How long can this go on ?




MILITARY LEADERS MUTINYING
Military Men Who Oppose Neo-Con Warmongering Under Attack
By Michael Piper

For generations, Republicans were strong supporters of the American military. But now that top military men are in open rebellion against thearmchair civilian war hawks—the hard-line pro-Israel ideologues who directed President George Bush to order an invasion of Iraq and who now want war on Iran—the angriest voices condemning the military are from GOP circles.Following the lead of the neo-conservatives, who are viewed as fanatics but still dominate the Bush administration and key GOP policy groups, many GOP loyalists are declaring war on the battle-tested generals, admirals and other military heroes who are saying, “Enough is enough.”Although none of the military men have yet said “No more wars for Israel,” their rhetoric in writings and public utterances says essentially that.Conservatives roundly denounced former Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni as an “anti-Semite” for noting that pro-Israel neo-conservatives were the driving force behind the Iraq war and that everybody in Washington knew it. Zinni knew what he was talking about: he formerly commanded all U.S. forces protecting Israel in the Middle East.More recently, another retired Marine, Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold, former director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in Time that the Iraq war was “unnecessary” and that the rationale for war by those whom he called “the zealots” made no sense. Newbold’s choice of the word “zealots” was loaded. The term arises from the legend of the Zealots—an ancient sect of Jewish fanatics.Newbold quit the service four months before the Iraq invasion, in part, he said, because he opposed those who exploited the 9-11 tragedy “to hijack our security policy”—referring to the zealous neo-con fanatics. He added: “Until now, I have resisted speaking out in public.” But, he said, “I’ve been silent long enough.” What particularly disturbed Newbold’s critics was that he said he was speaking out “with the encouragement of some still in positions of military leadership.”He also struck out at what he called “the distortion of intelligence in the buildup to the war”—a slam at the neo-conservatives and their Israeli allies who shoveled up garbage, disguised as “intelligence,” and used it to justify the war. Newbold brandished his anger at the armchair war hawks, most of whom never served in the military, saying, “the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions—or bury the results.”Newbold’s statements received much media attention, so the neo-cons fired back. Perhaps the most telling attack on the generals came from Stephen Herbits, a former top executive of the Seagram liquor empire, the fiefdom of World Jewish Congress chief Edgar Bronfman, a major patron of Israel.This longtime Bronfman henchman was appointed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to make “heads roll” in the military, screening all Pentagon promotions and appointments, implementing the agenda of enforcing lockstep Zionist control of the American war machine.EXAMINE THE GENERALSWriting in the April 20 edition of the egregiously pro-Israel Washington Times, Herbits urged the media to start to investigate military leaders who dared to take on the administration.Herbits said it would be “a service to this country when the media digs a bit below these attacks to examine the generals.” Herbits is obviously calling on spy agencies such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a conduit for Israel’s Mossad, to come up with “data” on the military men and provide it to the media to bring the dissidents into line. But cracking the whip over the entire military will be tough. On April 18, David Broder, senior Washington Post commentator, revealed that some months ago after he wrote of how Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.)—a former Marine colonel who served in Vietnam—had called for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, Broder was contacted by a Pentagon officer who gave his name and rank and then said: “This is a private call. I am not speaking officially. But I read your column, and I think it is important for you to know that Jack Murtha knows us very well and speaks for many of us.”This is no secret to those who know official Washington since Murtha has been a leading Capitol Hill voice for the military for years. And this is what makes pro-Israel Republican attacks on Murtha so disingenuous: they paintMurtha as a “pacifist,” “defeatist,” “liberal” ideologue. He is anything but that.For its own part, in an April 18 editorial, titled “The Generals’ Revolt,” The Washington Post said “the rebellion is problematic” and “threatens the essential democratic principle of military subordination to civilian control—the more so because a couple of the officers claim they are speaking for some still on active duty.”That same day, a lead editor of The Washington Times Tony Blankley—an advocate of all-out war against the Muslim world—declared that generals still in service who may be planning to quit together in protest against Bush policies may be “illegally conspiring.”Not content with accusing American military leaders of being seditious, Blankley followed up the next day with a repetition of his smears, calling for a court of inquiry to determine whether the military leaders are guilty of insubordination.Echoing Blankley, shrill pro-Israel agitator Charles Krauthammer, a psychiatrist by profession, not a soldier, blustered on April 21 with a column in The Washington Post crying of “The General’s Dangerous Whispers.”In the end, though, what’s most interesting is that prior to the explosion of reports in the mainstream media about the dissatisfied generals—four years after American Free Press first broke the story at a national level, even before the invasion of Iraq—the April issue of America’s oldest and most respected magazine, Harper’s, featured a provocative cover story: “American Coup d’Etat: Military thinkers discuss the unthinkable.” This was one month after Harper’s—in another cover story—called for the impeachment of President Bush.Clearly, some people in high places are not happy with the pro-Israel internationalism of the Bush regime.


Associated Press
Hezbollah Captures 2 Israeli Soldiers
By JOSEPH PANOSSIAN , 07.12.2006, 05:41 AM

The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them. The forces were trying to keep the soldiers' captors from moving them deeper into Lebanon, Israeli government officials said on condition of anonymity. The Israeli military would not confirm the report. Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called an emergency Cabinet meeting and said Lebanese guerrillas would pay a "heavy price" for Wednesday's attacks. "These are difficult days for the state of Israel and its citizens," Olmert said. "There are people ... who are trying to test our resolve. They will fail and they will pay a heavy price for their actions."

On July 12th, the Associated Press reported "The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them." This is from the article Hezbollah Captures 2 Israeli Soldiers By JOSEPH PANOSSIAN , 07.12.2006, 05:41 AMThis AP news article was run by several news outlets on July 12th like ABC, CBS Forbes, The Boston Herald etc. Here are more examples of articles which mention that the Israeli soldiers were captured on the Lebanese side of the boarder and a map that shows the Lebanese town refereed to in the articles: The two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanon Here are two examples from those at that page:"The Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement announced on Wednesday that its guerrillas have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon. "Implementing our promise to free Arab prisoners in Israeli jails, our strugglers have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon," a statement by Hezbollah said."The two soldiers have already been moved to a safe place," it added. The Lebanese police said that the two soldiers were captured as they "infiltrated" into the town of Aitaa al-Chaab inside the Lebanese border." [Hindustan Times 7/12/06]It all started on July 12 when Israel troops were ambushed on Lebanon's side of the border with Israel. Hezbollah, which commands the Lebanese south, immediately seized on their crossing. They arrested two Israeli soldiers, killed eight Israelis and wounded over 20 in attacks inside Israeli territory. [Asia Times 7/15/06]

Changing the Story Two Times:
5:41 AM ET, Associated Press Writer Joseph Panossian originally reported
"The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon"
7:09 AM ET, Associated Press Writer Joseph Panossian had changed his report to read: "The Hezbollah militant group captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes along the Lebanese border on Wednesday."4:13 PM ET, Associated Press Writer Joseph Panossian had again changed his report, this time to read: "Hezbollah militants crossed into Israel on Wednesday and captured two Israeli soldiers. "On July 12th, Anthony Shadid, Scott Wilson and Debbi Wilgoren, of the Washington Post Foreign Service, did not say which side of the border in their article Hezbollah Captures 2 Israeli Soldiers , "The militant Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers along the Israel-Lebanon border Wednesday morning, and Israeli officials said seven more soldiers were killed after tanks and troops moved into Lebanon in response to the attack." [as seen in google cache.] But that article was rewritten and on July 13th it read: "The Lebanese Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah infiltrated the Israeli border Wednesday in a brazen raid, capturing two Israeli soldiers, killing three others and prompting Israeli attacks on the airport in Beirut and bridges, roads, power stations and military positions across the hillsides of southern Lebanon



Did you know?
Gabriele Zamparini Tuesday, July 25, 2006

"I, Tsilli Goldenberg, Israeli citizen Accuse you - Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of Israel, Amir Peretz, Minister of Defense, Dan Halutz Head of Staff Chief Commander of the Israeli Army, of committing this bestial barbaric slaughter in Lebanon.I accuse you of committing Crimes against Humanity towards the Palestinian People. I accuse you of deserting our soldiers, when their lives could be saved by negotiations, and I accuse you of starting an unjustified war in my name." - Tsilli Goldenberg, Masarik 11, Jerusalem 93106 IsraelDid you know that "the daughter of Israel's newly elected prime minister added her voice to those of the anti-Israel [sic] forces around the world when she actively participated in a demonstration outside the home of IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, calling him a 'murderer'"?Why not?
Did you know that "45% of those killed in Lebanon are children and of the 500,000 people who have fled to safety, some 200,000 are children"?
Why not?
Did you know that Israel bombed "the nation's biggest private network, the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation"?
Why not?
Did you know that a "big milk factory in the Bekaa region called 'Liban Lait' was completely burned and destroyed by direct attacks from the Israeli Air Force."? And that a "food storehouse called 'TransMed' in Choueifate, in Beirut's southern suburbs, was totally destroyed"?
Why not?
Did you know that "Lebanon's president accused Israel on Monday of using phosphorous bombs in its 13-day offensive and urged the United Nations to demand an immediate ceasefire"?
Why not?
Did you know that "the bodies of 13 Lebanese fighters were taken from Maroun al-Ras and buried in Israel to use in future negotiations over the release of Israeli prisoners"?
Why not?
Did you know that "Israeli military has said it will destroy 10 buildings in predominantly Shia south Beirut for every rocket fired at the Israeli port of Haifa, army radio said Monday"?
Why not?
Did you know that "The delivery of at least 100 GBU 28 bunker busters bombs containing depleted uranium warheads by the United States to Israel for use against targets in Lebanon will result in additional radioactive and chemical toxic contamination with consequent adverse health and environmental effects throughout the middle east."?
Why not?
Did you know that what's going on is "subject to review by Israel's chief military censor, who has - in her own words - 'extraordinary power'. She can silence a broadcaster, block information and put journalists in jail"?
Why not?
Did you know that "[a]ccording to the Lebanese police force, the two [Israeli] soldiers were captured in Lebanese territory"?
Why not?
Did you know how the "cross-border" myth originated?Why not?From the beginning of this new chapter of the old madness, many people have been following on the internet this shame. We are a peaceful army of world citizens, working for free and moved by solidarity, compassion and an inner drive for justice. Not anger!But even among the elites of the anti-war movement and the so-called "left", too many have never been listening to us. Let alone important journalists working for the "pro-Israeli" mainstream media who still believe that the "internet is a new thing, and it's also unreliable.
"More than sixty years ago George Orwell wrote in The Freedom of the Press, a Preface to his political novel, Animal Farm:
"But at least let us have no more nonsense about defending liberty against Fascism. If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. The common people still vaguely subscribe to that doctrine and act on it... it is the liberals who fear liberty and the intellectuals who want to do dirt on the intellect..."



"The Insane Brutality of the State of Israel"

Atrocities in the Promised Land
By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON former CIA analyst

Words fail; ordinary terms are inadequate to describe the horrors Israel daily perpetrates, and has perpetrated for years, against the Palestinians. The tragedy of Gaza has been described a hundred times over, as have the tragedies of 1948, of Qibya, of Sabra and Shatila, of Jenin -- 60 years of atrocity perpetrated in the name of Judaism. But the horror generally falls on deaf ears in most of Israel, in the U.S. political arena, in the mainstream U.S. media. Those who are horrified -- and there are many -- cannot penetrate the shield of impassivity that protects the political and media elite in Israel, even more so in the U.S., and increasingly now in Canada and Europe, from seeing, from caring.
But it needs to be said now, loudly: those who devise and carry out Israeli policies have made Israel into a monster, and it has come time for all of us -- all Israelis, all Jews who allow Israel to speak for them, all Americans who do nothing to end U.S. support for Israel and its murderous policies -- to recognize that we stain ourselves morally by continuing to sit by while Israel carries out its atrocities against the Palestinians.
A nation that mandates the primacy of one ethnicity or religion over all others will eventually become psychologically dysfunctional. Narcissistically obsessed with its own image, it must strive to maintain its racial superiority at all costs and will inevitably come to view any resistance to this imagined superiority as an existential threat. Indeed, any other people automatically becomes an existential threat simply by virtue of its own existence. As it seeks to protect itself against phantom threats, the racist state becomes increasingly paranoid, its society closed and insular, intellectually limited. Setbacks enrage it; humiliations madden it. The state lashes out in a crazed effort, lacking any sense of proportion, to reassure itself of its strength.
The pattern played out in Nazi Germany as it sought to maintain a mythical Aryan superiority. It is playing out now in Israel. “This society no longer recognizes any boundaries, geographical or moral,” wrote Israeli intellectual and anti-Zionist activist Michel Warschawski in his 2004 book Towards an Open Tomb: The Crisis of Israeli Society. Israel knows no limits and is lashing out as it finds that its attempt to beat the Palestinians into submission and swallow Palestine whole is being thwarted by a resilient, dignified Palestinian people who refuse to submit quietly and give up resisting Israel’s arrogance.
We in the United States have become inured to tragedy inflicted by Israel, and we easily fall for the spin that automatically, by some trick of the imagination, converts
Israeli atrocities to examples of how Israel is victimized. But a military establishment that drops a 500-pound bomb on a residential apartment building in the middle of the night and kills 14 sleeping civilians, as happened in Gaza four years ago, is not a military that operates by civilized rules.
A military establishment that drops a 500-pound bomb on a house in the middle of the night and kills a man and his wife and seven of their children, as happened in Gaza four days ago, is not the military of a moral country.
A society that can brush off as unimportant an army officer’s brutal murder of a 13-year-old girl on the claim that she threatened soldiers at a military post -- one of nearly 700 Palestinian children murdered by Israelis since the intifada began -- is not a society with a conscience.
A government that imprisons a 15-year-old girl -- one of several hundred children in Israeli detention -- for the crime of pushing and running away from a male soldier trying to do a body search as she entered a mosque is not a government with any moral bearings. (This story, not the kind that ever appears in the U.S. media, was reported in the London Sunday Times. The girl was shot three times as she ran away and was convicted to 18 months in prison after she came out of a coma.)
Critics of Israel note increasingly that Israel is self-destructing, nearing a catastrophe of its own making. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy talks of a society in “moral collapse.”
Michel Warschawski writes of an “Israeli madness” and “insane brutality,” a “putrefaction” of civilized society, that have set Israel on a suicidal course. He foresees the end of the Zionist enterprise; Israel is a “gang of hoodlums,” he says, a state “that makes a mockery of legality and of civil morality. A state run in contempt of justice loses the strength to survive.”
As Warschawski notes bitterly, Israel no longer knows any moral boundaries -- if it ever did. Those who continue to support Israel, who make excuses for it as it descends into corruption, have lost their moral compass.

Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession. She can be reached at mailto:%20kathy.bill@christison-santafe.com.


The Shame of Being An American
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Do you know that Israel is engaged in ethnic cleansing in southern Lebanon? Israel has ordered all the villagers to clear out. Israel then destroys their homes and murders the fleeing villagers. That way there is no one to come back and nothing to which to return, making it easier for Israel to grab the territory, just as Israel has been stealing Palestine from the Palestinians.
Do you know that one-third of the Lebanese civilians murdered by Israel’s attacks on civilian residential districts are children? That is the report from Jan Egeland, the emergency relief coordinator for the UN. He says it is impossible for help to reach the wounded and those buried in rubble, because Israeli air strikes have blown up all the bridges and roads. Considering how often (almost always) Israel misses Hizbollah targets and hits civilian ones, one might think that Israeli fire is being guided by US satellites and US military GPS. Don’t be surprised at US complicity. Why would the puppet be any less evil than the puppet master?
Of course, you don’t know these things, because the US print and TV media do not report them.
Because Bush is so proud of himself, you do know that he has blocked every effort to stop the Israeli slaughter of Lebanese civilians. Bush has told the UN “NO.” Bush has told the European Community “NO.” Bush has told the pro-American Lebanese prime minister “NO.” Twice. Bush is very proud of his firmness. He is enjoying Israel’s rampage and wishes he could do the same thing in Iraq.
Does it make you a Proud American that “your” president gave Israel the green light to drop bombs on convoys of villagers fleeing from Israeli shelling, on residential neighborhoods in the capital of Beirut and throughout Lebanon, on hospitals, on power plants, on food production and storage, on ports, on civilian airports, on bridges, on roads, on every piece of infrastructure on which civilized life depends? Are you a Proud American? Or are you an Israeli puppet?
On July 20, “your” House of Representatives voted 410-8 in favor of Israel’s massive war crimes in Lebanon. Not content with making every American complicit in war crimes, “your” House of Representatives, according to the Associated Press, also “condemns enemies of the Jewish state.”
Who are the “enemies of the Jewish state”?
They are the Palestinians whose land has been stolen by the Jewish state, whose homes and olive groves have been destroyed by the Jewish state, whose children have been shot down in the streets by the Jewish state, whose women have been abused by the Jewish state. They are Palestinians who have been walled off into ghettos, who cannot reach their farm lands or medical care or schools, who cannot drive on roads through Palestine that have been constructed for Israelis only. They are Palestinians whose ancient towns have been invaded by militant Zionist “settlers” under the protection of the Israeli army who beat and persecute the Palestinians and drive them out of their towns. They are Palestinians who cannot allow their children outside their homes because they will be murdered by Israeli “settlers.”
The Palestinians who confront Israeli evil are called “terrorists.” When Bush forced free elections on Palestine, the people voted for Hamas. Hamas is the organization that has stood up to the Jewish state. This means, of course, that Hamas is evil, anti-semitic, un-American and terrorist. The US and Israel responded by cutting off all funds to the new government. Democracy is permitted only if it produces the results Bush and Israel want.
Israelis never practice terror. Only those who are in Israel’s way are terrorists.
Another enemy of the Jewish state is Hizbollah. Hizbollah is a militia of Shia Muslims created in 1982 when Israel first invaded Lebanon. During this invasion the great moral Jewish state arranged for the murder of refugees in refugee camps. The result of Israel’s atrocities was Hizbollah, which fought the Israeli army, defeated it, and drove it, with its tail between its legs, out of Lebanon. Today Hizbollah not only defends southern Lebanon but also provides social services such as orphanages and medical care.
To cut to the chase, the enemies of the Jewish state are any Muslim country not ruled by an American puppet friendly to Israel. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the oil emirates have sided with Israel against their own kind, because they are dependent either on American money or on American protection from their own people. Sooner or later these totally corrupt governments that do not represent the people they rule will be overthrown. It is only a matter of time.
Indeed Bush and Israel may be hastening the process in their frantic effort to overthrow the governments of Syria and Iran. Both governments have more popular support than Bush has, but the White House Moron doesn’t know this. The Moron thinks Syria and Iran will be “cakewalks” like Iraq, where ten proud divisions of the US military are tied down by a few lightly armed insurgents.
If you are still a Proud American, consider that your pride is doing nothing good for Israel or for America.
On July 20 when “your” House of Representatives, following “your” US Senate, passed the resolution in support of Israel’s war crimes, the most powerful lobby in Washington, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), quickly got out a press release proclaiming “The American people overwhelming support Israel’s war on terrorism and understand that we must stand by our closest ally in this time of crisis.”
The truth is that Israel created the crisis by invading a country with a pro-American government. The truth is that the American people do not support Israel’s war crimes, as the CNN quick poll results make clear and as was made clear by callers into C-Span.
Despite the Israeli spin on news provided by US “reporting,” a majority of Americans do not approve of Israeli atrocities against Lebanese civilians. Hizbollah is located in southern Lebanon. If Israel is targeting Hizbollah, why are Israeli bombs falling on northern Lebanon? Why are they falling on Beirut? Why are they falling on civilian airports? On schools and hospitals?
Now we arrive at the main point. When the US Senate and House of Representatives pass resolutions in support of Israeli war crimes and condemn those who resist Israeli aggression, the Senate and House confirm Osama bin Laden’s propaganda that America stands with Israel against the Arab and Muslim world.
Indeed, Israel, which has one of the world’s largest per capita incomes, is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. Many believe that much of this “aid” comes back to AIPAC, which uses it to elect “our” representatives in Congress.
This perception is no favor to Israel, whose population is declining, as the smart ones have seen the writing on the wall and have been leaving. Israel is surrounded by hundreds of millions of Muslims who are being turned into enemies of Israel by Israel’s actions and inhumane policies.
The hope in the Muslim world has always been that the United States would intervene in behalf of compromise and make Israel realize that Israel cannot steal Palestine and turn every Palestinian into a refugee.
This has been the hope of the Arab world. This is the reason our puppets have not been overthrown. This hope is the reason America still had some prestige in the Arab world.
The House of Representatives resolution, bought and paid for by AIPAC money, is the final nail in the coffin of American prestige in the Middle East. It shows that America is, indeed, Israel’s puppet, just as Osama bin Laden says, and as a majority of Muslims believe.
With hope and diplomacy dead, henceforth America and Israel have only tooth and claw. The vaunted Israeli army could not defeat a rag tag militia in southern Lebanon. The vaunted US military cannot defeat a rag tag, lightly armed, insurgency drawn from a minority of the population in Iraq, insurgents, moreover, who are mainly engaged in civil war against the Shia majority.
What will the US and its puppet master do? Both are too full of hubris and paranoia to admit their terrible mistakes. Israel and the US will either destroy from the air the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Iran so that civilized life becomes impossible for Muslims, or the US and Israel will use nuclear weapons to intimidate Muslims into acquiescence to Israel’s desires.
Muslim genocide in one form or another is the professed goal of the neoconservatives who have total control over the Bush administration. Neocon godfather Norman Podhoretz has called for World War IV (in neocon thinking WW III was the cold war) to overthrow Islam in the Middle East, deracinate the Islamic religion and turn it into a formalized, secular ritual.
Rumsfeld’s neocon Pentagon has drafted new US war doctrine that permits pre-emptive nuclear attack on non-nuclear states.
Neocon David Horowitz says that by slaughtering Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, “Israel is doing the work of the rest of the civilized world,” thus equating war criminals with civilized men.
Neocon Larry Kudlow says that “Israel is doing the Lord’s work” by murdering Lebanese, a claim that should give pause to Israel’s Christian evangelical supporters. Where does the Lord Jesus say, “go forth and murder your neighbors so that you may steal their lands”?
The complicity of the American public in these heinous crimes will damn America for all time in history.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com


A perilous excursion into the distant past, starting seven whole weeks ago
Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need To Know
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

As the tv networks give unlimited airtime to Israel’s apologists, the message rolls out that no nation, least of all Israel, can permit bombardment or armed incursion across its borders without retaliation.
The guiding rule in this tsunami of drivel is that the viewers should be denied the slightest access to any historical context, or indeed to anything that happened prior to June 28, which was when the capture of an Israeli soldier and the killing of two others by Hamas hit the headlines, followed soon thereafter by an attack by a unit of Hezbollah’s fighters.
Memory is supposed to stop in its tracks at June 28, 2006.
Let’s go on a brief excursion into pre-history. I’m talking about June 20, 2006, when Israeli aircraft fired at least one missile at a car in an attempted extrajudicial assassination attempt on a road between Jabalya and Gaza City. The missile missed the car. Instead it killed three Palestinian children and wounded 15.
Back we go again to June 13, 2006. Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a van in another attempted extrajudicial assassination. The successive barrages killed nine innocent Palestinians.
Now we’re really in the dark ages, reaching far, far back to June 9, 2006, when Israel shelled a beach in Beit Lahiya killing 8 civilians and injuring 32.
That’s just a brief trip down Memory Lane, and we trip over the bodies of twenty dead and forty-seven wounded, all of them Palestinians, most of them women and children.
Israel regrets… But no! Israel doesn’t regret in the least. Most of the time it doesn’t even bother to pretend to regret. It says, “We reserve the right to slaughter Palestinians whenever we want. We reserve the right to assassinate their leaders, crush their homes, steal their water, tear out their olive groves, and when they try to resist we call them terrorists intent on wrecking the ‘peace process’”.
Now Israel says it wants to wipe out Hezbollah. It wishes no harm to the people of Lebanon, just so long as they’re not supporters of Hezbollah, or standing anywhere in the neighborhood of a person or a house or a car or a truck or a road or a bus or a field, or a power station or a port that might, in the mind of an Israeli commander or pilot, have something to do with Hezbollah. In any of those eventualities all bets are off. You or your wife or your mother or your baby get fried.
Israel regrets… But no! As noted above, it doesn’t regret in the least. Neither does George Bush, nor Condoleezza Rice nor John Bolton who is the moral savage who brings shame on his country each day that he sits as America’s ambassador (unconfirmed) at the UN and who has just told the world that a dead Israel civilian is worth a whole more in terms of moral outrage than a Lebanese one.
None of them regrets. They say Hezbollah is a cancer in the body of Lebanon. Sometimes, to kill the cancer, you end up killing the body. Or bodies. Bodies of babies. Lots of them. Go to the website fromisraeltolebanon.info and take a look. Then sign the petition on the site calling on the governments of the world to stop this barbarity.
You can say that Israel brought Hezbollah into the world. You can prove it too, though this too involves another frightening excursion into history.
This time we have to go far, almost unimaginably far, back into history. Back to 1982, before the dinosaurs, before CNN, before Fox TV, before O’Reilly and Limbaugh. But not before the neo-cons who at that time had already crawled from the primal slime and were doing exactly what they are doing now: advising an American president to give Israel the green light to “solve its security problems” by destroying Lebanon.
In 1982 Israel had a problem. Yasir Arafat, headquartered in Beirut, was making ready to announce that the PLO was prepared to sit down with Israel and embark on peaceful, good faith negotiations towards a two-state solution.
Israel didn’t want a two-state solution, which meant -- if UN resolutions were to be taken seriously -- a Palestinian state right next door, with water, and contiguous territory. So Israel decided chase the PLO right out of Lebanon. It announced that the Palestinian fighters had broken the year-long cease-fire by lobbing some shells into northern Israel.
Palestinians had done nothing of the sort. I remember this very well, because Brian Urquhart, at that time assistant secretary general of the United Nations, in charge of UN observers on Israel’s northern border, invited me to his office on the 38th floor of the UN hq in mid-Manhattan and showed me all the current reports from the zone. For over a year there’d been no shelling from north of the border. Israel was lying.
With or without a pretext Israel wanted to invade Lebanon. So it did, and rolled up to Beirut. It shelled Lebanese towns and villages and bombed them from the air. Sharon’s forces killed maybe 20,000 people, and let Lebanese Christians slaughter hundreds of Palestinian refugees in the camps of Sabra and Chatilla.
The killing got so bad that even Ronald Reagan awoke from his slumbers and called Tel Aviv to tell Israel to stop. Sharon gave the White House the finger by bombing Beirut at the precise times -- 2.42 and 3.38 -- of two UN resolutions calling for a peaceful settlement on the matter of Palestine.
When the dust settled over the rubble, Israel bunkered down several miles inside Lebanese sovereign territory, which it illegally occupied, in defiance of all UN resolutions, for years, supervising a brutal local militia and running its own version of Abu Graibh, the torture center at the prison of Al-Khiam.
Occupy a country, torture its citizens and in the end you face resistance. In Israel’s case it was Hezbollah, and in the end Hezbollah ran Israel out of Lebanon, which is why a lot of Lebanese regard Hezbollah not as terrorists but as courageous liberators.
The years roll by and Israel does its successful best to destroy all possibility of a viable two-state solution. It builds illegal settlements. It chops up Palestine with Jews-only roads. It collars all the water. It cordons off Jerusalem. It steals even more land by bisecting Palestinian territory with its “fence”. Anyone trying to organize resistance gets jailed, tortured, or blown up.
Sick of their terrible trials, Palestinians elect Hamas, whose leaders make it perfectly clear that they are ready to deal on the basis of the old two-state solution, which of course is the one thing Israel cannot endure. Israel doesn’t want any “peaceful solution” that gives the Palestinians anything more than a few trashed out acres surrounded with barbed wire and tanks, between the Israeli settlements whose goons can murder them pretty much at will.
So here we are, 24 years after Sharon did his best to destroy Lebanon in 1982, and his heirs are doing it all over again. Since they can’t endure the idea of any just settlement for Palestinians, it’s the only thing they know how to do. Call Lebanon a terror-haven and bomb it back to the stone age. Call Gaza a terror-haven and bomb its power plant, first stop on the journey back to the stone age. Bomb Damascus. Bomb Teheran.
Of course they won’t destroy Hezbollah. Every time they kill another Lebanese family, they multiply hatred of Israel and support for Hezbollah. They’ve even unified the parliament in Baghdad, which just voted unanimously -- Sunnis and Shi’ites and Kurds alike -- to deplore Israel’s conduct and to call for a ceasefire.
I hope you’ve enjoyed these little excursions into history, even though history is dangerous, which is why the US press gives it a wide birth. But even without the benefit of historical instruction, a majority of Americans in CNN’s instant poll –- about 55 per cent out of 800,000 as of midday, July 19 -- don’t like what Israel is up to.
Dislike is one thing, but at least in the short term it doesn’t help much. Israel’s 1982 attack on Lebanon grew unpopular in the US, after the first few days. But forcing the US to pressure Israel to settle the basic problem takes political courage, and virtually no US politician is prepared to buck the Israel lobby, however many families in Lebanon and Gaza may be sacrificed on the altar of such cowardice


Glasgow University Media Unit
Bad News from Israel
Greg Philo and Mike Berry (2004, London: Pluto Press)

This is a study of TV new coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and of how this coverage relates to the understanding, beliefs and attitudes of the television audience. The work was undertaken with support from the Economic and Social Research Council whose help we would like to acknowledge. In producing this study out intention was not to ‘monitor’ the media or to criticise individual journalists. Our intention was to discuss the pressures and structures within which they work to show the effects of those on new content and to examine the role of the media in the construction of public knowledge. It is a very extensive study with an audience sample of over 800 people and a detailed analysis of TV news over a two-year period. This work also raises a series of important theoretical issues in mass communications. The main focus of the book is on giving a clear exposition of our methods and results, but the theoretical concerns are latent and there is a more detailed discussion of them in other work by the Media Group. (For a discussion of issues in popular culture and audience response, including the active audience, resistance and post-modern accounts see Philo, G. and Miller, D. Market Killing Pearson / Longman. 2001).
The study suggests that television news on the Israel/Palestinian conflict confuses viewers and substantially features Israeli government views. Israelis are quoted and speak in interviews over twice as much as Palestinians and there are major differences in the language used to describe the two sides. This operates in favours of the Israelis and influences how viewers understand the conflict. The study focused on BBC One and ITV News from the start of the current Palestinian intifada, the Glasgow researchers examined around 200 news programmes and interviewed and questioned over 800 people. The study is unique in that for the first time it brought senior broadcasters together with ordinary viewers to work in research groups, analysing how the news informs people and how it could be improved. Those taking part included George Alagiah and Brian Hanrahan from the BBC, Lindsey Hilsum from Channel 4 news, the film-maker Ken Loach and a large number of other broadcasting professionals and programme makers. (The study was part of a large research programme analysing views and audience understanding across a range of subject areas. Those helping and taking part also included: John Humphrys, Sue Inglish, Paul Adams, Nik Gowing, Sian Kevill, Alan Hayling, Evan Davis and Fran Unsworth from the BBC, Gary Rogers, Adrian Monck and Gaye Flashman from Channel Five News, Alex Graham from Wall to Wall Television, John Underwood from Clear Communications, Sandy Ross and Paul McKinney from Scottish Television.)
Some Major Findings:
There is a preponderance of official ‘Israeli perspectives’, particularly on BBC 1, where Israelis were interviewed or reported over twice as much as Palestinians. On top of this, US politicians who support Israel were very strongly featured. They appeared more than politicians from any other country and twice as much as those from Britain.
excerpt from book
TV news says almost nothing about the history or origins of the conflict. The great majority of viewers depended on this news as their main source of information. The gaps in their knowledge closely paralleled the ‘gaps’ in the news. Most did not know that the Palestinians had been forced from their homes and land when Israel was established in 1948. In 1967 Israel occupied by force the territories to which the Palestinian refugees had moved. Most viewers did not know that the Palestinians subsequently lived under Israeli military rule or that the Israelis took control of key resources such as water, and the damage this did to the Palestinian economy. Without explanations being given on the news, there was great confusion amongst viewers even about who was ‘occupying’ the occupied territories. Some understood ‘occupied’ to mean that someone was on the land (as in a bathroom being occupied) so they thought that the Palestinians were the occupiers. Many saw the conflict as a sort of border dispute between two countries fighting over land between them. As one viewer put it:
The impression I got (from news) was that the Palestinians had lived around about that area and now they were trying to come back and get some more land for themselves - I didn’t realise they had been driven out of places in wars previously.
extract from book
Journalists gave different views on why there was so little explanation on the news. George Alagiah from the BBC stressed the problem of time:
In depth it takes a long time, but we’re constantly being told that the attention span of our average viewer is about twenty seconds and if we don’t grab people - and we’ve looked at the figures - the number of people who shift channels around in my programme now six o’clock, there’s a movement of about three million people in that first minute, coming in and out.Lindsey Hilsum from Channel 4 News also commented on how difficult it was to report in a controversial area:
With a conflict like this, nearly every single fact is disputed, I think ‘Oh God, the Palestinians say this and the Israelis say that…’ I know it’s a question of interpretation so I have to say what both sides think and I think sometimes that stops us from giving the background we should be giving.The book also examines other factors in production such as lobbying and public relations by both sides.
excerpt from book
Because there was not account of historical events such as the Palestinians losing their homes, there was a tendency for viewers to see the problems as “starting ” with Palestinian action. On the news, Israeli actions tended to be explained and contextualised - they were often shown as merely “responding ” to what had been done to them by Palestinians (in the 2001 samples they were six times as likely to be presented as “retaliating ” or in some way responding than were the Palestinians). This apparently influenced many viewers to blame Palestinians for the conflict, as in these comments from two 20 year olds:
You always think of the Palestinians as being really aggressive because of the stories you hear on the news… I always think the Israelis are fighting back against the bombings that have been done to them.
I wasn’t under the impression that Israeli borders had changed or that they had taken land from other people - I thought it was more a Palestinian aggression than it was Israeli aggression.Some people disputed such views but they tended to cite alternative sources of information other than the television news.
excerpt from book
In news reporting there was a tendency to present Israeli settlements in the occupied territories as vulnerable communities, rather than as having a role in imposing the occupation. But as the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim has written, they have a key military and strategic function. They have been built on hilltops to give a commanding position and their occupants are often heavily armed. The Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, has pointed to its role in attacking Palestinians in attempts to seize land. Most viewers knew very little of this - one describes his surprise at learning that the settlements controlled over 40% of the West Bank:
I had absolutely no idea it was that percentage… I saw them as small embattled and surrounded by hostile Palestinians - that’s entirely thanks to watching the television news.
excerpt from book
There was a strong emphasis on Israeli casualties on the news, relative to Palestinians (even though Palestinians had around 2-3 times the number of deaths as Israelis). In one week in March 02 which the BBC reported as having the most Palestinian casualties since the start of the intifada, there was actually more coverage on the news of Israeli deaths. There were also differences in the language used by journalists for Israelis and Palestinians - words such as ‘atrocity’, ‘brutal murder’, ‘mass murder’, ‘savage cold blooded killing’, ‘lynching’ and ‘slaughter’ were used about Israeli deaths but not Palestinian. The word ‘terrorist’ was used to describe Palestinians by journalists but when an Israeli group was reported as trying to bomb a Palestinian school, they were referred to as ‘extremists’ or ‘vigilantes’ (BBC 1 lunch time news and ITV main news 5/03/02). TV News coverage influenced some viewers to believe most deaths had been Israeli as in these comments about the reporting of suicide bombs:
I remembered it was the suicide bombers - they are the one who go in and take maybe a whole busload and I thought it would be more Israelis.And this is from a viewer who believed the Israelis had five times as many casualties as Palestinians:
I would imagine it’s going to be more casualties on the Israeli side, but it’s purely from television - that’s where I get my info from.
excerpt from book
The journalists and researchers also looked at issues of cultural difference - They asked viewers if they ‘saw’ conflicts in terms of who they identified with? Do we sympathise immediately with people who look and sound like us and reject the views of people who look ‘strange’? The research showed that our perceptions of others are affected by such factors but the journalists wanted to know what they should do about it. Should they intervene to help audiences ‘see through’ cultural difference by appealing to more universal values, e.g. concern for human suffering or loss – and should this be done in the name of balance? This is explored in a number of fascinating exchanges between journalists.
excerpt from book
The book shows the crucial importance of TV news in informing public opinion and the powerful influence it can have on how we see and understand our world. It also shows how news can confuse and the book is a real attempt to reach for different and innovative approaches to improve the quality of news and deal with some of the most difficult issues that journalists have to face. The study also raises serious questions for broadcasters since they have a duty to properly inform the public in these and to maintain due impartiality in reporting all sides of the conflict. The absence of any proper historical context or explanation for the reasons underlying the conflict make it difficult for viewers to understand why it is so intractable and hinders the development of an informed public discussion on how it might be resolved.
See also:
Bad news from Israel: media coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict by Greg Philo