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   From: o@o.org   
      
         Five myths that help Israel's war crimes   
      
         by Jonathan Cook; July 25, 2006   
      
     This week I had the pleasure to appear on American radio, on the Laura   
   Ingraham show, pitted against David Horowitz, a "Semite supremacist" who   
   most recently made his name under the banner of Campus Watch, leading   
   McCarthyite witch-hunts against American professors who have the   
   impertinence to suggest that maybe, just maybe, Arabs have minds and   
   feelings like the rest of us.   
      
     It was a revealing experience, at least for a British journalist rarely   
   exposed to the depths of ignorance and prejudice in the United States on   
   Middle East matters -- well, apart from the regular whackos who fill my   
   email in-tray. But five minutes of listening to Horowitz speak, and the   
   sympathy with which his arguments were greeted by Laura ("The Professors --   
   your book's a great read, David"), left me a lot more frightened about the   
   world's future.   
      
     Horowitz's response to every question, every development in the Middle   
   East, whether it concerns Lebanon, the Palestinians, Syria or Iran, is the   
   same: "They want to drive the Jews into the sea". It's as simple as that.   
   Not even a superficial attempt at analysis; just the message that the Arab   
   world is trying to finish off the genocide started by Europe. And if Laura   
   is any yardstick, a lot of Americans buy that stuff.   
      
     Horowitz is keen to bang the square peg of the Lebanon story into the   
   round hole of his claims that the "Jews" are facing an imminent genocide in   
   the Middle East. And to help him, he and the massed ranks of US apologists   
   for Israel -- regulars, I suspect, of shows like Laura's -- are promoting at   
   least four myths regarding Hizbullah's current rockets strikes on Israel.   
   Unless they are challenged at every turn, the danger is that they will win   
   the ground war against common sense in the US   
      
     The first myth is that Israel was forced to pound Lebanon with its   
   military hardware because Hizbullah began "raining down" rockets on the   
   Galilee. Anyone with a short memory can probably recall that was not the   
   first justification we were offered: that had to do with the two soldiers   
   captured by Hizbullah on a border post on July 12.   
      
     But presumably Horowitz and his friends realised that 400 Lebanese dead   
   and counting in little more than a week was hard to sell as a   
    "proportionate" response. In any case Hizbullah kept telling the world how   
   keen it was to return the soldiers in a prisoner swap.   
      
     Hundreds of dead in Lebanon, at least 1,000 severely injured and more than   
   half a million refugees -- all because Israel is not ready to sit down at   
   the negotiating table. Even Horowitz could not "advocate for Israel" on that   
   one.   
      
     So the chronology of war has been reorganised: now we are being told that   
   Israel was forced to attack Lebanon to defend itself from the barrage of   
   Hizbullah rockets falling on Israeli civilians. The international community   
   is buying the argument hook, line and sinker. "Israel has the right to   
   defend itself", says every politician who can find a microphone to talk   
   into.   
      
     But, if we cast our minds back, that is not how the "Middle East crisis",   
   as TV channels now describe it, started. It is worth recapping on those   
   early events (and I won't document the long history of Lebanese suffering at   
   Israel's hands that preceded it) before they become entirely shrouded in the   
   mythology being peddled by Horowitz and others.   
      
     Early on July 12 Hizbullah launched a raid against an army border post, in   
   what was in the best interpretation a foolhardy violation of Israeli   
   sovereignty. In the fighting the Shiite militia killed three soldiers and   
   captured two others, while Hizbullah fired a few mortars at border areas in   
   what the Israeli army described at the time as "diversionary tactics". As a   
   result of the shelling, five Israelis were "lightly injured", with most   
   needing treatment for shock, according to the Haaretz newspaper.   
      
     Israel's immediate response was to send a tank into Lebanon in pursuit of   
   the Hizbullah fighters (its own foolhardy violation of Lebanese   
   sovereignty). The tank ran over a landmine, which exploded killing four   
   soldiers inside. Another soldier died in further clashes inside Lebanon as   
   his unit tried to retrieve the bodies.   
      
     Rather than open diplomatic channels to calm the violence down and start   
   the process of getting its soldiers back, Israel launched bombing raids deep   
   into Lebanese territory the same day. Given Israel's worldview that it alone   
   has a right to project power and fear, that might have been expected.   
      
     But the next day Israel continued its rampage across the south and into   
   Beirut, where the airport, roads, bridges, and power stations were   
   pummelled. We now know from reports in the US media that the Israeli army   
   had been planning such a strike against Lebanon for at least a year.   
      
     In contrast to the image of Hizbullah frothing at the mouth to destroy   
   Israel, its leader Hassan Nasrallah held off from serious retaliation. For   
   the first day and a half, he limited his strikes to the northern borders   
   areas, which have faced Hizbullah attacks in the past and are well   
   protected.   
      
     He waited till late on June 13 before turning his guns on Haifa, even   
   though we now know he could have targeted Israel's third largest city from   
   the outset. A small volley of rockets directed at Haifa caused no injuries   
   and looked more like a warning than an escalation.   
      
     It was another three days -- days of constant Israeli bombardmeent of   
   Lebanon, destroying the country and injuring countless civilians -- before   
   Nasrallah hit Haifa again, including a shell that killed eight workers in a   
   railway depot.   
      
     No one should have been surprised. Nasrallah was doing exactly what he had   
   threatened to do if Israel refused to negotiate and chose the path of war   
   instead. Although the international media quoted his ominous televised   
   message that "Haifa is just the beginning", Nasrallah in fact made his   
   threat conditional on Israel's continuing strikes against Lebanon. In the   
   same speech he warned: "As long as the enemy pursues its aggression without   
   limits and red lines, we will pursue the confrontation without limits and   
   red lines." Well, Israel did, and so now has Nasrallah.   
      
     The second myth is that Hizbullah's stockpile of 12,000 rockets -- the   
   Israeli army's estimate -- poses an existential threat to Israel. According   
   to Horowitz and others, Hizbullah collected its armoury with the sole intent   
   of destroying the Jewish state.   
      
     If this really was Hizbullah's intention in amassing the weapons, it has a   
   very deluded view of what is required to wipe Israel off the map. More   
   likely, it collected the armoury in the hope that it might prove a   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)