Antiwar.com Blog

The Economist reports that the American public is usually on Israel’s side:

Americans are far more likely than Europeans to side with Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A Pew Global Attitudes survey taken between March and May found that 48% of Americans said that their sympathies lay with the Israelis; only 13% were sympathetic towards the Palestinians. By contrast, in Spain for example, 9% sympathised with the Israelis and 32% with the Palestinians.

Politicians are much more likely than their constiuents to support Israeli policy:

Support for Israel stretches from San Francisco liberals like Nancy Pelosi to southern-fried conservatives like Bill Frist. The House and Senate have both passed bipartisan resolutions condemning Hizbullah and affirming Congress’s support for Israel. The House version passed by 410 to 8 (of which three were from districts in Michigan with concentrations of Arab-Americans). The Senate resolution, sponsored by 62 senators—including the leaders of both parties—passed unopposed.

Why the unquestioned support?  Two reasons: the Israeli lobby and Christian evangelicals:

“Thank God we have AIPAC, the greatest supporter and friend we have in the whole world,” says Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister. The lobby, which is the centrepiece of a co-ordinated body that includes pressure groups, think-tanks and fund-raising operations, produces voting statistics on congressmen that are carefully scrutinised by political donors. It also organises regular trips to Israel for congressmen and their staffs. (The Washington Post reports that Roy Blunt, the House majority whip, has been on four.)

…

White evangelicals are significantly more pro-Israeli than Americans in general; more than half of them say they strongly sympathise with Israel. (A third of the Americans who claim sympathy with Israel say that this stems from their religious beliefs.) Two in five Americans believe that Israel was given to the Jewish people by God, and one in three say that the creation of the state of Israel was a step towards the Second Coming.

On CNN’s “Reliable Sources” news show on Sunday, Washington Post Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks stated

One of the things that is going on, according to some U.S. military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they’re being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon.

HOWARD KURTZ: Hold on, you’re suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it’s fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?

RICKS: Yes, that’s what military analysts have told me.

KURTZ: That’s an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here.

RICKS: Exactly. It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well.

I have often found Sidney Blumenthal useful in informing my understanding of the relationship between the neocons and the establishment, such as, for example, his article in which it is revealed that Bush’s temper tantrum when he declared himself “the decider” was actually a direct rebuke to his father who had been trying to arrange the replacement of Donald “Personally Involved in Torture” Rumsfeld.

This one is mostly a review of how Israel and the neocons are implementing “A Clean Break” and, like the Jim Lobe article we ran a few days ago, describes the dissatisfaction of Henry Kissinger in regards to Bush refusal to negotiate with Iran, Brent Scowcroft in regards to the Palestinian crisis, and Richard Haass about Israel’s war in Lebanon. Blumenthal adds one more oil/eastern establishment voice of dissent, Edward Djerejian, the director of the James Baker institute, who last week urged negotiation with Syria and Iran.

And take note of the latest Causus Belli Alert:

“The National Security Agency is providing signal intelligence to Israel to monitor whether Syria and Iran are supplying new armaments to Hezbollah as it fires hundreds of missiles into northern Israel, according to a national security official with direct knowledge of the operation. President Bush has approved the secret program.

“Inside the administration, neoconservatives on Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security staff and Elliott Abrams, the neoconservative senior director for the Near East on the National Security Council, are prime movers behind sharing NSA intelligence with Israel, and they have discussed Syrian and Iranian supply activities as a potential pretext for Israeli bombing of both countries, the source privy to conversations about the program says. (Intelligence, including that gathered by the NSA, has been provided to Israel in the past for various purposes.) The neoconservatives are described as enthusiastic about the possibility of using NSA intelligence as a lever to widen the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Hamas into a four-front war.

“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is said to have been “briefed” and to be “on board,” but she is not a central actor in pushing the covert neoconservative scenario. Her “briefing” appears to be an aspect of an internal struggle to intimidate and marginalize her. Recently she has come under fire from prominent neoconservatives who oppose her support for diplomatic negotiations with Iran to prevent its development of nuclear weaponry.”

If you have religious beliefs, now may be the time to pray for the American soldiers who have spent the last three years training and equipping the Iraqi Shi’ite religious militias, and who are going to have to start the Iraq war all over again when this thing escalates to Syria and Iran. Perhaps they will be able to get safely inside the green zone before Order 66 comes down.

Update: Zbigniew Brzezinski:

“These neocon prescriptions, of which Israel has its equivalents, are fatal for America and ultimately for Israel. They will totally turn the overwhelming majority of the Middle East’s population against the United States. The lessons of Iraq speak for themselves. Eventually, if neocon policies continue to be pursued, the United States will be expelled from the region and that will be the beginning of the end for Israel as well.”

It’s a heck of a note.

Frankly, I am tired of Israel accusing Hezbollah of “using human shields.” Even if Hezbollah truly are hiding behind children, the Israelis act as if they believe this excuses their military killing well over 600 (possibly closer to 900) people in Lebanon. At best, their seeming inability to find a way to attack Hezbollah without killing civilians makes them look inept or careless. At worst, they look like cynical monsters trying to pin the blame on their victims, a charge they have made against Hezbollah.

The Israeli inquiry into the Qana “mistake” alleged that, “had the information indicated that civilians were present…the attack would not have been carried out.” At the same time, a former senior Israeli military officer stated that the IDF believed the apartment building demolished in Qana “was the residence of two Hezbollah operatives.” In other words, a couple of Hezbollah members were living in a building along with their civilian neighbors. The IDF also bombed, allegedly on purpose, the home of a Lebanese bank manager in hopes that it would scare other bank officers into rejecting Hezbollah accounts. So which is it? They don’t bomb civilian homes, or they do?

Israel’s defenders like to point out that leaflets often warn residents of an impending strike, but these same leaflets also warn Hezbollah. So if the enemy has left the building too, what’s the point of demolishing it? Even without leaflets, if the Lebanese know that rocket launchers will attract Israeli attacks, why do they remain in those buildings? They didn’t notice somebody launching a rocket from their backyard? Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, has suggested that Hezbollah force the civilians, “in a cynical and brutal way,” to remain behind as shields, but that doesn’t make any sense. The Israelis have demonstrated that they will bomb human shields. Besides, if the Israelis truly believe that those civilians are hostages, that’s one more reason to make sure they are not attacked.

That wasn’t the only time that Gillerman has called Hezbollah cynical. Last Sunday, during his speech at the UN Security Council’s emergency meeting on the Qana catastrophe, he again referred to Hezbollah’s cynicism. Earlier in the day, Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres, while speaking on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” also called Hezbollah “cynical”; however, it seems more and more like a case of the pot calling the kettle “cynical.”

I suppose it could be that the Israelis are merely annoyed that Hezbollah haven’t gone to the same lengths, that the Lebanese Army has, to make themselves easy targets. On the other hand, they could be ticked off that Hezbollah also use Lebanese soldiers as human shields. Or was that base bombing, or the other base bombing, or that other base bombing a different variety of intelligence mistake? And how about those banks in Beirut? Vaults must be great places to stash rocket-launchers on the fly, huh?

I don’t recall any old Western where the heroic sheriff complains to his horse about having to kill a pioneer family in order to save them from desperados. He’d spend a good part of the movie seeking a way to bring the enemy over to his side or defeat them without harming innocents. Likewise, the Israelis should take some of their famous intelligence resources and those fancy weapons with the superior tracking and figure out a way not to slaughter children, instead of whining about how they were forced to…unless, of course, they enjoy blaming the victims.

Ira Glunts sends the following:

Israeli Newspaper Reports That The Army Lied About Qana

In its lead story August 1, the Hebrew edition of Ha’aretz online reported that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) claim that Hezbollah missile launchers and Hezbollah fighters were in and around the building in Qana which they shelled early Sunday morning was false.

Oddly, this article, which points to Israeli culpability and recklessness in what some are calling the IDF’s second massacre in Qana (the first was in 1996), has been largely ignored in the international press.

According to the newspaper, the IDF “decided to attack houses in a specific radius of a place that was used in the past to launch missiles.” The article states that the tactic of choosing buildings as targets that are near areas from which rockets were launched in the past has been used before.

Initially, Israeli military sources had reported that the deaths in Qana where caused not by the Israeli air attack early Sunday morning, but by an accidental explosion, many hours later, of Hezbollah ordnance that was stored inside the building. According to the Ha’aretz article, this is not true. Israeli Air Force sources have admitted, according to Ha’aretz, that the deaths in Qana were caused by the Israeli shelling. Between 30 and 60 deaths were reported as a result of the building collapse. Many bodies are still believed to be buried beneath the rubble.

Additionally, the claim of the IDF that leaflets were dropped on the weekend warning of an attack were also untrue. The leaflets were actually delivered “some days” before the weekend, according to military sources.

Here in Miami, it’s the third night of the Raúl Castro Ruz era. Although I wouldn’t say the euphoria (or the schadenfreude) has entirely evaporated, calm has returned just in time for everyone to rush to the supermarket to stock up on water and batteries should Tropical Storm Chris decide to spoil any weekend festivities. Only a man as evil as Fidel could pick the Monday before a weekend hurricane to drop dead. Thoughtless bastard.

All kidding aside, it’s been fairly surreal down here. Coverage of the crazy Cubans shaking their booties across several major thoroughfares in Miami has been on all the national networks. We saw hours of videos here. Yes, we’ve danced on Fidel’s grave before, but this time it’s different. It really is. The announcement that Fidel was ceding power — even if it is only temporary — was like watching a coma patient twitch his eyes after 47 years. You simply just don’t sit back and relax when something like that happens. We’re celebrating and waiting to see what twitches next.

We don’t really pretend to know what’s going on down there, but fueled on shots of high-octane Cuban coffee, everyone is speculating. Maybe for once they told the truth. Maybe he’s already embalmed. Maybe he’s just in a coma or stroked out in a hospital bed. Maybe — as my friend Robert suggested — he’s on Calle Ocho dressed as a little old lady, spying on his Miami Mafia funeral. And with Raúl missing in action too, the conspiracy theories multiply with each passing hour. Maybe it’s an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned, backroom coup d’état. The possibilities are endless, and I suspect we’ll never really know.

I’ve rolodexed through a number of emotions these last three days — mostly disbelief, grief for family and friends who didn’t live to see this, and hope that the future starts now for Cuba instead of after another couple of years of close calls — but I never expected in my wildest dreams to actually be concerned for the Castro butchers. For all the trouble those two have caused I guess I want them to have a more fitting end than gastro-intestinal trouble and some quick “demise” in a dark hallway. Just what the hell has happened to Raúl? Until this mystery surfaced everything had been going according to my schedule of how the changeover was likely to happen.

It’s almost a traitorous feeling, I suppose. My Mom and most of her family fled their adopted island home within a couple years of the glorious revolution in ’59. Then again, if it weren’t for the Castros, she wouldn’t have moved to Miami, and I would never have been born, so I guess they do deserve a smidgen of concern from me…or maybe I was just hoping for the better entertainment value of a nice, public lynching.

(I posted a bit about this on Monday night over at Crash Landing, one of my regular blathering haunts.)