Tom Hayden: “I Was Israel’s Dupe”

Must reading: Tom Hayden’s “I Was Israel’s Dupe.” Here’s a snippet of Counterpunch editor and Nation columnist Alex Cockburn’s, um, irreverent introductory note:

Twenty four years ago Ariel Sharon’s artillerymen bombarded Beirut, causing huge terrible civilian casualties, just as Israel’s bombs are doing today. … Standing next to those Israeli gunners and cheering them on were Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda, eager to promote Hayden’s political career in California. It was one of the most disgusting political spectacles of the 1980s and I wrote angrily that ‘in the halls of the National Gallery in Washington DC there are 54 portraits of Benedict Arnold. None look alike. All resemble Tom Hayden.’ Now, amid another Israeli onslaught Hayden makes amends, with a mea culpa for that trip and an important glimpse of how what’s loosely called “the lobby” really works, when it comes to electing its chosen politicians.” 

Hayden’s piece originally appeared on the truthdig website, under a different title, but hasn’t shown up yet on the Huffington Post, where Hayden is a contributor. It may be that Tom just hasn’t gotten around to posting it there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the editors suppressed it.

There must be a reason why the Huffpost hasn’t huffed or even puffed much about the Israeli re-invasion of Lebanon — could this be the one war the “antiwar” Huffpuffers find tolerable? Arianna Herself has so far been mum on the subject, which is rather odd. Silence on any subject is most unusual behavior coming from her. At any rate, don’t hold your breath waiting for “I Was Israel’s Dupe” to show up on Arianna’s group blog — which she once described to the Los Angeles Times as consists of “postings that don’t hew to any political line.”

UPDATE: I see here that Hayden has put his piece on the Huffington Post. I stand corrected — although I wonder about the significance of the time lag.

The News Before It Happens

An update to today’s column, posted on Thursday, 10:00 pm PST, in which I speculated that some sort of “international force” to supplant the IDF would be created. Bloomberg News reports Friday morning:

“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she wants a ‘robust’’ international military force to try to oust Hezbollah forces from southern Lebanon, as she prepares to leave on a diplomatic mission to the region next week.

“…Any military force must be ‘robust enough” to supplant Hezbollah in southern Lebanon where it can launch attacks on Israel, she said. If not ‘we’re going to be back here in the next few months,’ Rice said.”

Which prompts me to come up with a nifty new slogan:

Antiwar.com – the News Before It Happens.

As I said in my column, this will forge the links of a new Anti-Shi’ite Front, a broad coalition of forces aligned against the “Shia Crescent” — as Jordan’s King Abdullah nervously puts it — that will be prepared for future action. The War Party is marching down the road to Tehran: Beirut and Damascus are just stops along the way.

About Those Photos

Lisa Goldman has written a lengthy post that attempts to put the infamous photos of the Israeli girls writing on IDF shells “in perspective.” You should read it, though I don’t think it adds much in the way of factual context that you couldn’t figure out on your own: Israelis have been under fire from Hezbollah, and they’re pissed off. Obvious, but fair enough. Some of Goldman’s larger points about demonization are certainly worth your time, yet the following portion of her post displays some startling naivete:

I’ve been thinking for the last two days about this photo and the storm of reaction it set off. I worry about the climate of hate that would lead people to look at it and automatically assume the absolute worst – and then use the photo to dehumanize and victimize. I wonder why so many people seem to take satisfaction in believing that little Israeli girls with felt markers in their hands – not weapons, but felt markers – are evil, or spawned by an evil society. I wonder how those people would feel if Israelis were to look at a photo of a Palestinian child wearing a mock suicide belt in a Hamas demonstration and conclude that all Palestinians – nay, all Arabs – are evil.

Is she kidding? We’re constantly shown images of Arab kids dressed up as militants, holding real or toy weapons, as evidence of their genetic predisposition for evil. (See this post by Jonathan Schwarz for more on that.) A couple of months ago, I blogged on this post by popular commentator Michelle Malkin, who actually argued that such photos of Palestinian children justified a shoot-first-ask-questions-later stance toward children in Iraq. Really. If some pro-Arab bloggers used the photos of the Israeli girls in the same way, that’s horrible, but they’re playing catch-up at this point.

A personal note: I blogged one of the photos myself in frustration over the one-sidedness of the American coverage I was watching at the time. I did not juxtapose it with the worst images of Lebanese suffering accessible to anyone on the Web. Each photo I chose – all girls: two Lebanese, one American, and two Israeli, all beautiful – struck me not as infuriating or nauseating, but heartbreaking. The brief introductory captions I gave the Lebanese and American girls were bitter and ironic, a comment on mainstream attitudes toward Arabs and critics of Israel in my country, but the caption for the Israeli girls was bitter and sincere. They were adorable, or at least that’s the word that would cross my mind if I saw them at the grocery store or the library (a feeling of familiarity only underscored by the fact that some of the messages on the shells were in English). Yet there they were in a scene that even in militaristic, violence-crazed, imperial America would be unthinkable, if for no other reason than that their parents would be in jail on child-endangerment charges within hours of such photos’ publication.

Surreally sad.

Those Israeli children are no more evil than the Palestinian tots the warbloggers splash across their pages, and anyone who saw in my post support for their own reverse-Malkinism can f*ck off. What those photos – and the hundreds of news stories we run every day – say to me is that U.S. involvement in the Middle East is a tragedy. It has emboldened the worst in all of us – Arabs, Israelis, and Americans – and empowered the worst among us. Don’t blather on and on about the horrors American disengagement would entail until you have honestly faced the horrors of the present.

Five Years After Being Exonerated by the FBI…

Jesus H. Christ.

Benamar Benatta, believed to be the last remaining domestic detainee from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was released yesterday after negotiations involving Canada, the United States and his attorneys ended his captivity at nearly five years. …

The Algerian air force lieutenant spent more than 58 months behind bars even though the FBI formally concluded in November 2001 that he had no connection to terrorism. …

Benatta came to the United States in 2000 for military training and then overstayed a six-month visa. He arrived at the Peace Bridge near Buffalo seeking political asylum in Canada on Sept. 5, 2001. Officials there detained him while investigating his claim. Benatta’s background — an Algerian Muslim and an avionics technician without proper immigration papers — prompted Canada to turn him over to the United States after the terrorist attacks. He was placed in solitary confinement in a New York City jail.

He was initially charged with carrying fraudulent papers until a federal magistrate called those accusations a “sham.” Since then, he has been held for overstaying his visa as he waged a multiyear battle for political asylum in the United States or Canada, alleging he would be killed if he were returned to Algeria.

Government officials have been repeatedly criticized about Benatta’s treatment. In 2003, federal Magistrate Judge H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr. found that Benatta had been “undeniably deprived of his liberty.” Keeping him in prison any longer “would be to join in the charade that had been perpetrated,” he wrote.

Despite the findings, Benatta was kept in jail while he made a claim for U.S. asylum that was ultimately refused. At one point, he was offered release on a $25,000 bond but was unable to pay. Later, when his attorneys sought his release on bond, the government declined.

But don’t despair, there are still reasons to be proud of this country.

Thank God for the Cato Institute

From the Cato Institute blog:

People who go to dangerous places … shouldn’t expect to be rescued from danger at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer.

Absolutely. We should end the American taxpayers’ never-ending rescue of Israel immediately.

Oh, wait. That post isn’t about U.S. aid to Israel… it’s about aid to American taxpayers who are being bombed by Israel.

Re: Brutal Mistakes

Thank you for the insight, Jim.

Remember too what effect the April 1996 Qana massacre had on one Osama bin Laden, who made particular mention of the Qana Massacre in his first “Fatwa” against the U.S. in August 1996.

As intelligence reporter James Bamford explained to me in April of 2004,

“[Bin Laden] freqently mentioned Qana during those times. It was a very inflaming incident in terms of his own development of his hatred for the United States, and as well for other people throughout the Middle East.”

Meanwhile, on Fox news today, I heard for the millionth time that the reason we have a problem with terrorists is because Ronald Reagan was such a coward, he “turned tail and ran,” from Lebanon after 241 Marines were truck bombed in 1983, leaving America’s enemies with the impression that they could influence American policies with terrorist attacks. What policies they may want to influence was not discussed. Nor was any explanation offered as to why they were in Beirut in the first place.