Antiwar.com Blog

The Israeli government appears so eager to facilitate the Palestinians’ election of a replacement for Arafat that they’re going to allow international election observers into Occupied Palestine. The IDF, however, will not withdraw, so I suppose the observers will be required to sign the Israeli “We have the right to kill you” visa.

Steve Erlanger (NYT/IHT) writes of the international observer concession:

It was another indication that Israel, after the death of Yasser Arafat and under new pressure from the West for movement on the peace process, does not want to be seen as putting obstacles in the way of the Palestinians exercising their right to vote.

Which is ridiculous. Israel and the US have been putting obstacles in the way of the Palestinians exercising their right to vote for many years. Lawrence of Cyberia points out:

Remember that in response to Bush’s Rose Garden speech of June 2002, in which he called for the election of a new leadership “not tainted by terror”, the PA called President Bush’s bluff and scheduled elections for 20 January 2003. But with Arafat riding high in Palestinians public opinion polls after the Muqata siege in fall 2002, it quickly became obvious that if the elections were held, Arafat would be re-elected. And President Bush’s new-found commitment to Palestinian democracy died a sudden death. Because let’s be honest, this Administration’s commitment to bringing “democracy” to the Middle East does not really envisage democracies that vote for anyone other than our preferred candidate. All of which explains why there was a resounding silence from the US when the PA asked for pressure on Israel to allow voter registration to take place in the reoccupied Palestinian cities. Ha’aretz ran a series of articles discussing openly how there was no chance that the Palestinians were going to be allowed to organize elections, if there was any danger that Arafat would get a new mandate, e.g.:

The real reason why the Israeli authorities, with the support of the United States, will not permit Palestinian elections is that they do not want Arafat to be reelected….So the PA can go on making all the preparations and its senior officials can talk as much as they wish about democratic processes and procedures, but as long as it’s clear that Arafat will win, elections are not likely to take place.

— Danny Rubinstein, The Other Elections; (Ha’aretz, 16 Nov 2002).

That was what killed off the 2003 Palestinian elections.

There’s more, read the whole thing. Well, it will be interesting to see what happens if the Palestinian people don’t elect Mahmoud Abbas, like they’re supposed to. Andrew Schamess has more.

For anyone interested in the lawsuit threatened by MEMRI against Professor Juan Cole (Repressive MEMRI on AWC frontpage), there’s both a well-written comprehensive defense and a set of links to other blogs supporting Cole at Abu Aardvark’s place.

In short, if you do decide to take Professor Cole to court over the allegation that you cherry-pick the Arab media to offer a highly warped perspective of Arab discourse, expect to lose. The trial would be exceedingly helpful to the general good of discrediting you by shining light on your translation and selection practices.

Cheerfully yours,
the aardvark

American Amnesia on MEMRI:

MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Organization, hasn’t received attention here at American Amnesia for one simple reason: it’s a compost of specious translations of worst-of-the-worst opinion pieces coming out of the Arabic press. Think of an organization dedicated to translating into Arabic the Jerry Falwells, Bob Jones, and other scraps of ideological detritus bobbing around in our local papers, and you’ve got MEMRI’s mission and net worth.

For those that are unfamiliar with MEMRI, it’s a group of translators whose work poses as a “bridge” to the language gap between the West and the Middle East. The fact that it bridges something is sufficient for most people without knowledge of the language…never mind where it leads you.

I think Yigal Carmon is going to regret SLAPPing this particular hornet’s nest.

After the sham “elections”in occupied Kosovo were finally certified by the Imperial viceroy, Albanians announced their new “government” will be led by two parties: Ibrahim Rugova’s LDK, and Ramush Haradinaj’s AAK. This means Hashim Taqi, the former supremo of the terrorist KLA, won’t be in the government again. Only trouble is, Haradinaj is KLA as well. And he’s under investigation by the Hague Inquisition. Continue reading “Terrorist PM OK?”

From Marines Hampered by Security Fears in Falluja:

Standing over a crater six meters (20 ft) across and six meters deep in a street created by what he said was a 2,000-pound bomb during the offensive, Staff Sargeant Jonathan Knarth, 29, of Florida, looked at down the deep water at the bottom.

“Hey look all you have to do is extend a slide from that rooftop to the water and you have an amusement park right here courtesy of the United States Air Force.”

How else am I to read this?

Consider the story of Henry Tandey, a British infantryman in the Duke of Wellington Regiment in the First World War. On September 28, 1918, Tandey participated in an attack against enemy trenches near the small French town of Marcoing. The British carried the day, and as they advanced, Tandey Cautiously peered into a trench. He saw an enemy soldier, a corporal, lying bleeding on the ground. It would have been easy for Tandey to finish off his enemy, as he had killed many that day; Tandey had played an heroic role in the battle and later was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest wartime decoration, for his great courage. But he felt it was wrong to shoot an injured man, and he spared the corporal’s life.

In 1940, during the Nazi bombardment of Coventry, when Tandey worked as a security guard at the Triumph automobile factory, he gnashed his teeth. “Had I known what that corporal was going to become! God knows how sad I am that I spared him.” The corporal was Adolf Hitler. Tandey’s human gesture had led to the deaths of millions of people and, in a bitter irony of military destiny, had placed his own life at the mercy of the monster whose life he could have taken.

Murder is surely evil, yet every reasonable person will agree that the cause of good would have been greatly advanced if Henry Tandey had killed Hitler in that trench. History abounds with examples of good actions furthering the cause of evil…

But of course, any morally reasonable person realizes that Tandey didn’t happen upon Hitler™, the genocidal maniac of two decades later; he came across an anonymous, wounded young man. If Tandey was supposed to kill him on the basis of what he would become later, then whom should Tandey have spared? Whom will the adherents of this monstrous doctrine of unlimited preemption spare?

Folks, this is far worse than terrorism.

(Link courtesy of Christopher Manion.)