>> ^acidSpine:

long. Wow it's like the only difference between Hezbollah and America is they take care of their veterans


They are even in large part foreigners to Lebanon like the Americans, being founded pre-dominantly by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and still receiving most of their support through Iran and Syria.

Also, let's not forget the racism. From Hezbollah's own description of itself:

Our primary assumption in our fight against Israel states that the Zionist entity is
aggressive from its inception, and built on lands wrested from their owners, at the
expense of the rights of the Muslim people. Therefore our struggle will end only when
this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace
agreements, whether separate or consolidated.
We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as
enemies, for the reason that such negotiation is nothing but the recognition of the
legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of Palestine. Therefore we oppose and reject the
Camp David Agreements, the proposals of King Fahd, the Fez and Reagan plan,
Brezhnev's and the French-Egyptian proposals, and all other programs that include the
recognition (even the implied recognition) of the Zionist entity.

Now re-read and remember that the 'Zionist entity' is Hezbollah's name for the entire state of Israel, and all that have any desire to see it continue to exist.

His analysis of the situation between Israel and Lebanon is pretty accurate. I don't agree with his view that Hezbollah is merely defensive and Israel is the sole provocateur, but it's certainly debatable.

Also, while true, I don't really see how that link is related to this video, @marinara.

Well, since this has been promoted, I'll paste the reply I left on EndAll's profile to his question.
I'll also correct myself: In my third point I falsely claim that Lehi was responsible for the King David hotel bombing, when in fact it was the Irgun that committed that act. Those guys weren't as extreme as Lehi, but not by much.
>> ^demon_ix:

- The video seems to take it for granted that "Zionists" are a tiny fraction of Jews, when in fact, the opposite is true. The anti-Israel Jews are a tiny minority, and their only objection to Israel is that it's too early. They believe that when the messiah comes again, he will take back the land, and so there is no reason to do it before his return. They are the Jewish equivalent of Christian believers in Rapture, fanatical Muslims and so on.
- There's some nice footage at 5:50 of planes dropping bombs and cannons bombarding settlements while Mr. Rees discusses the Jewish defensive organizations, conveying the appearance that the Jews were attacking Palestinians at the time, when the biggest piece of military hardware they had at the time were rifles, often without ammo.
- The bombing of the King David hotel (6:46) was performed by a tiny splinter group known as Lehi, which was the most extreme bunch of lunatics in our history. They even attempted to ally themselves with Nazi Germany at one point. Mr. Rees generously attributes this to "The Zionists".
- In the description of UN resolution 181 (7:20), he skips completely over the actual formation of the Nation of Israel on May 14th 1948, and declares the 1948 war which involved EVERY SINGLE NATION BORDERING ISRAEL, was in fact simply Jews terrorizing Palestinians. The relevant details about the actual progress of the war are here. He mentions the actual war in about 3 words afterwards.
- The 1967 war, or the Six Day War, started with an invasion of Israel by it's bordering nations. Mr. Rees states that Israel expanded it's borders as though it was on an Imperialist quest to grab more land.
- The quickly described war of 1973, or the Yom-Kippur War, was started AGAIN by an invasion from all sides. This time, they picked Yom-Kippur as their day of attack, and managed to catch most of our army by surprise on the one day where the vast majority of Jews rest and eat nothing. This war wasn't spinnable in an anti-Israeli way for Mr. Rees, so he glossed over it quickly and moved on.
- At around 14:00 Mr. Rees describes the American aid to Jordan and Egypt as "payment for not attacking Israel", and ignores the fact that Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 and Jordan followed in 1994. Syria and Lebanon are still technically at war with Israel, and Iraq actively attacked Israel with Scud missiles during the first Gulf War.
---------
I could probably go into further detail, find more links and keep debating this, but it's 2:15am and I'm quite sleepy. I'll be glad to continue tomorrow.
In reply to this comment by EndAll:
Can you point out for me what history was rewritten? What facts they got wrong, or left out?

When I think of fun loving great places to visit or live.....well just read and see what I mean.......................(the Koran is not a simple history. It is the way all true Muslims must live.
What Islam Isn't
By Dr. Peter Hammond
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, April 21, 2008
The following is adapted from Dr. Peter Hammond's book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat:

Islam is not a religion nor is it a cult. It is a complete system.

Islam has religious, legal, political, economic and military components. The religious component is a beard for all the other components.

Islamization occurs when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their so-called 'religious rights.'

When politically correct and culturally diverse societies agree to 'the reasonable' Muslim demands for their 'religious rights,' they also get the other components under the table. Here's how it works (percentages source CIA: The World Fact Book (2007)).

As long as the Muslim population remains around 1% of any given country they will be regarded as a peace-loving minority and not as a threat to anyone. In fact, they may be featured in articles and films, stereotyped for their colorful uniqueness:

United States -- Muslim 1.0%
Australia -- Muslim 1.5%
Canada -- Muslim 1.9%
China -- Muslim 1%-2%
Italy -- Muslim 1.5%
Norway -- Muslim 1.8%

At 2% and 3% they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs:

Denmark -- Muslim 2%
Germany -- Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom -- Muslim 2.7%
Spain -- Muslim 4%
Thailand -- Muslim 4.6%

From 5% on they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population.

They will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves -- along with threats for failure to comply. ( United States ).

France -- Muslim 8%
Philippines -- Muslim 5%
Sweden -- Muslim 5%
Switzerland -- Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands -- Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad &Tobago -- Muslim 5.8%

At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islam is not to convert the world but to establish Sharia law over the entire world.

When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions ( Paris --car-burnings). Any non-Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats ( Amsterdam - Mohammed cartoons).

Guyana -- Muslim 10%
India -- Muslim 13.4%
Israel -- Muslim 16%
Kenya -- Muslim 10%
Russia -- Muslim 10-15%

After reaching 20% expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and church and synagogue burning:
Ethiopia -- Muslim 32.8%

At 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare:

Bosnia -- Muslim 40%
Chad -- Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon -- Muslim 59.7%

From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels:

Albania -- Muslim 70%
Malaysia -- Muslim 60.4%
Qatar -- Muslim 77.5%
Sudan -- Muslim 70%

After 80% expect State run ethnic cleansing and genocide:

Bangladesh -- Muslim 83%
Egypt -- Muslim 90%
Gaza -- Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia -- Muslim 86.1%
Iran -- Muslim 98%
Iraq -- Muslim 97%
Jordan -- Muslim 92%
Morocco -- Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan -- Muslim 97%
Palestine -- Muslim 99%
Syria -- Muslim 90%
Tajikistan -- Muslim 90%
Turkey -- Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates -- Muslim 96%

100% will usher in the peace of 'Dar-es-Salaam' -- the Islamic House of Peace -- there's supposed to be peace because everybody is a Muslim:

Afghanistan -- Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia -- Muslim 100%
Somalia -- Muslim 100%
Yemen -- Muslim 99.9%
(Where's your next vacation to?)

i donno, i have a lot to say about this but I'm too lazy to type it all down.

historically israel has been at war with arabs, and Iran isn't even arab. Even as the bombs fall, Israel will be waging political war here in the US for support and money.\

Of course Israel do some bombing in Iran, and then "declare victory" but this has to be the dumbest response to an actual threat by hesbollah in lebanon. But I guess Israel is so smart I just can't understand their methods.

- The video seems to take it for granted that "Zionists" are a tiny fraction of Jews, when in fact, the opposite is true. The anti-Israel Jews are a tiny minority, and their only objection to Israel is that it's too early. They believe that when the messiah comes again, he will take back the land, and so there is no reason to do it before his return. They are the Jewish equivalent of Christian believers in Rapture, fanatical Muslims and so on.

- There's some nice footage at 5:50 of planes dropping bombs and cannons bombarding settlements while Mr. Rees discusses the Jewish defensive organizations, conveying the appearance that the Jews were attacking Palestinians at the time, when the biggest piece of military hardware they had at the time were rifles, often without ammo.

- The bombing of the King David hotel (6:46) was performed by a tiny splinter group known as Lehi, which was the most extreme bunch of lunatics in our history. They even attempted to ally themselves with Nazi Germany at one point. Mr. Rees generously attributes this to "The Zionists".

- In the description of UN resolution 181 (7:20), he skips completely over the actual formation of the Nation of Israel on May 14th 1948, and declares the 1948 war which involved EVERY SINGLE NATION BORDERING ISRAEL, was in fact simply Jews terrorizing Palestinians. The relevant details about the actual progress of the war are here. He mentions the actual war in about 3 words afterwards.

- The 1967 war, or the Six Day War, started with an invasion of Israel by it's bordering nations. Mr. Rees states that Israel expanded it's borders as though it was on an Imperialist quest to grab more land.

- The quickly described war of 1973, or the Yom-Kippur War, was started AGAIN by an invasion from all sides. This time, they picked Yom-Kippur as their day of attack, and managed to catch most of our army by surprise on the one day where the vast majority of Jews rest and eat nothing. This war wasn't spinnable in an anti-Israeli way for Mr. Rees, so he glossed over it quickly and moved on.

- At around 14:00 Mr. Rees describes the American aid to Jordan and Egypt as "payment for not attacking Israel", and ignores the fact that Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 and Jordan followed in 1994. Syria and Lebanon are still technically at war with Israel, and Iraq actively attacked Israel with Scud missiles during the first Gulf War.

---------
I could probably go into further detail, find more links and keep debating this, but it's 2:15am and I'm quite sleepy. I'll be glad to continue tomorrow.

In reply to this comment by EndAll:
Can you point out for me what history was rewritten? What facts they got wrong, or left out?

Glad to see this is getting some attention.

It's absolutely atrocious how Lebanon and Palestine manipulate western sympathies. Sometimes even to the extent of endangering their own civilians.

"Is Israel not simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by the States of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and Lebanon?"

The short answer is, no. Israel is a classic settler nation with all the existential attributes and brutality of a colonial ruler.

Sometimes an article deserves reprinting in full.

(copyfree)

Date : 2004-01-29
''Diagnosing Benny Morris: the mind of a European settler''

By Gabriel Ash - YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States)

Israeli historian Benny Morris crossed a new line of shame when he put his academic credentials and respectability in the service of outlining the "moral" justification for a future genocide against Palestinians.

Benny Morris is the Israeli historian most responsible for the vindication of the Palestinian narrative of 1948. The lives of about 700,000 people were shattered as they were driven from their homes by the Jewish militia (and, later, the Israeli army) between December 1947 and early 1950. Morris went through Israeli archives and wrote the day by day account of this expulsion, documenting every "ethnically cleansed" village and every recorded act of violence, and placing each in the context of the military goals and perceptions of the cleansers.

Israel's apologists tried in vain to attack Morris' professional credibility. From the opposite direction, since he maintained that the expulsion was not "by design," he was also accused of drawing excessively narrow conclusions from the documents and of being too naive a reader of dissimulating statements. Despite these limitations, Morris' "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugees Problem, 1947-1949" is an authoritative record of the expulsion.

In anticipation of the publication of the revised edition, Morris was interviewed in Haaretz - ( http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/380986.html,
Hebrew original at
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/objects/pages/PrintArticle.jhtml?itemNo=380119). The major new findings in the revised book, based on fresh documents, further darken the picture.

The new archival material, Morris reveals, records routine execution of civilians, twenty-four massacres, including one in Jaffa, and at least twelve cases of rape by military units, which Morris acknowledges are probably "the tip of the iceberg." Morris also says he found documents confirming the broader conclusions favored by his critics: the expulsion was pre-meditated; concrete expulsion orders were given in writing, some traceable directly to Ben Gurion.

Morris also found documentations for Arab High Command calls for evacuating women and children from certain villages, evidence he oddly claims strengthen the Zionist propaganda claim that Palestinians left because they were told to leave by the invading Arab states. Morris had already documented two dozen such cases in the first edition. It is hard to see how attempts by Arab commanders to protect civilians from anticipated rape and murder strengthen the Zionist fairy tale. But that failed attempt at evenhandedness is the least of Morris' problems. As the interview progresses, it emerges with growing clarity that, while Morris the historian is a professional and cautious presenter of facts, Morris the intellectual is a very sick person.

His sickness is of the mental-political kind. He lives in a world populated not by fellow human beings, but by racist abstractions and stereotypes. There is an over-abundance of quasi-poetic images in the interview, as if the mind is haunted by the task of grasping what ails it: "The Palestinian citizens of Israel are a time bomb," not fellow citizens. Islam is "a world in which human lives don't have the same value as in the West." Arabs are "barbarians" at the gate of the Roman Empire. Palestinian society is "a serial killer" that ought to be executed, and "a wild animal" that must be caged.

Morris' disease was diagnosed over forty years ago, by Frantz Fanon. Based on his experience in subjugated Africa, Fanon observed that "the colonial world is a Manichean world. It is not enough for the settler to delimit physically, that is to say, with the help of the army and the police, the place of the native. As if to show the totalitarian character of colonial exploitation, the settler paints the native as a sort of quintessence of evil … The native is declared insensitive to ethics … the enemy of values. … He is a corrosive element, destroying all that comes near it … the unconscious and irretrievable instrument of blind forces" (from "The Wretched of the Earth"). And further down, "the terms the settler uses when he mentions the native are zoological terms" (let's not forget to place Morris' metaphors in the context of so many other Israeli appellations for Palestinians: Begin's "two-legged beasts", Eitan's "drugged cockroaches" and Barak's ultra-delicate "salmon"). Morris is a case history in the psychopathology of colonialism.

Bad Genocide, Good Genocide

When the settler encounters natives who refuse to cast down their eyes, his disease advances to the next stage -- murderous sociopathy.

Morris, who knows the exact scale of the terror unleashed against Palestinians in 1948, considers it justified. First he suggests that the terror was justified because the alternative would have been a genocide of Jews by Palestinians. Raising the idea of genocide in this context is pure, and cheap, hysteria. Indeed, Morris moves immediately to a more plausible explanation: the expulsion was a precondition for creating a Jewish state, i.e. the establishment of a specific political preference, not self-defense.

This political explanation, namely that the expulsion was necessary to create the demographic conditions, a large Jewish majority, favored by the Zionist leadership, is the consensus of historians. But as affirmative defense, it is unsatisfactory. So the idea that Jews were in danger of genocide is repeated later, in a more honest way, as merely another racist, baseless generalization: "if it can, [Islamic society] will commit genocide."

But Morris sees no evil. Accusing Ben Gurion of failing to achieve an "Arabenrein Palestine," he recommends further ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, including those who are Israeli citizens. Not now, but soon, "within five or ten years," under "apocalyptic conditions" such as a regional war with unconventional weapons, a potentially nuclear war, which "is likely to happen within twenty years." For Morris, and it is difficult to overstate his madness at this point, the likelihood of a nuclear war within the foreseeable future is not the sorry end of a road better not taken, but merely a milestone, whose aftermath is still imaginable, and imaginable within the banal continuity of Zionist centennial policies: he foresees the exchange of unconventional missiles between Israel and unidentified regional states as a legitimate excuse for "finishing the job" of 1948.

Morris speaks explicitly of another expulsion, but, in groping for a moral apology for the past and the future expulsion of Palestinians, he presents a more general argument, one that justifies not only expulsion but also genocide. That statement ought to be repeated, for here is a crossing of a terrible and shameful line.

Morris, a respectable, Jewish, Israeli academic, is out in print in the respectable daily, Haaretz, justifying genocide as a legitimate tool of statecraft. It should be shocking. Yet anybody who interacts with American and Israeli Zionists knows that Morris is merely saying for the record what many think and even say unofficially. Morris, like most of Israel, lives in a temporality apart, an intellectual Galapagos Islands, a political Jurassic Park, where bizarre cousins of ideas elsewhere shamed into extinction still roam the mindscape proudly.

Nor should one think the slippage between expulsion, "transfer," and genocide without practical consequences. It is not difficult to imagine a planned expulsion turn into genocide under the stress of circumstances: The genocides of both European Jews and Armenians began as an expulsion. The expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 was the product of decades of thinking and imagining "transfer." We ought to pay attention: with Morris's statement, Zionist thinking crossed another threshold; what is now discussed has the potential to be actualized, if "apocalyptic conditions" materialize.

The march of civilization and the corpses of the uncivilized

It is instructive to look closer at the manner in which Morris uses racist thinking to justify genocide. Morris' interview, precisely because of its shamelessness, is a particularly good introductory text to Zionist thought.

Morris' racism isn't limited to Arabs. Genocide, according to Morris, is justified as long as it is done for "the final good." But what kind of good is worth the "forced extinction" of a whole people? Certainly, not the good of the latter. (Morris uses the word "Haqkhada," a Hebrew word usually associated with the extinction of animal species. Someone ought to inform Morris about the fact that Native Americans aren't extinct.)

According to Morris, the establishment of a more advanced society justifies genocide: "Yes, even the great American democracy couldn't come to be without the forced extinction of Native Americans. There are times the overall, final good justifies terrible, cruel deeds." Such hopeful comparisons between the future awaiting Palestinians and the fate of Native Americans are common to Israeli apologists. One delegation of American students was shocked and disgusted when it heard this analogy made by a spokesperson at the Israeli embassy in Washington.

Morris's supremacist view of "Western Civilization," that civilization values human life more than Islam, has its basis in the moral acceptance of genocide for the sake of "progress." Morris establishes the superiority of the West on both the universal respect for human life and the readiness to exterminate inferior races. The illogicalness of the cohabitation of a right to commit genocide together with a higher level of respect for human lives escapes him, and baffles us, at least until we grasp that the full weight of the concept of "human" is restricted, in the classic manner of Eurocentric racism, to dwellers of civilized (i.e. Western) nations.

This is the same logic that allowed early Zionists to describe Palestine as an empty land, despite the presence of a million inhabitants. In the end, it comes down to this: killing Arabs -- one dozen Arabs or one million Arabs, the difference is merely technical -- is acceptable if it is necessary in order to defend the political preferences of Jews because Jews belong to the superior West and Arabs are inferior. We must be thankful to Professor Morris for clarifying the core logic of Zionism so well.

The color of Jews

Morris assures us that his values are those of the civilized West, the values of universal morality, progress, etc. But then he also claims to hold the primacy of particular loyalties, a position for which he draws on Albert Camus. But to reconcile Morris' double loyalty to both Western universalism and to Jewish particularism, one must forget that these two identities were not always on the best of terms.

How can one explain Morris' knowledge that the ethnic Darwinism that was used to justify the murder of millions of non-whites, including Black African slaves, Native Americans, Arabs, and others, was also used to justify the attempt to exterminate Jews? How can Morris endorse the "civilizational" justification of genocide, which includes the genocide of Jews, even as he claims the holocaust as another justification for Zionism? Perhaps Morris' disjointed mind doesn't see the connection. Perhaps he thinks that there are "right" assertions of racist supremacy and "wrong" assertions of racist supremacy. Or perhaps Morris displays another facet of the psychopathologies of oppression, the victim's identification with the oppressor.

Perhaps in Morris' mind, one half tribalist and one half universalist, the Jews were murdered to make way for a superior, more purely Aryan, European civilization, and the Jews who are today serving in the Israeli army, both belong and do not belong to the same group. They belong when Morris invokes the totems of the tribe to justify loyalty. But when his attention turns to the universal principle of "superior civilization," these Jews are effaced, like poor relations one is ashamed to be associated with, sent back to the limbo they share with the great non-white mass of the dehumanized. In contrast, the Jews of Israel, self-identified as European, have turned white, dry-cleaned and bleached by Zionism, and with their whiteness they claim the privilege that Whites always had, the privilege to massacre members of "less advanced" races.

False testimony

It would be marvelous if Morris the historian could preserve his objective detachment while Morris the Zionist dances with the demons of Eurocentric racism. But the wall of professionalism -- and it is a very thick and impressive wall in Morris' case -- cannot hold against the torrent of hate.

For example, Morris lies about his understanding of the 2000 Camp David summit. In Haaretz, Morris says that, "when the Palestinians rejected Barak's proposal of July 2000 and Clinton's proposal of December 2000, I understood that they were not ready to accept a two state solution. They wanted everything. Lydda, and Akka and Jaffa."

But in his book "Righteous Victims," Morris explains the failure of the negotiations thus: "the PLO leadership had gradually accepted, or seemed to…Israel...keeping 78 percent of historical Palestine. But the PLO wanted the remaining 22 percent. … At Camp David, Barak had endorsed the establishment of a Palestinian state…[on only] 84-90 percent of that 22 percent. … Israel was also to control the territory between a greatly enlarged Jerusalem and Jericho, effectively cutting the core of the future Palestinian state into two…" Morris' chapter of "Righteous Victims" that deals with the '90s leaves a lot to be desired, but it still strives for some detached analysis. In contrast, in Haaretz Morris offers baseless claims he knows to be false.

If Morris lies about recent history, and even grossly misrepresents the danger Jews faced in Palestine in 1948, a period he is an expert on, his treatment of more general historical matters is all but ridiculous, an astounding mix of insinuations and cliches. For example, Morris reminds us that "the Arab nation won a big chunk of the Earth, not because of its intrinsic virtues and skills, but by conquering and murdering and forcing the conquered to convert." (What is Morris' point? Is the cleansing of Palestine attributable to Jewish virtues and skills, rather than to conquering and murdering?)

This is racist slander, not history. As an example, take Spain, which was conquered in essentially one battle in 711 A.D. by a band of North African Berbers who had just converted to Islam. Spain was completely Islamized and Arabized within two centuries with very little religious coercion, and certainly no ethnic cleansing. But after the last Islamic rulers were kicked out of Spain by the Christian army of Ferdinand and Isabel in 1492, a large section of the very same Spanish population that willingly adopted Islam centuries earlier refused to accept Christianity despite a century of persecution by the Spanish Inquisition. 600,000 Spanish Muslims were eventually expelled in 1608.

Obviously, Islamic civilization had its share of war and violence. But, as the above example hints, compared to the West, compared to the religious killing frenzy of sixteenth century Europe, compared to the serial genocides in Africa and America, and finally to the flesh-churning wars of the twentieth century, Islamic civilization looks positively benign. So why all this hatred? Where is all this fire and brimstone Islamophobia coming from?

Being elsewhere

From Europe, of course, but with a twist. Europe has always looked upon the East with condescension. In periods of tension, that condescension would escalate to fear and hate. But it was also mixed and tempered with a large dose of fascination and curiosity. The settler, however, does not have the luxury to be curious. The settler leaves the metropolis hoping to overcome his own marginal, often oppressed, status in metropolitan society. He goes to the colony motivated by the desire to recreate the metropolis with himself at the top.

For the settler, going to the colony is not a rejection of the metropolis, but a way to claim his due as a member. Therefore, the settler is always trying to be more metropolitan than the metropolis. When the people of the metropolis baulk at the bloodbath the settler wants to usher in the name of their values, the settler accuses them of "growing soft," and declares himself "the true metropolis." That is also why there is one crime of which the settler can never forgive the land he colonized -- its alien climate and geography, its recalcitrant otherness, the oddness of its inhabitants, in sum, the harsh truth of its being elsewhere. In the consciousness of the settler, condescension thus turns into loathing.

Israeli settler society, especially its European, Ashkenazi part, especially that Israel which calls itself "the peace camp," "the Zionist Left," etc., is predicated on the loathing of all things Eastern and Arab. (Now, of course, there is the religious, post-1967 settlers who relate to the Zionist Left the way the Zionist Left stands in relation to Europe, i.e. as settlers.) "Arab" is a term of abuse, one that can be applied to everything and everyone, including Jews. This loathing is a unifying theme. It connects Morris' latest interview in Haaretz with Ben Gurion's first impression of Jaffa in 1905; he found it filthy and depressing.

In another article, published in Tikkun Magazine, Morris blames the "ultra-nationalism, provincialism, fundamentalism and obscurantism" of Arab Jews in Israel for the sorry state of the country (although Begin, Shamir, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Barak, Sharon, and most of Israel's generals, leaders, and opinion makers of the last two decades are European Jews). For Morris, everything Eastern is corrupt and every corruption has an Eastern origin.

One shouldn't, therefore, doubt Morris when he proclaims himself a traditional Left Zionist. Most of what he says hasn't been said already by David Ben Gurion or Moshe Dayan. Loathing of the East and the decision to subdue it by unlimited force is the essence of Zionism.

Understanding the psycho-political sources of this loathing leads to some interesting observations about truisms that recur in Morris' (and much of Israel's) discourse. Morris blames Arafat for thinking that Israel is a "crusader state," a foreign element that will eventually be sent back to its port of departure. This is a common refrain of Israeli propaganda. It is also probably true. But it isn't Arafat's fault that Morris is a foreigner in the Middle East. Why shouldn't Arafat believe Israel is a crusader state when Morris himself says so? "We are the vulnerable extension of Europe in this place, exactly as the crusaders."

It is Morris -- like the greater part of Israel's elite -- who insists on being a foreigner, on loathing the Middle East and dreaming about mist-covered Europe, purified and deified by distance. If Israel is a crusader state, and therefore a state with shallow roots, likely to pack up and disappear, it is not the fault of those who make that observation. It is the fault of those Israelis, like Morris, who want to rule the Middle East from behind tall walls and barbed wire.

Morris is deeply pessimistic about Israel's future; this feeling is very attractive in Israel. The end of Israel is always felt to be one step away, hiding beneath every development, from the birthrate of Bedouins to the establishment of the International Court of Justice.

Naturally, every Palestinian demand is such a doomsday threat. This sense of existential precariousness can be traced back to 1948; it was encouraged by Israel's successive governments because it justified the continuous violence of the state and the hegemony of the military complex. It may eventually become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

But this existential fear goes deeper. It is rooted in the repressed understanding (which Morris both articulates and tries to displace) of the inherent illegitimacy of the Israeli political system and identity. "Israel" is brute force. In Morris' words: "The bottom line is that force is the only thing that will make them accept us." But brute force is precarious. Time gnaws at it. Fatigue corrodes it. And the more it is used, the more it destroys the very acceptance and legitimacy it seeks.

For Israel, the fundamental question of the future is, therefore, whether Israelis can transcend colonialism. The prognosis is far from positive. In a related article in The Guardian, Morris explains that accepting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees would mean forcing Israeli Jews into exile. But why would Jews have to leave Israel if Israel becomes a bi-national, democratic state? One cannot understand this without attention to the colonial loathing of the Middle East which Morris so eloquently expresses.

But taking that into account, I'm afraid Morris is right. Many Israeli Jews, especially European Jews who tend to possess alternative passports, would rather emigrate than live on equal terms with Palestine's natives in a bi-national state. It is to Frantz Fanon again that we turn for observing this first. "The settler, from the moment the colonial context disappears, has no longer an interest in remaining or in co-existing."

Gabriel Ash was born in Romania and grew up in Israel.

Try coming to Palestine and honestly telling me that Hamas is a terrorist organization and not simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by the State of Israel.
Israel reaps the seeds that it has sowed itself.


Your world view must like perpetual war and violence. Do you really wish to defend a group that sends it's own children as suicide bombers against it's enemies, because the enemies sowed the seeds?

Would you honestly accept that Zionism is simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by Europeans? I reject that notion as soundly as your own allegations towards Hamas.

Is Israel not simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by the States of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and Lebanon? Do you accept defending Israel's actions as Arabs reaping the seeds they sowed?

Should we go back further, and declare the Arab attacks on Israel simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by Britain. Do we defend the Arab attacks on the basis of Britain and her allies reaping what was sown?

Do you realize that rationalization is the whole reason the hatred and warfare in the region seems to be a never ending circle?

Here's where I stand, and have stated numerous times before. I condemn war crimes committed by any nation or group, Israel included. There's a lot of undeniable evidence the IDF need to be prosecuted for crimes committed in the recent offensive. Hamas kills more Arabs than Israelis and that is their greatest crime. Yes I condemn them for deliberately targeting Israeli civilians, I condemn them for stating in their charter the elimination of the Israeli state as one of their goals. Their worst crimes though are using Palestinian civilians as human shields to launch their attacks, using child soldiers and suicide bombers and generally using the bodies of their own people as their primary weapon. I refuse to accept the defense of 'Israel deserves it', or 'the Arabs deserve it' when defending war crimes and atrocities.

(0:08)
Lebanon, good morning
Lebanon, good morning
May you never know pain
Lebanon, good morning
(0:50)
Your dreams will come true
Your nightmares will evaporate
Your life is a blessing
Lebanon, good morning
(1:24)
You are torn to pieces
Bleeding in my arms
The love of my life
My short life
Tear me to pieces

---

The voice belongs to the soldier on the right side of the screen. He is talking about the beautiful scenery they experienced going into Lebanon.
Later he talks about how secure you feel inside a tank, emphasized when the tank crushes cars in it's path.
As you can probably tell from the final second, as long as your head is sticking out (which the tank commander's head is, most of the time), that security is quite an illusion.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'watlz with bashir, good morning lebanon, hebrew, tank, merkava' to 'waltz with bashir, good morning lebanon, hebrew, tank, merkava' - edited by peggedbea

Oh, and how about starting the 910 project, where we go back in time and stop bin Laden from carrying out the acts of September 11th? Or maybe other projects where we stop the USS Cole bombing, or the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, or Lebanon...or Hiroshima and Nagasaki...or the Civil War...or...

Boos El Wawa ("wawa" means "owie", a little injury) sung by Haifa Wehbe of Lebanon and Hana El Idrissi of Morocco.
Lyrics in English (the beginning sung a More..s if to a child):
See the owie, kiss the owie, make the owie better.
When you kissed the owie, you made the owie go away -- baahh.
Hide me close to you, cover me and make me warm.
Without you I am so cold.
My nights are sweeter staying up in love
I have to wear my most beautiful clothes
I wear for your eyes my darling all brand new.
A kiss to you and I want you to stay by my side.
Among all people you are most precious to me
And my last concern is what they say is wrong or right.

There's no spin. It's an accurate and fair assessment of the situation. There are more players in the game than just Isreal and the Palestinians. There's plenty of blame to spread around and the situation is not the sole pervue of any one side.

I have more historical perspective than you perhaps, but I recall quite well the peace efforts of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and early 00s where Isreal made concession after concession after concession. But it was never enough. The objective of the militant Pals is not peaceful coexistence. It is the complete elimination of the Isreali state.

Therefore you and others like you are operating from a false position that only exists within the confines of your fantasies. You probably haven't been around long enough, and so you don't remember that this is all ground that has been covered before over and over and over.

You think that Isreal is to blame for this mess because you think there is some mythical 'concession' Isreal could make that would make the Palestinians happy. Baloney. The so-called 'peace' talks of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and early 00s proved unequivocally that there are NO concessions Isreal can make that will satisfy the Palestinians. The only thing that will satisfy them is when Isreal is booted out of 'thier' country.

So your argument is an utterly false magician's choice, and I think even yo know this deep down. Isreal is doing what it thinks it needs to do in order to prevent the deaths of thier citizens. That's the right of any country, and the main duty of a government. I don't blame them for that. They want security from a bunch of uncompromising, half-insane terrorists. Who doesn't?

What the Palestinians need to do is reign in thier extremists and show they are willing to give Isreal a peaceful option that will actually work. Frankly, I don't think that is possible because there are too many factions in the Middle East (Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, et al) that are too intent on keeping a bunch of poor, angry Palestinians around as a stable of useful idiots to funnel bombs to.

Nah - Hamas, PLO, Hezbollah, whatever. Name your Palestinian terrorist regime du' jour. They're all the same animal. The objective is the removal of the state of Isreal by whatever means necessary. Isreal could be as armed with only drinking straws and gentle as a Kleenex and it wouldn't matter beans to the Palestinians or other terror states.

And the Arabs DO 'help' the Palestinians... By arming them with rockets, rifles, and bombs. Iran, Syria, Lebanon - they're all funnelling weapons to the Palestinians. Maybe if the Isrealis can safely ignore the Arab gun to thier head, a peaceful solution can be found. Maybe the Arabs would be better off halting the weapons and giving more food & jobs. But the dirty secret is that the Arabs hate the Palestinians too. They just hate Isreal more and are keeping the Palestinians poor and angry so they can have a useful tool of angry terrorists to do the dirty work they're too afraid to do themselves after Isreal gave Egypt such a spankering.