I need a little time to write about my trip to Haifa, which was a fascinating day with many unexpected conversations. While I write about it, I've posted my translation of an article I read on an Israeli portal called Nana ("mint"). It is long, but I think it is very interesting and well worth reading. I hope that Lebanese readers, in particular, will take note that some of the most thoughtful and interesting Israeli voices are not translated into English and that there is a far wider range of opinion in this country than you might know. The link to the Hebrew article is
here. Hebrew speakers, please let me know if I made any errors in the translation.
Saying no to a second war of failure
Despite the Lebanese government’s attempts to distance
itself from Hezbollah’s attacks, the IDF has decided to turn it into a
scapegoat. Heaven forbid they should attack those who are really guilty
July 13, 2006
By Yossi Gurvitz
Starting from yesterday, every Israeli official blamed the
Lebanese government for the Hezbollah attack on Israel, which resulted in the
kidnapping of two soldiers and the killing of three. In a particularly
hypocritical fashion, spokesman after spokesman protested the violation of
Israeli sovereignty - as if the Israeli Air Force had not violated Lebanese air
space time after time with flyovers. And in order to make it clear that those
were not just words, the IDF attacked Lebanon’s power stations, its airport and
Lebanese Air Force bases.
Spokesman after spokesman blamed the Lebanese government for
violating UN Security Council resolution 1559, which calls for the dismantling
of Hezbollah. But they elegantly ignored the fact that Israel has failed to
abide by a whole string of UN resolutions - primarily 242 and 338, which call
for withdrawal from the territories that were conquered in 1967.
But this time we’re not talking merely of a victorious
propaganda war. This time, the IDF is endangering not just the lives of its
soldiers and the citizens of Israel with its operations. It is also
significantly endangering peace in the entire Middle East.
The Cedar Revolution
When Syrian agents assassinated the former Lebanese prime
minister, Rafik Hariri, they probably thought it was just another
assassination. After all, Syrian agents had already assassinated more than 15
senior Lebanese officials. But that assassination blew up in their faces: A
national movement of rage was ignited in Lebanon, forcing the Syrian regime to
withdraw from Lebanon.
The Cedar Revolution threatened to shake Bashir Assad’s
throne as well. Whilst his father was devious, strong and cruel, Bashir
inherited only his cruelty. With incredible stupidity, he started to blow up
anti-Syrian journalists throughout Lebanon. It didn’t help: The Lebanese
elected a democratic and independent government, and even though Syria’s
collaborators in Lebanon – the Hezbollah – succeeded in getting a couple of
representatives elected, the government is without a shadow of a doubt
anti-Syrian.
This had a direct effect on Syria: Bashir Assad’s throne
began to shake. Last week, Syria was forced to announce that it had arrested
about 300 anti-regime intellectuals who had dared to hold a public
demonstration in front of the presidential palace. That would have never
happened to Papa Assad.
And Lebanese democracy, which would not have come into
existence if not for the American forces on the border with Iraq, as the leader
of the Lebanese Druze testified, radiates throughout the region. It is
difficult to overestimate the importance of the first Arab democracy. In Egypt,
the opposition is lifting its head; in Jordan, reforms are taking place; Saudi
Arabia was forced to hold elections – limited, local and only for men, but elections
nonetheless; the “parliament of poodles” in Kuwait woke up, started to snap its
teeth and women finally won the right to vote.
We love to criticize Al Jazeera, and with good reason. It
doesn’t exactly employ a lot of Israel lovers. But it does not only broadcast
photos of the massacres we have committed, or the decapitation of prisoners in
Iraq. It also broadcast directly from the Lebanese revolution. And those images
were broadcast to every home in the Middle East, showing that there was another
way.
The war of cultures
We are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as a people who live apart, and do not consider themselves one of the nations; that was never really true, and it is certainly not true
today. It’s time to extract our national head from our armpit and stop looking
at the world in terms of “the Jews against the goyim,” to stop looking at
history as “the history of the Jews” versus “general history” and look at
what’s happening around us. Over the past 30 years, the Muslim world has been
torn by civil war. The failure of the secular Arab governments and humiliation
in the face of the Western world, have led to the radicalization of Islam. That radicalization began previously – the
Muslim Brotherhood was founded in the 1920’s – but it reached its peak in
recent years.
The moderates of the Muslim world are defending themselves
desperately. The extremists face no difficulty in slaughtering them. But if the
free world has any kind of hope, it is not to be found in actions like the
invasion of Iraq, but in the victory of Western values - in the victory of
democracy over tyranny, free thought over religious intolerance, nationality
over ethnic identity, the individual over the tribe.
The fragile Lebanese democracy represents all of these
values, and it is converting – slowly, it is true, and with difficulty –
followers from the Muslim street. Hezbollah’s operation – the long arm of
Tehran and Damascus – was directed against Lebanon no less than it was directed
against Israel. Arab democracy, an alternative to Islam, frightens the Islamists
more than Israeli democracy.
Bombing Damascus
On the day that the Lebanon War [the IDF invasion of 1982]
broke out, two important articles were published. The first, in Haaretz
newspaper, clearly underlined the true target of that war: The conquest of Lebanon
and the installation of a puppet Christian president. The article cried out for
public opposition to that goal. The second was published in Yedioth Ahronoth,
with the headline: “Quiet, we’re shooting!” Yedioth won, because strong words
will always drown out thought when the blood is boiling.
The army, with lies and deceptive maps, as the head of the
northern command Amram Mitzna testified at Ariel Sharon’s trial,
dragged the government into a war that was wider than planned. It knew that the
public, drunk with cries for revenge, would not stand in its way.
Today the army, crazed with humiliation and rage, is
dragging us into a second Lebanon War. The butting bull is not bothering to
check whether the china dishes will break as a result of its wild behaviour. It
knows that there is no government which will stand up to its bellowing for
revenge. But if we do not wish to be part of a culture war, and we do not want
once again to be stuck in the mud of Lebanon, we need to rein in the destructive
animal.
Israel’s answer should be simple: an ultimatum to the
Lebanese government to return unhurt all the Israeli prisoners, within one
week. At the same time, we should demand that Nasrallah be arrested and put on
trial at the International Court of Justice at The Hague, because the shelling
of civilian areas is certainly a war crime.
If Israeli pressure is joined by international pressure, it will
strengthen the Lebanese government and help it to dismantle the Hezbollah – and
the dismantling of the Hezbollah is a UN demand.
At the same time, Israeli Air Force planes should reduce to
dust the palace of the tyrant in Damascus, and bomb its army from the air. That
way Israel will destroy the real target – while simultaneously helping to
liberate Lebanon. That message – that a
murderous Arab tyranny is collapsing because it tried to undermine its two
democratic neighbours – will provide great encouragement to the Arab street.
That is the path we could have taken, if we had only stopped
to think. But no: We let the blood blind our eyes and our thoughts, we listened
to the army’s promises, and we let it do its job. And even if something
exceptional occurs, it will become clear that when we let the army do its job,
it manages to undermine both Israel and its residents.
