Tag: lebanon

Norton on the war

Forget the talking heads on television going on about Syria and Iran at lengths, and listen instead to the real experts, such as Augustus Richard Norton. Harpers has an excellent interview with him in he makes excellent points, which I agree entirely with:

  • Iran didn’t “commission” the attack as some would have you believed. It is a Hizbullah initiative that “was tactically very smart, but strategically they were taking a real gamble.” Precisely my original views and the reason for my stupefaction (and anger) when Hizbullah carried out the attacks.
  • Olmert and his pals are not over-reacting because they’re not historic military officers in Israel. There is a military / strategic logic to the Israeli onslaught that goes beyond politics and whose aim is total dominance of its “near-abroad” (Norton says it has to do with Iran.) I can’t believe how often this one is repeated, apparently to excuse Israel’s actions (the perverse logic goes something like this: “Israel is a democracy, so its leaders have be politically savvy, so they can’t afford not to look tough, so they have to carry out war crimes, etc. Utter nonsense.)
  • The Israeli attack is completely disproportionate and is a form of collective punishment against civilians. I thought this was interesting as Norton is a Vietnam vet:

I’ve been talking to people in Lebanon and it appears that Israel has established a killing box in south Lebanon, what the U.S. called a “free fire zone” in Vietnam. You establish a zone, which you dominate from the air, and force out civilians—there are already hundreds of thousands of Lebanese who have been displaced. Then you presume anything still moving in that zone is the enemy. This is a recipe for lots of hapless civilians dying, as happened a few days ago when 16 southern Lebanese villagers were killed in automobiles while adhering to Israel’s order to flee their homes.

  • Hizbullah will emerge from this with its stature diminished. I’ve wondered about this, and a lot of pundits are saying that Hizbullah will emerge stronger. For my part I don’t see a solution to this where Hizbullah does not come out weaker, and the Lebanese will (rightly) want to have more say over its actions in the future. One should not confuse support for resistance with support for Hizbullah’s political leadership and continued “untouchable” status in Lebanon. Norton says:

Totally disarming Hezbollah is a fool’s errand. It’s too easy to hide weapons and there’s too great an incentive to keep them. Hezbollah is facing an interesting dilemma. The more it uses the rockets the more it creates a rationale to keep the time period open. Inside Lebanon there is going to be a readjustment of politics. Hezbollah will be diminished in stature, it won’t be able to maintain its privileged position after what has happened.

  • Outcome for Israel and the US will be negative. Two key quotes:

Israel has made a profound mistake.

I’ve been studying American foreign policy in the Middle East for 34 years and I can’t recall any U.S. president who has subordinated American interests to Israeli interests like this one. The administration is being naïve about how this is going to reverberate elsewhere, in places like Iraq.

There going to be hell to pay for this in the long run. I can already imagine Al Qaeda recruiters are working non-stop.

What’s missing from the interview, though, is discussion of Syria. I’ve commented on other blogs about this, so here are my two cents: Syria’s weak domestic position (created by Israeli/French/US pressure and its own idiocy and assassinations) makes it actually more difficult to really push for regime change there, as some are advocating. The weaker the Bashar Al Assad regime is, the more careful Israel and the US will be. The majority opinion in the leadership of both countries now is that the regime’s fall would either lead to Iraq-like chaos (which would compound Iraq’s own problems and naturally affect Lebanon) to relative stability under a new Islamist regime. I think enough Islamists have come to power recently for the taste of everybody in the region right now. So the Syrian regime is reinforced and can be more intransigeant in the current situation, since it is not paying much of a price and most probably won’t be challenged.

The caveat is, of course, that the advocates of Syrian regime change will win the argument over Syria and change everybody’s mind (or something will happen to make people change their mind.) In that case, don’t plan a trip to the Levant for the next 10-20 years.

U.S. speeds up bomb delivery for the Israelis

I just wanna puke…

NYT: U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis

By DAVID S. CLOUD and HELENE COOPER
WASHINGTON, July 21 — The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, American officials said Friday.

Continue reading U.S. speeds up bomb delivery for the Israelis

Pro-resistance Tahrir demo on Wednesday

National Forces For Palestine and Lebanon–a united front of leftist, Islamist political groups, and NGO activists–have called for a demonstration in Tahrir Square, Wednesday 26 July, at 6pm, in solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance. Wednesday also coincides with the 50th anniversary of the nationalization of the Suez Canal.
If you are attending, please bring Lebanese or/and Palestinian flags.
And here’s the demo banner, designed by the organizers. It adresses Arab leaders saying “Your Majesties, Your Excellencies… Spit on You!”

Demo banner

Activism Calendar

Israel’s rationale behind bombing civilians

The San Francisco Chronicle ran an interesting article on Israel’s motives behind agressively bombing civilian targets in Lebanon. The report quotes a variety of security experts, one of whom referred to how “Hezbollah is so intertwined with the society and community, it’s very difficult to try to destroy the Hezbollah infrastructure without such collateral damage,”

“The casual references to ‘Hezbollah neighbourhoods,'” Arabist reader SP rightly said in an email exchange, very much “echo the idea of ‘VC villages’ in Vietnam.”

Civilian toll raises questions
Israel, criticized for killing hundreds of Lebanese, says Hezbollah stores missiles in residences
Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, July 20, 2006

As Israel has steadily escalated its military assault on Hezbollah, so has the criticism about the rising number of civilian deaths resulting from its campaign.
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, accusing Israel of indiscriminately targeting civilians, said Wednesday that his country “has been torn to shreds” by Israel’s aerial bombardment, which he said has killed 300 Lebanese, mostly civilians, wounded 1,000 and displaced half a million more.

Continue reading Israel’s rationale behind bombing civilians

Israel’s psychological warfare

Sick fucks:

Late night calls from Israel spook jittery Lebanese
Reuters 21.07.06 | 21h23

BEIRUT, July 21 (Reuters) – At first, Bushra Khayyat tried to ignore the incessant ringing of the phone at her house in Lebanon’s southern port city of Sidon. It was 4 a.m., but she finally got out of bed.

“I said hello and got a recorded message from Israel,” she told Reuters.

In clear Arabic, the strong voice on the phone said: “Oh Lebanese people, we tell you not to follow Hizbollah. We will continue to strike and no one will bring your prisoners back from Israel except the Lebanese government.”

Other residents of the south have received similar calls.

“My grandmother got two calls at 5 and 6 in the morning saying the Israeli state would not stop the attacks and asking everyone to leave the area south of the Litani,” said one woman who is stranded in Sidon.

“She slammed the phone down.”

Israel has dropped flyers on Lebanon during its 10-day-old conflict with Hizbollah guerrillas, warning people to stay away from the group’s strongholds, warning them to evacuate their villages in the south or caricaturing the chief of Hizbollah.

But there was something eerie about the phone calls.

“It was a shock to get a call from Israel,” said Khayyat, who has since fled the bombardment to Syria and then France.

“I have caller ID on my landline and when I checked it came up as ‘out of area’. It’s not that I was scared, I just wished I could talk back to the voice but it was a recorded message.”

Khayyat got a similar call two nights later, this time answered by her maid, who, panicking when she heard a voice announce “this is Israel”, immediately put down the phone.

I doubt this kind of psychological warfare will get them far. I also wonder, out of curiosity, how they are doing this — how they got control of the Lebanese phone system. And how long they’ve had the ability to control it.

Update: It gets even sicker, now they want snitches:

Israel offers rewards to Lebanese for tips on Hizbollah
Reuters 21.07.06 | 21h56

JERUSALEM, July 21 (Reuters) – Israel dropped leaflets across Lebanon on Friday offering “attractive material rewards” to people who give information about Hizbollah that helps the Jewish state’s offensive against the guerrillas.
An army spokeswoman said the rewards could be a range of things, such as cash or a house. It was not clear how such items would be delivered or exactly what information Israel wanted.

The leaflets, worded in Arabic, call on people to “remove the sore known as Hizbollah from the heart of Lebanon”, gave a phone number and Web site where information could be passed on.

Confidentiality was assured, said the leaflet, entitled “All 4 Lebanon”.

Israeli aircraft dropped 23 tonnes of bombs on a Hizbollah bunker earlier this week in southern Beirut after intelligence indicated senior leaders of the group were there. Hizbollah said none were killed.

The Jewish state launched the offensive last week after Hizbollah seized two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others in a cross-border raid.

Ground invasion to come soon?

Many Israeli analysts and sources are expecting an imminent ground invasion as the govt. there has called up more reservists and massed troops at the border. The Israeli army has also told people to leave South Lebanon. It looks like at least a partial repeat of 1982 will happen.

The Angry Arab, whose mother is in hospital in Beirut, doesn’t think so because the Israelis have destroyed the roads and bridges. He sees this as posturing to put pressure on Hizbullah.

I’m not sot sure how this squares up with the Israeli statements that they want this to be over within two weeks. Perhaps they intend to stay in a part of Lebanon until an international peacekeeping force can come in. Another interesting development is that Hizbullah refuses to negotiate directly, while Israel only wants to negotiate directly.

The Lebanese defense minister said the Lebanese army would fight in the case of a ground invasion:

Lebanon’s army, which so far has sat on the sidelines of the violence raging in the country, will fight an Israeli ground invasion, Defense Minister Elias Murr said on Al-Jazeera television Thursday.

“The Lebanese army – and I stress – the Lebanese army will resist and defend and will prove that it is an army that deserves respect,” he said.

Although obviously the Lebanese army is no match as a conventional army, I wonder that — if this is more than posturing — what they would do. What would make sense is to adopt the guerrilla tactics of Hizbullah against an occupation army. But if this didn’t happen in 1982, I don’t see why it would happen now. If it did, it would certainly complicate matters…

Latest developments

From Reuters (latest civilian toll in Lebanon is 345):

July 21 (Reuters) – Here are developments in the Middle East.

* Israel calls up army reservists for possible major ground assault against Hizbollah in Lebanon

* U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will go to Mideast Sunday while resisting international pressure for immediate cease-fire between Israel, Hizbollah in Lebanon

* Three Hizbollah rockets crash into the northern Israeli city of Haifa, wounding 19 people. Other towns also hit

* Israeli troops launch small-scale raids in Lebanon to try to stop rocket attacks

* Israel’s military chief says the country’s forces have killed nearly 100 Hizbollah fighters in Lebanon during the 10-day offensive

* Four Israeli soldiers are killed in fierce battles with Hizbollah guerrillas inside Lebanon

* Lebanon’s defense minister says the army, which has not fought so far despite losing a score of soldiers in Israeli air strikes, would defend the country against any invasion

Continue reading Latest developments

Police crackdown on solidarity demos

I’m getting phone calls saying Egyptian security is cracking down now on thousands of pro-Lebanese and pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Al-Azhar. I still don’t have details. The Mosque, as well as the neighborhood, is under siege by the Central Security Forces, State Security agents, plainclothes policemen and hired thugs, according to a lawyer present in the scene.
Some people are trapped in the mosque. Others are outside, and got scattered into seperate groups by security, who assaulted some of them, confiscated the leaflets and flags they were carrying, according to the lawyer who called me.
Yesterday, the police also banned another rally in solidarity with the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance, in Zagazig, Sharqiyya Province, as Egyptian blogger Asad reports. And in Isma3ilia, ten Muslim Brothers activists were detained by security, and charged for “writing some phrases on the street walls which read ‘Together with the resistance of Palestine and Lebanon,'” according to Ikhwan Web.
UPDATE: I spoke with a blogger who was present in the scene. She said the mosque was packed with worshippers, Kefaya and Labor Party activists, but could not see a sizeable Muslim Brothers’ presence. (CORRECTION: I checked with sources, and it turned out the MB took part in the protest, led by Mahdi Akef the group’s Supreme Guide.) The security, she added, did not restrict access to the mosque, but responded brutally when the demonstrators tried to get out of the mosque. Plainclothes thugs were unleashed on the protestors and worshippers, using sticks and batons, till they pushed them back into the mosque. The blogger said she saw several activists, including Malek whose shirt was stained with the blood of another demonstrator who was injured. The activists continued demonstrating inside the mosque, chanting against Israel, US, and Arab regimes, for around an hour.
Later the security allowed those trapped inside to leave, one by one. Activists are now on their way to the Press Syndicate in 3abdel Khaleq Tharwat Street, to hold a sit in.
UPDATE: It’s 4pm, I got a phone call from the blogger again saying they are marching now in downtown! Around 150 activists managed to re-assemble, after assaults by security and thugs, in Opera Square. They are marching towards the Press Syndicate, chanting slogans against Israel, US, and the Egyptian police. Several activists haven been injured already. Released detainee Rasha 3azzab, according to the blogger, was assaulted by the thugs who slapped her on the face and pushed her to the ground.
UPDATE: 4:20pm, They have reached the Press Syndicate. I could hear on the phone slogans chanted against Gamal Mubarak.
PHOTOS: Photographers Nasser Nouri and 3amr 3abdallah sent me those pix of the earlier protest in Al-Azhar. Check out the SLIDESHOW
UPDATE: Here’s a dpa report by Jano Charbel:
Around 8,000 Egyptians demonstrate against Israel’s escalation of military strikes on Lebanon
Cairo, July 21 (dpa) –Around 8,000 Egyptians demonstrated, in Cairo and Alexandria, following Friday noontime prayers, against Israel’s escalation of military strikes on Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.
Black-clad central security forces sealed in around 5,000 demonstrators within Cairo’s al-Azhar Mosque as they chanted slogans against Israel ‘s targeting of civilian non-combatants and infrastructure in both Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
The demonstration was organized by the Moslem Brotherhood, and the left-leaning umbrella movement Kifaya/Enough. Other political forces present at the demonstration were members of the Nasserist Party, the Revolutionary Socialists, and the Labor Party. Former Egyptian Prime Minister Aziz Sedqi was also present. Continue reading Police crackdown on solidarity demos

Beirut artist jams to bombing

43BoingBoing reports:

30-year-old musician, comic book author, and painter Mazen Kerbaj in Beirut has been blogging throughout the recent violence. You can view some of his recent drawings here on his blog.

Listen to a six-minute ambient, improvisational music piece he performed — accompanied by the sound of falling bombs. “Starry Night” — Audio link, alternate MP3 link, more links.

I just visited his site and looked at his drawings, and listened to the audio — eerie.

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