No, the Israeli attack on Hezbollah was the response to that terror organization's kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of another three on the Israeli side of the border. The attack was unprovoked; its purpose was to seize hostages who could be used to negotiate the release of Hezbollah terrorists in Israeli jails.
One hardly even knows where to start - but "Hezbollah terrorists in Israeli jails" is probably a good place. Repeat after me "Israel invaded Lebanon and occupied the south for more than a decade". It is a piece of linguistic violence to state that all Lebanese, or even Hezbollah members, in Israeli cells are "terrorists". When someone invades your country and you resist and you are then captured in most cases you can hardly be called a "terrorist". In fact, I believe the phrase that MJ would never dare use is "freedom fighter".
I want Americans to imagine something. Imagine that you knew for a fact (not BS supposition, but for a fact, and acknowledged by them) that Vietnman held Americans captive seven years after the war had ended. Would you grab some Vietnamese soldiers given a chance and try to use them to make a trade?
Probably not, odds are you'd bomb the shit out of Vietnam again, if you're honest with yourselves.
And, of course, this is even before we get to the fact that Israel has repeatedly refused to give Lebanon maps of the minefields they left behind, minefields which kill people to this day.
Sound like causus belli?
Sure as hell does to me.
This is the sickness at the base of American discouse about the world - a complete inability to walk one inch, let alone one mile, in the shoes of your "enemies".
Of course, Hezbollah hasn't attacked Americans in well over a decade, and has a policy of not attacking Americans. Are they your enemy?
Well, let's go back into the memory bank, something people like Rosenberg seem unable to do. Hezbollah did kill a lot of Americans in the 80's. Why? Because they are EVIL, and Americans are GOOD, and Hezbollah just likes killing good guys?
No.
Because American ships bombarded Shia villages.
Somehow that almost never gets mentioned in the US press, or by "bloggers" like Rosenberg.
So yes, Israel bears no blame for the Israeli/Hezbollah war MJ. None at all. After all they're "terrorists" and they should just let their "terrorist" countrymen rot to death in Israeli jails and do nothing about it. They should just ignore the minefields killing their fellow citiznes (including a disproportionate number of children.)
And they should expect that Israel, a nation which arrogates to itself the right to kidnap half of Palestinian parliament, that assassinates whoever it damn well feels like, which has negotiated prisoners swaps in the past, should suddenly decide that this time they'd rather bomb Lebanon back into the dark ages than negotiate the exact same sort of swap they've negotiated in the past.
Because it's all about who you can call a "terrorist", and Hezbollah is a "terrorist" organization which fought off an occupying army, picks up the trash, runs the schools and clinics, gives out pensions and is supported by a million Lebanese Shia.
The Israelis, on the other hand, despite having killed many many more people than Hezbollah, certainly aren't terrorists, because dropping bombs from planes is never terrorism.
We wouldn't want to think otherwise, would we? Because if we did we might have to ask questions about certain other countries which drop bombs on people, or who think that half a million dead Iraqi kids are "worth it" to keep Saddamn in check.
And we sure as hell can't have that.
Why if we actually thought that way we might not be able to use "terrorist" as a synonym for "people we don't like who dare to fight back" and might actually have to think about what it means to use terror to achieve political means - and who, in this "shock and awe" age of secret prisons and torture, is using terror to achieve political means.
What was it that the pot said to the kettle?
Ian Welsh
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