Arab-Israeli Peace Blog

Syria's Opposition Is Armed

2011-11-21T23:14:00.000+02:00

Placard-Waving Protesters are actually Machine Gun-Wielding Terrorists.

By Tony Cartalucci

November 18, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- The "Free Syria Army" is literally an army of militant extremists, many drawn not from Syria's military ranks, but from the Muslim Brotherhood, carrying heavy weapons back and forth over the Turkish and Lebanese borders, funded, supported, and armed by the United States, Israel, and Turkey. The latest evidence confirming this comes in the form of a report out of the International Institute for Strategic Studies where Senior Fellow for Regional Security at IISS-Middle East Emile Hokayem openly admits Syria's opposition is armed and prepared to drag Syria's violence into even bloodier depths.

This report comes in sharp contrast to the propaganda fed via the corporate-media and the West's foreign ministers on a daily basis, where the violence is portrayed as one-sided, with Syria's President Bashar al-Assad "gunning down" throngs of peaceful, placard waving protesters. Just as in Libya where these so-called "peaceful protesters" turned out to be hordes of genocidal racist Al Qaeda mercenaries, led by big-oil representatives, fighting their cause upon a verified pack of lies, so too is Syria's "pro-democracy" movement which is slowly being revealed as yet another militant brand of extremists long cultivated by Anglo-American intelligence agencies, whose leadership is harbored in London and Washington and their foot soldiers supplied a steady stream of covert military support and overt rhetorical support throughout the compromised corporate media.

The unrest in Syria from the beginning was entirely backed by Western corporate-financier interests and part of a long-planned agenda for region-wide regime change. Syria has been slated for regime change since as early as 1991. In 2002, then US Under Secretary of State John Bolton added Syria to the growing "Axis of Evil." It would be later revealed that Bolton's threats against Syria manifested themselves as covert funding and support for opposition groups inside of Syria spanning both the Bush and Obama administrations.

In an April 2011 CNN article, acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner stated, "We're not working to undermine that [Syrian] government. What we are trying to do in Syria, through our civil society support, is to build the kind of democratic institutions, frankly, that we're trying to do in countries around the globe. What's different, I think, in this situation is that the Syrian government perceives this kind of assistance as a threat to its control over the Syrian people."

Toner's remarks came after the Washington Post released cables indicating the US has been funding Syrian opposition groups since at least 2005 and continued until today.

In an April AFP report, Michael Posner, the assistant US Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor, stated that the "US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments." The report went on to explain that the US "organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there." Posner would add, "They went back and there's a ripple effect." That ripple effect of course is the "Arab Spring," and in Syria's case, the impetus for the current unrest threatening to unhinge the nation and invite in foreign intervention.

With planted "speculation" running through the corporate media that a recent explosion, amongst several other "incidents" in Iran, were the work of Western covert operations, and the Jerusalem Post all but admitting the entire Western-backed destabilization in Syria aims not at ushering in "democracy" or upholding "human rights," but to weaken Iran by proxy, it is clear that everything within Wall Street and London's power is being done to provoke Iran. Iran has downplayed the recent explosion at their military base as an accident and has thus far maintained a persistent patience in the face of criminal provocations and overt acts of war by an alarmingly and increasingly depraved West.

It is quite clear that the stratagems spelled out in the corporate-funded Brookings Institute report "Which Path to Persia?" have been read and understood by both sides and that Iran realizes that any act of retaliation not expertly played, only gives the West what it has stated it wants - an excuse to go to war with the Islamic Republic. Should the public in Syria, Iran, and throughout the West also read "Which Path to Persia?" and realize that the only threat Iran and its allies pose to the West is toward the extraterritorial ambitions of Wall Street and London, perhaps a bloody, entirely unnecessary war can be avoided, and the first steps taken toward dismantling the parasitic corporate-financier oligarchy that has misled the world for the past several decades.

This item was first posted at Land Destroyer Report

Spies outed, CIA suffers at hands of Hezbollah in Lebanon

2011-11-21T23:00:00.000+02:00

Spies outed, CIA suffers at hands of Hezbollah in Lebanon

Syria and Iran: The Great Game

2011-11-21T22:57:00.001+02:00

Regime change in Syria is a strategic prize that outstrips Libya – which is why Saudi Arabia and the west are playing their part

By Alastair Crooke

November 05, 2011 "The Guardian" (copied from ICH) -- This summer a senior Saudi official told John Hannah, Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, that from the outset of the upheaval in Syria, the king has believed that regime change would be highly beneficial to Saudi interests: "The king knows that other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself, nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria."

This is today's "great game" – losing Syria. And this is how it is played: set up a hurried transitional council as sole representative of the Syrian people, irrespective of whether it has any real legs inside Syria; feed in armed insurgents from neighbouring states; impose sanctions that will hurt the middle classes; mount a media campaign to denigrate any Syrian efforts at reform; try to instigate divisions within the army and the elite; and ultimately President Assad will fall – so its initiators insist.

Europeans, Americans and certain Gulf states may see the Syria "game" as the logical successor to the supposedly successful Libya game in moulding the Arab awakening towards a western cultural paradigm. In terms of regional politics however, Syria is strategically more valuable, and Iran knows this. Iran has said that it will respond to any external intervention in Syria.

It is already no "game", as the many killed by both sides attests to. The radical armed elements being used in Syria as auxiliaries to depose Assad run counter to the prospect of any outcome emerging within the western paradigm. These groups may well have a bloody and very undemocratic agenda of their own. I warned of this danger in connection to Afghanistan in the 80s: some of the Afghan mujahideen had real roots in the community, I suggested, but others posed a severe danger to people. A kindly American politician at the time placed his arm around my shoulder and told me not to worry: these were the people "kicking Soviet ass". We chose to look the other way because kicking the Soviets played well to US domestic needs. Today Europe looks the other way, refusing to consider who Syria's combat-experienced insurgents taking such a toll of Syrian security forces truly are, because losing Assad and confronting Iran plays so well, particularly at a time of domestic difficulty.

Fortunately, the tactics in Syria, in spite of heavy investment, seem to be failing. Most people in the region believe that if Syria is pushed further into civil conflict the result will be sectarian violence in Lebanon, Iraq and more widely too. The notion that such conflict will throw up a stable, let alone western-style, democracy, is fanciful at best, an act of supreme callousness at worst.

The origins of the "lose Assad" operation preceded the Arab awakening: they reach back to Israel's failure in its 2006 war to seriously damage Hezbollah, and the post-conflict US assessment that it was Syria that represented Hezbollah's achilles heel – as the vulnerable conduit linking Hezbollah to Iran. US officials speculated as to what might be done to block this vital corridor, but it was Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia who surprised them by saying that the solution was to harness Islamic forces. The Americans were intrigued, but could not deal with such people. Leave that to me, Bandar retorted. Hannah noted that "Bandar working without reference to US interests is clearly cause for concern. But Bandar working as a partner … against a common Iranian enemy is a major strategic asset." Bandar got the job.

Hypothetical planning, however, only became concrete action this year, with the overthrow of Egypt's President Mubarak. Suddenly Israel seemed vulnerable, and a weakened Syria, mired in troubles, had heightened strategic allure. In parallel, Qatar had stepped to the fore. Azmi Bishara, a pan-Arabist who resigned from the Israeli Knesset and self-exiled to Doha, was according to some local reports involved in a scheme in which al-Jazeera would not just report revolution, but instantiate it for the region – or at least this is what was believed in Doha in the wake of the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings. Qatar, however, was not merely trying to leverage human suffering into an international intervention, but was also – as in Libya – directly involved as a key operational patron of the opposition.

The next stages were to draw France's President Sarkozy – the arch-promoter of the Benghazi transitional council model that had turned Nato into an instrument of regime change – into the team. Barack Obama followed by helping to persuade Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan – already piqued at Assad – to play the transitional council part on Syria's border, and lend his legitimacy to the "resistance". Both of the latter components, however, are not without challenges from their own security arms, who are sceptical of the efficacy of the transitional council model, and opposed to military intervention. Even Bandar is not without challenges: he has no political umbrella from the king, and others in the family are playing other Islamist cards to different ends. Iran, Iraq and Algeria – and occasionally Egypt – co-operate to frustrate Gulf manoeuvres against Syria at the Arab League. The transitional council model, which in Libya has displayed the weakness of leveraging just one faction as the government-in-waiting, is more starkly defective in Syria. Syria's opposition council, put together by Turkey, France and Qatar, is caught out by the fact that the Syrian security structures have remained near rock solid through seven months – defections have been negligible – and Assad's popular support base are intact. Only external intervention could change that equation, but for the opposition to call for it would be political suicide, and they know it.

The internal opposition gathering in Istanbul demanded a statement refusing external intervention and armed action, but the Syrian national council was announced even before the intra-opposition talks had reached any agreement – such was the hurry on the part of external parties.

The external opposition continues to fudge its stance on external intervention, and with good reason: the internal opposition rejects it. This is the flaw to the model – for the majority in Syria deeply oppose external intervention, fearing civil conflict. Hence Syrians face a long period ofexternally mounted insurgency, siege and international attrition. Both sides will pay in blood.

But the real danger, as Hannah himself noted, is that the Saudis might "once again fire up the old Sunni jihadist network and point it in the general direction of Shiite Iran", which puts Syria first in line. In fact, that is exactly what is happening, but the west, as before in Afghanistan, prefers not to notice – so long as the drama plays well to western audiences.

As Foreign Affairs reported last month, Saudi and its Gulf allies are firing up the radical Salafists (fundamentalist Sunnis), not only to weaken Iran, but to do what they see is necessary to survive – to disrupt and emasculate the awakenings that threaten absolute monarchism. This is happening in Syria, Libya, Egypt Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.

This Islamically assertive, literalist orientation of Islam may be generally viewed as nonpolitical and pliable, but history is far from comforting. If you tell people often enough that they can be king-makers and throw buckets of money at them, do not be surprised if they metamorphose – yet again – into something very political. It may take some months, but the fruits of this new attempt to use radical forces for western ends will yet again backfire. Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, recently warned that the Hillary Clinton-devised response to the Arab awakening, of implanting western paradigms, by force if necessary, into the void of fallen regimes, will be seen as a "cultural war on Islam", and will sow the seeds of a further round of radicalisation.

One of the sad paradoxes is the undercutting of moderate Sunnis, who now find themselves caught between the rock of being seen as a western tool, and the hard place of radical Sunni Salafists waiting for the opportunity to displace them and to dismantle the state. What a strange world: Europe and the US think it is OK to "use" precisely those Islamists (including al-Qaida) who absolutely do not believe in western-style democracy in order to bring it about. But then, why not just look the other way and gain the benefit of the public enjoying Assad's kicking?

Vicious Triangle Forming Against Iran

2011-11-21T22:54:00.000+02:00

By Ismail Salami

November 05, 2011 "Press TV" -- In recent days, there has been a vociferous interest in Israel, the US and the UK in fanning the flames of Iranophobia in what observers see as a political red herring to engage in a catastrophic war in the Middle East.

The trio, which constitute a vicious triangle in their roguishly Iranophobic endeavors, have manifestly held secret meetings among the top security officials and formed a united front against Iran.

A recent report by The Guardian has revealed that British Chief of Defense Staff Gen. David Richards visited Tel Aviv secretly during the week, held a number of meetings with top Israeli military and intelligence officials and reassured them of Britain's unwavering support in case of an attack on Iran's nuclear sites. Further to that, the British officials revealed that the US government was mulling accelerating plans for targeted attacks on the country's nuclear sites and that Britain was prepared to be part of the plan for a possible attack.

Interestingly enough, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak arrived in London on Wednesday to hold talks with his British counterpart, with Iran of course to top the agenda. The importance of these meetings is that Britain's senior military official had not visited Israel for a decade. So, the recent meetings indicate the cementing security and military ties between the two countries.

Only recently, a senior US military official addressing a forum in Washington said that Iran had become the biggest threat to the United States. “The biggest threat to the United States and to our interests and to our friends … has come into focus and it's Iran.”

Coincidentally (how so?), on the same day (Friday), Israel's president Shimon Peres also stated something virtually to the same effect, saying that the military option to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons was nearer.

When asked by Channel Two News if events were moving toward to a military option rather than a diplomatic one, Peres replied, “I believe so, I estimate that intelligence services of all these countries are looking at the ticking clock, warning leaders that there is not much time left.”

In this regard, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, a pea in the pod, graced a G-20 summit of world leaders in France with his pithy words, “Iran's behavior and this obsessional desire to acquire nuclear military (capability) is in violation of all international rules. … If Israel's existence were threatened, France would not stand idly by.”

The trio (excluding France) have stepped up their rhetoric against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Threat is not a new word to Iran and the country is prepared for the worst and as Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has said on the sidelines of a news conference in the Libyan city of Benghazi, “The US has unfortunately lost wisdom and prudence in dealing with international issues. It depends only on power. They have lost rationality; we are prepared for the worst but we hope they will think twice before they put themselves on a collision course with Iran.”

Time and again, the USA has renewed its hollow rhetoric against the Islamic Republic of Iran, repeating the same allegations again and again and again: that Iran is pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program; that Iran is supporting terrorism in the region; that Iran is violating human rights; that if Iran acquires the technology to produce nuclear weapons, it will create World War III.

The recent allegation leveled against the Islamic republic ahead of the next week's report by the UN atomic watchdog is that Iran has “built a large steel container for carrying out tests with high explosives that could be used in nuclear weapons,” and that Iran has made computer models of a nuclear warhead and other previously undisclosed details on alleged secret work by Tehran on nuclear arms.” Allegation comes after allegation against the Islamic Republic and the vicious triangle is forming to set a stage for an all-out attack against the country with the intended purpose of plundering its natural resources.

However, Iran will not sit quietly and leave the invaders in peace.

In August 2011, a top IRGC commander Brigadier General Ali Shadmani envisaged three effective measures to counter any potential act of aggression.

1. As Israel is the USA's backyard, Iran will disturb peace there. (The absence of peace in Israel will certainly deny repose to the USA as well.)

2. It would take full control of the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway where over 40 percent of all traded oil passes (thereby spiraling up the oil prices to a confounding level and dealing a heavy blow to the already deteriorating economy.)

3. It would keep a close watch on all American military bases in Afghanistan and Iraq. In case of an attack, Iran will cripple the troops stationed in those bases and incapacitate them of any possible move.

In the final analysis, the US hidden agenda in creating Iranophobia is to raise a specter of a nuclear apocalypse in the world, invade the country in alliance with Israel and the UK and other nefarious powers and eventually get their hands on Iran's myriad resources which they have coveted for so long.

In the unholy Israel-US-UK alliance, one cannot say with surety who is the most responsible party for these anti-Iran provocative acts but it seems that the Israeli tail is wagging the US-UK dog.

ISRAEL ALREADY MEDDLING IN THE UPCOMING EGYPTIAN ELECTIONS

2011-06-05T02:56:00.001+03:00

Check out this post: http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/israel-already-meddling-in-the-upcoming-egyptian-elections/

@WRH_Mike_Rivero, 5/27/11 6:49 AM

2011-05-27T22:04:00.000+03:00

Michael Rivero (@WRH_Mike_Rivero)
5/27/11 6:49 AM
ISRAEL & PALESTINE: THE MAPS TELL THE TRUE STORY http://tinyurl.com/agbs9q #nakba #israel #palestine #gaza #freegaza

On Our Way to Palestine

2011-05-16T22:54:00.002+03:00

7.30am, Nada calls. “The buses are already full and they told us if we want to hitch a ride we’d have to stand the whole way down, is there space with you?” The buses are full? Big smile on my face. “Of course!” Quick change of plan, and I wait for Rana before we set off to pick up Nada and Lara and join Ahmad in Khalde.

After a stop for coffee, we began our journey down, with Ahmad leading our two-car convoy. It was very unlikely we would get lost though, because every kilometre or so we’d pass half a dozen buses decked out with Palestinian flags, clearly heading in the same direction we were. And if somehow we missed those, someone had kindly taken the time to signpost the entire journey down with directions to Palestine. I guess for future reference, you know, after we’ve liberated it and we can make plans to hang out in Haifa for the weekend. Forward planning; I like.

Adorned with keffiyehs, and draping flags out of the car window, we laughed at those who had predicted the worst for us that day, rather, exchanged ideas of how we would cross the border fence. “What did you hear?” “Someone said they’re going to shoot at us” “They wouldn’t dare!” “I wonder how many of us are going to show up?” “I wonder how many of THEM are going to show up?” “Look! More buses!” Nada told us she had promised her father that she won’t be the first person to break across the border, “but I will be the second!”. Ohh yay, I get to be the first.

Trying to be clever, Ahmad searched for an alternate route to beat the crowds to Maroun el Ras. Clearly the organisers, in conjunction with Hizbullah, had predicted there would be people with Ahmad’s mentality, and blocked all other roads leading to the hill top, ensuring complete control of the masses of people descending on the border from all corners of the country. And it was very well executed. Herding us like sheep into a pen, we got in line behind each other, slowly moving forward. Well, I say got in line, there were more than a few who thought the line didn’t apply to them- we are still in Lebanon after all.

Finally arriving at the foot of the hill, we debated staying in line behind the buses, or parking the car and trekking it up. Seeing as the traffic was at a standstill, we opted for the park’n’trek, trusting the army soldier who told us it’ll take us “15 minutes, easy!” to get to the top. 15 minutes later, and nowhere near the top, we stopped to collect our breaths (it was hot and none of us are avid mountain climbers), and watched as people ranging from our grand-parents age to babies slowly walked up passed us. Covered in Palestinian memorabilia, from flags, to scarves, to traditional dress, to keffiyehs, to self-designed t-shirts, Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Jordanians, and even a few Westerners, chanted and sang, while some played the tablah. There was a festive feeling, the atmosphere was almost electric with nationalism, solidarity, and hope. “The people want to free Palestine!” was chanted repetitively on the road towards Maroun al Ras.

On the final stretch of the hill, just behind the destination point, shots were heard. Young boys started running towards the sounds. Others stopped, confused. Rana and I? We started running (I say running; we were going uphill, walking at a brisk pace is more realistic) towards the sounds. They were so sporadic I thought that possibly they were fireworks. Or something.

Eventually we rounded the corner and arrived at our destination point; the garden donated by Iran following the 2006 war with Israel, which overlooks the border with Israel. An old ice-cream van was selling cones and playing slightly out of tune music, making it sound more creepy than friendly. Chairs were scattered across the ground, for those weary from walking to sit and listen to the speeches on revolution, on resistance, on remembrance, being aired over loud-speakers. Rana and I waited, as we had lost Nada and Lara on the way after they stopped to help an old lady walk the distance. While we waited, we watched as balloons, lots of pretty red, green and white balloons were released into the skies. Altogether people seemed content, occasionally rising to the bait with “Free Palestine!” when a particular speaker struck the right chord.

From the start we had taken the decision to go to the border fence, so once we found the others, we headed down towards the fence. Looking into the distance at the border, one could see a hail of stones being thrown over the fence, almost automatic, as if in time with some invisible beat. Some had even managed to throw a couple of flags onto the fence. People had gathered at different points on the descent, and the mood was quickly changing from one of festive to one of concern the further down we got. Ahmad called. We had lost each other before even getting to Maroun el Ras, but by this point we all had the same plan- head down the hill. As the shots continued to ring out, news quickly travelled up the hill, with people passing on unconfirmed statistics of the dead and wounded. “1 dead.” “4 dead.” “10 wounded.” The shots continued.

At the bottom of the hill was a dirt road. By this time it was probably around 1pm, and the army had started to gather, forming a blockade to prevent protestors from crossing into the field which led to the fence. We had seen scores of people retreating from the fence following several shots from the Israelis, before returning, hurling stones with renewed anger. Attempting to pass the blockade, we were at first politely asked to back away, before being roughly pushed back by the army, who were shouting at us to back up. “But we want to be at the fence,” we pleaded with them. “What? You want to go over there are get shot? Are you not seeing the bodies they’re bringing back?” One soldier responded aggressively.

But we were. We were seeing the bodies alright. We were seeing them, boys as young as 15, critically wounded. We were seeing them, wrapped in make-shift blankets and stretchers made of keffiyehs and Palestinian flags tied together. We were seeing them, covered in blood from gunshot wounds to the head, chest, or abdomen. We were seeing them, lifted high for the crowds to see, who responded with chants of ‘Allah w akbar!’ until they reached fever pitch. Grown men were breaking down, crying, as friends were being carried away. Others screamed until they could no longer make a sound. And that’s why we wanted to be at the fence. The more bodies were pulled away from the fence, whether dead or wounded, the more we, as a crowd, wanted to be there. To help, to support, to get angry, to chant, to do whatever was necessary to defend.

At one point the army get tetchy with the crowd pushing and shoving, and fired warning shots in the air. Followed by another round. People ducked to the ground to avoid the spray of bullets, unsure of what just took place. This wasn’t supposed to happen; isn’t the army supposed to fire at the enemy? Wasn’t the enemy on the other side of the fence currently killing our protestors? The crowd reacted quickly, picking up whatever was around them and throwing them at the army; sticks, stones, bottles. A rain of objects fell on the soldiers, who retaliated with another round of shots. People started screaming at them; “Why??” “You should be firing at the Israelis not at us!” “Use your fire on the Israelis!” “You fire on your own people?!”

We rushed at the army again, trying to get through, but to no avail. “Please, Mademoiselle, don’t try and come through” one said. The crowd, once again infuriated because a fresh body was brought up, pushed and shoved, and I managed to wriggle my way through, even as one of the organisers tried to hold me back. Elated, I ran down, half afraid the army may start shooting at the few of us who got through. Spinning round, I checked to see if Rana or Nada had made it. Rana had. Thank God. There was a part of me that couldn’t do this alone.

As we stopped to catch our breath and pat each other on the back, the organiser who previously tried to stop me from breaking through the barrier jogged passed. “I’m so sorry, but I had to come down” I started to explain to him as he passed. “I know, I wanted to come too,” he responded with a smile.

We walked towards the fence, passing a dozen people who were kneeling on the floor, tying together keffiyehs for the stretchers. I had already passed over both my flag (actually it was Rana’s) and my keffiyeh when they had come to the crowd up by the army, asking for donations. As we were walking towards the fence, the few army that had remained were walking back, towards the hill. Looking at each other with concern, Rana and I wondered why they were leaving. Now it was just us and the Israeli army.

Minding our step, we got closer to the fence. The area immediately in front of the fence, where the remaining protesters had gathered, was essentially a minefield, littered with unexploded mines. In an attempt to prevent further casualties, the protestors had marked off the mines with (again) make-shift fences, as a warning to avoid that particular patch. At one point, several of the protestors unearthed the mines themselves, carefully lifting them and placing them together next to the fence. One protestor stated that at least 40 mines had been uprooted and put there. Not wanting to count them ourselves and tempt fate, we took his word for it.

It was a strangely beautiful sight. All around people were working together. They were either breaking rocks to make smaller stones and giving them to the throwers, or helping carry the wounded, or handing out what little water was left, or giving words of encouragement, or warning the freshly arrived of the landmines. Exhaustion was pushed to one side, replaced by a sense of determination and purpose. “The people want to free Palestine!” “The people want to return to Palestine!”

Shots rang out. Everyone scrambled to the ground, face down, while shouting “watch out for the mines!”, “Heads down! Keep your heads down!”. But within seconds, everyone was on their feet again, running towards the fence, with their arms cocked and ready to throw. It would take about a minute before you heard “ambulance!”, “injured!”, or “killed!” as a result of the latest barrage of bullets, causing the protesters to get riled up even further. This did not happen just once, or twice. This was happening all the time. It got to a point where some people stopped ducking the bullets.

We noticed the Lebanese army had decided to come back. Not wanting to be pushed back prematurely, Rana and I escaped to a pile of rocks to the far right of the stone-throwers. A couple of boys were sitting, taking a break. “Where are you girls from?” “Beirut. You?” “Rashadiyeh Camp.” Pointing to the trees located beyond the fence and on the Israeli border, they said, “If you look really carefully, you can see one or two of their soldiers.” And, after much squinting, you could. You could see a couple of soldiers moving between the trees, probably at the same distance from the fence on their side as we were on our side. “Cowards!” I shout. “You hide behind your trees and your fence hiding from kids with stones, and you shoot bullets? Are we that much of a threat to you?”

By now it was after 5pm, and the Lebanese army had clearly been given fresh orders; move the protestors away from the fence, using any means necessary. And they did. To the letter. People were being hit with sticks, others were being shoved with rifle butts. Very quickly a crowd had gathered around us. Possibly a little naively, I thought it was to protect us, as we seemed to be the only two girls in that particular corner. “Careful, careful, there are girls here! Watch out for the girls!” they shouted at the soldiers, who relented slightly.

The army started firing. And wouldn’t stop. Not even for a minute. They fired above our heads and marched forward, straight towards the protestors. Running back to the hill, we all seemed to forget about the Israelis, about the landmines, and focused only on protecting ourselves against the Lebanese army. We weren’t sure at this point whether they were real bullets or not. Later we were told they were blanks, created to make sound. Keeping our heads down, we looked like a crowd of hunchbacks, screaming at them to stop. At one point I turned around and started running back towards the army, yelling obscenities. I felt arms grabbing at me, pulling me back, telling me not to be scared. I wasn’t scared. I was angry, and ashamed. By now tears were streaming down my face, and my throat was hoarse. I had only two thoughts running through my head; why is my army protecting my enemy, and where the fuck is Rana?

Behind me. Phew. Some of the guys shoved us behind an ambulance where rescue workers had taken cover. “Calm down, don’t worry, it’s going to be fine,” they kept telling us. I’m not worried, I just don’t get it, I wanted to say, but the only thing that came out was “stop itttt!! Make them stop!!”

But they kept firing. They marched passed us, weapons in the air, still firing. It was so loud, and so many, the ground was vibrating. The rest of the crowd were already halfway up the hill, the army having succeeded in pushing them far away from the fence. We stood up, ready to make our way up the hill.

Hmmm. Dilemma. The crowd, now halfway up the hill, were facing the army, who had by now reached the dirt road. We were essentially behind the army. Our only option was to walk through the army (who was still firing). But by this point, the crowd, incensed by what had just happened, were now throwing stones, rocks, anything at the army. Downhill. With us behind. Awesome.

Eventually, by walking along the edge of the army positions, we managed to overtake them and get back to the ‘right side’ of the hill, only to be met with half a dozen tear gas canisters fired at the crowd by the army. Pleasant. There’s something quite unforgettable about the streaming of the eyes, the burning of the throat, and the feeling of fire on your face.

A tire was lit and rolled, burning, down the hill towards the army. Cheers went up within the crowd. Random question, but who carries a tyre with them? When I plan on liberating Palestine, I think ‘camera, ID, water’; who thinks ‘ahh, tire?

Finally we reached the top. The last of the people remained, clearly waiting for news from those who had been at the bottom. Rana and I ran into some friends; one of their friends had been shot while at the fence, by the Israelis. Quickly heading back to the car, tiredness was rapidly replaced by anger.

We head to the hospital in Bint Jbeil to see if we could find the guy. The first hospital we went to we left empty handed, except for the bizarre-conspiracy-laden ‘advice’ from one of the hospital workers that “in this area, you can’t name individuals and ask about them, because if information was revealed about them, you could be the enemy and use that information”. Yes, sir. Clearly, we look like the enemy. The keffiyehs, the flags, the tear-stained faces, and bedraggled hair were all just a decoy.

Munib Masri, an AUB student in his early twenties, was undergoing surgery when we pulled into Bint Jbeil Government Hospital. He had been shot twice in the back while at the border. He lost a kidney, his spleen, and half of his intestine. His friends and fellow students spent the rest of the night pacing outside the hospital, waiting for him to stabilise. One friend, Khalil, had managed to obtain the list of injured and dead, and spent the evening coordinating with Abu Wassim in Shatila camp, trying to figure out who these people were to alert their families. In Bint Jbeil Government Hospital alone, there were 3 dead, and 29 injured. Those killed were Mohammad Abu Shalha, 18 years old, Imad (last name unknown), and Hussein Youssef.

Just before we left the hospital, two men pulled up outside on a scooter. “Are there any injured here?” they asked. We responded to the affirmative, so one ran inside to talk to reception. In the meantime we asked the other where they were from. “Which camp are you from?” “We’re not from the camps, we’re from Syria.” “What are you doing here?” “We’ve come to donate blood.” At this point his friend came back, saying the hospital had enough blood, and asked for directions to the next nearest hospital, before speeding off to continue their mission.

The car journey home was quiet. One of the guys, Mohammed, kept asking how people could go back to their lives after what happened today. “You know, the majority of people will go home, shower, and wake up tomorrow as if today didn’t happen.” Unfortunately, he is right. What happened today, if it was in any other country, would be considered an act of war. For some reason here it’s chalked up as yet another Israeli violation, filed as yet another complaint to the UN, shoulders are shrugged, and people move on. So many things happened today that should not have been allowed to happen, but the most important one is no one should forget. No one should forget the names of those killed, no one should forget they were people, with lives, with families, with their entire future ahead of them. According to news reports, 10 people were killed and over 100 wounded. I have a feeling more died. I want to know who they were. They are not a news ticker, they are real.

Maroun El Ras

2011-05-16T02:52:00.001+03:00

The following is a text sent to me from an old friend I've known since university:

"Careful where you step! There are landmines here!"
I look to where the young man is pointing, to see a metal disk embedded among the flowers in a grassy meadow in the village of Maroun El Ras on the Lebanese-Palestinian border. Some of the men had surrounded the mine with stones and stuck two wooden poles in the ground, calling demonstrators' attention to the innocently greenish device of death. But seeing that there were several mines, and more than 300 demonstrators in the area directly behind the border fence, volunteers stationed themselves around the mines, two volunteers for each mine, and were constantly making sure none of the other demonstrators stepped on one.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians, Lebanese, and others had made their way South today, to commemorate the 63rd year to the Nakba in a manner that befits that of a freshly awakened nation. No pre-prepared and ruminated speeches, no schoolchildren plays, no impotent rows of white plastic chairs. No, this year, it had to be a lot more direct: commemorate the Nakba by marching to Palestine - or to the closest possible point to her.
People from all over the country had crammed into buses and cars and made their way to Maroun El Ras with its beautiful green hills and meadows - and the hideous double fence plaguing the side of it that borders Palestine. We had come by car, taking a somewhat roundabout route to make the most of the stunning scenery of South Lebanon that we so seldom get the chance to see. Or arriving to the neighboring village of Bint Jbeil, we found that the Lebanese Army had blocked the way to Maroun El Ras, on the account that the Israelis were opening fire. On a whim, we ask two young men standing next to an ATV how to get there. With no hesitation whatsoever, one of them says: "The road is blocked from here, but we'll show you another way. Follow us, but don't bring other cars with you." We comply, and the three of us in the car give a strange mix of mixed signs to the man and woman in the car behind us, and who, as we had found out just a few minutes earlier, had been following us for the past hour or so, having themselves lost the way. "We saw the Palestinian flag on your car,(we had bought one from a street stand near Tyre), so we figured you're coming here." We felt a little bit guilty ditching them like that, but we were not about to risk our one-car-pass to our goal. The young man driving the ATV (whose name is Abdel Majeed as we later find out), proceeds to lead us through a small, winding road smack into the middle of the march in Maroun El Ras, on the way slickly negotiating our passing with two adjacent military checkpoint; one for the Lebanese Army, and another, more pragmatic and down-to-business-like, for Hizballah.
We thank Abdel Majeed and his friend, park the car, and join the thousands marching up the steep road to Maroun's Head, a bad joke I couldn't help but make. Halfway up, I manage to lose sight of my two friends, Ghadi and Ghida. Apparently I had thought they were up ahead, so had quickened my pace upwards, while they had thought that I was still behind them, so had stopped to wait for me.
I arrive at the top of the hill to find a few thousand people already there, stationed on the Plateau near a new-looking public park that I later find out was called 'The Garden of Iran'. I walk over towards the other side of the hill we had just climbed, and there it was, just like that: Palestine.
It had never felt closer.
A thousand or so people were in different stages of descending the steep grass-slippery slope to get to the border fence. I was tired from the long walk, so I decided to sit and rest for a few minutes, and take note of what was going on around me. The hillside stretched down some 300 meters from where I was sitting midway down. At the bottom of the hill was a meadow that stretched a few kilometers across. Running along the bottom was a narrow dirt road, on which I could see a few vehicles of the Lebanese Army. There were around 50 soldiers and officers standing near the bottom of the hill. The Israeli double trouble fence was erected almost 500 meters into the field, and one could see the military structures of the Israeli border units. A few hundred demonstrators were gathered right behind the fence on the Lebanese side, and I could faintly hear their shouts. I could also see the demonstrators were starting to throw small rocks across the fence, aiming at the ten or so Israeli soldiers crouching-hiding among a line of evergreens on the other side of the fence. As I watched, there came the sudden sound of bullet fire, and to it, increased commotion on our side of the fence. A few minutes later, the Lebanese soldiers at the bottom of the hill form a line across and make it clear that they weren't going to allow any more demonstrators to head to the fence.
But I wanted to get to the fence. It wasn't a premeditated decision on my side, but I had come here to get to Palestine or to the closest possible point to it. And that fence was the closest possible point. The meadow being quite large in width, and the Lebanese soldiers being too few, their line could not stretch very far. So I decide to walk far enough away from them along the hillside, and then, when they couldn't easily reach me, cut across the field to join the people at the fence. I make my way alongside the hill, and then, when I feel safe enough, start to walk across. I hear some shouts from the direction of the soldiers, but I innocently ignore it and walk on as calmly as possible. When I had gone far enough, I look back to see the Lebanese soldiers now roughing up some of young men who were trying to make it across. I turn and continue to walk towards the fence; all along stepping between young tobacco plants that some nearby farmers had planted and that were, by now, in various states of being trampled on by the passing demonstrators.
Back to where this jumbled piece of writing - that mirrors my currently jumbled state of mind - starts:
"Careful where you step! There are landmines here!"
I take out my phone and take a picture of the landmine lying at the center of a campfire-like circle of stones. More bullet shots, and a sudden scurrying of the demonstrators. Instinctively, I duck. And so does everyone else. Apparently the Israeli soldiers, who were, to start with, firing in the air, had now brought the nozzles of their American made automatic M16 rifles down by a few notches, and were firing over our heads. When the shots come to stop, the stone-throwers, especially those at the very front, resume their stone throwing with multiplied zeal. I pick up a stone and hurl it in the direction of the fence. It lands behind the first one but a few meters away from the second one. I try again, with similar results. My throw wasn't strong enough, especially that I was five or six rows away from the row of people closest to the fence.
I did not dare go any closer.
The area we were in, having always been agricultural land, was divided intermittently with low stone walls. So there was plenty of rock to be found, and instead of throwing the stones myself, I take to smashing the bigger ones and handing the pieces to nearby throwers who I deemed more suited than I was at the mission at hand. The bullets resume their volley, sounding closer to us.
Then: "Jaree7! Jaree7!" (a wounded person! a wounded person!)
I look to where the shouts came from to see a group of five men carrying the wounded individual, a teenager of perhaps 17 years. He was conscious, and there was blood on his trousers. The small troupe of improve paramedics carried him away. More shots, and again we crouch, and again we resume with the breaking and the throwing. The more time passed, the heavier the rocks rained down. The soldiers at the receiving end were in full battle posture. By now the shouts of 'Jaree7!' were becoming more frequent, and so were the ensuing rescue teams.
Right in the middle of this chaos of flying stones and zapping bullets and related reactions to these, I bump into a girl I know from yoga class. We have a record of meeting in unexpected places, but this was by far the least expected place we've ever met. We smile, almost shyly, and give each other a quick hug, and crouch down quickly because the bullets had resumed their single-direction flights. It was now very clear that the Israeli soldiers were successively shooting with aim, and the aim was not up in the air, but t he people down on the ground. The flurry of flying stones had now come to a new level of frenzy, and yet I noted how calm everyone seemed to me, how calm I felt. I had not yet registered how real everything was, perhaps, but under whatever layers of thoughts and emotions that were going through me, there was a faint and yet much felt sense of joy and fulfillment at being then and there, doing whatever it was that I was doing. Strangely enough, in that moment of clear self awareness, I was at peace.
A pause in the gunfire.
I stand up, and in turning around I fall down, stumbling at what I soon discover is a mass of crouching young men. Absurdly enough, I apologize. I stand up again and decide that it was time to head back. My friends must be worrying about me, I rationalize. Yes, it was time I headed back up the hill.
I start walking, stopping twice to offer water from my backpack to two wounded people lying on the ground. There were others who were not injured but who had fainted.
I see a small troupe of Lebanese soldiers making their way towards the fence. I stop a bit and watch. Their aim was apparently to force the demonstrators at the fence to turn back. A couple of quarrels start between the soldiers and a group of young men. The soldiers are shouting at the demonstrators closest by, and I see one of the soldiers beating at a young man with a wooden stick that he had picked up. It was probably a pole for one of the many Palestinian flags that fluttered into that meadow today. Upon request, before turning back, I had given the flag I was carrying to a random guy who asked if I needed it. I had given it to him, and he dutifully proceeded to tear the flag off its pole, wrap it around a rock the size of a human head, and hurled it 'Miqla3' style towards the fence. It landed on the fence itself, and stuck to the barbed wire. I thought that was a good place for our flag to end up.
I walk on, and by the time I reach halfway towards the hill, the gunfire starts again. I pause again and look back.
Comes the shout: "Shaheed! Shaheed ya shabab!" (A Martyr! A martyr, comrades!)
As the group comes closer, I could hear their shouts of "Allahu Akbar!" and "7ayyo el shaheed" (Salute the Martyr!), and could clearly see the body of a teenager bouncing on top of a dozen raised arms. I move closer. And again, I take out my phone, and take a picture.
In time, I make it up the hill. On the way up I encounter some people who tell me my friends were looking for me. I speed up my pace a little bit. Upon hearing the shouts of 'Shaheed!', the mood had become very somber among the thousands that were still on the hill, and the wailing of ambulance sirens filled the air.
Why was I throwing rocks?
What was that sense of calm joy fulfillment?
How could I explain that the armed soldiers on the other side of the fence were more scared of stone throwing demonstrators than the latter were of them?
I rationalize:
I was throwing rocks not at the soldiers; as distasteful as it might feel to me, I still saw that they were human beings. I was throwing stones at the so called State of Israel.
The sense of calm-joy-fulfillment had several aspects to it. Mainly: throughout my 32 years here, this was the first time that I have directly confronted this rabid monster. And I was not alone, and I was not only me, but everyone who was there. At least everyone on this side of the fence.
The armed Israeli soldiers were scared not of the demonstrators' direct physical actions. How could a rock possibly do serious harm to a metal clad, fence protected person who to top it off was armed to the teeth with the killing equipment that the first world could produce? The fact of the matter is that what the soldiers were-are really scared of is not the rocks, but the very existence of those hurling them. Those who will hold them accountable for their state's wretched and bloody history. Those for whom She will always be Palestine. Those who, today in Maroun El Ras, made me see that their return is imminent.

TZM: Response to Media; Death of Osama bin Laden

2011-05-03T09:33:00.002+03:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TZM: Response to Media; Death of Osama bin Laden

On May 1, 2011 Pres. Barack Obama appeared on national television with the
spontaneous announcement that Osama bin Laden, the purported organizer of
the tragic events of September 11th 2001, was killed by military forces in
Pakistan.

Within moments, a media blitz ran across virtually all television networks
in what could only be described as a grotesque celebratory display,
reflective of a level of emotional immaturity that borders on cultural
psychosis. Depictions of people running through the streets of New York and
Washington chanting jingoistic American slogans, waving their flags like
the members of some cult, praising the death of another human being,
reveals yet another layer of this sickness we call modern society.

It is not the scope of this response to address the political usage of such
an event or to illuminate the staged orchestration of how public perception
was to be controlled by the mainstream media and the United States
Government. Rather the point of this article is to express the gross
irrationality apparent and how our culture becomes so easily fixed and
emotionally charged with respect to surface symbology, rather than true
root problems, solutions or rational considerations of circumstance.

The first and most obvious point is that the death of Osama bin Laden means
nothing when it comes to the problem of international terrorism. His death
simply serves as a catharsis for a culture that has a neurotic fixation on
revenge and retribution. The very fact that the Government which, from a
psychological standpoint, has always served as a paternal figure for it
citizens, reinforces the idea that murdering people is a solution to
anything should be enough for most of us to take pause and consider the
quality of the values coming out of the zeitgeist itself.

However, beyond the emotional distortions and tragic, vindictive pattern of
rewarding the continuation of human division and violence comes a more
practical consideration regarding what the problem really is and the
importance of that problem with respect to priority.

The death of any human being is of an immeasurable consequence in society.
It is never just the death of the individual. It is the death of
relationships, companionship, support and the integrity of familial and
communal environments. The unnecessary deaths of 3000 people on September
11, 2001 is no more or no less important than the deaths of those during
the World Wars, via cancer and disease, accidents or anything else.

As a society, it is safe to say that we seek a world that strategically
limits all such unnecessary consequences through social approaches that
allow for the greatest safety our ingenuity can create. It is in this
context that the neurotic obsession with the events of September 11th, 2001
become gravely insulting and detrimental to progress. An environment has
now been created where outrageous amounts of money, resources and energy is
spent seeking and destroying very small subcultures of human beings that
pose ideological differences and act on those differences through violence.

Yet, in the United States alone each year, roughly 30,000 people die from
automobile accidents, the majority of which could be stopped by very simple
structural changes. That's ten 9/11's each year... yet no one seems to pine
over this epidemic. Likewise, over 1 million Americans die from heart
disease and cancer annually - causes of which are now easily linked to
environmental influences in the majority. Yet, regardless of the over 330
9/11's occurring each year in this context, the governmental budget
allocations for research on these illnesses is only a small fraction of the
money spent on "anti-terrorism" operations.

Such a list could go on and on with regard to the perversion of priority
when it comes to what it means to truly save and protect human life and I
hope many out there can recognize the severe imbalance we have at hand with
respect to our values.

So, coming back to the point of revenge and retribution, I will conclude
this response with a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., likely the most
brilliant intuitive mind when it came to conflict and the power of
non-violence. On September 15, 1963 a Birmingham Alabama church was bombed,
killing four little girls attending Sunday school.

In a public address, Dr. King stated:

"What murdered these four girls? Look around. You will see that many
people that you never thought about participated in this evil act. So
tonight all of us must leave here with a new determination to struggle. God
has a job for us to do. Maybe our mission is to save the soul of America.
We can't save the soul of this nation throwing bricks. We can't save the
soul of this nation getting our ammunitions and going out shooting physical
weapons. We must know that we have something much more powerful. Just take
up the ammunition of love."

- Dr. Martin Luther King, 1963 -

~Peter Joseph

www.thezeitgeistmovement.com

The Best Case for World Peace

2011-01-31T22:15:00.003+02:00

http://zeitgeistmovie.com/

Zeitgeist: The Movie - 2007 by Peter Joseph from ZeitgeistMovie.com on Vimeo.

Zeitgeist: Addendum - 2008 by Peter Joseph from ZeitgeistMovie.com on Vimeo.

Spoof on US State Department's Position on Egyptian Revolution

2011-01-31T02:15:00.004+02:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBuMuzhvYeA

And guys you can download and keep any YouTube video with "YouTube Downloader"

In case there's any confusion over how today's clashes started...

2010-08-04T01:36:00.003+03:00

Link: http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/IGallery.aspx?GalleryID=132&Index=0

Details on how Israel plays war

2010-02-15T21:07:00.000+02:00

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/ambulances-fired-on-by-israel-says-red-cross/2006/07/24/1153593272695.html

Ambulances fired on by Israel, says Red Cross

Ed O'Loughlin Herald Correspondent in Tyre and agencies
July 25, 2006

ISRAELI forces pushed up to the edge of Bint Jbeil, a large town on Lebanon's southern border, yesterday as heavy fighting continued.

Thousands of Lebanese civilians are still believed to be in the area, trapped in their homes by Israeli bombardment. Dozens of Lebanese civilians had earlier been killed or wounded by Israeli aircraft as they tried to comply with Israeli orders to flee the area or die.

Israeli jets repeatedly bombed the area east and south of Tyre in the dark, with reports of eight civilians killed and six wounded.

The Red Cross in Tyre said that five of its volunteers and three patients were wounded when Israeli aircraft attacked two ambulances on Sunday night. The attack took place near Qana when an ambulance from Tyre arrived to evacuate three patients from the border town of Tibnin.

The drivers said that two guided missiles were fired at each ambulance. Three patients - a woman, her son and grandson - were all re-injured, the son losing his leg to a direct hit from one of the kinetic-energy anti-tank missiles.

Ambulance drivers - until Sunday night the only people able to drive out into the killing zone - report that the roads around Tibnin are strewn with wrecked vehicles and uncollected bodies. The Red Cross has now been forced to abandon all attempts to rescue wounded from Tibnin.

More than 369 Lebanese have died since the fighting began on July 12, almost all of them non-combatants. Twenty Israeli combat personnel have died and 17 Israeli civilians have been killed.

Israel has ruled out a large-scale re-invasion of Lebanon but says it will carry out "pinpoint" incursions to locate and destroy Hezbollah positions.

The leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said yesterday that Israeli attacks in south Lebanon will not prevent the guerilla group from firing missiles into northern Israel.

"Any Israeli incursion will not have political results unless it achieves any of the announced goals, most importantly to stop the bombardment of Zionist settlements … and I assure you that this goal will not be achieved," he told a Lebanese newspaper.

Hezbollah says it will not halt its fire until Israel in turn agrees to cease its bombardment of Lebanon and to negotiate a prisoner exchange.

The violence broke out after a Hezbollah border raid killed eight Israeli soldiers and captured two. Lebanon's Foreign Minister said yesterday that the two captured Israeli soldiers "are OK and in good health".

"I was basing it on what Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said," the minister, Fawzi Salloukh, said. "So let the United Nations or another friendly party come to Lebanon and start the negotiations [for a swap]."

On Sunday the Israeli Defence Force said that its troops had in turn captured two Hezbollah fighters in fighting at the border.

AND....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jul/25/syria.israel5

Red Cross ambulances destroyed in Israeli air strike on rescue mission
· Volunteer paramedics demand UN guarantees
· Flags and lights prove no protection for aid teams

Suzanne Goldenberg in Tyre

The Guardian, Tuesday 25 July 2006

Coffins are prepared for mass burial in the Lebanese city of Tyre. Photograph: Nasser Nasser/AP

The ambulance headlamps were on, the blue light overhead was flashing, and another light illuminated the Red Cross flag when the first Israeli missile hit, shearing off the right leg of the man on the stretcher inside. As he lay screaming beneath fire and smoke, patients and ambulance workers scrambled for safety, crawling over glass in the dark. Then another missile hit the second ambulance.
Even in a war which has turned the roads of south Lebanon into killing zones, Israel's rocket strike on two clearly marked Red Cross ambulances on Sunday night set a deadly new milestone.

Six ambulance workers were wounded and three generations of the Fawaz family, being transported to hospital from Tibnin with what were originally minor injuries, were left fighting for their lives. Two ambulances were entirely destroyed, their roofs pierced by missiles.

The Lebanese Red Cross, whose ambulance service for south Lebanon is run entirely by volunteers, immediately announced it would cease all rescue missions unless Israel guaranteed their safety through the United Nations or the International Red Cross.

For the villages below the Litani river, the ambulances were their last link to the outside world. Yesterday, that too was gone, leaving the 100,000 people of Tyre district with no way of reaching hospital other than to take to the roads themselves, under the roar of Israeli war planes.

The fateful call to the Red Cross operations room came through at about 10pm - well after dark, a time when almost no Lebanese now dare venture out.

At the Red Cross office in Tyre, three volunteer medics dressed in their orange overalls, and got into their ambulance. The plan was to drive halfway, meet the local ambulance, and transfer the three patients to their vehicle to return to Tyre.

By Nader Joudi's reckoning, the ambulances had been stopped for barely two minutes. Two patients had been loaded: Ahmed Mustafa Fawaz, who had been hit by shrapnel in the stomach, and his son, Mohammed, 14. The volunteer attendant was just easing Jamila Fawaz, 80, inside and setting up a drip when the missile struck. He managed to get the old woman and the child outside, but there was no way to reach Mr Fawaz. "It was horrible," Mr Joudi said. "He was screaming, and we couldn't do anything."

One of the members of the three-man crew from Tibnin radioed for help when another missile plunged through the roof. Ambulance crew and patients retreated to the cellar of a nearby building, then waited to be rescued, trying as best as they could to help the injured. "Each of us treated ourselves. There was no light," said Kassem Shaalan, a medic from Tyre.

By the time patients and ambulance crew reached Tyre, Mr Fawaz was unconscious after losing one leg, and suffering severe fractures to the other. His son had lost part of a foot, and his mother's body was riddled with shrapnel. Mr Joudi had shrapnel wounds in his left arm, and Mr Shaalan cuts to the face and leg.

He was adamant that the ambulances, with their Red Cross insignia on the roof, were clearly visible from the air. "I don't think there can be a mistake in two bombings of two ambulances," he said.

Although the air strike marked the first time ambulances have been hit by Israel in this war, for Mr Shaalan and the other Red Cross volunteers it was only a matter of time. After two weeks of strikes designed to choke off possible supply lines to Hizbullah guerrillas, travel to many villages was just too dangerous. Coastal villages even within a few kilometers of Tyre are cut off. In some, corpses remain trapped in the rubble for days.

But nothing is more perilous than travelling by night, and no more so than just before midnight that Sunday when another Red Cross crew set off from Tyre to pick up their injured colleagues.

"I was trembling," said Ali Deeb, one of the volunteers on the mission. "It was too dangerous, and helicopters buzzing, and all through this, I am thinking one thing: the ambulance that left half an hour before you has already been injured, and you could be next." Later yesterday afternoon, two missiles landed in the building across the road from the Red Cross office.

The toll

Lebanese

Yesterday

Civilian deaths 8

Hizbullah deaths 0

Since outbreak

Military deaths 66

Civilian deaths 377

Wounded 1,550+

Israeli

Yesterday

Civilian deaths 0

Military deaths 4

Since outbreak

Military deaths 24

Civilian deaths 17

Wounded 360+

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

How do Israelis play war?

2010-02-04T11:52:00.002+02:00

Israeli fighter jets bomb ambulances and firefighters putting out fires during times of war.

2009-11-04T00:17:00.002+02:00

This is just to show you a little part of what I've been seeing over and over as I've been growing up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irIXIy6hNc8

2009-06-10T22:36:00.001+03:00

This is one heck of a fantastic article...

Mishal’s Luck

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n09/shtz01_.html

Adam Shatz

Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination of Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas by Paul McGeough

In early September 1997, Danny Yatom, the head of Mossad, arranged a special screening for Binyamin Netanyahu, who was then prime minister. The film, shot on the streets of Tel Aviv, presented the plan for the assassination of Khalid Mishal, the head of Hamas’s political bureau in Amman. Twenty-one Israelis had died in Hamas suicide attacks in the previous two months, and Netanyahu was eager for revenge. The peace process might be undermined, but that would be just as well: Netanyahu shared Hamas’s hostility to Oslo, and had compared trading land for peace to appeasement with Hitler. Mishal, Paul McGeough writes in Kill Khalid, his gripping account of the plot, was selected from a list of targets by Netanyahu not only because he was suspected of orchestrating the suicide bomb campaign, but because he made an articulate case for Hamas’s position, in a suit rather than clerical robes: ‘he was too credible as an emerging leader of Hamas, persuasive even. He had to be taken out.’

It was an extremely sensitive operation. Israel had signed a peace treaty with King Hussein in 1994, and the murder of a Palestinian leader in Amman would be sure to fuel speculation that Mossad had got the green light, and perhaps some helpful tips, from Jordan’s General Intelligence Department (GID). This was no way to treat a friend – at least not one you respected – and the Israelis knew it. Unlike the flamboyant assassinations of the PFLP spokesman Ghassan Kanafani (killed in 1972 in a car bomb in Beirut) and Arafat’s top aide Khalil al-Wazir (gunned down in 1988 in his home in Tunis by Israeli commandos), Mishal’s murder had to be discreet and, if possible, invisible.

The attack would take a matter of seconds – so quick he wouldn’t know it was happening. One agent would shake a can of Coke and pop it open to distract Mishal while another would spray levofentanyl, a chemically modified painkiller, in his ear. He would feel as if he’d been bitten by an insect; 48 hours later the drug would kill him, leaving no trace. Mossad agents rehearsed the assassination using water instead of poison on unsuspecting pedestrians in Tel Aviv. Netanyahu liked what he saw, and gave Yatom the go-ahead. He was not dissuaded by Hamas’s proposal for a 30-year hudna (truce), relayed by King Hussein on 22 September in a letter delivered by hand to the secret Mossad station at the Israeli embassy in Amman. Three days later, a pair of Mossad agents disguised as Canadian tourists – they were carrying passports borrowed from Canadian Jews living in Israel – waited for Mishal at 10 a.m. outside his office, where his driver was due to drop him off.

The plot unravelled almost as soon as it began. Mishal’s driver suspected that he’d been followed by a green Hyundai. When he saw a blond, bearded man in sunglasses approaching his boss as he stepped out of the car, with a ‘bizarre instrument’ in his hand, he pounced on him – though not before the poison had been squirted into Mishal’s ear from that instrument, a nebuliser. The attackers piled into the Hyundai, but they didn’t know their way around Amman, and were chased by Mishal’s bodyguard, who did. Eventually they jumped out of their car, but got stuck in a crowded marketplace, where Mishal’s bodyguard wrestled them into a taxi and took them to the nearest police station. Mishal seemed fine at first, but a few hours later he realised that something was wrong: his ear was ringing, he was shivering; he suddenly felt exhausted and nauseous. As his aides rushed him to hospital, he lost consciousness altogether.

Hamas’s claim that Mishal had been the target of an assassination attempt might have been squelched by the Jordanians, and Mishal might have died, had it not been for Randa Habib, a Lebanese journalist who broke the story to Agence-France Presse. General Samih Batikhi, head of the GID, insisted that nothing more than a fight between locals and tourists had taken place; another official suggested that Mishal’s driver had sparked the row by making unwelcome advances to the Canadians. The absence of a weapon wasn’t the only reason the Jordanians were sceptical. Why would Mossad place its special relationship with the GID at risk? Only a week earlier Danny Yatom had stopped by the headquarters in Amman – after a family holiday at the royal palace on the Red Sea – to chat with Batikhi. Now here was Hamas, accusing Israel of violating the peace treaty: a serious charge which, if true, would require a response.

Batikhi, who viewed Hamas as troublemakers, was inclined to dismiss the Agence-France Presse report until he received credible information that two men involved in the fight were seen running into the Israeli embassy (they would be joined by two other accomplices). When Netanyahu called King Hussein to say that Yatom was flying to Amman on urgent business that ‘could have bearing on the peace process’, Hussein assumed the visit was a response to Hamas’s offer of a hudna; but Batikhi knew better. He ordered the army to surround the Israeli embassy in Amman, and asked the Canadian ambassador to quiz the two men in Jordanian custody – ‘Shawn Kendall’ and ‘Barry Beads’ – on their ‘Canadian-ness’. It didn’t take long for them to be exposed as impostors.

‘We did it . . . We sprayed him with a chemical,’ Yatom confessed to Batikhi after landing in Jordan: ‘There’s nothing you can do about it . . . He’s been poisoned and all his bodily functions will deteriorate. There’ll be no apparent cause of death . . . We’d better deal with the consequences.’ But Hussein wasn’t prepared to deal with the consequences. He felt, he said, as if the Israelis had ‘spat on my face’. Despite – and partly because of – his friendship with Israel, Hussein had allowed Hamas to operate out of Amman. Hamas gave him leverage in negotiations with Israel and the US, and, as McGeough points out, they also ‘gave back something that Arafat and the PLO threatened – Hussein’s legitimacy’. The Jordanians had no love for Mishal: Batikhi regarded him as ‘shallow, brittle and unbending’, and Hussein had gone to great lengths to replace him, securing the release to Jordan four months earlier of the more pliable Mousa Abu Marzook, the former head of the Hamas political bureau, who had spent two years in an American prison awaiting extradition to Israel. But Marzook’s cosiness with Jordan’s security services, and his reputation for moderation (which had earned him the nickname Mr CIA), had cost him support inside Hamas; and he wasn’t helped now by rumours that the Jordanians had conspired with Israel to return him to his old job. Suddenly Hussein’s honour – if not his political survival – depended on saving Mishal.

The crisis offered Hussein a chance to settle scores with Netanyahu, who had treated him with undisguised contempt, and whom he suspected of seeking to ‘destroy all I have worked to build between our peoples’, as Hussein had written to Netanyahu in March. Netanyahu had approved a tunnel underneath the al-Aqsa Mosque, which led to rioting in which dozens of Palestinians and a number of Israelis died; he had also betrayed his promise to Hussein not to build new settlements in East Jerusalem, with his plan to encircle the neighbourhood of Jabal Abu Ghneim with Jewish apartment complexes. In Hussein’s view, the assassination was part of Netanyahu’s plan to sabotage Oslo and to destabilise his own regime, so that a Palestinian state could be established in Jordan – the old fantasy of the Israeli right. Refusing to speak to Netanyahu, he placed a call to Clinton. ‘If Mishal dies, peace dies with him,’ Hussein warned. The embassy would be stormed, the Israelis in Jordanian custody would hang, and relations would be broken off. Clinton agreed to pressure the Israelis to hand over the antidote to the poison used on Mishal, along with the formula. Forty-eight hours after Yatom landed in Amman, an Israeli doctor arrived at the same airport with the goods, just in time to save Mishal. Netanyahu even flew to Jordan to apologise to the king in person.

Hussein’s humiliation of Netanyahu did not end there. As the ‘father of the treaty’ with Hussein, Efraim Halevy, Israel’s envoy to the EU and Mossad’s former deputy director, recognised, the king needed a deal, not just the antidote; and if he didn’t get one, the Israelis now held in Jordan would never come home. The price, Halevy argued, should be the release of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the paraplegic cleric who had founded Hamas in Gaza, and was now serving his eighth year of a life sentence. This was ‘political dynamite’, in the words of an American official: Yassin’s return to Gaza was bound to raise the standing of Hamas among Palestinians, and to weaken Arafat, Israel’s ‘peace partner’. Arafat made an operatic display of joy over Yassin’s release, but privately he was furious: not only would King Hussein get the credit, but the sheikh would threaten his control of the national movement, and undermine his negotiations with Israel. ‘Why should I pay a price for this?’ he moaned to Clinton’s Middle East envoy, Dennis Ross.

Shortly after Mishal’s life was saved, a group of Jordanian officials discussed the affair with Clinton. ‘Though he was not present, the meeting was an extraordinary moment in the life of Khalid Mishal,’ McGeough writes: ‘Mishal and his movement had been acknowledged as key players.’ It was also an extraordinary reversal of fortune. Hamas, in the words of a senior American official, had been having ‘its worst year’ until ‘Mossad’s balls-up in Amman’. Marzook and Yassin had been behind bars, and hundreds of Hamas leaders had been jailed by Arafat’s Preventive Security Service, headed in Gaza by Mohammed Dahlan, whose methods had made some Hamas prisoners nostalgic for their Israeli jailers. Now Marzook was back in Amman, and Yassin was back in Gaza, a symbol of Palestinian defiance whose authority even Arafat found difficult to challenge.

The greatest beneficiary of the failed assassination, however, was its intended victim, whom Mossad had turned into a star of the Islamic resistance. Marzook campaigned to get his old job back but didn’t stand a chance against the ‘martyr who would not die’. Mishal’s insistence that only armed resistance would end the occupation, and that Arafat had nothing to show for his renunciation of violence (‘Where did it get him? Where’s his independent state?’), prevailed in Hamas’s shura, or decision-making council. ‘The day they tried to kill him was the day Mishal the leader was born,’ a Jordanian journalist told McGeough. ‘The man who died that day was Abu Marzook. Nobody wanted to talk to Abu Marzook after that – it was Mishal, Mishal, Mishal.’

McGeough tells the story of the Amman plot in the gritty, unsentimental style of a hard-boiled thriller. Kill Khalid is a reporter’s book, drawing plentifully on interviews with the important players, including Mishal. The Mishal affair may not be as much of a turning point in the conflict as McGeough claims, but its wider resonances are striking. More than a decade later, Mishal is Hamas’s political chief in Damascus, and Netanyahu, the man who ordered his assassination, is back in power in Jerusalem. The Islamic resistance movement, Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyah (hamas means ‘zeal’ in Arabic), now controls the Gaza Strip, having survived the prisons of the IDF and the Palestinian Authority, a pitiless blockade, international isolation, the ‘targeted’ assassinations of many of its leaders, an American-backed putsch and an Israeli invasion. And though neither the US nor the EU will speak to Mishal, on the grounds that Hamas is a ‘terrorist’ organisation, he has won the respect of a growing number of politicians in the West, including Jimmy Carter.

Mishal was born in 1956, into a peasant family in the Jordanian-ruled West Bank village of Silwad, 16 miles north of Jerusalem. His father, Abd al-Qadir, was a sheikh who had fought in the 1936 Arab Revolt and in the 1948 war with Israel; he had also been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the militant Islamist group founded in Egypt in 1928. Mishal, during his childhood in Silwad, saw little of his father: in 1957, Abd al-Qadir had taken a second wife and moved with her to Kuwait, where he established a new family. Ten years later, however, the Israeli army occupied Silwad, and Fatima Mishal and her children fled to Amman, then to Kuwait, where they were reunited with Abd al-Qadir.

The emirate was not without its difficulties for Palestinian refugees, who couldn’t buy property without a Kuwaiti partner, and were collectively viewed as a potential fifth column. But since in most of the Arab world Palestinians had a choice between the heroism of guerrilla warfare and the misery of the refugee camps, Kuwait offered the hope of a more or less normal life. Palestinians staffed Kuwait’s schools and civil service, and took great pride in their contribution to the country’s economy. Mishal’s father befriended a senior member of the royal family who admired his sermons, and rose to the position of mullah, no small achievement for a country preacher. Kuwait’s comparatively liberal ambience had also made it a centre of Palestinian politics. It was in Kuwait that Arafat and his comrades had founded Fatah; it was there, too, that young Palestinians in the national movement’s various factions – secular-nationalist, Marxist, Islamist – would fight over its future.

Khalid Mishal joined the Muslim Brotherhood at the age of 15. As McGeough emphasises, this was not a fashionable choice in the early 1970s, when the armed resistance to Israel was led by secular nationalists, and Islamists faced accusations of complacency, if not cowardice, for standing on the sidelines. But Mishal, like a growing number of pious Muslims in the diaspora, was convinced that the Palestinian struggle had to be grounded on Islamic principles; it was, they believed, the Arabs’ deviation from those principles that had led them to defeat in 1948 and 1967. They thought that Arafat was repeating the same error when, in the mid-1970s, he began to express support for a ‘transitional’ Palestinian state in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem – and hinted, implicitly, at an eventual rapprochement with the Jewish state.

For Mishal and his comrades, who called for the creation of an Islamic state in all of historical Palestine, this was treason; at a stroke Arafat was lending legitimacy to the state that had caused the Palestinian ordeal, and selling out the refugees. At Kuwait University, where he studied physics, Mishal founded the Islamic Association of Palestinian Students, a rival to the Arafat-controlled General Union of Palestinian Students, and became its president. When he graduated, he asked his mother to say ‘amen’ to his wish to become ‘a martyr for Palestine’. ‘My son, I can’t say “amen” to that,’ she replied. ‘It’s too difficult.’

She needn’t have worried: Khalid, a contemplative, bookish young man, a reader of Camus and Dostoevsky, was not in a hurry to become a martyr. Not only had he joined an organisation that had until this point kept its distance from the armed struggle; unlike many of his classmates, who were slipping out of Kuwait to join the fedayeen in southern Lebanon, he had decided that he could better serve the national cause by remaining a student. In McGeough’s words, he ‘was opting to live to fight another day’.

Mishal soon acquired the trappings of a quiet, middle-class life: a stable job as a high-school physics teacher, a wife and children. But in his spare time he was meeting behind closed doors with a group of Palestinian Muslim Brothers to develop what he called his ‘project’, the creation of an Islamic alternative to Fatah. The time had come, they believed, for Islamists to take part in the armed struggle, and to wrest control of the movement. They belonged to a new generation of Islamists who drew inspiration from the Iranian Revolution and the Afghan holy war; they pointed to the failure of secular Arab nationalists to govern effectively (or to confront Israel), and wanted to fuse the energies of nationalism and Islam. For them ‘there was no contradiction between fighting for Palestine and conducting a religious life.’ Mishal drew selectively on Palestinian history – including his father’s story – to argue that the Muslim Brotherhood, not Fatah, had launched the national resistance: ‘We’re the root; Fatah is a mere branch.’

To most observers, Mishal’s early efforts couldn’t have looked promising. Supporters of Fatah and the left far outnumbered Palestine’s Islamists, and Arafat controlled the purse strings of the PLO. But Arafat had little to show for his leadership of the PLO, apart from its survival. He had held it together thanks to his charisma and his flair for cutting deals, but he had involved the Palestinian movement, to disastrous effect, in Arab politics, above all in the Lebanese civil war. Though spartan in his own habits he had allowed corruption in the PLO to fester, since compromised allies were more easily controlled. And he governed in the style of the region, making decisions capriciously and without consulting anyone, as if his nickname, Mr Palestine, entitled him not to. Islamic opposition movements combining piety with political militancy were excoriating nationalist leaders throughout the region; what grounds were there for seeing the Palestinian movement as an exception? The main surprise, perhaps, is that it took so long.

In 1983, Mishal and his Kuwaiti allies presented their ‘project’ to a meeting of the Muslim Brotherhood in Amman. Arafat and his soldiers had recently been expelled from Lebanon, and the PLO, exiled to Tunis, had never seemed so far from achieving independence, or so directionless. Mishal, McGeough writes, gave a daring speech that amounted to a ‘full-frontal assault on the supremacy of Yasir Arafat’. His recommendations were adopted, and Mishal was made head of the Kuwait-based Jihaz Filastin – the Palestine Apparatus that would pay for military operations in the Occupied Territories. (McGeough, drawing uncritically on Mishal’s account, makes rather too much of this conference, claiming that it marks the founding of Hamas; in fact, Hamas was established four years later, at the Gaza home of Sheikh Yassin on 9 December 1987, the day the intifada broke out.) Mishal’s first assignment, as head of the Palestine Apparatus, was to raise money in the Gulf so that Yassin’s followers could undergo weapons training in Jordan. Tipped off by an informer, Israel jailed Yassin for plotting to destroy the Jewish state.

Yassin’s involvement in weapons training came as a shock to many Israelis; even today there are figures in Israeli intelligence who insist that his guns were pointed at Fatah. Ever since they occupied Gaza, the Israelis had been cultivating Yassin – a Muslim Brother who’d been jailed by Egypt – in their struggle against Palestinian nationalism, much as the Americans had supported the Afghan mujahedin. (McGeough suggests that some of the money raised by Muslims abroad in support of the mujahedin may have found its way to Palestine.) Yassin made no secret of his hatred of Israel, but, as a Muslim Brother, he believed that before taking up arms to recover their land, Palestinians would first have to undergo ‘ideological, spiritual and psychological re-education’. While secular nationalists mobilised against the occupation, in strikes and guerrilla attacks, Yassin promoted social works and religious instruction. Overlooking his belief that ‘re-education’ was only preparation for the impending jihad, the Israelis regarded him as a tactical ally against the PLO. In the early 1970s, while Israel repressed any stirrings of nationalist resistance, Yassin was permitted to open up the Islamic Centre, an umbrella organisation that included a mosque, a clinic, a kindergarten, a festival hall and a headquarters for an alms committee; with the occupier’s approval he was soon receiving considerable funds from the Gulf.

In the mid-1980s, the military governor of Gaza gave a succinct summary of Israel’s relationship to Yassin: ‘The Israeli government gives me a budget and the military government gives it to the mosques.’ After a trip to Gaza in 1985, Daniel Kurtzer, an official at the US embassy in Tel Aviv, barged into a meeting of Shimon Peres’s advisers and asked them: ‘Have you guys lost your minds? Do you ever learn from history? Do you know what you’re doing in Gaza as we speak? . . . You really think you can tame these guys?’ When Gazan Islamists wanted to cross over to the West Bank in support of their comrades in clashes with Fatah, the Israelis let them through. As one official explained to McGeough, ‘they’ll only be beating each other up.’

In fact, Yassin and other Islamists inside the Occupied Territories were drawing the same lessons from the revolutionary Islamic struggles in Iran, Afghanistan and Lebanon as Mishal and his comrades were in the diaspora: that the gradualist philosophy of the Brothers should give way to the rifle. In its 1988 charter, Hamas proclaimed its desire to ‘raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine’ and depicted the Zionist project as the latest chapter of a Jewish conspiracy for world domination that had begun with the French Revolution, and continued with the Russian Revolution and two world wars. Yet the Israelis continued to indulge Hamas during the first few years of the intifada, focusing their repression on the secular National Unified Leadership of the Uprising, and allowing the Islamists to receive substantial funds from abroad. With this money – raised by Hamas-affiliated charities in Europe, the US and the Gulf – Hamas expanded its influence, building a vast network of schools, daycare centres, hospitals and athletic clubs.

Mishal relocated to Amman in 1990, when he and his family were forced to flee Kuwait after Arafat gave his blessings to Saddam Hussein’s invasion, thereby jeopardising the security of the 400,000 Palestinians who’d made a decent life for themselves in the emirate – not to mention his ties to the Gulf Arabs who bankrolled the PLO. Arafat’s mistake was Hamas’s good fortune: Gulf rulers who had paid for the PLO’s operating budget now wrote their cheques to Hamas, which had denounced Saddam’s attack. Drained of funds and desperate to come in from the cold, Arafat scurried to Madrid and then to Oslo; ignoring the warnings of Palestinian leaders from the Occupied Territories, he signed a deal in September 1993 that made him Israel’s policeman, while providing no guarantee of a freeze on Israeli settlements, or the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state. In no small part thanks to disappointment with Oslo – and frustration with Arafat and the ‘Tunisians’ who returned to govern the PA – Hamas became the main opposition party in Palestine, attracting support not primarily for its Islamic piety, but for its lack of corruption, and its willingness to stand up to Israel. It also developed a substantial military wing, the Qassam Brigades, which would launch a ferocious campaign of suicide attacks inside Israel in 1994, following Baruch Goldstein’s massacre of 29 Palestinian worshippers at the Cave of the Patriarchs mosque in Hebron. There could be no balance of power with Israel, but perhaps, Mishal and his men reasoned, there could be a balance of fear. Arafat won praise from the US and Israel as a ‘partner in peace’ for his brutal crackdown on Hamas. But he soon discovered that he could repress Hamas only at prohibitive cost to his own legitimacy.

Working under Mousa Abu Marzook in Hamas’s political bureau, Mishal kept a low profile during the first intifada: ‘A little obscurity is good. My comrades and God know what I have been doing.’ But according to regional intelligence agencies, he had established an increasingly influential position inside Hamas, overseeing ‘funds, weapons and military infrastructure’; some Israeli officials referred to him as Hamas’s prime minister. Agents observed that he avoided public highways in Lebanon, preferring roads used by the Syrian army, and that he travelled frequently to Singapore, Pakistan and other Muslim countries. Though he did not make an official appearance as a leader of Hamas until 1995, he was now, as head of the Palestine Apparatus and a member of the three-man military committee which directed the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s single most powerful figure.

Mishal had a stroke of luck when, brushing aside the warnings of his colleagues, Marzook travelled to the US only six months after the Clinton administration declared Hamas a ‘terrorist’ organisation – and only a day after a suicide attack near Tel Aviv. He was arrested by the FBI at JFK airport and spent the next two years in prison, leaving Mishal to take over the political bureau. Marzook continued to think of himself as Hamas’s natural leader, but his visit to the US had infuriated his colleagues, and Mishal proved himself an adroit operator in the shura council. The rivalry between Mishal, a Kuwaiti Palestinian who’d never lived a day under occupation, and Marzook, a protégé of Yassin from a poor family in Gaza, was partly a reflection of the old tensions between Palestinians from the ‘inside’ and those from the diaspora. But matters of style and personality were just as important. Marzook was a gregarious, impulsive man who enjoyed an audience; Mishal was a careful, patient listener who won over his colleagues with his seriousness and with his rigorous adherence to the principles of shura. And so when Marzook returned to Jordan in 1997, he found himself out of a job.

The failed assassination gave Mishal a renewed sense of purpose: ‘I’ve been given a new life for a new role,’ he said. Two years later, he was deported by Hussein’s heir, King Abdullah, but soon found a home in Damascus, where, like Hizbullah, Hamas has given the Syrians a card to play in their efforts to recover the Golan Heights. In return, Syria has provided him with protection from Israel, which has assassinated dozens of Hamas militants since the second intifada, including Sheikh Yassin, killed by a helicopter gunship in March 2004. After Yassin’s death Mishal became Hamas’s undisputed leader. And in November of that year, another obstacle to Mishal – and to Hamas’s eclipse of Fatah – vanished when Arafat died. Without Arafat, and under Abbas’s impotent, feckless leadership, Fatah was rudderless. Hamas now dominated Palestinian politics.

Mishal is often portrayed as the ‘hardliner in Damascus’, in implicit (and unfavourable) contrast with Hamas ‘moderates’ in the Occupied Territories. But McGeough, who spent many hours talking to Mishal, situates him at Hamas’s ‘pragmatic centre’. He is a militant, but not a fanatic; a nationalist, not a proponent of transnational jihad. (An American analyst told McGeough: ‘I’ve met him three times now and I still have not heard him say the word “Islam”.’) It’s true that Mishal led the opposition inside the shura to participating in the 1996 parliamentary elections, arguing that to do so would be to admit the legitimacy of the Oslo Accords. But he also argued in favour of taking part in the 2006 elections, inspired by the example of Hizbullah in Lebanon, and led Hamas to a decisive victory. As McGeough points out, Hamas ran on a platform of reform, promising clean governance and transparency; it made no mention of an Islamic state in its electoral manifesto, and hardly spoke of violence, leaving Fatah to boast of its contribution to the armed struggle. During the campaign Mishal spoke to rallies from Damascus, through a mobile phone held to the microphone of a loudspeaker. Hamas’s victory was greeted with a diplomatic boycott by the powers that had urged democracy on the Palestinian people, along with efforts to ‘bolster’ Abbas and, ultimately, to foment civil war between Hamas and Fatah.

The West responded this way to the elected government of Hamas because it refuses to renounce violence, abide by previous agreements between Israel and the PA, and recognise the state of Israel. Mishal’s view is that if Hamas were to satisfy the Quartet’s three demands, there would be little to distinguish Hamas from Fatah, which renounced violence, repudiated its claim to 78 per cent of historical Palestine and accepted Israel’s legitimacy – and got very little in return except an interminable ‘peace process’. Israel, in Mishal’s view, would never have removed the settlers from Gaza had it not been for the Qassam rockets fired at Sderot. Hamas, he insists, will continue the armed struggle until the occupation ends. Yet his movement does not use force indiscriminately, and, as many Israeli officials acknowledge, he has honoured ceasefires more faithfully than Arafat did.

Mishal does not accept Israel’s ‘right to exist’ – this would be tantamount, in Hamas’s eyes, to legitimising their own dispossession – but de facto recognition is another matter, and he has on several occasions advocated a hudna of 20 to 30 years. At a summit in Mecca on 7 February 2007 he expressed Hamas’s support for continued negotiations based on a two-state deal along the 1967 border, a position that, McGeough suggests, brings him closer to Washington’s official position than Netanyahu, who advocates only a vague ‘economic peace’. Until a Palestinian state is established, and there is some parallel recognition by Israel of Palestinian rights to national self-determination – and some resolution of the refugees’ plight – Mishal is not going to recognise the Jewish state. And in Mecca he agreed only to ‘respect’ – not ‘abide by’ – earlier agreements with Israel. But he has also indicated that Hamas’s stated positions are far less important than its actions: ‘Watch what we do, not what we say.’

What this means is that Hamas is likely to continue calling for the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea, while at the same time seeking an end to the occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Mishal and his associates don’t view the two-state arrangement as anything like a long-term solution to the conflict, but they are realists, and they are willing to live with it – provided it doesn’t result in the cantonisation of Palestinian land, and provided it’s not a way of shutting them out, as Abbas and the West intend it. Hamas wants to be a part of the deal, and, as it demonstrated during the Oslo years, is in an ideal position to play the role of spoiler if it’s not.

As for the 1988 charter, with its luxuriant borrowings from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Hamas isn’t likely to repudiate it, particularly if it comes under pressure to do so: it was precisely Western calls for repudiation that led Hamas to suspend its efforts to revise it, and to eliminate the offending passages. But Mishal and other Hamas officials have indicated on several occasions that the charter is a historical document that long ago ceased to reflect their thinking. Mishal is reported to consider it an embarrassment, and has insisted that the conflict with Israel ‘is a political issue between us; it is not theological.’ Although he has authorised – and indeed praised – the use of suicide attacks against Israeli civilians, he has also emphasised that ‘we do not fight you because you belong to a certain faith or culture . . . We have no problem with Jews who have not attacked us.’ Unlike most of the secular nationalist factions, including Fatah, Hamas has never struck at targets outside the zone of conflict.

Mishal is not a charismatic leader in the mould of Arafat, or even of Yassin. He’s a good speaker, yet he has arrived at his position not by giving speeches, but rather, McGeough suggests, by patiently fielding the views of his colleagues inside Hamas’s shura. By promoting discussion and consensus, he’s been able to steer Hamas towards an implicit acceptance of coexistence with Israel. Despite his commitment to the armed struggle, he is not a hothead, and he is far less interested in martyrdom than in lifting the blockade, securing the release of Palestinian prisoners, and achieving recognition for Hamas on the international stage. Unlike some of Hamas’s leaders, particularly those who have spent their lives under occupation, Mishal has travelled widely, and he understands the way things work in the outside world. The world, in turn, has begun to take notice of him. He may be a ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorist’ in the eyes of the US Treasury, but he has been receiving an increasing number of visitors from the West, as well as a handful of Jewish leaders.

As the director of Hamas’s foreign policy, Mishal has forged a close alliance with Syria and Iran, the so-called resistance bloc; he has been a frequent guest in Tehran, which is reported to smuggle weapons to Gaza through Sudan and Cyprus. But he has been careful to preserve his movement’s independence, and has developed cordial relations with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and, increasingly, Turkey. ‘Hamas is not an Iranian tool,’ a former senior Israeli official told McGeough. ‘Hamas needs Tehran and Damascus, but it’s a balance that Mishal manages well.’ As Mishal points out, he wouldn’t have gone to Mecca in February 2007 or supported the Saudi peace plan – or backed the Sunni insurgents in Iraq – if he were simply a client of Tehran.

Will the Obama administration talk to Hamas? In a recent interview with La Repubblica, Mishal said that it was just ‘a matter of time’. In American think tanks close to the administration (and, one imagines, in the State Department), it’s understood that Hamas will have to be engaged sooner or later: Abbas simply does not command enough support among Palestinians to reach a deal on his own, and if Hamas is destroyed, it’s likely to be replaced not by Fatah, but by jihadi extremists. In March, a bipartisan group of senior American officials – including Paul Volcker, an economic adviser to Obama, the former Republican senators Chuck Hagel and Nancy Kassebaum, the former World Bank president James Wolfensohn and the former UN ambassador Thomas Pickering – urged Obama to talk to Hamas. But the power of the Israel lobby makes any direct overture risky. Legal restrictions, too, would have to be overcome: three years ago, the US Congress passed a law banning the use of funds for diplomatic contact with Hamas, and ended assistance to any Palestinian ministry connected to Hamas. Although Hamas has never attacked American interests, Obama may find it hard to authorise talks with the ‘specially designated global terrorists’ in its leadership. And while the administration is pursuing a thaw with Damascus, George Mitchell isn’t likely to stop by Mishal’s bunker. Just how Mitchell expects to reach a deal without talking to Hamas isn’t clear. As Mishal remarked to McGeough in a recent interview, ‘Would he have succeeded in Belfast if he was ordered to ignore the IRA?’

Isolating Hamas, however, remains the order of the day, and it was the unspoken subtext of the recent ‘donors conference’ at Sharm el-Sheikh, where leaders from the West and the Arab world came to pledge £3.2 billion in aid to the Palestinians. Hamas was not invited, since the purpose was to bolster Abbas and the PA. And though it was Gaza, not the West Bank, that was devastated during Israel’s offensive, most of the funds will go to the PA in Ramallah. (Of the $900 million the US has pledged, $600 million has been earmarked for the PA to ‘reorganise itself’.)

In an implicit concession to Hamas, Hillary Clinton recently said that Washington would not oppose the formation of a unity government between Fatah and Hamas, but she added that the US ‘will not deal with nor in any way fund’ a Palestinian government that fails to meet the Quartet’s three conditions: a demand it hasn’t imposed on the coalition government in Lebanon, in which Hizbullah has veto power; or indeed on such pro-Western Arab governments as Saudi Arabia that have yet to make peace with Israel. Meanwhile, Israel has prevented construction materials from entering Gaza, partly because of their alleged ‘dual use’ in arms production – but also as a means of pressuring Hamas to release Corporal Gilad Shalit – and even pasta and lentils have been turned away at the crossing.

None of this is going to turn Palestinians against Hamas, any more than America’s arming of Fatah or Israel’s attack on Gaza did. Hamas is part of the fabric of Palestinian politics, and neither force nor diplomatic isolation will make it go away. Its history is one of tenacity in the face of enormous odds: it has been nourished by the efforts to destroy it. No one is in a better position to appreciate this than Israel’s new prime minister who, once again, finds himself facing the martyr who would not die.

From the LRB letters page: [ 28 May 2009 ] Joe Palmer, Thom Townsend.

The Israeli New Historians

2009-05-26T18:13:00.003+03:00

Exerpted from: http://azure.org.il/download/magazine/1546az9_editorial.pdf

It was scarcely a decade ago that books such as Benny Morris’ Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (1987) and Tom Segev’s The Seventh Million (1991) appeared, heralding the arrival of a cadre of young Israeli historians radically at odds with the way that previous scholars had recounted the story of Zionism. In particular, the new historians painted a highly unflattering picture of Israel’s founding, centered around the Zionist leadership’s mistreatment of the Arabs during and after the War of Independence (Morris) and its errors of omission and commission towards the victims and survivors of the Holocaust (Segev). At the time, the new perspective on Israel’s past was generally dismissed as a fringe phenomenon, and only a handful of names were associated with it. Since then, however, scholars openly identified with the new history—and with the similar treatment of Zionism in disciplines such as political science, sociology and philosophy—have grown appreciably in numbers and influence. Many of them have earned coveted tenure-track positions at Israeli universities, while their views have been widely disseminated by the Israeli media, especially in the daily Ha’aretz (Israel’s equivalent of The New York Times), and most spectacularly in Tekuma, Israel Television’s 1998 documentary miniseries on the Jewish state’s first fifty years.

In the past year, however, the new historians have taken a quantum leap towards acceptance by the cultural mainstream. In July 1999, the Israel Defense Forces, through its History Division, cosponsored the publication of The Struggle for Israel’s Security, a book which the daily Yedi’ot Aharonot described as “shattering a number of the most splendid myths on which we were raised” (August 4, 1999), and which was particularly harsh in assessing Israel’s security policy during the formative period of the 1950s. Two months later, the Ministry of Education introduced into ninth-grade classrooms across the country the first three textbooks about Israel that are part of a new curriculum aimed at teaching history from an expressly “universal” (as opposed to “nationalist”) perspective. The most radical of these texts is A World of Changes: History for Ninth Grade, edited by Danny Ya’akobi and published by the Ministry’s own Curriculum Division, which attributes the victory of Jewish forces over five Arab armies in the War of Independence to the Jews’ organizational and logistical edge rather than to determined leadership, brilliant military tactics or individual heroism, and suggests that Israel precipitated the Six Day War by acting aggressively against Syria in the months prior to the outbreak of fighting. The new history has captured the interest of a growing segment of the Israeli public as well: Tom Segev’s Days of the Anemones (1999), an account of the Mandate period that credits the Arabs rather than the Jews with driving the British out of Palestine, has been on the Ha’aretz national bestseller list for thirty-one weeks, and counting—a feat unparalleled by any historical work published in Israel in the last decade and a half. (See Yehoshua Porath’s article on Segev, p. 23.)

At least as impressive has been the new historians’ penetration of the American intellectual mainstream—which sets the trend for the way that Israel is viewed throughout the democratic world, and which until now has remained largely immune to the trends in Israeli academia. In September 1999, New York’s prestigious Knopf publishing house released Benny Morris’ Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999, a 750- page reinterpretation of Zionist history which suggests that Zionism was “tainted by a measure of moral dubiousness” from the outset, and argues that the Israeli leadership bears substantial responsibility for all the wars fought since 1948. The following month, W.W. Norton published The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World Since 1948, a 670-page tour of the last half-century authored by Avi Shlaim, an Israeli-born “new historian” who teaches at Oxford. Shlaim’s conclusions, though presented in a less scholarly manner than those of Morris, are similar in substance. Many of America’s leading opinionmaking publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, Commentary, Foreign Affairs and The Weekly Standard, devoted lengthy reviews to these iconoclastic works, making them the most widely discussed books on Israel to appear in the English-speaking world in the past decade.

Stop the War Coalition - Hezbollah MP Hussein El Haj Hassan London 3 March 2009

2009-04-13T02:28:00.001+03:00

Norman Finkelstein - Hezbollah, the Honour of Lebanon

2009-04-12T22:44:00.002+03:00

This is the best and most current analysis of Hezbollah I've seen yet.

http://zionismkills.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/norman-finkelstein-hezbollah-the-honour-of-lebanon/

Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish American political scientist and author, specializing in Jewish-related issues and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular talks about the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and openly supports and praises their resistance: “They (Hezbollah) show courage, they show discipline, I respect that”

On Israeli defeat and consequential withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, Finkelstein says:”But the reality was — and everyone understood it — that the Israeli attitude was: We are going to knock out Hizbullah. They began planning for a new war right after they were forced to leave in 2000. They found their excuse, their pretext, in July 2006, but there is no question among rational people that Israel was never going to let the Hizbullah victory go by.”

Watch the video:

“There is no way that the United States and Israel are going to tolerate any resistance (to their hegemony) in the Arab world.”

On the damage caused to Lebanon as a result of the resistance: “It’s better to die on your feet than to walk crawling on your knees….how can I not respect those (Hezbollah) who say they would rather die on their feet? How can I not respect that?”

Finkelstein then goes on to slam the stances taken by some sell out Arabs who continue to admire George Bush like ‘Servants’ despite Bush being the man behind the carpet bombing of Lebanon and says that Bush should be classified as ‘persona non grata’:”Who (would) roll out the red carpet less than two years after your whole country was destroyed by them (the US)? “

“You (sell out-arabs) have NO self respect”

—————————————- ———–

How Hezbollah achieved victory over Israel

Part 1: The Intelligence War
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_E…

Part 2: The Ground War
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_E…

Part 3: The Political War
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_E…

Rabbi Weiss, Outside Annapolis Peace Confab, Rips Zionism

2009-01-12T18:06:00.000+02:00

Israeli Captain Tells the Truth about Israeli Genocide in Gaza

2009-01-12T17:57:00.001+02:00

Thousands of Israelis protest against the war in Gaza

2009-01-12T17:45:00.000+02:00

An In-Depth BBC Report on Israel's Secret Nuclear Weapons Program

2009-01-12T17:40:00.002+02:00

http://brasschecktv.com/page/13.html

Stunning!!

2006-11-08T07:34:00.001+02:00

John Stewart on the Israeli attack strategy in Lebanon

2006-09-04T15:47:00.002+03:00

Hezbollah - a primer

2006-08-31T20:24:00.001+03:00

The word Hezbollah is composed of the two words hezb and allah, meaning "party" and "God" respectively, or simply "party of God". It is also commonly referred to as "the party" or el hezb.

Created in 1983, after Israel's invasion and occupation of Lebanon and it's capital, Beirut, in 1982 (the first ever occupation of an Arab capital by Israel,) its stated goal at that time was the creation of an islamic state in Lebanon, widely believed to be modeled after the Iranian revolution, but an alliance with a Christian party in Lebanon, Aoun's Free Patriotic Current, shows their tolerance to Lebanon's multi-sectarian culture. Its top priority historically however has been attacking Israeli soldiers on Lebanese soil.

Hezbollah's method of sustenance is unknown. The exact nature of this backing is presumed to be financial, technical, and military backing, with reports sometimes surfacing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards visiting Hezbollah in Lebanon to provide assistance. Military supplies had been shipped through the Syrian army supply lines when Syrian troops were stationed in Lebanon, yet Hezbollah's methods of rearmament now are through the black market.

As a way to remain popular with the local population mostly of the south, Hezbollah has involved itself in charity work, often compensating the families of fighters who have died and those whose homes had been destroyed by Israel. The lack of an equivalent system of providing help from the Lebanese government has been a key ingredient in remaining popular. Yet, the government is learning. Whilst Hezbollah will provide the rent of an apartment for a period of two years with furniture included (a sum amounting to US$12,000 per houshold), the government has decided to give LL50m (US$33,333) for every family that has lost a home. With 1500 lost homes during the war, that's the equivalent of the entire donation of Saudi Arabia, and of also the entire stated goal for the Stockholm donor's conference.

Finally Some Peace

2006-08-21T15:57:00.000+03:00

This is why our country means so much to us

2006-08-17T18:43:00.000+03:00

Half of Ramlet el Bayda was cleansed of most of the spilled oil on it's beach today and oil absorption pads were layed along the seafront which will absorb more oil that will come along it's shores. All that was needed was some heavy machienery, some shovels, buckets, and a few able-bodied men and women to clean the beach.

May this first "experiment" expand like a crystal to all the beaches in Lebanon, and to all the activists in Greenline and others... give yourselves a pat on the back.

Oil Spill Cleanup time!

2006-08-15T22:36:00.000+03:00

The time to clean our beaches has finally arrived. Unfortunately the effetcs of the oil spill will be felt for years to come, and we might see oil on our beaches forever. However the more we delay in cleaning the beaches the more difficult it becomes to clean it.

Starting on Thurs 17th Aug 2006, work will commence on cleaning the oil spill in two shifts per day
Shift 1 = 9:00am - 12:30pm
Lunch = 12:30pm - 1:30pm
Shift 2 = 1:30pm - 6:00pm

Location: Ramlet El Baida

Personal protective equipment that will be provided will be:
- Goggles
- Masks with filters (we're actually short of activated carbon masks so find some and get some with you)
- Gloves
- Plastic Boots
- Overalls

For coastal cleaning, shovels and buckets will be provided.
For personal cleaning, hot-spots will be allocated to wash gloves and boots between shifts.

Greenline is organising this cleanup with help from various groups and NGOs. For any questions don't hesitate to call the coordinator 03 782469, she's a real cool chick ;-)

Battle "one"

2006-08-14T10:26:00.000+03:00

two hours and a bit into the first battle in the war for peace and it looks like the cease fire might hold, but i'll give it a full 24 hrs before i'll be too sure.

The only problem the Lebanese have is that we still have a blockade upon us. People, we need gas desperately!

Join us tonight for cease fire dinks, for tomorrow is a holiday here..

Peace.

Stuck between a Katyusha and a hard place

2006-08-13T18:24:00.000+03:00

Bombing of Dahyeh this afternoon. People were hurt.

To many it seemed the beginning of the end scheduled for monday morning after everyone agreed in principle to UN res 1701, but hezbollah ended up refusing to discuss certain terms of resolution 1701 today (such as disarming), thus effectively cancelling the discussions that the lebanese gov't was supposed to engage in to finally end the war.

My intuition told me it was too good to be true. Looks like we have some more to endure.. We're stuck between the haters of the region and it continues to be only the innocent civillians of both Israel and Lebanon who pay the price. Noone, it seems, gives a shit about us enough to make a difference.

It's time to teach hate a lesson. The Lebanese people have dealt with 16 yrs of hate and there's NO reason why we can't deal with it again this time.

I just want to add that seeing pictures of smoke, and then seeing smoke rise live from buildings is a completely surreal experience..

2006-08-13T05:14:00.000+03:00

Just got back from one of the most amazing parties we've had in a looong time... and it's in times of war!... unbelievable lebanon... Middle of the forest, EXCELLENT minimal electro all night.. dancing all night... that familiar smell in the air.. (hey we WERE in the forest) Music was great, crowd was great, setting was amazing.. the only thing is that i think the valet dude took my car out for a spin (bastard)

The CD up there cost 10thou and the proceeds of that as well as the tickets all went to helping refugees.

The party was held in the name of PEACE! Yeah people PEACE! ...to the whole world! now that's what i'm talking about...

Jamiroquai - Dynamite - (Don't) Give Hate a Chance

2006-08-12T22:15:00.000+03:00

Why can't we be together?
Could you love me, don't hate me
I don't see (why can't we live together)
Maybe we could get it on.
Maybe we can get it on
Should be our destiny
There's a cold streak living inside us
There's no rainbows... just bullets and bombs
If you wanna rise up
We can make this hate stop
Now don't you wanna rise up

We've been giving hate a chance
(we've got all this love to give you know)
And the love will be running out for us
Can you feel the dreams of life
We're hoping we can still survive
As the wind carries every dove away

So why do we see these colours
It's only skin deep, don't mean a thing
So clear underneath this we're all brothers
Can't you see it's killing us.
can't you see it's killing us
Can't you see it's killing me
Trigger happy fantasy
So stand up and be, so strong now
Freedom is not so far away
If you know you wanna rise up
We can make this hate stop
Don't you wanna rise up

We've been giving hate a chance
(we've got all this love to give you know)
And the love will be running out for us
Can you feel the dreams of life
We're hoping we can still survive
As the wind carries every dove away

The wind, carries every dove away
The wind, carries every dove away
Every dove away
Dove Dove Dove Dove Dove Dove Dove

Now you've been taking our dignitiy for too long
I want to save this sanctity that we hold
And who's right and who's wrong
We're not so different anyway
Words are in this song
Can't we stop the fighting

We've been giving hate a chance
(we've got all this love to give)
And the love will be running out for us
Can you feel the veins of life
We're hoping we can still survive
As the wind carries every dove away

Don't give this hate a chance.
we've got this love to give you know
That this dream alive, will still survive.
untill no more people have to cry
Don't give this hate a chance.
we've got all this love to give you know
That this dream alive, will still survive.
untill no more people have to cry
And the love will be running out for us

Party for peace & against all forms of violence

2006-08-12T19:57:00.000+03:00

Check it out, tonight in Brummana: http://minimalresistance.blogspot.com/

Some people are taking their case against the UN

2006-08-10T20:04:00.000+03:00

www.theUNcampaign.org

lol Look at how far it's gone..

2006-08-10T14:19:00.000+03:00

Israeli Cows 'Invade' South Lebanon

The grass is greener in Hizbullah-controlled territory. Literally.

Dozens of hungry cows whose pasture land in northern Israel has been reduced to ashes by the daily rain of rockets found a hole in the border fence and moved to Lebanon for healthier grazing, the Yediot Aharonot reported Thursday.

According to the daily, the more than 3,000 rockets that have been fired by Hizbullah have set fire to 100 sq km of pasture where cows used to graze. The cows used a breach made in the border by Israeli units who have been battling the group since the start of a massive offensive in Lebanon on July 12. (AFP)

Beirut Attacked

2006-08-10T13:28:00.000+03:00

Two big booms were heard in Beirut recently. Phone lines were blocked.. tried to connect to the internet for news.. the net was jammed.. the jams were lasting longer than i thought.. started thinking they hit our communications. Media sources have conflicting reports about where the strikes happened..

El mouhim, Beirut was hit, let's see what the Hizb will do...

Galloway speaks

2006-08-07T16:41:00.000+03:00

This just came in

http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,31200-galloway_060806,00.html

What everyone must realise

2006-08-04T09:08:00.000+03:00

Hezbollah wants war. This is why it captured the two Israeli soldiers to begin with, and the IDF played streight into their hands by attacking Lebanon and it's civilians and making them IDF victims.

The Lebanese were having a national diolog (i think for the first time in Lebanon's history) and were on their way to disarming hezbollah and were going to effectively declare them as useless. Hezbollah needed this war you see, to survive.

The Lebanese have gone back now to backing "the resistance" as the IDF clearly failed to win any hearts and mind in Lebanon.

In the persuit of satisfying their own egos and scoring points at home, I'm afraid the IDF played a wrong move, which has lead us to the bullshit we find ourselves in that we can't seem to get ourselves out of.

There must be some way to get these two to stop fighting...

An enviromental word

2006-08-03T18:26:00.000+03:00

Well I know there are bigger problems right now, such as the supply shortage in Beirut and today's 7 rocket casualties in Akre and Ma'alot, but just to elaborate on the enviromental piece Bash posted last week about the enviromental disaster in Beirut - here's a little more about some other victims of this war:

Over 6,000 dunams of trees, woodland destroyed / Eli Ashkenazi, Ha'aretz

Some 6,000 dunams of natural woodland and planted forest, comprising about half a million trees have been burned since the beginning of the fighting in the north, according to the Jewish National Fund forestry experts. Among the trees burned are oaks, terebinths, pines, and cypresses. Another 25,000 dunams of grazing land have also been lost to the flames.
About five percent, or some 1,500 dunams of the Birya forest has burned, and about one-third of the forests of the Naphtali ridge above Kiryat Shmona, consisting of about 2,500 dunams. Another 1,000 dunams burned in the Beit Keshet forest in central Galilee, 800 dunams of the Shlomi forest in the northwestern Galilee, and about 700 dunams on Mount Meron.
The JNF estimates the cost of rehabilitating the forests at some NIS 3,000 per dunam during the first two years. "Even if we replanted all the ancient trees that were hit," the JNF's Omri Boneh said, "it will take 50 to 60 years to return the forests to their state before the fighting."

50 to 60 years.... almost the time it takes to build a country.

What every Lebanese household should have..

2006-08-02T15:37:00.000+03:00

I wonder if it also would be effective on a satellites. hmm..

Courtesy of Hovs

Let's declare victory and start talking

2006-08-02T14:00:00.000+03:00

It's only now starting to occur to me how fighting terrorism has become fighting against a people's right to be free.

Herebelow is a long post, but is definitely worth the read since it is, so far, the best analysis on the Lebanon war i've read so far.

PEACE

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/743764.html

By Ze'ev Sternhell

It's a widely accepted idea that an Israeli who returns home, even after a short period of time, feels as if he has come to another country. But the opposite is the case: He returns to the same situation, the same problems, the same thought patterns and mainly, the same solutions. Apparently, we did not learn a thing from the first Lebanon War or from the American defeat in Iraq. If the definition of Israel's strategic goal given by the head of Military Intelligence at the beginning of the week reflects the government's position, we are in big trouble.

If Israel really did embark on the war in order to force Lebanon to impose its authority on the south, which is in Hezbollah's hands - or in other words, to force the Lebanese government to begin a civil war in the service of Israel - that is a sign that it is dominated by thinking even more primitive than the thinking that led Ariel Sharon to Beirut about a quarter of a century ago.

But this time, we have exacerbated the problem: At the beginning of the third week of fighting, in spite of the determination and courage of the attacking soldiers, the war seems only to be beginning. That is why we should achieve a cease-fire before the campaign gets out of control, claims victims in vain and, in the long run, even turns into a strategic failure. In the more distant future, it will be necessary to carry out a fundamental structural reform of the government's work procedures and to examine its dependence on the Israel Defense Forces' General Staff. These are truths that are not pleasant to voice at this time, but that is the reality, and we are obliged to confront it.

And in fact, considering the means that the IDF is employing and the ratio of forces in the field, any outcome less than the elimination of Hezbollah as a fighting force will be considered an Israeli failure and a great achievement for the enemy. But since it is impossible to uproot Hezbollah from among the Shiites without destroying the population itself, wisdom requires us to refrain from positing goals that are unachievable.

The inability of a major power to put an end to a guerrilla war is not a new phenomenon: From Napoleon in Spain, through his successors in Algeria, to the Americans in Vietnam and now in Iraq, well-organized armies equipped with modern technology have always failed in attempts to defeat irregular forces. The latter know how to adapt themselves to their surroundings, they are an inseparable part of the population and they serve its material, religious and emotional needs.

When there is fighting, guerrilla organizations want the entire population to be harmed. When everyone is a victim, the hatred will be directed at the enemy more forcefully. That is why bombing residential neighborhoods, power plants, bridges and highways is an act of folly, which plays into Hezbollah's hands and serves its strategic goals: An attack on the overall fabric of life creates a common fate for the fighters and those standing on the sidelines. At the same time, the greater the population's suffering, the greater its alienation from the formal ruling institutions - the government, the parliament and the various security forces that are powerless to save them.

It is an illusion to hope that the 700,000 Lebanese refugees will direct their fury at their government, or that the population that still remains in place will evict the Hezbollah members from among it. As far as the population is concerned, responsibility for its catastrophe lies entirely with Israel, and failure to cooperate with whoever fights against Israel would be considered national treason. It was foolish to assume that the Lebanese political elite would dare to confront Hezbollah and use force against it. And anyway, who was even capable of using force? The Lebanese Army, whose bases were bombed as well?

That is why Israel's interest must be to isolate Hezbollah, to strike a hard blow at its bases and camps, but to avoid harming the infrastructure of life for the general population, even when its gives refuge to those bearing arms. This is not a matter of military ethics, but of a cold practical considerations.

The goal of the war is to restrain Hezbollah, because nobody is dreaming any longer of destroying it. As things look today, at best, Israel will make do with removing it from the border. There, behind the back of an international force, which in the Arab world will in any case be seen as protecting Israel, Hezbollah will be able to reorganize, train, equip itself with more modern weapons and prepare for the next round.

There is no military solution for this situation. IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz has already implied that the solution is political. The prime minister, who bears overall responsibility and will be required to give an accounting in the future, would do well not to lag behind the person who in any case will pass him the hot potato.

And a word about the price of American support. Sometimes it seems as if U.S. President George W. Bush wants Israel both to destroy Lebanon and to sustain painful losses. That way, Israel provides him with an excellent alibi for the war in Iraq: The fight against terror is global, the blood price is the same, the methods of operation and the means are identical, and the time needed for victory is long. The Israeli vassal is serving its master no less than the master is providing for its needs.

Beirut ER: Time's Running Out

2006-08-01T23:30:00.000+03:00

This article is an example of the pitiful conditions we have to live by in beirut thanks to the Israeli blockade. Indeed, the IDF is famous for its policies of collective punishment against Arabs. Cigerrettes are fast running out and we have to line up for hours for gas.. that is IF the gas station is open. I decided to get my bicycle repaired today, it's been years i haven't ridden on.. got to get to work somehow! I knew there was a reason why i chose to be a skater in my youth...

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/07/beirut_er_times.html

July 31, 2006 7:10 PM
Lara Setrakian Reports:

There is not much time left before the lights will go out at the American University of Beirut Medical Center. Oil tankers ready to deliver the much-needed fuel are standing by in nearby waters, but they are being kept out by Israel's blockade.

The hospital has only enough oil to fuel their generators for a maximum of 20 days, or as little as seven days if the state cuts off the little power it now provides, according to Dr. Nadim Cortas, Dean of the medical program.

Israel and others may fear the fuel those tankers carry would go to Hezbollah fighters, used for their trucks and artillery. But Cortas argues this point.

"We see no reason why there should be a blockade on fuel delivery. It could be conditional, only going to hospitals, and it can be monitored. It wouldn't go straight to [Hezbollah] warriors. The blockade…has no benefit to Israel except to inflict more suffering on the civilian population."

What he and other doctors are hoping is that Israel will let the oil through, with either the Lebanese government or third-party agencies, like the Red Cross, making sure it gets to the hospital.

American University Medical Center is Lebanon's biggest and most important hospital. But with the electric grid damaged and the current shortage of fuel, the lights could very well go out for the healthcare provider.

Without the Medical Center, more refugees would likely get their healthcare from Hezbollah's grassroots aid efforts. Hezbollah currently hands out food and care in many of the makeshift shelters around Beirut housing refugees from the south of Lebanon and southern suburbs of Beirut.

If power runs out, it's unclear what would happen to the dozens of refugees and war injured at the hospital, not to mention the routine patients waiting to give birth or receive organ transplants.

"[The Hospital] has received dozens of injured and will receive transfers of dozens more from the south," Dr. Cortas says. "And we've said yes to all of them. Payment is no issue."

Some more powerful footage

2006-08-01T21:36:00.000+03:00

Following Bash's powerful video, here is some more footage.

This was shot in the neighbourhood of Bat Galim in Haifa.

A powerful message for peace in the Middle East

2006-08-01T19:49:00.000+03:00

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14258.htm

Banerama

2006-08-01T15:25:00.000+03:00

A Beirut cityscape in the evening

Regards to my Israeli sidekick for providing this banner!

Staying On

2006-07-31T16:19:00.000+03:00

Staying On
Why I'm not evacuating Beirut.
By Faerlie Wilson

BEIRUT, Lebanon.
From my balcony this afternoon, I watched as French, British, and American evacuees boarded chartered cruise ships in Beirut's port about a half-mile west of my apartment.

And over the last few days, while bombs and artillery pummeled the southern part of the city, I made the decision not to leave Lebanon. Explosions rock my building even as I write this, but I'm staying put.

I'm not crazy, and I harbor no death wish. This is simply the rational decision of someone who has built a life in Lebanon, who believes in this place and its ability to bounce back. I choose to bet on Beirut.

After five visits to Lebanon over as many years, I moved to Beirut from California this February. I'm a 24-year-old American with friends but no family here. But Lebanese hospitality makes it easy to feel at home; it's a warm society that exudes and embodies a sense of interpersonal responsibility. Live here for two weeks and then go out of town, and you'll get a dozen offers to pick you up at the airport upon your return.

So although I'm not Lebanese by blood, I have become Beiruti. There are plenty of us who fit that description, foreigners who fell in love with the place and its people. One friend, an American college student interning for the summer with a member of the Lebanese parliament, called in tears en route to the northern border to tell me her parents had forced her to leave.

"I'm going to stay in Syria as long as I can," she vowed. "In case things settle down and I can come back."

Until the war broke out last week, this was to be Lebanon's golden summer; last year's tourist season having been dampened by the brutal car bomb that killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005.

This summer started off strong, with concerts by major Western artists that allowed the Lebanese to hope their country was returning to the prewar days when everyone who was anyone - icons like Ella Fitzgerald, Marlon Brando, and Brigitte Bardot - made regular stops in the country. Ricky Martin and 50 Cent performed in May and June, respectively, Sean Paul was on deck for July, and negotiations were under way to bring Snoop Dogg later in the summer. But the most anticipated concert was set for late July: the three-night return of legendary Lebanese diva Fairouz to the Baalbeck festival, where she first earned her fame in the 1950s and '60s.

The after-party for 50 Cent was typical over-the-top Beiruti, held at city's most decadent nightclub, Crystal. Lamborghinis and Ferraris crowded the parking lot; plasticated Lebanese girls in short skirts and spike heels danced on tables as waiters navigated the dance floor balancing trays laden with sparklers and magnums of champagne for high-rolling Saudi tourists, while Fiddy free-styled and openly smoked a joint.

Tourists from the Arab world, Europe, and North America flooded the streets of cities and villages throughout the country. Gulf Arabs in particular have been drawn to Lebanon, especially in a post-9/11 era when they felt unwelcome in the West (and often had trouble obtaining visas). Lebanon offered many of the same attractions as Europe, but in an Arab setting: temperate climate, good shopping, plenty of tourist activities, and most important, heady nightlife and a liberal social atmosphere.
Tourists partied till dawn, stormed the sales at Beirut's designer boutiques, and visited sites like Lebanon's ancient cedar groves and the Roman temples at Baalbeck.

Now those magnificent ruins are surrounded by newer ones: The city of Baalbeck, long a Shiite stronghold, has received a heavy share of the Israeli bombardment.

Falling bombs erase entire villages, fire and smoke cover the horizon, and visions of that promised summer have, in just over a week, evaporated. On the beaches of Damour and Jiyeh, the foreign visitors aren't European sun junkies but Israeli missiles. And the cruise ships docked in the port aren't bringing tourists to Lebanon, they're taking them away.

The contrast between Beirut today and Beirut two weeks ago is so stark, it would be unbearable if it weren't so surreal. This isn't my Beirut. This isn't anyone's Beirut. The frantic, vibrant city has shrunk into a sleepy town, with empty streets and only a handful of restaurants, bars, and shops open for business.

It's amazing how quickly you can get used to living under siege. We've taped our windows, stocked up on supplies, and settled into a perversion of normal life. Electric generators succeed where embattled power stations fail. I've learned what times the electricity, water, and Internet connection usually cut out, and I plan my days accordingly - an old Lebanese ritual from the days of the civil wars.

Candles we bought as decoration are scattered throughout the apartment, half-burned down from long nights without electricity. An Israeli propaganda flier dropped on a university soccer field sticks out of my roommate's copy of the now-obsolete July issue of Time Out Beirut, marking a page listing exhibitions at art galleries that have since boarded up their doors. The magazine only launched this spring, and it was easy to see it as yet another symbol that Beirut was finally being recognized as one of the world's great cities. Travel and Leisure magazine listed Beirut as the ninth-best city in the world for 2006. In this part of the world, fortunes shift very quickly.

Smaller explosions and the rushing of Israeli fighter jets overhead don't startle or frighten me anymore. We are exhausted and have to save our emotional energy for the moments where panic is needed. Still, when larger blasts rattle my windowpanes and make the apartment shudder, I rush to the balcony to figure out which part of my city is being hit. Sometimes, it's an easy game: Three days ago, my roommate and I watched as Israeli warships struck Beirut's port.

I know I'm reasonably safe in my corner of Beirut, and I have a place to go in the mountains if that ceases to be true. Unlike people in many other industries, I still have a job: The magazine where I work decided to publish an August issue - although it will lose money - as a sign of resistance and resilience.

There is painfully little we, the ordinary people of Lebanon, can do to help the situation. So, instead, we do what we can to help each other by donating food and supplies, opening our doors to friends and strangers, and trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy. We aren't giving up.

After the foreigners are gone, local wisdom predicts that the fighting will only get worse. At the very least, there will be less protective padding; a fear of foreign casualties that may have restrained Israel to some degree. Evacuating Beirut would feel a lot like abandoning it. I know that my staying won't keep the Israelis from intensifying their attacks, but at least I won't be complicit, seeing events unfold on a TV screen from the comfort of Cyprus.

So, I'll watch those ships pull away without regret. Lebanon has given me more than I ever could've asked: a home, a sense of belonging, an almost indecent number of happy memories. But aside from any debt to Lebanon, I won't leave because I know how miserable I would be watching the war ravage my country from the outside. As long as my feet are firmly planted on Lebanese soil, I somehow know the country will survive.

People ask me if I'm scared, and I am - but for Lebanon more than for myself. This place and its people deserve far better than what they're getting.

There's a sad, unstated "what will become of us?" question floating around the Lebanese who are left behind. I need to stay here, if only to learn the answer.

an israeli thought on Qana and its aftermath

2006-07-31T03:00:00.000+03:00

When I heard the news of Qana today, my immediate reaction was to close my eyes and mutter: Shit.

I wont elaborate now exactly what it all made me think of Olmert and co., but I will say this: the biggest thing I fear of losing because of today, is the small progress that's being made by the people in the field. The small achievments, which are actually very big, like this blog and it's brother Joint Voices, the friendship that is the background for it, the other friendships and dialogs that are being forged every day throughout the web.

The comments I have seen today on various blogs are the worst I've ever seen. They frighten me. And their amount scares me most. In one day, it seems, all the understanding that's been achieved has been undermined by all the hate that's burst out.

Today was a horrible day. I don't know what will follow it. But I know that we mustn't falter and let ourselves be blinded by acts of stupidity, we mustn't let the anger get the better of us.

We gotta be strong. Intelligent, sensitive dialog is the only way.

Peace, mates.

A Light in the Darkness

2006-07-29T03:49:00.000+03:00

As darkness unfolds on the people of the Middle East in the form of attacks and counterattacks by Hezbollah and the IDF, a glimmer of hope like a light switched on will stay lit as those here who are peacefull will, and must, make a difference instead.

Let this blog be a connection between likeminded Arabs and Israelis to finally put their differences aside and let it prove that we can live together in peace, and indeed even be warm friends one day.

For the sake of our children and our common destiny, let us not allow those who derive their very identities by their hatred of one another to dictate our lives anymore.

Word from GreenLine Environmental

2006-07-28T19:38:00.000+03:00

War in Lebanon Brings About the Biggest Environmental Catastrophe in the History of the Country 15,000 ton Oil Spill from Jiyyeh Power Plant Hits Most of the Lebanese Coast

Beirut, July 27, 2006 - The escalating Israeli attack on Lebanon did not only kill its civilians and destroy its infrastructure, but it is also annihilating its environment. Last week a 15,000 ton oil spill resulted from the Israeli air raid on the Jiyyeh power plant South of Lebanon. The power plant has 6 fuel tanks. Four of them have burned completely, while the fifth one, which is also the main cause of the spill, is still burning. The Lebanese ministry of environment is worried that the sixth tank, which is underground, is going to explode.

The oil slick appeared for the first time last week on the once beautiful beach of Ramlet El-Beida in Beirut, which used to be the only public beach in the Lebanese capital. Upon this finding, several environmental activists alerted the media on the spill, which in turn has mobilized the municipality of Beirut and the Ministry of Environment. After a few days of investigation it became obvious that more than 100km of the Lebanese coast, from Jiyyeh in the South to Chekka in the North has been hit by this oil spill.

This is definitely one of the worst environmental crisis in Lebanese history, declared a group of local environmental NGOs working on this issue (1). Just for the sake of comparison, in 2003 a 50 ton oil spill in the North was a huge blow to the Lebanese coastal environment. The current spill is 300 times bigger, and there is a big possibility that more oil will go into the sea.

These NGOs added that the Mediterranean marine environment will suffer tremendously for several years from this spill. The Lebanese coast is a very important site for fish spawning and sea turtle nesting, including the green turtle, which is an endangered species in the Mediterranean.

During the month of July, turtle eggs start to hatch and all baby turtles will need to reach deep waters as fast as possible. With the oil slick in their way baby turtles will have no chance of making it. Also, Blue Fin Tuna, which is a very important commercial species in the Mediterranean and which has been under severe stress from over-fishing, are present in the Eastern Mediterranean coastal water in this period of the year. The oil spill, of which part of it has settled on the sea floor, will threaten the blue fin tuna and other fish species spawning areas.

Another important impact of the spill is the effect on tourism in the future. The Lebanese coast is an important tourist destination, and after the war ends, Lebanon will need every source of income to rebuild its infrastructure. Now the beautiful Lebanese white beaches are covered with a black layer and the smell of fuel can be smelled a good distance in land, rendering them toxic and useless.

This oil spill is bigger than what the local authority can handle and urgent help is needed from outside, declared the NGOs. The Ministry of Environment has organized a team to follow on this issue, and have requested help from the United Nations Environmental Program and the Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Response Center for the Mediterranean (REMPEC). The Ministry of Environment in Kuwait has also promised to send equipment and expertise to help in the clean up. “We are in constant communication with the Ministry of Environment, and as Lebanese NGOs we are ready to help in the clean up when the necessary equipment arrive.

Nevertheless, the constant Israeli air raids will make the operation very difficult, and an immediate cease fire is needed if we want to save Lebanon and its environment (2),” concluded the NGOs.

Notes to editor:

(1) The Lebanese environmental NGOs include: Bahr Lubnan Association,

Union of Professional Divers, and Green Line Association; which are prominent local Non-Governmental Organizations known for their work in protecting the Mediterranean Sea in Lebanon.

(2) Other Environmental impacts of this war include air pollution and chemical spills due to the targeting of industrial factories, fuel bunkers, and other flammable structures; the use of depleted uranium in Israeli bombs, and the huge waste and sanitary crisis resulting from the 750,000 refugees in Lebanon, which can lead to water pollution and the spread of diseases.

The Way I See it

2006-07-27T11:13:00.001+03:00

Concerning the Hizbullah - IDF attacks, the way i see it, the only way forward is through nogotiation, whether direct or indirect. But what is certain is that this macho, tough-guy, "nobody can touch me" attitude by those two has to go. Yet, can their egos handle the swallowing of their pride? This is the one of the main aspects in this conflict.. ego.

So how to satisfy the two parties' egos? Hopefully by a win-win situation, that their egos hopefully won't blind them into not seeing.

The way I see it, the conflict has created an opportunity. An opportunity to settle our differences once and for all, at least between Lebanon and Israel, and this can be done by:

- Returning the disputed Chebaa Farms back to Lebanon

- Exchanging Lebanese and Israeli prisoners

The equation is beautiful in it's simplicity and effectiveness. It does away with Lebanese needing to carry armed struggle against Israel, and hence guarentees calm along the border. Permanently. This is what citizens on both sides of the border want.

We can even go a step further and craft similar treaties between other countries, but that would be a topic for a different post...

The Birth of a Problem

2006-07-26T18:47:00.000+03:00

(Picture depicts the attack that the Irgun 'terrorist' group undertook in 1946 against British assets in Jerusalem)

This is an excellent article written by Correlli Barnett, a military historian at Churchill College. This man witnessed what he calls the first terrorism in the Middle East.

ISRAEL WAS FORGED THROUGH ASSASSINATION AND KIDNAPPINGS
DAILY MAIL (London)
July 21, 2006
By Correlli Barnett

Several of my good friends are American, but this does not inhibit me from criticising George W. Bush's catastrophically misguided invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Similarly, I have good friends who are Jewish, but this will not inhibit me from criticising the current 'total war' being waged on Lebanon by the Israeli state. The fact that some of my Jewish friends will read this article only makes me the more sad that I have to say, as a military historian, that this war is grotesquely out of proportion to the level of casualties and damage previously inflicted on Israel by Hezbollah. It is likewise grotesquely out of proportion to the taking hostage of two Israeli soldiers -- as are the ferocious Israeli attacks inside the Gaza strip in response to the taking hostage of just one soldier.

Certainly, Israel has the right to defend herself today as she has done successfully in the past. But surely her response to Hamas and Hezbollah should have been limited and precisely targeted rather than a version of the 'shock and awe' bombing which opened the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Israeli government should have learned that 'shock and awe' may only be a prelude to a protracted guerilla war. During the long and bitter struggle against the IRA in Northern Ireland, it never occurred to any British government that the IRA bases and arms dumps within the Irish Republic should be bombed by the Royal Air Force, let alone that whole districts of Irish cities like Drogheda known to harbour IRA terrorists should be destroyed. Equally, it has never occurred to a Spanish government that it would be right and proper to respond to the lethal, indiscriminate attacks by ETA (the Basque terrorist organisation) by savagely bombing and rocketing San Sebastian and other Basque cities.

Why should Israel regard herself as a p r i v i l e g e d exception? Why should 'the West' in general -- and Bush and Blair in particular -- also regard her as a privileged exception, rightfully entitled to conduct a savage total war in response to Hezbollah attacks no worse than those of the IRA and ETA? These questions are the more pertinent because Israel herself was born out of a terrorist struggle in 1945-48 against Britain, which then ruled Palestine under a United Nations mandate.

The so-called Stern Gang (after its founder, Abraham Stern) specialised in assassination, its most famous victim being Lord Moyne, the Colonial Secretary, shot in Cairo in 1944. But by far the most dangerous Jewish terrorist group was the Irgun Zvei Leumi (National Military Organisation) led by Menachem Begin, who after the creation of the state of Israel founded the Likud political party, and even finished up as prime minister. The group's propaganda stated its political aims with brutal clarity. First, what it called 'the Nazo-British occupation forces' must be driven out of Palestine. Then a Jewish state would be established embracing the whole of Palestine and Transjordan (as Jordan was then known). Too bad about the native population of Arabs, of course.

The group's logo, displayed on the fly-posters which I myself saw as a soldier in Palestine in 1946-47, showed a crude map of Palestine and Transjordan with an arm holding a rifle splayed across it. The Irgun's successful attacks included the demolition in 1946 of the wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem housing the secretariat of the British mandatory government and also the HQ of British troops in Palestine -- at a cost of 91 lives, Jewish, Arab and British, most of them civilians (for more info on this attack, click here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing) . Another 'success' was the blowing-up of the Officers' Club in Jerusalem in March 1947. I saw the corpses lying on slabs in the morgue, spittle still bubbling out of their mouths. In combat with a terrorist group perhaps some 3,000 strong, a maximum of 100,000 British troops was deployed in a country about the size of Wales. There was a lesson here for George W. Bush and Tony Blair before their invasion of Iraq -- but of course a lesson unheeded by men with no interest in history.

In July 1947, the Irgun Zvei Leumi kidnapped two British Intelligence Corps sergeants as hostages to trade against the lives of three Irgun terrorists under sentence of death for an attack on Acre jail. Here is an exact parallel to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. But unlike the savage reaction of Ehud Olmert's government today, the British government in 1947 did not seek to apply pressure to the kidnappers by ordering the RAF to destroy large parts of Tel Aviv, and the Royal Artillery to bombard selected Jewish settlements suspected of being bases for the Irgun. In the event, the three Jewish terrorists were hanged -- and the Irgun in turn strung up the two British sergeants from a tree in an orange grove and booby-trapped their bodies.

Yet even then it did not occur to the British authorities to impose the kind of savage collective punishment that Olmert's government is now visiting on the Arabs of Gaza and southern Lebanon. A notice posted by the Irgun proclaimed that the two sergeants had been hanged because they were 'members of the British criminal-terrorist organisation known as the British Army of Occupation in Palestine', responsible for the murder of men, women, children and prisoners of war. The so- called 'murdered prisoners of war' were in fact terrorists hanged after due trial.This Irgun proclamation signed off with the warning: 'We shall revenge the blood of the prisoners of war who have been murdered, by actions of war against the enemy, by blows which we shall inflict on his head.' So blood- thirstily selfrighteous is the language of this long proclamation that it could just as easily have been written today by Hezbollah or Hamas or Al-Qaeda. The sacred cause may be different, but the language and the type of mind behind it remain the same.In the event, Jewish terrorism against the British finally succeeded. All attempts to negotiate a future for Palestine which balanced Jewish interests against those of the majority Arab population came to nothing. A project for a single state with Jewish and Arab cantons was rejected by the Arabs. An Arab proposal for a single state based on the existing Arab majority and a limit on future Jewish immigration was rejected by Jewish leaders. A two- state solution, proposed by a UN commission and favoured by Washington, was in turn rejected by the Labour Government, who rightly feared that it would be British troops who would have to impose the settlement on one side or the other -- or perhaps on both.

This, the chiefs of staff warned, would require two extra divisions on top of the two already in Palestine. With the Irgun campaign of bombing still going on, and the tally of British casualties mounting, Clement Attlee's Cabinet had quite simply had enough. They refused to impose the UN plan, and instead opted for unconditional withdrawal, even at the cost of (in the words of Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary) 'a period of bloodshed and chaos'. Another lesson here for Tony Blair in regard to Iraq? So Britain handed the mandate back to the UN and announced that British rule in Palestine would end in spring 1948. As it duly did. In the last months of the mandate, the security situation dissolved into three-cornered violence -- Jew versus British and Arab; Arab versus Jew and British; British versus both.

By the time the last British force had left, this violence had degenerated into anarchic civil war between Jew and Arab. It was just the prelude to the full-scale war between the new state of Israel and neighbouring Arab regimes wanting to extinguish it. The war ended in the successful conquest by Israel of the larger part of Palestine, and a tidal wave of Arab refugees into Lebanon and Jordan. Here is the origin of today's bitter Arab resentment of Israeli hegemony -- a resentment which powers Hamas and Hezbollah as they follow the path of terrorism first mapped out by the Stern Gang and the Irgun Zvei Leumi in the 1940s.

CORRELLI BARNETT is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.