SEPTEMBER 2006
| Apocalypse Near Noam Chomsky ZNet Commentary August 08, 2006 http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-08/08chomsky.cfm Noam Chomsky interviewed by Merav Yudilovitch Last week, a group of renowned intellectuals published an open letter blaming Israel for escalating the conflict in the Middle East. The letter, which mainly referred to the alignment of forces between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, caused a lot of anger among Ynet and Ynetnews readers, particularly due to its claim that the Israeli policy's political aim is to eliminate the Palestinian nation. The letter was formulated by art critic and author John Berger and among its signatories were Nobel Prize winner, playwright Harold Pinter, linguist and theoretician Noam Chomsly, Nobel Prize laureate José Saramago, Booker Prize laureate Arundhati Roy, American author Russell Banks, author and playwright Gore Vidal, and historian Howard Zinn. Prof. Chomsky, you claimed that the provocation and counter-provocation all serve as a distraction from the real issue. What does it mean? "I assume you are referring to John Berger's letter (which I signed, among others). The "real issue" that is being ignored is the systematic destruction of any prospects for a viable Palestinian existence as Israel annexes valuable land and major resources, leaving the shrinking territories assigned to Palestinians as unviable cantons, largely separated from one another and from whatever little bit of Jerusalem is to be left to Palestinians, and completely imprisoned as Israel takes over the Jordan valley. "This program of realignment cynically disguised as "withdrawal," is of course completely illegal, in violation of Security Council resolutions and the unanimous decision of the World Court (including the dissenting statement of US Justice Buergenthal). If it is implemented as planned, it spells the end of the very broad international consensus on a two-state settlement that the US and Israel have unilaterally blocked for 30 years - matters that are so well documented that I do not have to review them here. "To turn to your specific question, even a casual look at the Western press reveals that the crucial developments in the occupied territories are marginalized even more by the war in Lebanon. The ongoing destruction in Gaza - which was rarely seriously reported in the first place - has largely faded into the background, and the systematic takeover of the West Bank has virtually disappeared. "However, I would not go as far as the implication in your question that this was a purpose of the war, though it clearly is the effect. We should recall that Gaza and the West Bank are recognized to be a unit, so that if resistance to Israel's destructive and illegal programs is legitimate within the West Bank (and it would be interesting to see a rational argument to the contrary), then it is legitimate in Gaza as well." You claim that the world media refuses to link between what's going on in the occupied territories and in Lebanon? "Yes, but that is the least of the charges that should be leveled against the world media, and the intellectual communities generally. One of many far more severe charges is brought up in the opening paragraph of the Berger letter. "Recall the facts. On June 25, Cpl. Gilad Shalit was captured, eliciting huge cries of outrage worldwide, continuing daily at a high pitch, and a sharp escalation in Israeli attacks in Gaza, supported on the grounds that capture of a soldier is a grave crime for which the population must be punished. One day before, on June 24, Israeli forces kidnapped two Gaza civilians, Osama and Mustafa Muamar, by any standards a far more severe crime than capture of a soldier. The Muamar kidnappings were certainly known to the major world media. They were reported at once in the English-language Israeli press, basically IDF handouts. And there were a few brief, scattered and dismissive reports in several newspapers around the US. Very revealingly, there was no comment, no follow-up, and no call for military or terrorist attacks against Israel. A Google search will quickly reveal the relative significance in the West of the kidnapping of civilians by the IDF and the capture of an Israeli soldier a day later. "The paired events, a day apart, demonstrate with harsh clarity that the show of outrage over the Shalit kidnapping was cynical fraud. They reveal that by Western moral standards, kidnapping of civilians is just fine if it is done by "our side," but capture of a soldier on "our side" a day later is a despicable crime that requires severe punishment of the population. "As Gideon Levy accurately wrote in Ha'aretz, the IDF kidnapping of civilians the day before the capture of Cpl. Shalit strips away any "legitimate basis for the IDF's operation," and, we may add, any legitimate basis for support for these operations. The same elementary moral principles carry over to the July 12 kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers near the Lebanon border, heightened, in this case, by the regular Israeli practice for many years of abducting Lebanese and holding many as hostages for long periods. Truly disgraceful "Over the many years in which Israel carried out these practices regularly, even kidnapping on the high seas, no one ever argued that these crimes justified bombing and shelling of Israel, invasion and destruction of much of the country, or terrorist actions within it. The conclusions are stark, clear, and entirely unambiguous - hence suppressed. "All of this is, obviously, of extraordinary importance in the present case, particularly given the dramatic timing. That is, I suppose, why the major media chose to avoid the crucial facts, apart from a very few scattered and dismissive phrases, revealing that they consider kidnapping a matter of no significance when carried by US-supported Israeli forces. "Apologists for state crimes claim that the kidnapping of the Gaza civilians is justified by IDF claims that they are 'Hamas militants' or were planning crimes. By their logic, they should therefore be lauding the capture of Gilad Shalit, a soldier in an army that was shelling and bombing Gaza. These performances are truly disgraceful." You are talking first and foremost about acknowledging the Palestinian nation, but will it solve the "Iranian threat"? Will it push Hizbullah from the Israeli border? "Virtually all informed observers agree that a fair and equitable resolution of the plight of the Palestinians would considerably weaken the anger and hatred of Israel and the US in the Arab and Muslim worlds - and far beyond, as international polls reveal. Such an agreement is surely within reach, if the US and Israel depart from their long-standing rejectionism. "On Iran and Hizbullah, there is, of course, much more to say, and I can only mention a few central points here. "Let us begin with Iran. In 2003, Iran offered to negotiate all outstanding issues with the US, including nuclear issues and a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The offer was made by the moderate Khatami government, with the support of the hard-line "supreme leader" Ayatollah Khamenei. The Bush administration response was to censure the Swiss diplomat who brought the offer. "In June 2006, Ayatollah Khamenei issued an official declaration stating that Iran agrees with the Arab countries on the issue of Palestine, meaning that it accepts the 2002 Arab League call for full normalization of relations with Israel in a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus. The timing suggests that this might have been a reprimand to his subordinate Ahmadenijad, whose inflammatory statements are given wide publicity in the West, unlike the far more important declaration by his superior Khamenei. "Of course, the PLO has officially backed a two-state solution for many years, and backed the 2002 Arab League proposal. Hamas has also indicated its willingness to negotiate a two-state settlement, as is surely well-known in Israel. Kharazzi is reported to be the author of the 2003 proposal of Khatami and Khamanei. "The US and Israel do not want to hear any of this. They also do not want to hear that Iran appears to be the only country to have accepted the proposal by IAEA director Mohammed ElBaradei that all weapons-usable fissile materials be placed under international control, a step towards a verifiable Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty. "ElBaradeiR17;s proposal, if implemented, would not only end the Iranian nuclear crisis but would also deal with a vastly more serious crisis: The growing threat of nuclear war, which leads prominent strategic analysts to warn of 'apocalypse soon' (Robert McNamara) if policies continue on their current course. "The US strongly opposes a verifiable FMCT, but over US objections, the treaty came to a vote at the United Nations, where it passed 147-1, with two abstentions: Israel, which cannot oppose its patron, and more interestingly, Blair's Britain, which retains a degree of sovereignty. The British ambassador stated that Britain supports the treaty, but it "divides the international community". These again are matters that are virtually suppressed outside of specialist circles, and are matters of literal survival of the species, extending far beyond Iran. "It is commonly said that the 'international community' has called on Iran to abandon its legal right to enrich uranium. That is true, if we define the "international community" as Washington and whoever happens to go along with it. It is surely not true of the world. The non-aligned countries have forcefully endorsed Iran's "inalienable right" to enrich uranium. And, rather remarkably, in Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, a majority of the population favor accepting a nuclear-armed Iran over any American military action, international polls reveal. "The non-aligned countries also called for a nuclear-free Middle East, a longstanding demand of the authentic international community, again blocked by the US and Israel. It should be recognized that the threat of Israeli nuclear weapons is taken very seriously in the world. "As explained by the former Commander-in-Chief of the US Strategic Command, General Lee Butler, "it is dangerous in the extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle East, one nation has armed itself, ostensibly, with stockpiles of nuclear weapons, perhaps numbering in the hundreds, and that inspires other nations to do so." Israel is doing itself no favors if it ignores these concerns. "It is also of some interest that when Iran was ruled by the tyrant installed by a US-UK military coup, the United States - including Rumsfeld, Cheney, Kissinger, Wolfowitz and others - strongly supported the Iranian nuclear programs they now condemn and helped provide Iran with the means to pursue them. These facts are surely not lost on the Iranians, just as they have not forgotten the very strong support of the US and its allies for Saddam Hussein during his murderous aggression, including help in developing the chemical weapons that killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians. Peaceful means "There is a great deal more to say, but it appears that the "Iranian threat" to which you refer can be approached by peaceful means, if the US and Israel would agree. We cannot know whether the Iranian proposals are serious, unless they are explored. The US-Israel refusal to explore them, and the silence of the US (and, to my knowledge, European) media, suggests that the governments fear that they may be serious. "I should add that to the outside world, it sounds a bit odd, to put it mildly, for the US and Israel to be warning of the "Iranian threat" when they and they alone are issuing threats to launch an attack, threats that are immediate and credible, and in serious violation of international law, and are preparing very openly for such an attack. Whatever one thinks of Iran, no such charge can be made in their case. It is also apparent to the world, if not to the US and Israel, that Iran has not invaded any other countries, something that the US and Israel do regularly. "On Hizbullah too, there are hard and serious questions. As well-known, Hizbullah was formed in reaction to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and its harsh and brutal occupation in violation of Security Council orders. It won considerable prestige by playing the leading role in driving out the aggressors. "The 1982 invasion was carried out after a year in which Israel regularly bombed Lebanon, trying desperately to elicit some PLO violation of the 1981 truce, and when it failed, attacked anyway, on the ludicrous pretext that Ambassador Argov had been wounded (by Abu Nidal, who was at war with the PLO). The invasion was clearly intended, as virtually conceded, to end the embarrassing PLO initiatives for negotiation, a "veritable catastrophe" for Israel as Yehoshua Porat pointed out. Shameful pretexts "It was, as described at the time, a "war for the West Bank." The later invasions also had shameful pretexts. In 1993, Hizbullah had violated "the rules of the game," Yitzhak Rabin announced: these Israeli rules permitted Israel to carry out terrorist attacks north of its illegally-held "security zone," but did not permit retaliation within Israel. Peres's 1996 invasion had similar pretexts. It is convenient to forget all of this, or to concoct tales about shelling of the Galilee in 1981, but it is not an attractive practice, nor a wise one. "The problem of Hezbollah's arms is quite serious, no doubt. Resolution 1559 calls for disarming of all Lebanese militias, but Lebanon has not enacted that provision. Sunni Prime Minister Fuad Siniora describes Hizbullah's military wing as "resistance rather than as a militia, and thus exempt from" Resolution 1559. "A National Dialogue in June 2006 failed to resolve the problem. Its main purpose was to formulate a "national defense strategy" (vis-à-vis Israel), but it remained deadlocked over Hizbullah's call for "a defense strategy that allowed the Islamic Resistance to keep its weapons as a deterrent to possible Israeli aggression," in the absence of any credible alternative. The US could, if it chose, provide a credible guarantee against an invasion by its client state, but that would require a sharp change in long-standing policy. "In the background are crucial facts emphasized by several veteran Middle East correspondents. Rami Khouri, now an editor of Lebanon's Daily Star, writes that "the Lebanese and Palestinians have responded to Israel's persistent and increasingly savage attacks against entire civilian populations by creating parallel or alternative leaderships that can protect them and deliver essential services." You are not referring in your letter to the Israeli casualties. Is there differentiation in your opinion between Israeli civic casualties of war and Lebanese or Palestinian casualties? "That is not accurate. John Berger's letter is very explicit about making no distinction between Israeli and other casualties. As his letter states: "Both categories of missile rip bodies apart horribly - who but field commanders can forget this for a moment." "You claimed that the world is cooperating with the Israeli invasion to Lebanon and is not interfering in the events Gaza and Jenin. What purpose does this silence serve? "The great majority of the world can do nothing but protest, though it is fully expected that the intense anger and resentment caused by US-Israeli violence will - as in the past - prove to be a gift for the most extremist and violent elements, mobilizing new recruits to their cause. "The US-backed Arab tyrannies did condemn Hizbullah, but are being forced to back down out of fear of their own populations. Even King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Washington's most loyal (and most important) ally, was compelled to say that "If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance, then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire." "As for Europe, it is unwilling to take a stand against the US administration, which has made it clear that it supports the destruction of Palestine and Israeli violence. With regard to Palestine, while Bush's stand is extreme, it has its roots in earlier policies. The week in Taba in January 2001 is the only real break in US rejectionism in 30 years. "The US also strongly supported earlier Israeli invasions of Lebanon, though in 1982 and 1996, it compelled Israel to terminate its aggression when atrocities were reaching a point that harmed US interests. "Unfortunately, one can generalize a comment of Uri Avnery's about Dan Halutz, who "views the world below through a bombsight." Much the same is true of Rumsfeld-Cheney-Rice, and other top Bush administration planners, despite occasional soothing rhetoric. As history reveals, that view of the world is not uncommon among those who hold a virtual monopoly of the means of violence, with consequences that we need not review." What is the next chapter in this middle-eastern conflict as you see it? "I do not know of anyone foolhardy enough to predict. The US and Israel are stirring up popular forces that are very ominous, and which will only gain in power and become more extremist if the US and Israel persist in demolishing any hope of realization of Palestinian national rights, and destroying Lebanon. It should also be recognized that Washington's primary concern, as in the past, is not Israel and Lebanon, but the vast energy resources of the Middle East, recognized 60 years ago to be a "stupendous source of strategic power" and "one of the greatest material prizes in world history." "We can expect with confidence that the US will continue to do what it can to control this unparalleled source of strategic power. That may not be easy. The remarkable incompetence of Bush planners has created a catastrophe in Iraq, for their own interests as well. They are even facing the possibility of the ultimate nightmare: a loose Shi'a alliance controlling the world's major energy supplies, and independent of Washington - or even worse, establishing closer links with the China-based Asian Energy Security Grid and Shanghai Cooperation Council. "The results could be truly apocalyptic. And even in tiny Lebanon, the leading Lebanese academic scholar of Hizbullah, and a harsh critic of the organization, describes the current conflict in "apocalyptic terms," warning that possibly "All hell would be let loose" if the outcome of the US-Israel campaign leaves a situation in which "the Shiite community is seething with resentment at Israel, the United States and the government that it perceives as its betrayer. "It is no secret that in past years, Israel has helped to destroy secular Arab nationalism and to create Hizbullah and Hamas, just as US violence has expedited the rise of extremist Islamic fundamentalism and jihad terror. The reasons are understood. There are constant warnings about it by Western intelligence agencies, and by the leading specialists on these topics. "One can bury one's head in the sand and take comfort in a "wall-to-wall consensus" that what we do is "just and moral" (Maoz), ignoring the lessons of recent history, or simple rationality. Or one can face the facts, and approach dilemmas which are very serious by peaceful means. They are available. Their success can never be guaranteed. But we can be reasonably confident that viewing the world through a bombsight will bring further misery and suffering, perhaps even 'apocalypse soon.'" =========================================== A TERRIFYING RECORD OF LIES AND DECEIT Comments on Dershowitz 08.17.2006 | chomsky.info By Noam Chomsky Alan Dershowitz's regular little performances are eminently ignorable, including the one reproduced below. But since I've been asked several times for comments on this one, a few follow. Dershowitz's opens by writing that "Chomsky is circulating a letter which he got two naïve Nobel Prize winners--the playwright Harold Pinter and the poet José Saramago--to sign." The rest goes on with "Chomsky claims," etc., and ends with a warning to those who "sign a Chomsky letter without checking its contents. If they don't, it tells us how little they value truth." Let's take it apart, piece by piece. As Dershowitz knows, the letter was written and circulated by John Berger, who approached the "two naïve Nobel Prize winners," as well as me and several others. In the normal fashion, some of us had suggestions about the text, and then helped him to circulate it. By Dershowitz standards, this fabrication is very minor, but it is of some interest nonetheless. Dershowitz readers will be aware that whenever his sensitive antennae pick up a phrase that might be critical of Israeli government policies, if my name is even remotely associated, it quickly becomes the "hard left gang of Israel bashers" led by the evil demon Chomsky. Why the consistent fabrications over the past 36 years – which, of course, merit no response? Dershowitz and I know very well, but others may be intrigued, so I might as well make the reason public for the first time. His pathetic behavior traces back to what was probably our first contact. In April 1973, Dershowitz wrote a scurrilous attack in the Boston Globe against Israel's leading human rights activist, Dr. Israel Shahak, the chairman of Israel's League for Human and Civil Rights, in which he even went so far as to support a government effort to destroy the League by methods so outrageous that they were at once declared illegal by the Israeli courts. I responded, correcting his slanders and fabrications – that is, every single substantive statement. He then tried to lie his way out of it, even descending to falsification of Israeli court records. I responded again, citing the actual court records and responding to his new lies and deceit. The incident demonstrated conclusively that Dershowitz is not only a remarkable liar and slanderer, but also an extreme opponent of elementary civil rights. That is crystal clear from the correspondence, reproduced below. Dershowitz flew into a fury over the exposure, and ever since has produced a series of hysterical tirades and lies concerning some entity in his fantasy world named "Chomsky," who lives on "planet Chomsky." That is his standard style when he is exposed, reaching truly grotesque levels in his efforts to discredit Norman Finkelstein (and even his mother, probably a new low in depravity) after Finkelstein's meticulous documentation of Dershowitz's astonishing lies in his vulgar apologetics for Israeli crimes (Beyond Chutzpah). Dershowitz's tirade about Berger's letter opens by referring to the first two sentences, which read: "The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press." Here Dershowitz reveals his amazing discovery that statements in brief letters of protest are not technical monographs, and are necessarily incomplete and imprecise. His counterparts in Teheran, if they sink low enough, would make exactly the same complaints about statements protesting repression of dissidents and other state crimes. The quoted statement in Berger's letter is, in fact, accurate as far as it goes, more than sufficiently so for a brief letter protesting atrocities. And Dershowitz doubtless discovered from his Google search that full details are readily available on the internet, on this very website and on Znet, where he found the following footnote to my account of this incident: Jonathan Cook, "The British Media and the Invasion of Gaza," Medialens (UK), June 30, 2006, http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060630_kidnapped_by_israel.php; Josh Brannon, "IDF Commandos Enter Gaza, Capture Two Hamas Terrorists," Jerusalem Post, June 25, 2006; Ken Ellingwood, "2 Palestinians Held in Israel's First Arrest Raid in Gaza Since Pullout," Los Angeles Times, June 25, 2006, p. A20. Apart from the Los Angeles Times, there were only a few marginal words in the Baltimore Sun (June 25) and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (June 25). Moreover, no mainstream media source chose to refer to this event when discussing Shalit's capture. The only serious coverage I know of in the English-language press appeared in the Turkish Daily News (June 25). (Database search by David Peterson.) The opening sentences in Berger's letter are indeed curtailed, in the normal fashion of all protest letters. Though accurate as far as they go, they leave it to the reader to understand the crucial significance of the kidnapping of the two Gaza civilians, the Muamar brothers, on June 24, over and above the fact that it is yet another crime of Dershowitz's favored state. The point is obvious, but since it may require a moment's attention, Dershowitz evidently assumed that it would provide an opening for yet another exercise in deceit. So let me spell it out, apologizing to the reader for stating the obvious. The obvious point is that the kidnapping of the two Gaza civilians was well-known, but scarcely and dismissively reported, apart from the Turkish press, which had the one serious news report (June 25). In the US media there was no comment nor follow-up, in sharp contrast to the capture of Cpl. Gilad Shalit the following day. While Shalit's name is known to any newspaper reader, the Muamar brothers, as Berger's letter correctly states, are unknown – though their names can be discovered by those who undertake research projects (or read the dissident media). A Google search for "Shalit" and "Muamar" (with several possible spellings) will quickly make brilliantly clear the difference in reaction to the events of June 24 and June 25. In fact such a search was carried out, by David Peterson, using the several possible spellings for "Muamar." The ratio of mentions of Shalit and Muamar is not far from 100 to 1. Of course that is a vast underestimate of the actual ratio, because the kidnapping of the Muamar brothers was mentioned casually and dismissively, with no comment or follow-up, while the capture of Shalit elicited immense outrage and support for the sharp and brutal Israeli escalation of atrocities. And as Peterson also found, the ratio rises very sharply if we extend the search period beyond the first week, because the capture of Shalit continued to arouse great attention, indignation, and support for the murderous Israeli retaliation, while the Muamar brothers received a few dismissive mentions in news reports the next day, and then virtually disappeared. Evidently, kidnapping of civilians is a far more serious crime than capture of a soldier. Those who do not understand the terminology used might turn to military historian Caleb Carr, who discusses Israel's escalated attacks on Gaza `to rescue what Israel claimed was a "kidnapped" soldier -- an assertion that was absurd because a uniformed, front-line noncommissioned officer can no more be "kidnapped" by the enemy than an innocent, unarmed child can "die in battle".' (Los Angeles Times, August 12, 2006). The great significance of these incidents on successive days can hardly be overemphasized: they reveal that the show of outrage over the Shalit kidnapping, and the support for Israel's sharp acceleration of atrocities in Gaza in response, was cynical fraud. That is even more dramatically true in Dershowitz's case, in the light of his desperate efforts to blow smoke to obscure the very clear and critically significant facts. Furthermore, as Gideon Levy accurately wrote in Ha'aretz – as Dershowitz surely discovered in his Google search -- the IDF kidnapping of civilians the day before the capture of Cpl. Shalit strips away any "legitimate basis for the IDF's operation" -- and, we may add, any legitimate basis for support for these operations. Dershowitz's interesting effort to lie his way out of this by citing a few of the references to the Muamar kidnapping reveals again his remarkable contempt for his readers. Evidently, the more he finds that the facts were reported, the more he shoots himself in the foot, demonstrating that kidnapping of civilians is considered insignificant when carried out by "our side," and thus eliminating any moral legitimacy for the Israeli escalation of crimes and any support for it, even any tolerance of these crimes. The point is so trivially obvious that Dershowitz cannot possibly fail to understand it, but evidently he hopes that his usual techniques of bluster and tirade will somehow obscure this further illustration of the depths to which he will sink in his apologetics and personal jihads. Putting aside irrelevant wire service and BBC reports, Dershowitz omits the sources he found in what I had written, but adds the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Boston Globe. The June 25 CT did indeed devote 27 words to the kidnapping of the two Gaza civilians, and the WP the same day devoted 87 words to it, in the closing two paragraphs of an AP report devoted to the same day's Palestinian raid on the IDF base where Gilad Shalit was captured -- thus demonstrating Dershowitz's cynicism even more fully, as noted, as would also be the case if something did appear in the BG. No one has been able to find a report there, though they did have an editorial on these events which demonstrates again the fraudulence of the show of outrage over the Shalit kidnapping and the utter illegitimacy of the Israeli response and the support for it. As is standard, the editorial omits the kidnapping of the Muamar brothers by the IDF, and opens as follows, under the headline "MIDEAST HELD HOSTAGE": "The attack Sunday [June 25] on military targets inside Israel, which led to an Israeli soldier being taken hostage, was not merely an arbitrary reflex within a cycle of vengeance. It was ordered by someone with command responsibility in Hamas, who could not be indifferent to the timing of his action or to its political and military consequences. Because the hostage-taking operation has brought Palestinians and Israelis alike to the brink of a new round of foreseeable disasters, it is crucial that all concerned parties focus their remedial efforts on the right address": Hamas, not the US-backed IDF, which committed a far worse crime the preceding day. Once again, the BG reaction demonstrates very clearly that Dershowitz is not just a cynical fraud, but is so to an unusual extreme. Dershowitz insists on disgracing himself even further by writing that "the two arrested individuals were alleged Hamas militants, a fact that Chomsky conveniently omits." Since it was not relevant to Berger's letter, he rightly omitted it. But Dershowitz "conveniently omits" that he knows very well the response to his shocking comment. Even in the unlikely event that he could not have figured it out for himself, his Google search surely discovered my interview in Yediot Ahronot (Ynet; the full version is on this site), with the following response to those who might sink to Dershowitz's level: `Apologists for state crimes claim that the kidnapping of the Gaza civilians is justified by IDF claims that they are "Hamas militants" or were planning crimes. By their logic, they should therefore be lauding the capture of Gilad Shalit, a soldier in an army that was (uncontroversially) shelling and bombing Gaza. These performances are truly disgraceful.' Again, the point is so trivial that Dershowitz could certainly have figured it out for himself even if he had not found it with his Google search, and "conveniently omitted" it. Dershowitz adds triumphantly: "Nor was the arrest of these Hamas terrorists the origin of the crisis, as Chomsky asserts"; rather, it was the July 12 capture of Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. Let's take the trouble again to decode the lies and absurdities packed into this sentence. The silliest one is the reference to July 12. The Berger letter did not even mention Lebanon: it was strictly limited to Palestine. And, exactly as the Globe editors and everyone else reported, and as Dershowitz of course knows, the upsurge in violence in Palestine followed the capture of Shalit on June 25. As Dershowitz also doubtless understands, if Berger's letter had been extended to the events in Lebanon several weeks latter, it could have pointed out that the reaction to the July 12 capture of Israeli soldiers was also cynical fraud, as demonstrated not only by the (null) reaction to the kidnapping of the Muamar brothers, but also by the (null) reaction to the regular Israeli practice for many years of kidnapping Lebanese, many held in prisons, including secret prisons like Israel's prison/torture chamber Camp 1391, exposed three years ago (in Israel and Europe), then apparently forgotten. No one ever suggested that this regular practice, or vastly worse US-backed Israeli crimes in Lebanon, would justify invasion of Israel, murder of hundreds of Israelis, and destruction of much of the country. There should be no need to elaborate. However, since the Berger letter kept to earlier events, Dershowitz's silly claim is revealed again to be more contempt for his readers. Turning to another transparent lie, the Berger letter pointedly denied that the kidnapping of the Muamar brothers was the origin of the crisis, contrary to what Dershowitz claims. The crucial point made in the opening sentence of the letter, as Dershowitz surely understands, was that the kidnapping of the two Gaza civilians, though known, was considered insignificant and elicited no criticism or reaction. It was the capture of an Israeli soldier the next day that led to the US-backed Israeli escalation of its attack on Gaza (with Palestinian casualties more than quadrupling from June to July, with over 170 killed, according to UN sources). And we may also add a minor bit of Dershowitz deceit: it is only for strict party liners that unsupported IDF charges about "Hamas terrorists" instantly rise to the level of revealed truths – though as noted, it would be irrelevant even if for once the charges were shown to be true in some credible tribunal. Among the articles that appeared the day after the June 24 kidnapping of the Muamar brothers was one of Dershowitz's classics, in the Jerusalem Post, June 25, under the headline "Palestinian terrorists want Israel to kill Palestinian civilians." "It may be difficult for some decent people to believe," Dershowitz instructs us, "that Palestinian terrorists are actually trying to increase the number of casualties among their own civilians but the evidence is overwhelming." It may indeed be difficult "for some decent people to believe" that Dershowitz actually exists, and is not simply invented by anti-Semites who want to ridicule supporters of Israel, "but the evidence is overwhelming" that he really does exist. By "terrorists," Dershowitz means anyone designated by the US and Israel as terrorists, whatever the facts. That apparently includes all of those who committed the crime of voting the wrong way in a free election in Palestine, and in addition, virtually the entire population of Lebanon, as Dershowitz explained in another classic, which also might lead some to wonder whether he even exists: www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/lebanon -is-not-a-victim_b__26715.html.... The rest is too depraved to require comment. Perhaps the author of the letter that evoked Dershowitz's intriguing performance, or the other signers, might want to respond. I have documented the actual facts he distorts so extensively in print that there is no need for me to do so, and the the general record of deceit that Dershowitz recycles has been thoroughly refuted by Norman Finkelstein, again eliminating any need to respond. |
An Open Letter to George W. Bush on Lebanon
Telling the Israelis to "Take Your Time"
By RALPH NADER
The widespread destruction of a defenseless Lebanon-its civilians, its life-sustaining public services, its environment-is a grim and indelible testament to your consummate cruelty and ignorance. Nearly two weeks ago when your tardy Secretary of State met with the Israeli Prime Minister, the message she carried was summarized in a large headline across page one of an Israeli newspaper, "TAKE YOUR TIME."
Yes, take your time, says George W. Bush, pulverizing fleeing refugees in cars full of families, bombing apartment buildings, hospitals and the poor huddled in large south Beirut slums.
Take your time, says George W. Bush, in destroying bridges, roads, gasoline stations, airports, seaports, wheat silos, vehicles with medical supplies, clearly marked ambulances taking the wounded to clinics, even a milk factory .
Take your time, says George W. Bush, while shelters are demolished with bodies of little children together with their mothers and fathers buried in the rubble.
Take your time, says George W. Bush, while the number of fleeing refugees nears one million Lebanese, many exposed to hunger, disease, lack of potable water and medicines. All this in a country friendly to the United States, which played by your rules, protested the Syrian army back into Syria and was trying democratically to put itself together.
Take your time, says George W. Bush, while he speeds more supplies of precision missiles containing deadly anti-personnel cluster bombs which will claim the lives of innocent children for years into the future. The phosphorous bombs laying waste to fields growing crops and horribly burning innocents come from the U.S.A. under your direction.
Do you think the taxpayers of America would approve of such shipped weapons were they ever asked?
Are there words in the English language suitable for the impeachable serial war crimes you are intimately involved in committing not only in Iraq but also now through your encouragement and supplying of the once again invading Israeli government?
Are there words to describe your strategic stupidity which will further increase opposition and peril to the United States around the world and especially in the Middle East? Your own Generals and former CIA Director, Porter Goss, among others in your Administration, have declared that your occupation of Iraq is a magnet attracting the recruiting and training of more and more "terrorists" from Iraq and other countries. And so now this will be the case in Lebanon. All this is a growing "blowback," to use the CIA word for a boomeranging foreign policy, that is endangering the security of the United States.
The calibrated Israeli terror bombing of Lebanon comes in three stages. With its electronic pinpoint precision bombing and artillery, the Israeli government goes after civilians, their homes, cities, towns and villages. Then after telling some to abandon their neighborhoods, it cuts population centers off from each other by destroying transportation facilities into and inside Lebanon, making both refugee flight and delivery of emergency relief efforts either impossible or very difficult. Then its planes, tanks and artillery endanger or destroy what food, water and relief efforts manage to get through to the injured and dying. Warehouse food supplies are incinerated. About four hundred small fishing boats north of Beirut on the oil-polluted coastline were demolished as well.
All the above mayhem and much more have been reported in the U.S., European, Lebanese and Israeli media. The bulk of the fatalities in Lebanon have been civilians. The bulk of the fatalities on the Israeli side have been soldiers. Very fortunately for the Israelis, the Hezbollah rockets are very inaccurate, the vast majority falling harmlessly. Unfortunately for the Lebanese, the precision American armaments of the Israelis are very accurate, which serves to account for why the total casualties and physical destruction are 100 times greater in Lebanon than in Israel.
Most of these accurate munitions come from your decision to send them. Knowing they will be used for offensive purposes, including the lethal demolition of a long-established UN compound, in violation of the Arms Export Control Act which you have sworn to uphold, places the responsibility of being a domestic law breaker squarely on your shoulders.
There is another law that is not being enforced-the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act of 1996 sponsored by then Republican Senator Robert Dole. Foreign aid is supposed to be cut off to any nation that obstructs the provision of humanitarian aid to another country. As one example, press reports that two tankers, each with 30,000 tons of diesel fuel critical for operating Lebanese hospitals and water pumping stations, are idling in Cyprus from fear of the totally dominant Israeli navy and air force.
There are only a few days left of fuel in Lebanon, which is heading for a larger wave of secondary casualties. They and other critical suppliers need safe passage which the U.S. Navy in the area can readily provide, should it receive orders from the Commander in Chief.
You heard high Israeli officials accurately say on the day the massive bombing of Lebanon began, followed not preceded by Hezbollah rockets, that "nothing in Lebanon is safe." That huge over-reaction to the recent Hezbollah border raid, in addition to many more previous air, sea and land border violations by the Israeli government, certainly put you on public notice.
Since you view yourself as a reborn Christian, and since you have the power to stop the Israeli state terror assaults on Lebanon, you may wish to reflect on Leviticus 19:16 "Neither shalt thou stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor."
Lebanon was a friendly country to you and you have stood by not just idly, but willfully aiding and abetting its devastation.