MAX BLUMENTHAL

The First Refuseniks
Opposition to war is building within Israeli society in the wake of the Olmert government's war crimes in Qana. Ten Israeli soldiers have signed up with Yesh Gvul to become refuseniks and one has already accepted a 28 day jail sentence. Meanwhile, according to Ha'aretz, hundreds of high-profile Israeli academics and political figures have signed petitions calling for a ceasefire:

One petition, which collected more than 200 signatures within a few hours yesterday, was organized by Haifa resident Orit Ben Artzi. It calls for a cease-fire and the opening of negotiations.

In addition, more than 600 people, including Israeli professors and senior Meretz party officials, have signed an international petition calling for an immediate, unconditional cease-fire in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank. Among the signatories to this petition are former Meretz MKs Naomi Chazan and Mussi Raz - though the latter has meanwhile obeyed an emergency call-up order for army reserve duty.

How Israel's Spin Machine Works
No modern military machine would be complete without a psyops-propaganda department that caters full-time to reporters desperate for a news hook. Victoria Clarke and CENTCOM showed how effective such an operation could be during the invasion of Iraq. Der Spiegel has an excellent piece up about Israel's pr operation, which is working to portray Israel as the victim while it bombs Lebanon back to the 1980's. Here's the intro:

The phone rings at 9 a.m. -- right on time. "Hello, this is the Government Press Office," pipes a woman's voice. "What are you planning to do today? Do you need an idea?" And then the suggestions just keep coming -- interview partners; a tour to the houses in Haifa that were struck by Katyusha rockets, complete with victim interviews. An expert will come along too, one who explains the nature of the rockets -- "in clean sound bites, if you want."

There's more on the plate. "The highlight is still to come," says the lady from Israel's press office, the GPO. "We can offer an interview in Naharya with the parents of the kidnapped soldiers," she says. She explains that the parents of Ehud Goldwasser, who has been held by Hezbollah since July 12, are waiting in a hotel. An interpreter? No need. "They speak good English, don't worry."

Israel has also rolled out the red carpet for right-wing activists like Joel Mowbray. Last week, Mowbray -- a complete unknown outside the right's media hothouse -- was given private meetings with Benjamin Netanyahu and Nathan Sharansky. (Sharansky's book, The Case for Democracy, was ignored in Israel but wound up providing the intellectual underpinnings for Bush's sophmoric agenda for the Middle East). In turn, Mowbray's "reports," which reliably parroted his Likudnik subjects, were plugged on right-wing sites like Powerline and Townhall. Mowbray was then featured on the nationally syndicated radio show, Janet Parshall's America. Quite a PR feat for Israel, and all it had to do was make one low-level neocon feel important.

Who is David Horowitz's Favorite Democrat?
A Quinnipac poll is coming out Thursday on the Connecticut Dem primary that could show Joe Lieberman trailing Ned Lamont by as much as 20 points. That might sound crazy after the Clinton visit, that's what I hear. With a week to go until the moment of truth, Lieberman's old allies are stepping up to the plate for him. One of them, David Horowitz, endorsed his favorite Democrat today in Frontpagemag:

The division of America is the greatest threat to our ability to prevail in the War on Terror – and the Left knows this and is incited by it. America is not divided enough for the American Left, which is now in full purge mode in Connecticut, where it is attempting to bring down the one statesman in the Democratic Party who might re-unite this country in the face of its enemies.

Horowitz's endorsement of Lieberman was buried in a long screed blaming "the left" for what he believes will be Israel's imminent defeat by Hezbollah. Apparently the fifth columnists are now attacking Lieberman as a means of undermining Israel. How long before the Lieberman campaign adopts this as a talking point?

More War Crimes

UNIFIL's prediction, which I cited last night on this blog, has unfortunately come true. Israel has begun "flattening" Lebanese village. Israel's systematic destruction of Lebanese society is one of the great war crimes of the 21st century. I have written several paragraphs here but erased them before hitting the publish button because they were simply not adequate enough to bring the depth of my disgust to expression. From the BBC:

Displaced families had been sheltering in the basement of a house in Qana, which was crushed after a direct hit.

The Israeli strike killed at least 54 people, more than half of them children.

The BBC's Jim Muir said that for some of the rescuers, experienced as they were, the emotional impact of finding so many dead children in the ruins was too much.

"As I arrived, they were carrying out on a stretcher the limp body of a young boy of about 10. Many other children were pulled out of the rubble lifeless," our correspondent said.

"That's a Red Cross rescue worker sitting here in the sunshine just sobbing - he's so overcome with emotion here," he added.

Israel has pulled its troops back from Southern Lebanon in an apparent retreat. Yet as I write this, its Merkava tanks are massed on the Lebanese border. Something is brewing. According to UNIFIL observers, it's something very dark:

Israeli troops have withdrawn from Bint Jbeil after heavy street clashes against well-entrenched Hizbullah fighters caused high casualties. The town was under heavy shellfire Friday in what UN officers suspect is a plan to force the last civilians to flee prior to destroying the town completely and killing any remaining Hizbullah fighters.

"I think the Israelis are contemplating flattening villages down to the last house," said Richard Morczynski, UNIFIL's political officer.

UNIFIL's prediction seems logical given that flattening villages is a classic counterinsurgency tactic honed by the US in Vietnam and employed by Ariel Sharon and his Phalangist proxies in Lebanon in the 1980's. In Gaza and places like Jenin, Israeli bulldozers simply flattened entire neighborhoods inhabited by fighters and the families of suicide bombers (I strongly recommend reading this testimony by the drunken Israeli bulldozer operator "Kurdi Bear," a legend of the IDF's Jenin campaign). Thanks to these tactics, the US won the war in Vietnam and Israel successfully rooted out terror in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. And then the freedom-loving West got back to its originally planned business of teaching the world to sing.

A Salute to Ollie
Mike Stark caught this bizarre photo of junior ROTC members of Ollie North's Freedom Alliance Leadership Program. In fairness to Ollie, the kids appear to be pointing at him.

A Lost Cause?
An unscientific poll of nearly 7000 Ha'aretz readers finds 55% think Israel is losing the war. Only 9% believe Israel is decisively winning. As I argued on Friday, Israel must fulfill its practically impossible stated goal of "dismantling Hezbollah's military infrastructure" to be able to declare victory. Anything less, including compiling massive casualty counts of Hezbollah "militants," would qualify as a loss. I'm hoping I'll have time this week to discuss the political atmospherics surrounding the war, especially a topic that hasn't been touched on yet: how the war is affecting the prospects of the seemingly vanquished Likud party and its leader, Bibi Netanyahu. Stay posted.

The Long View of the War in Lebanon
Richard Armitage is the latest foreign policy establishment character to argue against the logic, or subsequent lack thereof, of Israel's war on Hezbollah and Lebanon. Here is the salient part of Armitage's remarks, which have not been picked up yet anywhere in the mainstream print media (I'm sure that will change within a few hours):

If I thought that this air campaign would work, and would eliminate Nasrullah and the leadership of Hezbollah, I think it would all be fine. But I fear that you can’t do this from the sky, and that you’re going to end up empowering Hezbollah, and perhaps introducing an element into the body politic in Lebanon that will take some great period of time to recover from.

The long term implications of Israel's war will further weaken prospects for stability in the region if Israel retreats from Lebanon without a decisive victory. And that appears likely, given that the IDF isn't likely to dig in for a long war and even if they do, they may not emerge victorious anyway. So why does Israel need to deal Hezbollah a quick death blow? The answer lies not in Lebanon, but in the Palestinian territories, where Hamas and Islamic Jihad are viewed as sisters to Hezbollah. Moderate, secular groups like Tanzim and Fatah are worried that a Hezbollah success could further marginalize them in the eyes of the Palestinian public. This is what a Tanzim leader said to Ha'aretz yesterday:

"Stopping the fighting now would be interpreted as an Israeli defeat, which would immediately affect events here, especially in the Gaza Strip. The extremist organizations, Islamic Jihad and Hamas, will feel as if the victory were theirs, as will the Palestinian public - which equates Hezbollah with Hamas. The moderate Palestinian camp will face collapse if Hezbollah has the upper hand when this war is over. What will Abu Mazen [Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas] be able to tell his people in the face of the achievements of [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah or Hamas?"

For too long, Bush and the neocons failed to distinguish between Tanzim, Fatah and Hamas. Then, when their childish goal of spreading democracy in the Middle East emerged, they ignored Mahmoud Abbas' pleas for support. When Abbas needed to show the Palestinian public he could leverage his friendly US ties to stop an Israeli incursion into the territories, for instance, Bush was nowhere to help. Meanwhile, Israel jailed Marwan Barghouti, the only moderate figure with enough street credibility to challenge Hamas. Finally, at the eleventh hour, when Hamas appeared poised to sweep parliamentary elections, the administration threw its support behind the beleaguered Abbas. But it was too late -- Hamas swept into power. Now, with a Hezbollah military success, which would be anything other than total defeat, Hamas could consolidate its power for a generation. The short term implications of the war are horrific, but the long term scenario is looking even worse. As usual, Israel is radicalizing the Middle East. But the US hasn't always been so aggressive in assisting them.

Bill Clinton is weighing in in support of a ceasefire. And he's not holding back on Israel's carpet bombing of Beirut:

Clinton also said Israel went too far in bombing the airport in Beirut.

"I understand why (Israel) wanted to degrade their military capacity, but I question whether it was worth it to wreck the airport because the airport was the symbol of the new Lebanon."

What's interesting about Clinton's criticism, besides the fact that it shows how a Democratic administration would handle the conflict, is that he might not have been able to make such a statement if he were in Congress today. Witness the Democratic leadership. As slanted as the debate is in cable and print media about the US's Israel policy, especially with respect to Lebanon, there still is a debate. But in Congress, the Democrats are silent. There was hardly a debate about a House resolution supporting Israel last week despite the Republicans' insistence that it omit language calling on Israel to limit civilian casualties. As for why so many major liberal blogs are silent on Israel's campaign in Lebanon, I think it has less to do with their fear of offending Jewish and pro-Israel readers than with offending the top Democrats they depend on for influence. Whatever their reasons are, their disengagement looks worse by the day.

Zbigniew Brezezinski ripped into Israel and Condi Rice at the New America Foundation last week. I don't know if these comments have been disseminated widely enough but given their significance -- a charter member of Washington's generally hawkish foreign policy establishment is attacking Israel's tactics in unusually strident terms -- they should be. From the Nation:

Last Thursday, Brzezinski gave a fascinating talk sponsored by the New America Foundation, where he labeled Israel's ferocious military bombing of Lebanon "dogged, heavy-handed, politically unproductive and morally wrong."

"What Israel is doing today in Lebanon is in effect the killing of hostages," Brzezinski said. And the US government enabled the military campaign "by abandoning the tradition of being a negotiator to a promise of complete partiality."

And of Rice's refusal to negotiate with Syria, Brezezinski had this to say: "Either she's doing what she should be doing," Brzezinski said of Condi, "or she's sitting in front of a mirror, talking to herself."

Juan Cole sees resonances of the neocon theory of "creative chaos," or that violence is a positive property that can create headway in an otherwise politically impossible situation, in Rice's casting of Israel's carpet bombing of Beirut as "birth pangs." It could also be that Rice is an empty shell who is carrying water for neocons like Eliot Abrams while pretending to conduct shuttle diplomacy as political cover for Bush. At least Colin Powell would have attempted to carve out some latitude to maneuver towards a ceasefire, and then been humiliated in the end. This was Rice's biggest test yet and she has clearly failed.

A Civilized Nation
Mike Stark caught CBC anchor Bob Schieffer on WABC's Mark Simone show Saturday morning. Here's one of the quotes he was able to capture from Schieffer: "All civilized nations would do what Israel is doing [in Lebanon]."

Meanwhile, the Washington Post's Phillip Gordon gets a retired IDF air force colonel on the record about Israel's strategy in Lebanon:

According to retired Israeli army Col. Gal Luft, the goal of the campaign is to "create a rift between the Lebanese population and Hezbollah supporters." The message to Lebanon's elite, he said, is this: "If you want your air conditioning to work and if you want to be able to fly to Paris for shopping, you must pull your head out of the sand and take action toward shutting down Hezbollah-land."

So Israel is deliberately holding the population of an entire country hostage and using them as bomb fodder because Hezbollah operates within their borders? Wait, it gets worse.

From Israel Armed Forces Radio via Scoop:

The Israeli air force has been ordered to hit 10 buildings in south Beirut - where Hezbollah has its headquarters - for every rocket the group fires at the Israeli port of Haifa.

"Army chief of staff Dan Halutz has given the order to the air force to destroy 10 multi-storey buildings in the Dahaya district (of Beirut) in response to every rocket fired on Haifa," a senior air force officer told army radio on Monday.

Despite IDF denials that such a policy is in place, the Jerusalem Post has confirmed the initial report's veracity. But all civilized nations would do this, wouldn't they? Somebody send back Tom Brokaw and the greatest generation.

Is the IDF Overhyped?
The networks seem to have completely missed one of the major stories of the war in Lebanon: the failure of IDF to live up to its fearsome reputation as a small, smart fighting force capable of dismantling "terrorist infrastructure" at the drop of a hat. Meanwhile, Hezbollah appears to be drawing them into another unwinnable conflict. Consider this wire report:

ISRAEL.- Israeli Armed Forces effectives returning from the Lebanon’s front, say they are facing an intelligent, well prepared and ruthless guerrilla.

The soldiers describe Hezbollah guerrillas hide between civilians and in underground bunkers that are two or three stories deep, evidence that this has been prepared for years.

They are hard to beat and show no fear of dying, expressed an Israeli soldier.

In Ha'aretz, Yoel Marcus, an ardent supporter of a broad war on Hezbollah, has taken the IDF to the woodshed:

Bush and the public assumed that the army knew what it was doing, and that Israel, with its superiority in manpower, weaponry and technology, would be able to put an end to Hezbollah as a menace to Israel. Little by little, however, a worrying picture has begun to emerge: Instead of an army that is small but smart, we are catching glimpses of an army that is big, rich and dumb.

Indeed, days after claiming to have reduced Hezbollah's military strength by half, the IDF appears to have done nothing to stop the guerillas from raining rockets down on Israel. And I doubt they will. After all, how can they stop Hezbollah from being resupplied? Bombing the runway at Beirut airport is not the solution (although it prevented my friend Tamer from visiting his father there this week). Further, the battle for supposed Hezbollah strongholds in south Lebanon are exacting a heavy toll. In one battle for Bint Jbail, 2 Israelis were killed and 14 wounded. Although numerous US networks have reported that the IDF has taken this town, that is still unclear. The Daily Star is reporting that Israel is not even inside Bint Jbail.
Israeli military disappointment is such that another cheerleader for war, Reuven Pedatzur, is calling for an investigation into the IDF's failures. This ultimately reflects what a bungle the Bush administration's strategy has been. The slam dunk idea of using Israel as a proxy force to take on Iran and Syria's proxies is not going as planned. Ceasefire anyone?

A Christian Voice in the Wilderness
Martin Accad, the academic dean of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Lebanon, has written a powerful editorial in Christianity Today denouncing both Israel and the premillenialist (read: rapture ready) wing of the evangelical community for destroying Lebanon. Accad implicates fellow evangelicals as willing accomplices of Israel's shock and awe campaign and highlights their dark motives:

I think that some pseudo-biblically motivated Christians with decision power, who believe "that apocalyptic destruction is a precursor to global salvation," are presently working toward provoking a Middle Eastern conflict of regional significance in order finally to settle accounts with Hezbollah- and Hamas-supporting Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and Palestine, who have committed the crime, as Gushee put it, of making their hatred for Israel "crystal clear." And how dare they, since the said state has only been acting as an aggressor and racist colonial state with neighbor-exterminating tendencies from the moment of its inception?

The failure of America's evangelical community, which comprises the mass of the Christian right, to express even the slightest bit of concern for Lebanon's Christians -- one of the oldest Christian communities in the world -- is an absolute disgrace, though not unexpected. The Southern Baptist Convention and assorted conservative mega-churches arguably deserve as much credit as the neocons for the rush to war with Iraq. Bush counted on them to drive support in the Heartland for his war. And now that the US has unleashed the forces of chaos in Iraq, its ancient Christian community is in far worse danger than they ever were under Saddam. As bad as Saddam was, there was no epidemic of church bombings under his watch.

Now Israel (and Bush by extension) is counting on blind support from American evangelicals as they (to paraphrase Ehud Olmert's chief of staff) seek to bomb Lebanon back 20 years. The complete ignorance of the Christian right toward their brethren in the Middle East is a largely unexplored theme that I will be discussing in much greater detail here, on the Huffington Post, and at Talk2Action either tomorrow or the following day. In the meantime, read Accad's column, and his subsequent response to evangelical critics. He is truly a voice in the wilderness.

It's too simplistic to call Bush administration policy towards Lebanon crazy. A more accurate description would be schizophrenic. On the one hand, they pledged yesterday to deliver $40 million in humanitarian aid to Lebanon. On the other hand, according to the Saudi Arabian daily, Asharq Al-Awsat, the administration is rushing 100 bunker busters to Israel for an attempt to strike at Sheik al-Nasrallah:

The United States will soon provide Israel with some 100 "bunker buster" bombs to kill the leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrilla group and destroy its trenches, Informed sources in both Washington and Tel Aviv to Asharq Al-Awsat.

The sources also revealed that "bunker buster" bombs, which can penetrate up to 40 meters under ground, will be delivered to Israel from a U.S. military base in Qatar.

The Bush administration's attempt to mitigate a humanitarian crisis while scrambling to ensure its continuation is like if Mike Tyson hired a rape counselor for Desiree Washington after he vandalized her body for two hours in a hotel room. (In reality, Tyson hired Alan Dershowitz to argue for his acquittal. Dershowitz, that paragon of conscience, will almost certainly spend this summer defending the bombardment of Lebanon -- and anything else Israel chooses to do -- from his Martha's Vineyard digs).

At Least He's Honest
This portrait of the anti-abortion fanatic as a young man pretty much says it all about last week's blockade of the Jackson Women's Clinic. Some members of Anti-Racist Action were there and they took lots of pictures. You can view them at One Peoples Project, one of my favorite sites. ARA managed to photograph among the blockaders some members of the Army of God, a domestic terrorist group which Eric Rudolph once affiliated with. Looks like there was a fine turnout by the base ("al qaeda" in Arabic).

There Is A Limit
The day after a Ma'ariv poll was released that showed 90% of Israelis in favor of continuing the wholesale bombardment of southern Lebanon, 2500 Israelis poured into Tel Aviv's Yitzhak Rabin square to demand a ceasefire. According to Ha'aretz, the demonstrators chanted, "We will not die, we will not kill in the service of the United States" as well as several anti-Bush slogans. To be sure, the protest was organized by a coalition of left-wing groups and Israeli Arab organizations historically opposed to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights. Nevertheless, this protest was significant for a number of reasons.

First, the demonstration was staged especially early in Israel's military campaign. The first protest during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 did not occur until nearly two weeks into the war. Many of the groups involved in yesterday's protest were veterans of the movement against the occupation of Lebanon during the 1980's and 90's. Memories of that disastrous quagmire have lent them an apparent sense of urgency.

Perhaps the most notable group involved in yesterday's protest was Yesh Gvul, or "There Is A Limit." Yesh Gvul was founded during Israel's first invasion of Lebanon, in 1982, to support the ranks of IDF soldiers and officers refusing to follow what they considered patently illegal orders. Its members rejected service in Lebanon and accepted jail sentences, giving rise to the refusenik movement. As the war dragged on and Hezbollah's guerilla attacks grew increasingly deadly, the number of refuseniks, most of whom came from the officer corps, reached a critical mass. The Israeli public was forced to recognize Lebanon as their country's version of Vietnam.

The second reason yesterday's demonstration deserves recognition is that it appeared to attract Israelis from outside established anti-war circles. Among them was a woman whose neighbors were killed in a Hezbollah Katyusha attack. She told Ha'aretz, "This war is not headed in the right direction. The captured soldiers have long since been forgotten, so I came to call for an immediate stop to this foolish and cruel war." The latest incarnation of the Israeli anti-war movement, though very small, could foreshadow an eventual fracturing of the pro-invasion consensus.

Finally and most importantly, the protest undermined the notion advanced in the US by so many self-appointed defenders of Israel that criticizing Israel's leveling of Lebanon is an anti-Israel, and even anti-Semitic position. The spectacle of Israeli Jews protesting a blood-drenched (think twice before you click on this link) war of choice should give the Alan Dershowitzes of the world pause before they accuse all critics of Israel's military policies of bigotry. And Americans, particularly American Jews, who care about Israel but are disgusted by its extreme militarism should feel encouraged by yesterday's protest to say that there is a limit to what they will support.

As Susan Sontag said just before her death at a ceremony honoring Yesh Gvul founder Ishai Menuchin, "Those of us abroad who wish for Israel to survive cannot, should not, wish it to survive no matter what, no matter how."

The Blog Will Be Back
It's been a while since I've posted anything. I have been working on a long investigative piece and am bringing it to a close, so I will have time for blogging again. In the coming week, I will be devoting most of my attention to the crisis in the Middle East and its domestic political implications.