Tag: lebanon

Critical reading of pro-Israel House resolution

Americans, remember this come the fall elections:

On July 20, the U.S. House of Representatives, by an overwhelming 410-8 margin, voted to unconditionally endorse Israel’s ongoing attacks on Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. The Senate passed a similar resolution defending the Israeli attack earlier in the week by a voice vote, but included a clause that “urges all sides to protect innocent civilian life and infrastructure.” By contrast, the House version omits this section and even praises Israel for “minimizing civilian loss,” despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The resolution also praises President George W. Bush for “fully supporting Israel,” even though Bush has blocked diplomatic efforts for a cease-fire and has isolated the United States in the international community by supporting the Israeli attacks.

The resolution reveals a bipartisan consensus on the legitimacy of U.S. allies to run roughshod over international legal norms. The resolution even goes so far as to radically reinterpret the United Nations Charter by claiming that Israel’s attacks on Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure is an act of legitimate self-defense under Article 51 despite a broad consensus of international legal scholars to the contrary.

In short, both Democrats and Republicans are now on record that, in the name of “fighting terrorism,” U.S. allies—and, by extension, the United States as well—can essentially ignore international law and inflict unlimited damage on the civilian infrastructure of a small and largely defenseless country, even a pro-Western democracy like Lebanon.

The rest is a deconstruction/critical analysis of the House resolution. It’s worth remembering that there were 24,000 Lebanese-Americans in Lebanon when the war started, and that Congress encouraged indiscriminate Israeli bombing that put them in grave danger.

Also see this by Praktike, who highlights that House Democrats, by trying to get Iraqi PM Maliki to withdraw his criticism of Israel’s war or ban him from addressing a joint session of the US Congress (a rare honor, yes, but one that serves US propaganda interests more than Iraq’s or Maliki’s). So basically Dems are (yet again!) undermining American interests for political point-scoring against Bush (Praktike’s reading) or to yet again prove their slavish loyalty to AIPAC (my reading).

1000 demonstrate in support of resistance

Due to some time constraints I won’t be able to post a detailed report on today’s pro-resistance demo, that started at 6pm and ended roughly around 8pm. However, I uploaded some photos of the protest and assaults by police-deployed thugs that I hope you’ll check on my flickr account.
I’m totally disgusted by the chocking police presence, and the increasing dependence of our security forces on plainclothes thugs to “keep law and order” during demos.
At least one journalist and several demonstrators were also assaulted, but I don’t know their names. Those I could recognize included dpa journalist Jano Charbel, Ahmad Droubi, who were hit in the face and the head by baton-wielding thugs, as well as Malek.

UPDATE: I’ve just spoken with Aida Seif al-Dawla, the chairman of the Egyptian Association Against Torture. She said she was brutally assaulted by plainclothes thugs as the demo was coming to an end. She received several punches in the stomach, sides, and chest.

UPDATE: Here are more protest pix from Mohamed el-Taher’s blog.

And now for some dark humor

Should blowing off little girls’ faces be limited by international agreement? Aqoul gets hold of a leaked conversation by Israel and Hizbullah. My laugh-out-loud moment:

Hizbullah: Look this isn’t rocket science—
Israel: Actually, it is….
{Pause}
Mediator: Should we bring in the rocket scientists?
Hizbullah: Um, uh, . . . is there a . . . um . . . Farsi translator here?

Just read it.

Arab, European and American media attitudes to war

Interesting note on Arab, European and American media attitudes to the war by Jonathan of the Head Heeb writing on Moorishgirl (ah, the incestuous world of liberal Middle East blogging!) I agree pretty much with his explanation, except that I don’t think the American media’s coverage, in Jonathan’s words, is supportive of Israel’s cause and tactics

because American thinking tends to conflate the concepts of just cause and just tactics. The default American opinion is that if someone starts a fight, the other party has the right to finish it by any means necessary, which means that to many Americans, the only significant fact is that Hizbullah struck the first blow.

There might be some insight about the American psyche there, but I would say the main reason is years of well-organized pro-Israel PR campaigns carried out by the main pro-Israel think tanks in DC (and the absence of equivalent pro-Arab think tanks) that has shaped much American political and media thinking about the Arab-Israeli conflict. And on top of that you have to add the not insignificant number of well-established, fundamentally pro-Israel publications in the US such as the New Republic, New York Sun, New York Post, Commentary, the Forward, and arguably the New York Times. This media reaction is not just the result of a “just desserts” attitude but the long-standing presence of almost automatically pro-Israel publications in the American media.

Chirac backs immediate ceasefire with no conditions

Jacques Chirac, whose political slush fund was financed by Rafiq Hariri for years, says he has a plan to save Lebanon in this Le Monde exclusive. (Why is Le Monde giving him this statesman role when they’ve been bashing him for months and at times want him to resign?) Doubt it will amount to much — the French have abdicated too much on their Middle East policy to have real influence now — but it’s a positive step that European leaders are beginning to change tack.

He says it’s not constructive to expect Hizbullah to be disarmed by an international peacekeeping force, and that it’s something the Lebanese government, doesn’t want to here about regime change in Damascus, calls for dialogue with Iran, calls for an immediate ceasefire and an international bail-out for Lebanon. He says: “It’s a essential that there be a ceasefire. It’s the precondition [for further negotiation on soldiers, disarmament, etc.”

A war on Shias?

From Jim Quilty’s MERIP piece, Israel’s war against Lebanon’s Shias:

Israel has blithely played upon Lebanon’s sectarian divisions with the patterns of bombing and with leaflets asserting that Nasrallah is beholden to foreign masters. Though the Shi‘a of Lebanon are not pre-programmed to be Hizballah supporters, and many are not, the unremitting strikes against south Lebanon, the Bekaa and Beirut’s southern suburbs punish the Shi‘i population for being the constituency that Hizballah primarily serves. They also replicate international sanctions against Palestinians for having the temerity to vote for Hamas in the January 2006 Palestinian elections.

Below Leaflets dropped by Israel on Lebanon, showing Nasrallah as a snake conjured by Syria and Iran (from the MERIP piece.)

Fliersfromisrael2Small
Fliersfromisrael1Small

Angry Arab on Arab media coverage of war

The Angry Arab does a vitriolic round-up of the Arab (and especially Lebanese) media’s coverage of the war, as always bereft of paragraph breaks. (I think that adds to his madness.) I doubt his assertion that al-Manar is the most watched satellite news station in Morocco, though. Perhaps we’ll know soon as Morocco just got its first real media monitoring firm recently.

Mustafa al-Fiqi, pro-Hizbullah?

Watchers of Egyptian politics will appreciate this:

Just today, I watched an appearance by Mustafa Al-Faqi (chairperson of the Egyptian parliamentary Foreign Relations Committee). He spoke like a Hizbullah spokesperson. A Hizbullah guest on the show (Lebanese member of parliament Husayn Hajj Hasan who is such an ineffective propagandist for the party) noted that tone and that change, even from a few days ago.

Mustafa al-Fiqi? HA! Why is it that Egyptian politicians (although al-Fiqi, arguably the biggest cheater of last year’s parliamentary elections, probably doesn’t deserve to be called even a “politician”) change what they say constantly depending on who they’re talking to, even when their government has a pretty clear line it’s following?

The rest of the post linked to above at the Angry Arab is his reasons why Israel miscalculated. Too soon to tell, as I’m not sure Israel’s objectives are the ones it is stating publicly…