Impressions from Syria

There is a fascinating article in Ha'aretz by Danny Rubinstein, based primarily on reports from Martin Schellenberg, a young German historian who visited Syria during the war. Our own man in Damascus, whom I ran into today here in Berkeley, is back safe and sound and we are waiting to hear whether his impressions match these (among others):

In the days that followed, [Schellenberg] also did not see anyone paying any special attention to the war. While he did see new Hezbollah flags and numerous pictures of Nasrallah, he did not encounter organized or popular rallies in support of the movement, or any signs that the Syrian people were preparing for war. In one or two places he saw signs reading, "We identify with our people holding fast in Lebanon," and two or three times, following dramatic events such as the first missile strikes in Haifa, he saw young people driving, honking their horns and leaning halfway out the car windows, waving Hezbollah flags.

Nasrallah's Mea Culpa

"Sorry guys, I screwed up."

As you have probably all heard by now, Nasrallah recently apologized for being an idiot and having his organization kidnap two IDF reservists in a cross-border raid. This is Nasrallah sounding contrite instead of smug and self-righteous:

I want to be clear in my response, and I hope that people are listening to me now. We did not think even one per cent that the capture of the two Israelis would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude, and if someone asked me why we didn't consider this one per cent, I would say that since 1982 and our relationships with the Israelis and the experience of our resistance with Israel, the operation wouldn't lead to such a result (ABC).

Who knows what kind of game the Hizbullah head is playing here. It looks like he has realized that it is important to at least pay lip service to the idea that he has some kind of responsibility for all of Lebanon's citizens. Furthermore, he seems to be acknowledging some culpability in what transpired. Of course, he pleads ignorance, but like it or not, Nasrallah has admitted that if it hadn't been for Hizbullah's wonderful kidnapping mission, all those Lebanese houses would still be standing today.

Given this admission by Nasrallah, it seems that a "disproportionate" response really was needed to deter Hizbullah.

Dumb UNIFIL, Clever Gorillas

Peekabooooo...

There was an interesting report on Israel's Channel 2 Television News last night. In the report, an embedded Israeli journalist accompanied an IDF reconnaissance unit across the border into Lebanon. The troops did not encounter any resistance or Hizbullah fighters. Their mission was to destroy an elaborate Hizbullah tunnel that had been located earlier. Before mining the tunnel and blowing it up, the troops gave the reporter a tour. The footage I saw showed a very sophisticated tunnel with a ventilation system, concrete-lined walls, provisions, explosives and ammunition. The commander of the unit remarked, with more than a hint of sarcasm, that is was "amazing what can be achieved in six years" (the time that has passed since the Israeli withdrawal). The reporter followed the soldiers, who were under pressure to finish their mission soon because of the fear of mines or an attack by Hizbullah, through the tunnel and to another exit. As they emerged from the other exit, the cameraman panned the surrounding area. Looming no more than 100 metres behind the tunnel exit was a tall, white UNIFIL observation post.

Can one blame Israelis for being suspicious of UNIFIL and for not trusting the European troops that are now being deployed in Lebanon? This was the same force that stood idly by and looked on as Hizbullah prepared to kidnap IDF soldiers in 2000 and then ambushed them. As of now, there is no reason to believe that the Franco-Italian led force will be any more effective. They don't even have clearly defined goals and it is clear that the French and Italian leaders lack the political will to involve their forces in more dangerous missions that might bring them into confrontation with Hizbullah.

Lebanese Gorillas Found Underground

"Hizbullah Gorilla" or Innocent Civilian?

The English-language edition of Ha'aretz reports that the IDF has uncovered a network of tunnels and arms depots used by Hizbullah in southern Lebanon. According to Ha'aretz, military intelligence revealed that

The tunnels had housed Hezbollah Gorillas [sic] and had been used to launch attacks against IDF forces.

What Israel Doesn't Need

Aron U. Raskas, claiming to speak for American Jewry, has prepared a disastrous recipe for Israel. It all sounds rather innocuous:

The Israeli people must establish leadership with the fortitude and will to stand up for their principles and to lead those who look to them for guidance. They must preserve Israel's strengths and unabashedly pursue its historic rights.

But the "principles" that Raskas wants Israel to defend include retaining control over the West Bank...forever! Not a word about what this actually entails for most of the people living there. But I guess those of us who advocate a withdrawal from the West Bank, similar to the one carried out from Gaza, do not really count. At least Raskas claims that

Since June 1967, there has been rigorous debate about the wisdom of retaining the territories that came into Israel's hands in the Six-Day War. Yet, almost no individual with a whit of appreciation for Jewish history would deny the essential right of the Jewish people to return and repopulate these territories that already millennia ago served as the cradle of the Jewish people.

To argue that his lunatic vision represents the aspirations of American Jews is an unbelievable lie. It is also incredibly out of touch with the reality on the ground in Israel and the West Bank.

Contra Appeasement

Barry Rubin has an interesting piece on "the new era" in the Middle East, which he sees, perhaps in line with Marx's famous dictum, as Nasserism in a new guise. The popular support generated throughout the Arab world by such figures as Osama bin Laden and now Hassan Nasrallah certainly invites such a comparison. Rubin's main claim is that

After the war in Lebanon, the Middle East entered a new era, which was already on the way for a half-dozen years and in which radical Islamism sets the ideological and political agenda. It marks the end of hope for peace or democracy.

This trend, Rubin argues, goes back to the Palestinian leadership's rejection of the Barak offer (whether you think it was generous or not). A consensus has emerged that Israel and the West are weak, and that now a

violent struggle in pursuit of total victory rather than pragmatism, democracy, compromise, and economic construction

can cure all the problems afflicting the Arabs and the Muslim world more generally.

For Rubin, appeasing this new "resistance axis," is the biggest mistake that that West could make (and is making):

If only Iran, Syria, or Hizballah is offered concessions, [those who favor appeasement] argue, the threat will go away. This view actually feeds the problem. The radicals have far-reaching goals (including genocide in Israel) and powerful ideologies that make them not so eager to make any deal.

It is often argued that Israeli actions weaken moderate forces. Thus, the bombing of Beirut rallied the entire Lebanese population to fight Israel and to support Hizbullah. Likewise, many argue that Israel's actions in the territories incite Arabs in Egypt and Jordan against the West and democracy. But few of these critics consider the effects of appeasement on local pro-democracy forces who see the incitement against Israel for what it is. Appeasement bolsters the most intransigent and fundamentalis forces, because

they [the extremists] think they are winning. Western efforts to achieve understandings are consistently viewed as weakness inviting escalation. This is clear in any reading of the radical leaders' speeches. Why should Arab governments, reformers, or Lebanese factions oppose the extremists if they believe--correctly in general--that the West will not help them?

Apologies for not writing earlier. Temporary time pressures conspired against us, and someone on Kishkushim got married this week (it wasn't me).

al-Manar vs. Israel's Channel 2

One of the more popular characters on Israel's satirical show "Eretz Nehederet"
I spent part of last week in the Arab village of Kofer Musmus, located near Umm al-Fahm, the second largest Arab town in Israel. During my stay there, I had the chance to get a good look at the Hizbullah TV news station, al-Manar, courtesty of my host's satellite dish. The broadcasts were quite professional, something that has already been noted by a number of Israeli and other commentators. Some of the station’s broadcasts certainly have the veneer of credible journalism. There is plenty of commentary and analysis, uninterrupted by commercials or the visual diversions that we’ve come to associate with television. I don’t know if what I saw was representative of their regular programming, but al-Manar’s editors don’t seem overly concerned about scaring off viewers with short attention spans. I was also impressed by their translations of broadcasts from Israeli television which always include Arabic subtitles. However, one only needs to watch the station’s broadcasts for several hours to realize that it’s an incredibly crude propaganda outlet hiding behind the veneer of a respectable news station. In one “news” clip of Olmert addressing the Israeli public, the Prime Minister suddenly morphed into Hitler, complete with a swastika armband and a moustache. This was not some satirical show but a serious news show with some creative AV editors. Instead of commercials, al-Manar runs stirring clips of Hizbullah fighters chanting war songs and engaged in combat with corny battle music playing in the background and captions celebrating the “victory” over Israel. Watching al-Manar pretty much affirmed to me what I’ve been telling critics of the war all along. People in the Arab world are attracted to Hizbullah, because they view it as a winner and because they are attracted by its displays of “heroism”. I think it’s quite similar to the support that Gamal ‘abd al-Nasir attracted in his days.

Visiting Carmia in Haifa, I got the chance to watch Israeli television over the weekend. I don’t have a TV at home for various reasons, so I used this chance to get my dose of news. Anyone who accuses Israeli television of being a propaganda outlet (and there were many who did so during the war) doesn’t know what they are talking about. One trend that I saw on all the major channels (Channel 1, Channel 2 and Channel 10) was the use of live footage shot by soldiers on reserve duty. A lot of this footage was quite genuine – there was one short “film” shot by a reservist about his experience in the war: boredom, contradictory orders, and a lot of wisecracks. Another news segment focussed on the home front and about different people who went out to feed or retrieve abandoned pets or who baked pizzas for returning soldiers. Meanwhile, just as they did at the beginning of the war, different Israeli satirical programs were busy lampooning Israel’s leaders. In one show, two child-like grown-up’s held up stickers (one in blue, one in yellow) declaring “We won” and “No, we did”. I did not get to see Eretz Nehederet, Israel’s leading Friday-night satirical show, but I recall that they had a field day lampooning everyone, from over-patriotic reporters and Israelis trying to get on TV by posing as bombing victims to Nasrallah, the IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz and IDF spokesperson Miri Regev. In one awesome segment, the stand-in character “Margol”, who is played by a male actor, but who represents the well-known Israeli (Yemenite) singer Margalit Tzan‘ani, is presented as the IDF’s new secret weapon for winning the war against Hizbullah.

Repairing the Damage

There haven't been any more sirens or missiles since Monday morning.

The focus in the north is now on repairing the damage. One of the apartments we looked at today on our apartment hunt was located within a block between two buildings (one of which can be seen below) that had been hit by a missile.

The force of the missiles, which fell both north and south of the apartment, had broken all of its windows. But the landlord was already busy making repairs (he will receive compensation for the damage and must submit receipts). We're not taking the apartment.

But the damage obviously isn't limited to private property. The post office below also suffered a direct hit. The yellow signs warn, roughly, "Danger - Collapse - Entry Prohibited," and a makeshift fence has been erected to make sure the instructions are followed.

The same can be seen at this site, a building that used to house an Arabic-language newspaper. Three people were killed in that day's attack.

Thank G-d that the nearest missile to my apartment landed a good 200 metres away and not any closer.

Anti-Israel Sentiment in Turkey

This photograph taken by an Israeli visitor in Alanya, Turkey has been circulating in Europe, the US, and Israel. Anti-American and anti-Israel sentiment has been building up in Turkey especially in the past decade. Although the country is now regarded as one of Israel's staunchest allies, and ties continue to exist in the military sector, it seems to me that many American and Jewish observers are in profound denial. Antisemitism and fierce criticism of Israel have been gaining ground among ordinary Turks. Even if Turkey is not going fundamentalist, many Turks are increasingly emphasizing the Muslim component of their identity. Although they might oppose the veil, they see themselves as part of the Muslim world. The Iraq war was one of the earlier warning signs of this. Turkey was the site of huge protests against the American invasion, and the government too refused to allow the US to mount part of the invasion from the country. What happens in Turkey might also determine what transpires in a country that many are pitching as a strategic ally (for Israel and the US) in the Caucasus - Azerbaijan, which has been supported by Turkey, especially in the former's conflict with Armenia. Azerbaijan is currently run by a corrupt despot who has cultivated ties with Israel, and the US, while carefully hedging his bets and keeping the other options open (including Iran). He, too, of course, is not immune to public opinion. So far, he has resorted mostly to inflammatory rhetoric about the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute combined with widespread anti-Armenian myths and stereotypes to appeal to popular sentiment. But it's a small step from Armenians to Jews. See coverage of anti-Israel protests in Azerbaijan.

Thanks to Carmia for passing on the photograph.

Joe the Jew

Joe is not playing. While the victorious Ned Lamont skirted off to Maine on the heels of his upset of incumbent Joe Lieberman in Connecticut's Democratic Senate primary, Lieberman has shown the nation -- and prominent Democrats who've turned their back on him -- that he's not going away. First we heard Lieberman's bold claim in the days following his defeat: the implementation of his opponent's position on Iraq would "be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England...It will strengthen them, and they will strike again."

Now comes yet more proof that the man who was seen cheek-to-cheek with the President after the last State of the Union is just as hardnosed as his hawkish friendships with men like Donald Rumsfeld would suggest. Here's the new Jewish angle to Joe's take-no-prisoners approach to holding his seat. Talkingpointsmemo posted this ad from the Republican Jewish Coalition, which has appeared in Jewish weeklies from St. Louis and D.C.:

It sounds as if Ned Lamont has actually been saying the "right" things about Israel, so you might wonder how much traction the Lieberman campaign can get from this. But since polls consistently show that Republicans are more staunchly supportive of Israel than Democrats, Lieberman and his supporters, who only need to pick off a certain portion of the Republican electorate for the "Independent Democrat" to win, are perhaps not unwisely pandering.

John featured on BBC Arabic Radio

You can download a short clip of John being interviewed on BBC Arabic (in Arabic) here. For some reason, the streaming audio plays really fast, but it's fine if you download it. The segment on Lebanese and Israeli blogs, which was aired on August 13 after an interview with MK Azmi Bishara, even features short bits of Israeli music - listen at 1'06". John can be heard between 2'21" and 2'44". Enjoy.

Writing About the War

A soldier gives an abandoned dog water from his
bottle (one of several amazing photographs taken by Lisa)

Lisa Goldman of On the Face has put up the best-written piece about the war ("Welcome to the shooting gallery") that I have seen until now. It is an account of her stay in the North over the last week before the cease fire and includes a number of stunning photographs.

Israel Should Be Wiped Off My Blog

He didn't lunch with Rep. Pete Stark at Thai Satay in San Leandro, CA, this weekend, but Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has launched his own blog, and it's translated into English, French, and Arabic. Make sure you click on the appropriate language icon in the top right corner of the page. However, at the time of this post, the French version wasn't up. For those of you who know Jennie, she'll be bidding for the contract.

I promise a more thorough review of Ahmadinejad's site, but for now, suffice it to say that this blog ain't bad. The top man in Iran has an RSS feed and a poll ("Do you think that the US and Israeli intention and goal by attacking Lebanon is pulling the trigger for another word war [sic]?").

Ahmadinejad invites his readers to post comments -- and this, from a country that is known to take the gloves off when it deals with bloggers. Though I've boldly and uniquely set forth my birth name on Kishkushim, I'm giving some serious thought as to what my nickname is going to be on homeboy's site.

Seymour Hersh Strikes Again

Seymour Hersh, Probably Chatting with Unnamed Sources

In his latest piece in the New Yorker, "Watching Lebanon: Washington’s interests in Israel’s war," Seymour Hersh does his best to lull us into believing that he is merely a responsible investigative journalist. The article includes plenty of quotations from White House and Israeli sources, but the author’s thesis is clear: the US and Israel colluded to attack Hizbullah/Lebanon in order to conduct a test run of an upcoming strike against Iran.

Hersh’s thesis is buried in paragraph five behind an opaque screen of pseudo-authority:

According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah—and shared it with Bush Administration officials—well before the July 12th kidnappings. “It’s not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into,” he said, “but there was a strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it.”

An unnamed “Middle East expert”? Who might this mysterious person be besides another incarnation of Hersh himself? And what does it mean to have knowledge of current American and Israeli “thinking”? Is that kind of like a sixth sense that gives you the ability to intuit people's real motives? It all sounds more like something one would read on DebkaFile (no offense intended to them) than in the New Yorker.

Although the expert’s judgment is preceded by a number of opinions disputing his claims of a premeditated attack hatched out by Big and Little Satan, it is clear that Hersh is betting on this horse. Thankfully, he does not go so far as to endorse the claims by various other conspiracy theorists that Israel started the war to annex Lebanese territory.

A bit later in Hersh’s article we read the following paragraphs in quick succession:

Uzi Arad, who served for more than two decades in the Mossad, told me that to the best of his knowledge the contacts between the Israeli and U.S. governments were routine, and that, "in all my meetings and conversations with government officials, never once did I hear anyone refer to prior coördination with the United States." He was troubled by one issue - the speed with which the Olmert government went to war. "For the life of me, I've never seen a decision to go to war taken so speedily," he said. "We usually go through long analyses."

Arad, like all of the Israeli intelligence and military sources whom Hersh cites by name, give the lie to his claims. But Hersh presents his sources either as unwitting fools or clever co-conspirators. Here, the author picks out a critique of the political leadership by Arad, that the decision to go to war was made too quickly, in order to insinuate something far more sinister than a mere reading of the facts would suggest. The great speed with which Israel launched its retaliatory operation, Hersh implies, can be explained by its previously orchestrated plot to attack Hizbullah and Lebanon.

In the next paragraph, Hersh reinforces his dubious claims that America and Israel designed the war a long time ago as an experiment that would model an attack on Iran:

The key military planner was Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, the I.D.F. chief of staff, who, during a career in the Israeli Air Force, worked on contingency planning for an air war with Iran. Olmert, a former mayor of Jerusalem, and Peretz, a former labor leader, could not match his experience and expertise.

He is, of course, really pushing it. According to Hersh, Halutz, the Iran specialist, ran the war, turning the civilians Olmert and Peretz into his tools. Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. Yes, there were plans to attack – the types of plans that all militaries prepare, especially ones faced with Hizbullah on the other side of their fence. But this was not a war run by the military! Olmert and Peretz went to war so quickly not because of an existing “plot” but 1) precisely because they are the quintessential civilians who had both been criticized for their weakness in military matters, and 2) because Israel is a democracy and most of the country’s citizens strongly supported some decisive action against Hizbullah, given that the latter’s attack had come after a withdrawal, the Shalit kidnapping, and a number of other smaller cross-border raids.

Of course, the Iranians never appear in Hersh’s story except as people reacting to nefarious American plans; same goes for Hizbullah vis-à-vis Israel. Nothing about theology and very little about politics.

BBC News rushed to turn Hersh’s story into an article in its own right. The piece ran under the title “US 'knew of Israel bombing plan,'” and its first paragraph reads

Israel and the United States were in close contact about Israel's war on Hezbollah long before it began, a US investigative journalist has claimed.

Are they blogging or reporting?

Props to Big Pharaoh who, as usual, hits the right tone with his spoof of Hersh.