Sally, could you encourage a more one sided view of the middle east conflict? Sally's friends: could you by omission be just a little more one sided? We're a bunch of lucky white folks, living here on Turtle Island: First Nations peoples have a better reason to kick the shit out of us here, than anyone has of kicking the shit out of one another in the middle east. Look at home first why don't you, before going on about things you'll never understand first hand. Try to be good left leaning peace loving folks now, and find a more equitable manner of informing yourselves.
- anonymous (guest) 7-25-2006 5:34 am

Some of us in NY were directly affected by the Middle East conflict, when it came here in the form of the the World Trade Center attacks. We have a right to care what happens across the oceans and you have no right to judge from your position of smug sanctimony.
- tom moody 7-25-2006 6:03 am

You're right - we do have a right to care what happens across the oceans. But I'm frustrated by the constant one-sided anti-Israeli stance. It goes both ways you know. *If *everyone *could consider just a moment the *other side of their *immediate response [maybe it's called mutual empathy], then *maybe all this warmongering would stop. Call me an idealist.
- anonymous (guest) 7-25-2006 7:12 am

What turtle island are you inhabiting that's just full of white folks. That's way out of line.

Where you're not out of line is in addressing the slant of some of the discussion. If you believe that the country of Lebanon is responsible for starting a conflict with Israel, then there is a major slant to these posts and comments, however I believe (as many others) that the Lebanese population as a whole was not represented by Hezbollah's actions and that's the great tragedy. Even Ha'aretz has published commentary calling for this war to Stop Now, Immediately. (that publication has been known to have a bit of a slant too)

As well, a big shift has been made in Canadian foreign policy that is placing us in lock-step with the Bush administration and that has to be examined critically by all of us.

If you are engaged by these events, feel free to present your own arguments, other arguments that you agree with and/or some links or documentation supporting it.
- L.M. 7-25-2006 7:28 am

If you are frustrated by the lack of pro-Israel arguments I suggest you watch American television, or read the US Congressional Record. Our Congress is almost 100% in favor of Israel's bombing of Lebanon.
- tom moody 7-25-2006 8:00 am

The big money media isn't giving much face-time to the Israeli peace movement either since their aims are inconvenient to the larger tactics being played out in the region.

Ultimately, no one in the direct line of fire, whether in Israel or Lebanon, is going to win, they'll just end up alive or dead.
- L.M. 7-25-2006 8:57 am

Anon ... A group of Israeli engineers, based in Caesaria, worked for me for several months. I visited them twice, and several of them spent time with me in the states. I've very pro-Israel. And I'm very pro-US.

But when the US does something fucked up, I'm going to say something. I love my country the way one adult loves another -- with eyes wide open -- not the way a little child loves his Mommy.

Same thing with Israel -- I'll criticize when Israel does something fucked up, as this action in Lebanon clearly is. I'll criticize Israel more than I might some other country for a few reasons ...

1) high expectations -- Israel has a highly educated population. The Ashkenazim (in particular) know what it's like to suffer injustice. The Israelis know better than to practice collective punishment.

2) my goddamn tax dollars -- Israel uses weapons that were developed with my tax dollars, and that were procured with my tax dollars. Any country that gets a ride off my wallet is due extra scrutiny.

3) balance of power -- The strangest thing about Israel is that many Israelis seem not to realize they won. They kicked ass, they took names. They humiliated the militaries of their neighbors in 67 and 73, and have an even stronger position relative to their neighbors now than they did then. As the country with the big swinging ... um .. military in the region, they have military options that their neighbors don't have. They should show more restraint. Unfortunately, the US and Israel have patterns of excess that feed off each other. The exesses of the US and Israel are both morally and strategicly WRONG!

That being said, I'm a big fan of Israel. The French tried to warn the US away from the evil and counterproductive invasion of Iraq, Friends don't let friends invade while drunk with power. Friends of Israel who urge restraint are doing the right thing.
- mark 7-25-2006 12:06 pm

anon,

as stated above, if you want to wag your finger at us, do it by making your case. all statements are open for intelligent retort. thats how peace is come to. pls reconsider the sarcasm. getting it yet?
- bill 7-25-2006 3:14 pm

Sorry about the white folks comment.

My purpose isn't to provide the opposing one-sided capital Z Zionism response. My hope is that a more multi-faceted view might effect more peacable dialogue.

1. I don't send my money for 'tree planting' in Israel.

2. The people of Lebanon don't want to be bombarded by a neighbouring country it knows has the power and inclination to do so if provoked: control its terrorist population and guard its borders.

3. Yes, the Ashekazim know what it is to suffer collective punishment. They are exhausted by it, and all the more 'mobilized' [fricking cnn]. Imagine your Manhattan cafes and nightclubs and busses and subways and people were *constantly under threat from all sides? No, really. Was America as a whole responsible for provoking the September 11 attacks? Or just its foreign policy? Or just part of its government? Who elected those folks?

3b. It *is Israel's responsibility to 'measure' their responses with more than just a little consideration for the lives of people. But isn't it equally the responsibility of others in the region to do whatever is possible to effect peace?

4. Israel doesn't control your tax dollar. You do. Effect greater voter turnout.

5. Balance of power. Noone has won. The Palestinians still don't have a State to call their own. The Israeli's are still under constant threat by a huge surrounding population that hates it and wants to see it destroyed. Everyone suffers.

5. Jews don't control the American media.

6. Friends don't let friends go on suicide missions.


- anonymous (guest) 7-25-2006 3:29 pm

I'm sorry, anonymous, but who raised the issues of "Israel controlling our tax dollar" and "Jews controlling the American media"?

I believe that was...you.

- tom moody 7-25-2006 4:38 pm

i think anon is making an attempt at being fair and balanced. like saying "im against the iraq war (but including the manditory) "but i support the troops." in a larger context that two sidedness is implied but not spelled out by LM and other regulars here. anon are you familiar with sally's blog?
- bill 7-25-2006 4:53 pm

I appreciate this thread for the reminder that the picture of Israel that we get on national news media does not even begin to represent the people of Israel. A reminder that many Canadians frequently need to hear about our American friends and activist allies. It is my impression that the implied two-sidedness Bill mentions above may require spelling out once in a while, especially in the current climate.
- sally mckay 7-25-2006 5:07 pm

Hi Everyone,

Mark mentioned Israeli use of American tax dollars in an earlier post.

I pointed out that Jews don't control the American media in response to Tom's note about watching American news: the subtext - generally - of these sorts of statements, whether intended or not, often points to deep-seeded anti-Jewish sentiment [in this case, that Jews control the media].

I apologize for my earlier sarcasm - it's not easy to feel a part of a community [as a professional visual artist] that often confuses its [our] criticism of some Israeli policies and actions, with Jewish people as a whole, and often doesn't express a balanced view.

I appreciate Bill and Sally's efforts at helping me pull my foot out of my mouth. You know: noone in our community ever challenges Hezbollah or Hamas for their use of violence. At least not within my hearing range, and that's hard to stomach.

A lot of diasporic and Israeli Jews *are critical of the action of *our people, and find ourselves feeling hopelessly caught between a rock and a hard place. On the subway this morning I wondered, re: the Balance of Power. How much power would be just enough, for Israel and for its neighbours, to maintain a ceasefire [or achieve peace]. Israel is greatly outnumbered in population and land mass. So, how much power would be just enough power to hold at bay those who would like to see it wiped of the face of the planet? I don't know. But I do understand/comprehend the historical attitude of never again. Rock and a hard place.

I will keep reading, and when I stick my foot in my mouth, I'll keep welcoming help to pull it out.
- anonymous (guest) 7-25-2006 5:31 pm

Big, big leap from "Israeli use of American tax dollars" to "Israeli control of American tax dollars."

As for your reading "subtext" into my statement: I would humbly suggest sticking to what people say and not what you think they say.

- tom moody 7-25-2006 5:42 pm

as they say on the gilmore girls : leaving your "fight face" at home for this exchange might help in the long run.
- bill 7-25-2006 5:53 pm

Wow this place got lively. Everyone else managed to wake up before 11:00 am.

First anon, I'd like to address point "2. The people of Lebanon don't want to be bombarded by a neighbouring country it knows has the power and inclination to do so if provoked: control its terrorist population and guard its borders."

At the risk of being redundant, It is clear that the Lebanese government was too weak to control the military arm of Hezbollah, Syria still holds much control over the country, and Iran has supplied most of their arms. Earlier, I provided a lot of links supporting that thesis.

your points 3B is well taken, and there is much argument on many sites about what constitutes restraint in war time.

The other day TNR published commentary on the subject of "disproportionate force"

(I'm not sure the link will work because its a pay-for-site that I got in a package with some other web subscriptions, so I'll quote a portion of it)

"...as the Israeli government rightly points out, no country operates on the principle of responding to aggression with no more force than was originally used against it. During World War II, Germany sunk a lot of American ships and declared war on us, and in return we flattened its cities, killed or captured hundreds of thousands of its solders and occupied its land. That was hardly a proportionate response.
Now, it is true that Israel's counteroffensive has taken the lives of several hundred Lebanese civilians (many entirely innocent, others who sheltered Hezbollah rockets) and displaced perhaps half a million more. Every innocent death is a tragedy.

But the brutal fact is that civilian deaths are Hezbollah's strongest weapon. As Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, once said: "We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win because they love life and we love death."

Thus, Hezbollah places its rockets and other potential targets in homes, knowing that Israel cannot hit back without creating collateral damage. This does not relieve Israel of the burden of minimizing civilian casualties as best it can. The point is that if Israel has to operate under a code of ethics that renders civilian deaths unacceptable, then it automatically loses."

My biggest problem with the above argument is that my late father, as a very young man, flew with the RCAF, dropping those bombs that flattened German cities and he felt the guilt for the rest of his life. On a basic human level, outside of wartime, he knew this to be wrong.

Thanks Bill, for pointing out what I have been writing about earlier, I am trying my best to figure out a way to talk about the current war without having to list my allegiances, ethnic & religious background, or preface everything I say with an ideological stance. (it would shift constantly anyway, I'd make a crappy ideologue).

"implied but not spelled out" is necessary in an attempt to express the complexity of this war. I've been reading commentary on a lot of sites and the heated predictable rhetoric & outright racism (that I've read elsewhere) drives me crazy. But this is a war that combines tactics and morality in a bewildering manner.
- L.M. 7-25-2006 8:20 pm

ummm. Gilmore Girls, Bill?
- L.M. 7-25-2006 8:53 pm

b/t/w anon, make up a screen name, for consistency, and always feel free to join in. You probably have already figured out that the people commenting around here read stuff quite closely, I've learned to be pretty careful about the assertions I make. There is a larger readership for this blog, than actual commenters, it would be nice to see that change, but it's always daunting to wade into a conversation that has been going on for a while.

ps. I'm a total sociopath
- L.M. 7-25-2006 10:27 pm

Hey anon, my first response was a bit strong due to the rather strained sarcasm of you original content. Thanks for writing more plainly in subsequent comments.

I have a further response to "Israeli's are still under constant threat by a huge surrounding population that hates it and wants to see it destroyed." This paints the situation with brush strokes that are too broad.

I visited during late 1999 and early 2000, prior to Sharon's infamous march on the temple mount. (Worst. Campaign Stunt. Ever.) This was a window of hope in Israeli/Palestinian relations.

I took a private guided tour, ranging from Tel Aviv to the Dead Sea, just me and the tour operator driving around for two days in his mini van. Although my tour guide expressed some rather hostile opinions about Palestinians when it was just the two of us, he had what were evidently warm relationships with certain Palestinians with whom he had ongoing business.

I've seen this behavioir in white/black relations in the US. While a racist white may think blacks are degenerates in general, they see certain blacks as "good negroes". I don't think it's fair to say a "population that hates it and wants to see it destroyed" about either the Israeli population or the Palestinian population. While there are hardcore eliminationists on both sides, there are also "selective" bigots, and unbigotted people on both sides.

The problem I see with Israel's broad, sweeping response to security issues is that these responses are not going to tend to turn "selective bigots" towards tolerance, but rather will lead to further hardening. The eliminationists on both sides seek constant escalation of conflict. The moderates on both sides are damn fools to let the hardcore set the tone for the relationship between the two populations.

Both the editor of Forward (in an NPR interview) and a university prof who runs the Angry Arab website recently lamented that the coverage is one sided -- the Israelis and Arabs that thrive on conflict get all the coverage while the Israelis and Arabs that want to defuse conflict are ignored.
- mark 7-26-2006 1:42 am

"First Nations peoples have a better reason to kick the shit out of us here, than anyone has of kicking the shit out of one another in the middle east."

I can't speak for Canadian history, but in the US the policy was: move onto this shitty land that no one else wants, or we will exterminate you. Choose one. Oh, and we reserve the right to take the shitty land at a later time if we change our minds.

I consider this a bad example for problem resolution.
- mark 7-26-2006 1:56 am

I've been thinking about Mark's comment about high expectations. Oddly enough my high expectations have come from attributing super-super-powers to the IDF and to Mossad. That raid in Entebbe captured my imagination when I was a kid. (Prior to 911, I think I credited the CIA with being all knowing, being as well, a bunch of hyper paranoid cartoon characters, but look how that turned out.)

As far as the discussion about whether or not Israel is totally surrounded by enemies, that may just be the prize that Hezbollah is seeking. Egypt and Saudi Arabia surprised many people by being on-board with the air strikes from Israel, but that was always temporary, and the pressures from their respective populations are causing them to change their stance.

Other broad strokes that have been painted elsewhere involve a lot of confusion between Hezbollah's goals and the goals of Hamas. I'm not cynical about any human compassion felt for the Palestinians, but I'm clearly cynical about the use that has been made of them by most of the governments in the region.

In summation: major clusterfuck.
- L.M. 7-26-2006 4:00 am

An interesting tidbit about "surrounded by enemies" ... One bit of Israeli mythology is about negotiating down to the meter the border between Israel and Egypt near Eilat to accomodate Egypt's demands. And yet Egypt is still mean to Israel.

While discussing this myth with an Israeli, I asked him how many times Egypt had attacked Israel since then (zero). And I pointed out that Sadat paid with his life for signing the peace accord.

Israel does face real threats, but sometimes I gotta roll my eyes.
- mark 7-26-2006 4:30 am

Details on yesterday's Big What the Fuck??? bombing of a U.N. outpost from The Guardian

"Jane Lute, the assistant secretary general for peacekeeping, told the UN security council that the base came under close Israeli fire 21 times - including 12 hits within 100 metres and four direct hits - from 1.20pm until contact was lost with the four peacekeepers inside at 7.17pm.

Ms Lute said the peacekeeping force had protested to the Israeli army after each firing incident. The UN's deputy secretary general, Mark Malloch Brown, and Ms Lute herself also made several calls to Israel's mission to the UN "reiterating these protests and calling for an abatement of the shelling", she said.

After contact with the base was lost, Unifil then won safe passage for two armoured personnel carriers to evacuate the position, she said. They arrived at 9.30pm 'and found the shelter collapsed and major damage to the rest of the position'. Despite negotiating safe passage, the APCs also came under Israeli attack, Ms Lute said."

But Condi made it in and out of Beirut safely.
- L.M. 7-26-2006 11:51 pm

It was a combined forces attack, both shelling and air bombardment.
- mark 7-27-2006 12:10 am

"The strike came on a day Israel stated it was prepared to hand over control of southern Lebanon to an international peacekeeping force but one that is more robust and with stronger more highly trained soldiers than is UNIFIL." Is Israel ready for a force that will shoot back in both directions?
- mark 7-27-2006 12:11 am

"'At the very minimum I would have to describe the actions of the Israeli army as grossly reckless at a minimum,' O'Dea said.

'I can't say for definite whether there was deliberate targeting but if it was an accident, it was a most extraordinary accident.' "

Our Harper is sure that it was an accident.

"We didn't mean to" doesn't cancel the responsibility.
- L.M. 7-27-2006 3:36 am