Israel exacting a pound of flesh without measure
cybermusings.blogspot.com
Iqbal Latif
On cause and effect of a ‘disproportionate response’
Wounds and scars from history cannot become the basis of inter-human relationships. With a bloodthirsty Jew at its centre, "The Merchant of Venice" is Shakespeare's most divisive play. Anyone who thinks this 400-year-old Shakespearean character is forgotten and superseded is mistaken. Shylock in the play offers Antonio this loan at no interest. Instead, if Antonio does not repay him in time, he will cut off a pound of his flesh. Meanwhile, Shylock's daughter, Jessica, elopes with Bassanio's friend Lorenzo taking a significant chunk of her father's wealth with her. Enraged by her betrayal, Shylock focuses all his energy on revenge. When Antonio defaults on the loan, Shylock demands his pound of flesh.
No one has hijacked this mass characterization of Jews to ignite hatred amongst people more than the ideological demagogues like Hezbollah and Alqaeda within the Islamic world. Though many in the Islamic world may not even be familiar with the character, the way the message of hatred of Jews has been sold to the Islamic street is as if every injustice originates from or is consummated by the Jews. Islamic societies today are gripped with frenzy; Jews are considered as the root of all evils and, very conveniently, radicals have an 'enemy to sell.' Regrettably for them, unlike the ill-treated 400-year-old Shakespearean character, the 'Shylock' of today can demand a pound of his enemies' flesh and cut it too without any regard to the measure.
Every time anyone within the Arab world has pursued this 'insane' agenda of annihilating Israel they have suffered terrible defeat. Fascism has one quality: it breeds hatred for a fellow human being based on a creed and ideology; if Zionism takes pride in exclusion, so does Islamic extremism. Political Islam sermons that preach death to a nation or a religion is akin to fascism, there are no two ways about it.
Trans-national violent players within the autonomous nation of Islam have robbed sovereignty of nations. The problem is that the 'definition of victory' in the bird-brained megalomaniacs is not to win a war, but how much beating one can take. The yardstick of 'Hezbollah' success is measured by the number of days they can absorb Israeli firepower after crying for 'ceasefire'. How senseless a strategy of war or winning can it be if it is purely based on the number of days one can take a beating? The more days they survive in the bunker, the merrier they are? Nasarullah claims victory based on the conjecture that where the great Arab armies could not stand more than five days against Israeli forces, he has withstood 26 days of shelling. The brunt of the actions of these trans-national free radicals is borne by the nation they are entrenched in. Afghanistan suffered heavily from the presence of Alqaeda until freed from those shackles of ideological tyranny. Today, Lebanon is an unwilling bed partner being forcibly robbed of its sanctity by another player of vicious composition – the Hezbollah.
War is a crime and no sensible being should instigate it. Every human heart bleeds and condemns the actions leading to the tragedy of Qana, the scene of the worst incident of civilian casualties in Lebanon. Qana is the celebrated village in the Bible where Jesus Christ is said to have performed his first miracle, turning water into wine. Human beings are bestowed with rational choices; war is not a rational choice, to choose war with an enemy far superior than one's own ability is a suicidal course. The tragedy of Qana has to be seen regrettably in the course of collateral action in war that has its own gush and own dynamics. Human art of survival revolves around education, health and prosperity. Decent living encourages responsible attitudes; at times there is some virtue in cowardice instead of vainglory if it protects and encourages life and learning. War encourages decimation and annihilation; war needs to be planned far from civilian habitats; missiles cannot be fired from villages and compounds where civilians and children are placed, this is a respected doctrine of the most brutal and vindictive warriors. Children and women cannot become shields for cowards who protect their missile launchers amongst innocents. The responsibility of bloodshed and civilian collateral damage lies on those who, instead of leading the war from the front end, are hiding in caves and basements.
What I always lament is deaths in West bank and Gaza strip, but I cannot help but cry about the scores of senseless deaths of Israeli children and women by the suicide bombers from Al Aqsa and Hamas-based brigades. To lament for one civilian blood and then turn a blind eye to the other is ruthless and bigotry of intense order. On the political scene within the Middle East, Israelis are like Shylock and stripped of their names. Radical Islamists have seemingly taken the revulsion for Jews more than anyone else. Creating an enemy that, through some ideological misinterpretation of events, has a reason for hatred too helps perpetuate tyrannical regimes. The accusations of betrayal of Jews in the early times of the Prophet help flourish this frenzy. It is most helpful for perpetuation of an autocratic society and the most convenient way to curtail the freedom of hundreds of millions by shifting the responsibility of denial of their self-determination on the doorsteps of schematic Jews. Jews are as human as Muslims and Quran reputedly asserts that blood of one innocent is killing of entire humanity.
Hezbollah had no reason to instigate this war. Lebanon as a sovereign nation has very little territorial dispute with Israel. Nasarullah as a Lebanese has to protect the interest of his nation, however, when regional interests and ideological supremacy become the rule of the game then the masters dictate the policy. To awaken a sleeping lion and get his own people decimated is logic only a Jihadist can explain. In this day of knowledge and reason, to see this kind of fatalism is nothing but indicative of self-cursed scorch earth policy that breeds in the body polity of Hezbollah; a cancer that needs to be uprooted for the good of Lebanon. In his heart of heart, Lebanese Prime Minister's dismissal of the UN Security Council preliminary draft that only outlines the way forward and deals nothing with the mechanism of UN deployment is actually a de facto approval of Israeli actions to clean up the mess that no one else can so clinically.
The tears and choked performance of the PM of Lebanon were 'tears' to make the Syrian and Iranian despots happy that Lebanon is a willing partner to this war imposed on them. He very well realizes that without these bombs Hezbollah cannot be eliminated and without elimination, a stable Lebanon cannot emerge. It is elimination of the war machine and the state within a state that Lebanon dearly wants. Ask Hariri's son or Walid Junbulaat. The rank and file of Lebanon intelligentsia sees this war as the last opportunity to wipe out the trans-national bigots entrenched within their societies and embellish the future of Lebanon sans terrorists.
Lebanon's rejection is one clear signal to prolong the 'misery' of Hezbollah. If he had an ounce of sympathy for Nasarullah, he would run for cover and accept the draft. A ceasefire is what Ahmdeinejad wants; this is what the Hezbollah needs. The daring IDF guerrilla operations in Tyre and south of Beirut have made nights of these self-styled freedom fighters very long; they cannot sleep in one place; they are fully aware they can be picked and deposited in an Israeli jail. A ceasefire will help them regroup and take the toothless and powerless embryonic Lebanese government a hostage; if we need to help the Maronites, the Muslims, the Druze's, Shiites and the Arabs of Lebanon, we have to accept this painful deliverance from the sons of Moses.
What an irony that the sons of Ishmael are being offered hope of deliverance by the sons of Isaac!! Peace in the Middle East comes from the barrel of a gun. It is callous and barbaric but peace in the Middle East because of these tyrants and self-proclaimed Jihadists is bred from the blood drained from the most disinclined civilian participants who are made canon fodder of this war of ideologies where 'Allah' is invoked for victory that shall only logically come from divine intervention. Lebanese have seen horrors of internecine ethnic wars as no one else has. Beirut known as The Paris of the East lost its battle to war maniacs; the city of love turned into a city of hate and war. It is a tragedy of Herculean proportions. Hariri, one of its greatest sons, was murdered callously by the enlightened tyrants who wanted to continue their hold on this great nation. From his grave Hariri achieved what no one else could – the withdrawal of Syrians from Lebanon. A new government was elected and embryonic democracy took its hold, but Iran's nuclear standoff needed a sacrificial lamb and none other was more properly suited than their eager proxy and ideological cousins, the Hezbollah, to do the dirty job of marginalising the pressure. Lebanon once again is the victim of a proxy war of heartless nature conducted by the Hezbollah masters in Tehran and Damascus.
Exactness of the bombs that bust the Jihadist type carrying basements and launching pads shall determine the drop scene of this war. This is a war to end all wars; partial ceasefires are useless instruments, they only help blood tyrants to get better weaponry that can target, irrespective of where it lands at a distance that can bring some glee to the streets. A missile launched at Tel Aviv irrespective of the counter consequence for the population of Beirut or Damascus would play big on the Middle Eastern streets; this will help breed the dying revolutions a bit longer; it will help drain some more blood out of vulnerable slave populations. This revolution of ideologies in Iran and elsewhere continuously needs to be watered by nothing but the blood of innocents. How many more tragic wars and how many more tragedies do the Muslim children need to face? Why can't, instead of Jihad, Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan and South Lebanon have a normal decent future where children may go to Oxford and Cambridge, or sit down at Starbucks in Piccadilly, enjoy the latest brew, or Haagen-Daz on Champ's Elysées for ice cream. After all, that is what oil-rich Middle Easterners do all the time in their summer vacations. Why are the leaders of Jihads in caves while innocent thousands are disappearing? It is a tragedy that the Ayatollahs sit on their huge coffers of wealth in UAE-based banks while their children run huge businesses, but Jihad's canon fodder are people who are the most disenfranchised and most poverty-stricken within the world of Islam. Leadership families steer clear of the way.
It is a callous equation but a factual one: if they had nuclear bombs they would lob them by the hundreds, like Fajrs or Zalzlal. Before that becomes a certainty, people who want godly disputes to be settled by nuclear bombs should be denied that option. This is the time where their bluff has to be called! They know no restraint; they have no deference towards their civilian lives, and every civilian casualty is a 'shaheed' hence in their imagination rewarded amply by Allah with a number of female companions, the houries, in the next world. The score that needs to be settled here in this world has to be at the highest possible pain to the adversary.
Who dares amongst the 'Sunni' Saudis and Egyptian or Jordanians to put their hands in the hornet's nest of Lebanon? Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Qatar Sunni leaders' alarm at Hezbollah's move also reveals their deep fear about the emergence of a "Shia crescent" of power that would run from Iran, through Iraq, to Syria (a largely Sunni country led by a Shia splinter group) and to southern Lebanon itself. The elimination of Shiite extremists from the borders of Israel will bring long-term prosperity and peace to the region. Lebanon has an albatross around its neck; no one openly admits it but only Israeli IDF can free Lebanon from this slow death. Like a vampire, Hezbollah sucks blood out of the Lebanese nation. Its diversity, its strength and its rich culture all lays to waste as the misguided hate-based ideology run by the master voice in Tehran demands forfeit of the Lebanese civilians as sacrificial lambs. This is what Abraham was asked by Allah to sacrifice his son Ishmael, why not the entire population suffer the same fate! Strategic imbalances and firepower and scientific reasoning to know the enemy well is not something that any of these leaders ever think about. Their losses of human lives are covered by an iron-clad 'Allah'-offered insurance policy of rewards in paradise, hence collateral damage becomes only an issue for emotional blackmail for the western civilisation, but not a criterion to stop aggression on a sovereign nation.
This region needs carrots and sometimes sticks. These are people who wage a war using children and women as their shields. Aiyman al Zahwari says, "It is a jihad (holy war) for the sake of God and will last until (our) religion prevails ... from Spain to Iraq," al-Zawahri said. "We will attack everywhere." He said Arab regimes were accomplices to Israel. "My fellow Muslims, it is obvious that Arab and Islamic governments are not only impotent but also complicit ... and you are alone on the battlefield. Rely on God and fight your enemies ... make yourselves martyrs." He also called for the "downtrodden" throughout the world, not just Muslims, to join the battle against "tyrannical Western civilization and its leader, America." This is a transformation in the vision of al-Qaeda and its struggle with the United States. It is now trying to unite Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims and calling for non-Muslims to join the fight."
These same Al-Qaeda morons were accusing Hezbollah of being Israeli agents few months ago. These monkeys first need to explain the 'gracious help' to the innocent Iraqis by their butcher henchman, Zarqawi, as well before offering to help Lebanese people next. God keep Lebanon safe from these morons. Had it not been for that 'Daisy cutter that blew him out of the old house with punctured lungs and killed his kinky clad 'female companions', a lot more innocent Shiites would have been killed in Iraq. The Alqaeda leaders who were ordering Zarqawi to slaughter the Shiites in Iraq are now calling to unite with Shiites against Israel. Why doesn't bin Laden and Al Zahwari get their lazy **ses out of the caves and fight against the Americans in Afghanistan?
The future belongs to those who are first-rate in science and technology. Empires that failed to integrate with the demands of the modern world have been wiped out. North America continues to lead in scientific investment, with public and private funding accounting for 37% of the world's gross expenditure on research and development, according to data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) featured in the UNESCO Science Report 2005. As long as Khamenei, and Nasarullah and others rely on three doses of 'Satan' imported 40 mg 'Lipitor', the war of ideas would be won by the West, not by cave living obsolete humans.
Alqaeda and others should worry about the future of this whole Islamic world. A dramatic situation is found in the Arab States of Africa, contributing just 0.1% of world, even more surprising, the same share is found in fossil fuel-rich Arab countries of Asia. The world is moving ahead at an electrifying pace but the Middle East is falling behind. These missions of heartless killings and useless futile wars will further balkanise and divide the nations of Islam. The region is falling at a breakneck speed, caught in the spiral of venom to a bottom that has no end. Mass human killings in Chad, Somalia, and Sudan are not aberrations, they are sum total of failed policies. A similar spectre haunts the future of oil rich Arabian Peninsula if these radicals are not stopped, if these wars of convenience are allowed to continue. It will first be arch enemies like Israel and US to be targeted, then the next step would be internecine wars which may wipe out the entire mosaic of plurality of the Middle Eastern societies. No Maronittes, no Druze and no Shiite would ever live in safety if these radicals are not stopped; their brand of Islam that primarily revolves around mass circumcision of man. The world before that would see dozens of Hiroshima's, mass murder would be forcibly responded. The road ahead is that of moderation and toleration, otherwise, the price would be paid by everyone and not just Lebanon; when they take a country hostage, one need not look at too distant a past, Afghanistan ended up in chaos, so is Lebanon now, the evil hands destroy the moral fibre of the nation.
From OBL to Zarqawi to Nasarullah, one thing is common: the leader does not lead from the front but runs in a dark cave; the cannon fodder are the foot soldiers; the leaders' sons or families are never a part of the suicide brigade, it has to be the brain-washed blindfolded followers. Suha Arafat with her daughter lived in Paris when the 'first Intifida was launched; Saad bin Laden is in a cave, so is Aiyman al Zahwari and so is Osama the 'great crusader,' it is never about leading from the front. These cowards need this treatment once in a while. The biggest win from this unshakable Israeli resolve is the change of minds and behaviours. Look at Gaddafi's change of heart after the Italian disco bombing, once his camp was bombed in the desert, he completely changed his don from a terrorist despot to a more domestic despot.
No appeasement, no emotional blackmail, no exhibition of dead bodies should stop this elimination of cancer that calls for the death of western civilisation and uses children and women as hostage. Who dares to challenge the authority of 'Hezbollah' in the village of Qana, if 80,000 strong Lebanese Army cannot? Hezbollah rockets are fired indiscriminately towards Israelis without any regard for civilians. Rarely do Israel bomb civilian targets without ample warning; millions of leaflets and warning signs asking civilians to leave an area is clear warning from a nation not to hurt civilians who are caught up in this mess. Every single civilian casualty in this war is the responsibility of Hezbollah's and their masters in Tehran. It is a question of survival of a nation that is a reality in the region. This reality needs to be accepted and loved. Period.
Dynamics of war have changed: it is firepower and accuracy that counts. To compare their sputtering, fizzling, worthless meaningless archaic rockets with the firepower of Daisy cutters of Israel was a poor strategic bet. Nasarullah got a little ahead himself seeing the antiquated 15,000 missiles in his coffers; he thought he could deliver the payload and exact revenge for the injustices committed on the 'Palestinians.' Little did he care that his own populace does not have the defence or the ability to be out of harm's way for the counter offensive. Warfare is an art and not child's game; when a war strategy is planned, the counter response is the main evaluation. The Iranians and the Hezbollah got it all wrong sizing up Olmert. With 15,000 unaccounted archaic bombs in Lebanon's Hezbollah-controlled basements just 20-50 miles north of their country, how can any Prime Minister overlook a golden opportunity to wipe them clean? It is not about victory, it is about taming a trans-national player that operates in a sovereign country without any impunity! Olmert words are very unambiguous and invite Islamic societies to search the enemy within ‘I am putting an end to this parade of hypocrisy. I don't recall such a wave of reaction in the face of the 100 citizens killed every single day in Iraq. Sunnis kill Shiites who kill Sunnis, and all of them kill Americans - and the world remains silent. And I am hard pressed to recall a similar reaction when the Russians destroyed entire villages and burned down large cities in order to repress the revolt in Chechnya. And when NATO bombed Kosovo for almost three months and crushed the civilian population - then you also kept silent. What is it about us, the Jews, the minority, the persecuted, that arouses this cosmic sense of justice in you? What do we have that all the others don't?’
When the counter offensive came, we hear the voices of 'cease fire now.' Yes, ceasefire now is a great option, but why play with antiquated shoot fakes? Why not instead of 'death to Israel' repeated in Friday sermons, a more pragmatic cohabitation approach that guarantees respect for two nations be adhered too. Yes, Israel is as small as New Jersey and sits amidst hundred of millions of Arabs, but in firepower and intellectual property, it holds sway in large capacity of constructive and destructive technology. Einstein was a Jew and so are nearly 100 Nobel prize winners who have given the world of medicine breakthrough technologies; they are also known to give the world the first Hydrogen bomb and, after the experience of the holocaust, have in good order made sure that no other pseudo-Nazi ever does that to them again.
In capability of destruction and accuracy, it can target every Arab Muslim city without any need to worry about mutual assured destruction. Why play a 'game of chicken' with a nation that has the most modern weapons of death at its disposal and is now ready to live within its border and has shown great interest by signing peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt. Why can't the road to peace be further explored? Why can't Haifa and Beirut become sister cities to prosper for the benefit of Middle East? One reads so often in the press that the plight of Muslims is aggravated by 'vicious' US meddling in their affairs. We are told that it is this unwelcome interference that prompts radical Muslim violence of which both America and Islam have been recent victims. Really? This is what makes "Rip Van Winkle of a nation," an apt description of the Islamic community. The gross hypocrisy resident within mainstream mores of Islamic polity has led the nation of Islam into a collective rage of vanity and powerlessness. The enemy within is rarely found to be the culprit.
The wealth and strength of nations today is not in numbers or gold reserves or dollar reserves, rather, these are weaknesses of a nation; a nation with low literacy and low R and D with a lot of petro-dollars is destined to fail. It is knowledge and cutting edge technology that has defined the great powers of this century and millennium. Based on these two standards, let's accept that Israel is well ahead of the Islamic world and Iran in particular after the revolution that stymied any evolution in that culturally rich and great nation. What a waste of great aptitude and talent! The mullahcracy in Iran destroyed the rich heritage of 5000 years in 28 years. Isn't it a shame?
This cutting edge technology is what we see as a big advantage that Israel has in its disproportionate response to aggression towards its territories or people. This is the message. Do not expect a measured response. If Israeli interests are targeted and those interests mean security of the population of Israel, they will react to safeguard their territories; they are insightfully sensitive about it; they can be called callous but their state policy is to safeguard the territorial integrity of the land that they think is their right from the times when Moses led them from the bondages of Pharaohs.
The approach is clear: either this message is taken in or spewed out by the Middle East at its own peril. It is a very costly clean up. Sadly, 'the heartbreak of Islam' is genuine. Islam is at odds with itself. It is no longer supremacy of one nation over the other, or control of one ideology over the other, today, it is about which nation is more advanced and connected to the aspiration of its populace. Freedom of minds dictates the strength of nations. Nations who deny pluralism and equal opportunity to their people based on color, creed and belief will not survive this age of knowledge. Only Muslims today can help their faith grow towards modernity. Only Muslims can construe all the brutal statements against Jews and Christians as parts of a precedent past. Only Muslims can define jihad not as a conflict against non-Muslims, but rather, as a delicate and inner struggle against wicked and self; only they can eliminate the credence that women are inferior to men and that non-Muslims are second-rate to Muslims. Only they can accept secularism, liberty and egalitarianism as part of their culture. |
