January 2009

Israeli Defense Force

And before I get a lot of grief on this from the pro-Israelis out there, there is an incredible amount of propaganda used to lie about what the IDF does and has done. It is an arm of the Israeli state that has been used in human rights violations, including ethnic deportations and massacres. Yes, there is a terrorist campaign against the Israeli state. No, it does not justify a state-sponsored terror campaign that kills three times as many Arab civilians as the Israelis lose to the PLO/Hamas/Hizbollah and other Palestinian Arab organizations. There are people who believe in Israel like it was God. It is not God. It is not an entity one follows blindly. It is not led by God. It is a secular state that abuses the power granted it by the United States to oppress millions of people it has rendered stateless, creating ghettos of Arabs on marginal lands.

People sometimes ask what would have happened if the Jews were able to organize an effective resistance under Hitler: what would it have been like? It would have been like the Palestinian resistance against Israel's robbery of their lands and property. No, Israel does not resort to death camps, thank goodness. On the other hand, it is resorting to the Stalinist solution: slow, determined grinding away to eliminate resistance in the long run. Stalin hoped to collect all the Jews in Russia to the Soviet Far East in a "homeland" of sorts, then liquidate the settlements there by severing rail links and letting Siberian winters do their thing. The way Israel seals off Gaza, starving it a little at a time, is more analagous to Stalin's methods than Hitler's, and I find Stalin to be much more the worse of the two tyrants. He just happened to have a better PR machine, that's all.

And Israel has a PR machine almost without parallel. The only thing that comes close to it in terms of viciousness and rabidity is the Turkish denial of the Armenian Holocaust. It would be nice if the USA quit shipping weapons to both those states, but that's not likely at all, especially under a president whose Chief of Staff is a golden boy in the American-Israeli PAC, or AIPAC. For those who are new to Washington lobbying groups, AIPAC is the one that makes sure the USA keeps sending arms and cash to Israel so it can continue to fire rockets into inhabited apartment blocks.

The death toll in Gaza so far in "Operation Cast Lead" is over 1000 civilians. All the US does is watch.

"Never again," my eye. More like "Never again to us, even if we have to make it happen again to others, in some form or fashion." And if you want one of the earliest comparisons of Israeli ethnic cleansing to the Nazis, look no further that the words of Golda Meir in 1948:

It is dreadful thing to see the dead city. I found next to the port [Palestinian Arab] children, women, the old, waiting for a way to leave. I entered the houses, there were houses where coffee and pitot were left on the table, I could not avoid [thinking] that this, indeed, had been the picture in many Jewish towns...

Gaza... Why?

Because, of course.

Hamas chucked missiles at Israel to provoke precisely the sort of ground attack that is happening now. In a few days, Hamas will launch more missiles to let Israel know it did not get all the missiles. Israel will remain in Gaza and its operation there will seem ineffective. If you've been following the Middle East, this should sound familiar, as it's exactly the sort of thing Hezbollah did to Israel in Lebanon. Israel left Lebanon without having defeated Hezbollah.

Hamas has had close ties with Hezbollah, so it's no surprise that they're carrying out a Hezbollah-style operation. For all the US-made rockets that the Israeli Defense Forces will fire into Gazan apartments, Hamas will survive and inflict unacceptable losses on Israel. Israel knows that if it withdraws, it looks weak. Hamas knows that, as well, and knows that Israel must eventually withdraw from Gaza. It cannot remain there indefinitely.

Israel missed its chance to have peace back in 1991. Now it's dealing with a Hamas that knows it can win a war of attrition, instead of the tired old Fatah of Yassir Arafat. Both sides are as bloody-minded as World War One generals, and will not step away from the violence, for fear of looking weak. In the long run, the Palestinians will win through weight of numbers, but only at a terrible civilian cost. The Israelis will lose in the long run, but also only at a terrible civilian cost.

Both sides' political leaders use the violence to perpetrate their power base. Both sides point to their own civilian casualties, rightly, as horrifying outrages. But they then point to the other side's civilian casualties, wrongly, as justifiable consequences for their struggle against evil.

Obama is very tight with the AIPAC. He'll send gobs of cash and material to Israel, but not soldiers. Hamas knows that if they can kill enough Israelis, all the cash and gadgetry in the USA won't save Israel. They're ready to fight this out for another 140 years.

After all, the last time Crusaders set up a state in Palestine, it took the Arabs 200 years to wipe it out - at terrible civilian cost to both sides. So it goes in the Middle East when the major powers pick sides instead of true peace.