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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
You will find that for as long as we've been keeping data on these things, civilian casualties always exceed military casualties. That you're singling out Israel means either you don't read history or you have a specific anti Israeli agenda.
Hamas conveniently turns that on its head by declaring that all Israelis are 'soldiers' therefore bona fide targets. They don't do this accidentally, they do this specifically so people like you won't blush when Israeli civilians are blown up since they are all of them 'soldiers'.
"Wreak enough havoc on the Palestinians every few years to keep them barely scraping by."
Not every few years, but every day--I would argue. Look at the distribution of permanent, impassible roadblocks on Palestinian roads. Look at the armed checkpoints where Palestinians must wait for hours to get through. Look at the hijacking of Palestinian land by radical Israeli settlers (also a crime in Geneva, I believe). Look at the permanent status as second-class citizens for Palestinians, in their own country, or what is left of it. All these things point to a concerted, daily process of disrupting Palestinian life and commerce.
I've just recently discovered your column at Slate.
Thanks for your excellent posts and courageous writings about the Iraeli agression against the innocents in Gaza.
While innocent civilians have always suffered in modern warfare as part of "collateral damage", intentionally targeting them, as you so clearly point out, is a terroristic act and should be summarily condemned no matter who the perpitrator.
"Luay Suboh, 10, from Beit Lahiya, lost his eyesight and some skin on his face Saturday when, his mother said, a fiery substance clung to him as he darted home from a shelter where his family was staying to pick up clothes."
One minute he was running in terror, and the next minute he was, literally, running in blind terror. Little Luay Suboh didn't "lose" his sight. His sight was burned out of his dear little face--in order to teach him a lesson? How can there be any question that this is terrorism? On "the morning after the morning after" this insanity ends, Luay Suboh will still be blind, and hundreds (if not, as I fear, thousands) of his fellow Gazans will still be dead, and countless more will be injured. What will have been accomplished, regardless of who claims victory, other than a further erosion of the collective human decency? What hell is this that there can be any argument that the pursuit of such a strategy can be justified?
I think an important component of much of this is the ascendance of Jewish extremist ideologies, and the inability and general refusal of most Jews to acknowledge or fight this trend. While everybody and his mother knows about and fears right wing Christian extremism and Islamic fundamentalism (as they should), there seems to be minimal ability to identify and marginalize Jewish extremists, both within the Jewish community and outside it.
This is garbage. I think it's extremely difficult to argue that Christian extremists are universally feared and therefore relatively powerless while extremist Jews are all-powerful. And it's certainly impossible to make that claim about Islamic extremists outside of the U.S. In the U.S., evangelical Christianity provides among the most vigorous and most numerous supporters for war generally and Middle East wars and allegiance to Israel specifically. And it wasn't an extremist Jew but an extremist Christian occupying the Oval Office the last eight years.
There's no shortage of religious extremists of all types, and to try to pick one strain of them -- the least numerous strain -- and pretend that they're the singular problem or most powerful force is inane.
Aside from all the rest, Friedman is jaw-droppingly wrong. After the Israelis had left Lebanon, although the Lebanese civilians were in anguish, and had experienced considerable pain, and massive collateral damage to their infrastructure, they did not in fact turn on Hezbullah, they did not control Hezbullah. On the contrary, Hezbullah entered the mainstream of Lebanese politics for the first time, and grabbed up a rather larger share of power than they had had previously.
Which was precisely the reason the attacks on Israel stopped.
In fact, Israel has only made progress towards peace when it has lost, or at anyrate its enemies have gained increased status-- the peace with Egypt was only possible after the Yom Kippur war, peace with the PLO was only possible after the Intefada, peace with Jordan after the 2nd Intefada, etc.
I mean Friedman is a buffoon, and getting more and more so every year, but you don't see him actually being as plainly and stupidly wrong, in addition to being vile, as this time around. Coming up with a clever, apparently inside-knowledge phrase like the morning after the morning after business, does not in fact make you right, it makes you pompous, in addition to being an idiot.
The current Israeli war, and the 2006 war with Lebanon, are both prime examples of what happens when the Neoliberal justification of "promoting democracy" abroad meets so-called entities of "terror." How can states that adopt this type of foreign policy justify their actions when, as has happened, these groups classified by the DOS are democratically elected? That is to say, no matter what the makeup of the country in question's parliament, how can wars against these entities be justified when they comprise a large amount of seats in parliament?
The solution from the imperialist POV is quite simple:
1) Declare that the state in question is not, in fact, a legitimate state. Such would be the case with Gaza, to some extent, and Palestine as a collective whole.
2) Declare that the elections which brought such "terrorist" organizations to power were somehow tainted, corrupt, or illegal. This is common practice, and despite very well-conducted monitoring by International NGOs and other organizations, the AEI and other American organizations willingly accomplish the task of rewriting immediate history precisely for these aims.
These strategies enable hypocritical foreign policy to continue uncriticized or addressed, perpetuating the idea that either a) democracy is good everywhere, when practiced a very specific way according to the United States, or b)certain peoples do not know "what to do with their freedom," and are unable to "appropriately" manage their own democracies (which is inherently self-contradicting).
How would the 2000 elections look to inernational election monitors? Can we classify the warmongering, rights-stealing faction of US government as a "mismanaged" democracy, or just a terrorist organization?
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
