AUTHOR: Redaspie DATE: Monday, July 17, 2006 ----- BODY:

I was going to give you a post about an article I found on the web that criticises Marxist approaches to disability rights. However, I now can't find the article, so that's off the table for now. Anyway, there are at present much more pressing issues.

It's been six days now since Israel started its murderous assault on the Lebanon - and let's be very clear this is a massacre. I was watching Channel 4 News this evening and was treated to such visual delights as a small child, no more than a few years old, lying quite obviously severely injured on a bed in (one hopes) a hospital. Of course, the same scenes have probably been repeated in Haifa this week, which Hizbullah has been shelling. In my view, any deaths of Israelis are as much the responsibility of the Israeli government as deaths in Lebanon. Olmert seems to be perfectly willing to place his citizens at risk to accomplish his government's strategic goals.

And what are Israel's goals? Well, don't be fooled by anyone claiming that this was just a retaliatory measure against Hizbullah kidnapping two soldiers. The level of the response, to both the actions of Hizbullah and also of the Palestinian militants who kidnapped the other Israeli soldier earlier on, was so extraordinarily disproportionate as to make it impossible to believe other than that Israel was using these instances as a pretext for all-out attacks on the Gaza and Lebanon. The reason for the attack on the Gaza was pretty obvious - Israel longs to destroy the Hamas government there and now sees this as the perfect time to do so. Today, they flattened the Palestinian foreign ministry, its latest act in its attempts to destroy the Palestinian infrastructure.

Israel's intervention in the Lebanon is a less obvious story, and so it is worthwhile for a brief history lesson. This article by Israeli activist Uri Avnery gives us the reason - the toppling of the Lebanese government and the installation of a puppet regime. This has been an idea amongst Israeli ruling elites since the early days of Israel. Avnery notes that:

"In 1955, David Ben-Gurion proposed taking a "Christian officer" and
installing him as dictator. Moshe Sharet showed that this idea was based on
complete ignorance of Lebanese affairs and torpedoed it".

Twenty-seven years later, a similar plan, masterminded by Ariel Sharon, was put into operation. As now, the actions of a Palestinian group - in that case the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador to London by the Abu Nidal group - were used as a pretext to invade the Lebanon, ostensibly to eliminate the PLO, just as Israel is now attempting to eliminate Hezbollah. In reality, Israel was working alongside the far-right Christian Phalangists, and seeking to install one of their leaders, Bashir Gemayel, as Lebanese President. He would then, according to the plan, sign a peace treaty with Israel. The Israelis got as far as Beirut, and managed to get Gemayal elected as President, but he was assassinated almost as soon as they got into office.

Now it is clear that Israel is planning to play the Lebanon card again, and one strongly suspects that they have been seeking to do so ever since Syria withdrew in 2000. And as before, they have the tacit approval of the US. Back in 1981, when Israeli high-ups were in contact with Gemayel, they brought Washington on board the discussions, and were told by the then Secretary of State Alexander Haig, that: "there could be no assault without a major provocation from Lebanon". In other words, the US was ready to back Israel up if there was a sufficiently strong pretext for military action by Israel. Similarly today, the US has given a green light to Israel to do whatever it wishes. In St Petersburg he stated that:

"The best way to stop the violence is for Hezbollah to lay down its arms
and to stop attacking.”

This, as the World Socialist Website notes, is tantamount to asking the membership of Hezbollah to commit suicide. And Tony Blair is fully in concord with him on this (a Labour prime minister... a Labour prime minister... ). This can be seen from the exchange between him and Bush at the St Petersburg summit, which was, in either a brilliant piece of luck or (if one believes Channel 4) an attempt by Putin, sitting next to the two, to embarass both of them, picked up by a mic that had been left open. The exchange is here and it is clear that as far as they are concerned, Syria and Hizbullah are the problem, and even attempting to restrain Israel is too much for them - witness their dismissive attitude towards Kofi Annan's anodyne call for a ceasefire.

So what is likely to happen next? At some stage, unless something happens which causes Israel to back down, we are likely to see a ground invasion of Lebanon. What is particularly worrying, however, is the possibilities of a wider conflict. The World Socialist Website notes the possibility of Israel pushing beyond merely Lebanon and attacking, and possibly invading, Syria and even launching attacks on Iran. Clearly, both Israel and Washington see both these countries as among the 'rogue states' that the neocons want to target and destroy. There is, therefore, an almost total confluence of interests here. Indeed, in respect to Iran, I have believed for a long while now that an Israeli 'proxy' attack on Iran's nuclear facilities is the dream scenario for the US government, which very badly wants to tame Iran but is stuck in a military and political quagmire in Iraq which makes such actions very difficult. Such speculations are not simply the fevered thoughts of the far left - it is also a real fear among ordinary Syrians, as this BBC report makes clear.

We can only hope that something occurs to prevent Israel getting to where they can realistically contemplate ambitions of that nature. One Syrian summed up the situation perfectly if such eventualities come to pass: "The Israelis wouldn't be stupid enough, would they? If they hit Syria, that's World War III".

UPDATE: There is an interesting article on the World Socialist Web Site today indicating that, despite reports of overwhelming support for war by Israel's population, that there is some evidence of opposition:

"Some 2,000 people marched in Israel’s commercial capital of Tel Aviv on
Sunday to demand prisoner exchange negotiations with the Palestinian Hamas and
the Lebanese Hezbollah, and an end to the offensive against Lebanon."

The marchers were using some pretty strong slogans, including accusing Olmert of murdering children, and of being complicit with American policy. This suggests that there is a small, but vital, thread of opposition in Israel with an anti-imperialist tinge.

-------- COMMENT-AUTHOR:

Redaspie COMMENT-DATE:6:19 PM COMMENT-BODY:Well, the peace movement in Israel has historically been very moderate. As for the kibbutz thing, I don't think left-zionists are necessarily any less bigoted than right-zionists. Your analysis of the roots of Israel is pretty accurate. Israel was originally meant to be Britain's "loyal little Jewish Ulster". --------