Delusional
Expectations
By John Chuckman
28 July, 2006
Countercurrents.org
At
this writing, Israel has killed six hundred civilians in Lebanon, including
more than one hundred children, and killed another one hundred and fifty
in Gaza. It has created hundreds of thousands of refugees and destroyed
enough bridges and power stations and apartments to create misery for
years to come.
Nothing is more dishonest
than attempting to justify this barbarism with "Islamist fundamentalists
declare their goal openly to destroy the state of Israel and kill Jews."
There is no possibility that
Israel can be destroyed by Islamic fundamentalists: the notion is simply
a fantasy. This is so not just because of Israel's ready willingness
to bomb and kill, but because of great-power guarantees. It is so also
because no Arab state believes any longer that Israel’s destruction
is a sensible or possible goal, despite their leaders’ public
rhetoric. And it is true because the enemies Israel claims are so threatening,
organizations such as Hezbollah or Hamas, are militarily weak by any
rational standard of calculation.
Israel began by moving into
a bad neighborhood, and everyone involved understood this from the beginning,
yet Israel behaves as though it should be normal to enjoy a pristine
Disney-like suburb with white-picket fences. It reacts to activities
in the bad neighborhood that disturb its fantasy with ferocious indignation.
Israel's destructive behavior is explained largely by this delusional
expectation.
If Israel had spent half
the resources it has spent on war over the last fifty years instead
on helping its neighbors and building up their economies, the region
would be a far better place today. And if Israel had been willing to
make reasonable concessions to the needs of others in the region, there
might well be lasting peace today.
The irony of Israel’s
current destructive behavior is that a healthy, prosperous Lebanon is
in Israel’s long-term interest, just as it is in Israel’s
interest to have all of its neighbors prosperous and flourishing.
But, instead, Israel’s
response to any provocation from any gang or individual is always war
and maintaining "the iron wall" - an early Zionist phrase
that has provided the foundation of Israeli policy for over half a century
- against all outsiders with disregard for their interests or needs.
Deception is an important
tool in any war, and Israel’s extensive use of it shows us how
it regards neighbors and others it should have cultivated as friends.
Look at the bombing of a UN observation post in Lebanon, killing four
unarmed UN workers. Israel says it was an accident, but the post had
been there for years, and it was well marked. Moreover, the UN workers
were killed in a bunker, meaning that a certain kind of munition had
to be used to kill them. According to a BBC report, the UN peacekeepers
had contacted Israeli forces ten times about artillery shelling in the
hours before they were hit by a precision-guided missile. How possibly
can this have been an accident?
Could the failed international
conference in Rome where proposals for an immediate cease-fire and an
international force in Southern Lebanon were advocated have provided
Israel’s motive? The cease-fire proposal was quickly killed by
the United States to give Israel more bombing time. Was the proposal
for an international force the target of Israel’s attack? Who
would commit observers or troops if this is what would happen to them?
We know Israel does not want outside interference in Lebanon. More broadly,
Israel has shown intense hostility towards the UN for years, perhaps
one of its closest bonds with Bush’s mob.
There is some evidence that
the Israeli soldiers kidnapped at the beginning of the current bombardment
were actually kidnapped inside Lebanon on a provocative mission. I have
no idea whether this true, but it is far from improbable. The kidnapping
has certainly provided an excuse for bombing the hell out of southern
Lebanon.
Israel’s many past
deceptions naturally enough leave one uncomfortable about any of its
official statements on any important matter. First was the covert creation
of a nuclear arsenal, a fact not acknowledged to this day. Then there
was Israel’s secret assistance to apartheid South Africa, including
still-unacknowledged assistance in creating and testing a nuclear weapon.
There was Israel’s manipulation of events leading to the Six Day
War, a war Israel knew it could handily win for great gains (see my
March, 2003, article, Was Einstein Right? ). There was Israel’s
attempt to sink the U.S.S. Liberty, an American spy ship, during the
Six Day War, an event never meaningfully explained but likely intended
to prevent evidence of atrocities against captured Egyptian soldiers
in the Sinai being recorded. A large group of Israeli spies was arrested
after 9/11, but their extensive activities in the United States leading
up to that event have never been explained. Only a few weeks ago, before
its attacks on Lebanon and Gaza, Israel mounted an effort claiming the
munition which wiped out a Palestinian family on a Gaza beach belonged
to someone else, when in fact a collected scrap of casing clearly showed
its American origin, a type of munition not made available to anyone
else in the region.
All gangs and individuals
who rudely remind Israel that it really does live in a bad neighborhood
are simply flattened, but flattening the perpetrators is never enough.
Always Israel takes the lives of innocents and destroys their property,
believing that such ruthlessness eventually will intimidate everyone
around into a zombie-like peace, but this is simply another delusion.
The logic of Israel’s
behavior taken to its limit would have a two- or three-hundred mile
perimeter around Israel’s border (whatever that is) bulldozed
and paved over. This would certainly provide complete security, but
it is utter fantasy, just as impossible as the destruction of Israel.
What is the solution in the
Middle East? It is found in so simple an act as Israel’s dealing
fairly with its neighbors and negotiating to sort things out. Israel
has never yet done this. It presents only an iron wall, bristling with
weapons. When breakthroughs do come, as with the Oslo Accords, Israel’s
establishment quietly ignores them or works actively against them while
still talking about peace.
Israel has all the advantages.
It has advanced weapons. It has great-power guarantees. It has billions
of dollars in assistance every year. It has unmatched access to American
intelligence and government. By comparison, Hamas and Hezbollah are
pretty anemic forces.
Organizations like Hezbollah
and Hamas owe their very existence to Israel's past behavior. Hezbollah
flourished as a guerrilla force opposing Israel's previous invasion
of Lebanon and its long-term partial occupation. It served also as an
important charity in the midst of chaos. Hamas was created with the
deliberate help of Israeli intelligence, intending to create a rival
for the PLO and introduce instability into Palestinian politics. When
Hamas was elected recently as part of the government of Palestine, it
was only after innumerable excuses from Israel for not meeting with
Abbas and after imprisoning and threatening Arafat for several years
before his death. How are Palestinians to deal with an Israel that always
has an excuse for not negotiating, for not even speaking, to its government?
Israel has now kidnapped the cabinet of an elected government, but this
is quietly supported by Bush’s democracy-loving mob.
Israel wants us to accept
the simplistic assertion that organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas
are proof of Islamist determination to destroy Israel. So long as this
is the accepted view, greatly over-simplifying a truly complex situation,
there can be no understanding and no sensible approach to peace. Refusing
even to talk with the democratically-elected Hamas government and cutting
it off from all connections and revenues was an act of war in response
to party slogans. You can't build peace on fantasy.
I said Israel could not be
destroyed by anyone, but there is an important exception to that statement:
Israel could well be destroyed by itself.