Liberals Make Excuses for Israeli Crimes Against Humanity
Kurt Nimmo
July 22, 2006
"Don’t get me wrong, I think Hamas and Hezbollah started the hostilities in this case. They sent a terrible message to Israel by attacking from territories Israel withdrew from. That precedent can only do tremendous damage to their own people because it encourages occupation. Then Israel overreacted and has killed far more civilians than necessary in a foolhardy effort to send a message. What’s the message? We’ll kill your women and children if you keep it up?" writes Cenk Uygur, co-host of the Young Turks radio show, on the Huffington Post website. "But at this point, it’s futile and unproductive to be worried about who started it. Instead, we need to focus all of our energies on how to stop it. Unfortunately, we have a couple of roadblocks here at home preventing us from trying to come up with a peaceful and productive solution. One of those roadblocks goes by the name of Bill Kristol."
Over on what passes for the Left side of the political spectrum, this opinion is all too prevalent. Not unlike Fox News and CNN, Mr. Uygur puts forward the distortion, in fact a lie, that Hamas and Hezbollah "started the hostilities," thus legitimizing Israel’s criminal and murderous behavior. As usual, the corporate media, and this includes the Young Turks and Sirius Satellite Radio, ignore the fact both Hamas and Hezbollah are resistance movements, completely legitimate under international law.
Hans Lebrecht writes: "According to international law, the people of a country, occupied by a foreign power, has the full right to fight for their liberation. The Palestinian people, inhabitants of the territories, Israel has conquered and is occupying by military means since June 1967, too have this briefed right. This right is based, among other reasons, also upon the guiding lines set for the International Tribunal in Nuremberg, which, after World War II, had been established to judge the main Nazi criminals."
Of course, lobbing rockets at Israeli citizens is a violation of this principle, but "kidnapping" Israeli soldiers—who were, regardless of the lies spun by the corporate media, on the Lebanese side of the border when they were captured—is legal, as all sides in a conflict routinely take prisoners of war. As well, the puny rockets of Hezbollah, based on seventy year old technology, pale in comparison to Israel’s high-tech munitions, provided by the American tax payer, a chump as usual.
Mr. Uygur tells us it is pointless, futile, and even unproductive to worry about "who started it" and instead "we need to focus all of our energies on how to stop it." In other words, ignore the 800 pound gorilla in the room, a monster with a Mogen David emblazoned on its side. Go after Bill Kristol, not the Israeli state. Pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain, the great Mask of Oz the Terrible.
Liberals, as well as the "conservatives" (actually Jacobin radicals, popularly known as neocons), get on the propaganda tube and tell us Hezbollah is in violation UN Security Council Resolution 1559, a resolution in part designed to "disband" Lebanese militias. Put differently, the United Nations, dominated by the United States, wants to make certain the Lebanese people are helpless to defend themselves against the state of Israel. Hezbollah refuses to accept this unreasonable and in fact ultimately fatal demand of the "international community" that the people of southern Lebanon go prostrate like passive sheep and allow the Israelis to rape and slaughter them.
In essence, this would be akin to the police demanding you turn in your gun, even though a hostile neighbor making threats against you and your family is allowed to keep his weapons.
Hezbollah knows perfectly well what will happen if they "disband," lay down their weapons—the 800 pound gorilla neighbor to the south will march across the border, as it has promised to do now for well over half a century (and has done on numerous occasions), terrorize and then ethnically cleanse them, set up colonial settlements populated by violent fanatics, and steal Lebanon’s water. In fact, the Israelis have already done this on Arab land at Shebaa Farms, and Hezbollah’s attacks against this illegal settlement on stolen land is at the root of the current situation. But don’t expect the corporate media, liberal or otherwise, to mention this.
Clueless liberals want to help the children of Lebanon after the 800 pound Israeli gorilla has smashed them from head to toe. Disarming Israel—bristling with the latest death merchandise, including around 400 nukes, undeclared—never enters the discussion because, as the popular (and racist) myth runs, the Arabs want to push the Jews into the sea. This is a lie, indeed a racist lie, one bought by far too many liberals (and indeed millions of Americans, regardless of political persuasion) brainwashed by the corporate media and nearly sixty years of pro-Israel mythology and whitewashing of horrific crimes against humanity, continuing in the occupied territories.
Liberals in general ignore the fact Israel is in violation of dozens of UN resolutions (see a list here), resolutions not only condemning Israel’s brutal behavior in the occupied territories but also its murderous crimes against the people of Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon.
Essentially, the wishy-washy declarations of the liberals are of little significance, as Hezbollah will continue its struggle against the Israeli military, as it is now gathered on the Lebanese border, poised to attack. Hezbollah kicked Israel out of Lebanon six years ago and has since that time prepared for a long guerrilla war. In short order, this guerrilla war will commence, with predictable result.
Israel, of course, will be obliged to leave Lebanon once again, licking its wounds after a sound defeat, although this defeat will not be reported as such by the corporate media.
In the meantime, liberals will denounce the violence "on both sides," and neocon sociopaths such as Bill Kristol will demand the United States invade or at least shock and awe Syria and Iran. Again, this will be of little significance to Hezbollah and Hamas, as they will continue to resist Israeli aggression.
Addendum
In a post yesterday, I compared Hezbollah to the National Front for the Liberation of Southern Vietnam. It appears Jane’s Defense Weekly agrees, according to AFP:
Hezbollah is proving a tough opponent for Israel because of their Viet Cong-style network of tunnels in southern Lebanon, the authoritative Jane’s Defense Weekly magazine said on Friday….
Alon Ben-David, a Jane’s Defense Weekly correspondent, said that intensive Israeli air raids had done limited damage to Hezbollah’s defensive fortifications, despite IDF special forces launching small incursions into Lebanese territory.
"The Israeli forces have discovered that Hezbollah has established a Viet Cong-style network of tunnels and trenches close to the Israeli border, providing shelter for its operatives and their weapons," said Ben-David.
"The IDF is meeting a fierce resistance from Hezbollah and have suffered a considerable number of casualties in the fighting."
Viet Cong resistance fighters fought from a giant tunnel network during the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975….
"They are extremely well trained and equipped and charged with high motivation to continue fighting."
For more information on the "Viet Cong" (the corporate media’s derogatory term for the Vietnamese resistance) tunnel system, see VC Tunnels. As well, for a more detailed explanation, see Allied Operations Against Tunnel Complexes.
"The tunnel system, built over 25 years starting in the 1940s, let the Viet Minh and, later, the Viet Cong, control a huge rural area…. The tunnels not only allowed guerrilla communication, they allowed surprise attacks, even within the perimeters of U.S. military bases. The U.S. retaliated with bombs, eventually turning the region into what writers Tom Mangold and John Penycate called "the most bombed, shelled, gassed, defoliated and generally devastated area in the history of warfare." No doubt southern Lebanon will also be thus "bombed, shelled, gassed, defoliated," in fact large areas of Lebanon already have suffered this fate.
While American troops’ motivation steadily faded amidst frustration, in part because the tunnel complex allowed their enemies to vanish, the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies remained fired by the fight against "foreign invaders"…. Cu Chi, a major staging ground for both sides during the Vietnam War, was so devastated by bombs, defoliants and ground combat that it was almost possible to see the Cambodian border 40 kilometers (25 miles) to the west. By government count, nearly half of the sprawling district’s wartime population of 46,000 died: 11,000 soldiers and 10,000 civilians.
"The Cu Chi area and nearby became the most heavily bombed, gassed, and defoliated area in the history of combat. The Americans, however, never knocked out the tunnel complex entirely despite such operations as Cedar Falls in January 1967. The Junction City Operation followed from February to May. Use of bulldozers and 32,000 troops did not prevent southern Vietnamese revolutionaries from rebuilding tunnels in time to be used in the 1968 Tet Offensive against nearby Saigon," writes Dr. Ernest Bolt.
In short, the tunnel system in Vietnam was instrumental in defeating the occupation. It will likely be instrumental in southern Lebanon.
"Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them," explained George Santayana. Obviously, Israel and the United States are incapable or unwilling to learn from history, as they are consumed with hubris. In respect to history and past struggles against imperialism, it appears Hezbollah is far more intelligent than their adversaries. |
