It is often and truthfully said that the first casualty of war is truth. A case in point is the interpretation of the Middle East crisis that Canadians are getting from much of the mainstream media and from the Harper government. The line adopted by the Harper government and fully endorsed on the editorial page of the Globe and Mail is that Israel, a peace loving sovereign state, has been attacked by Hezbollah, a terrorist organization that governs southern Lebanon and that Israel has legitimately and in “measured” fashion counteracted against this terrorist threat on its northern border. The Harper government refuses to call for an immediate ceasefire because it does not want to return to the status quo ante in which Hezbollah poses a continuing threat to Israel. Ceasefire yes, but only after Israel has obliterated Hezbollah----that is Ottawa’s line and the line of nearly all of Canada’s English language press.
This exceedingly one-sided picture excludes so much reality that it amounts to the worst sort of wartime propaganda.
A few strategic realities need to be kept in mind by Canadians to offset the simplicities being offered by Ottawa.
· Two peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, have been fighting over parts of, or all of, a common territory since the creation of Israel in 1948, indeed even before that. That basic starting point is well known but is regularly left out of discussions of the Middle East question. Struggles of this kind in other parts of the world---for instance Ireland, the Balkans, and Kashmir to name a few---are extremely intractable and can continue for decades, even centuries.
· The Six Day War in 1967 dramatically altered the strategic situation in the Middle East. It left Israel occupying the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. The occupied territories have been a battleground ever since. The settler movement in Israel, a powerful force in the country’s politics, has managed to established Israeli settlements whose populations now number several hundred thousand people. While Israel pulled its small settlements out of Gaza last year, the major settlements in the West Bank are quite another matter. The settlements pose an enormous stumbling block to a lasting peace with the Palestinians. Any Israeli government that decided to dismantle the major settlements would face enormous domestic resistance, possibly even civil war.
· The plight of the Palestinians has become a rallying cry for political mobilization throughout the Middle East. The question will not go away and it enflames the relationship between all the Muslim peoples of the region and the West. Even the governments of Arab states that are clients of the United States dare not criticize movements such as Hezbollah for fear of losing ground to their political opponents.
· The mainstream media in Canada largely insists on viewing the Middle East crisis through the prism of the American “war on terror”. Since the attacks on New York City and Washington DC on September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has packaged its foreign policy under this rubric. The invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq were justified to the American people and the world as elements of the war on terror. Hamas and Hezbollah are depicted as terrorist organizations committed to the destruction of the state of Israel. More broadly terrorism is understood as the option chosen by those who hate the freedoms of the West and who are determined to establish theocratic regimes that exclude all but their own particular brands of Islam. The term “terror” is used to characterize acts of force that are launched by non-state actors, who resort to suicide bombings and the bombing of “soft” targets that result in large numbers of civilian casualties. The term “terror” is not used as an epithet to describe attacks carried out by state forces---aerial bombardment, artillery shelling, and tank incursions---that lead to huge civilian casualties. Even though about ninety percent of the casualties in the current fighting have been in Lebanon compared to about ten percent in Israel, the highly loaded term “terrorist” is applied only to one side in the conflict.
· The alternative to terror, according to leaders such as Tony Blair and George W. Bush, most recently promulgated by Blair in London yesterday at a press conference with the Iraqi prime minister, is democracy. Blair’s theory is that the struggle is between the regressive, primitive forces of terrorism and the modernizing forces of democracy. The terms “terrorism” and “democracy” have become slogans whose purpose is to stifle discussion and analysis both in the West and in the Middle East.
· The current struggles, on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon frontier and in Gaza were provoked by incursions into Israel and the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. In both cases, however, Israel seized on the provocations to launch major campaigns aimed at achieving strategic gains. In the south, the goal has been to undermine the Hamas government of the Palestinian Authority. In the north, the goal is to destroy the military power of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
· The United States, the supplier of both monetary aid and the purveyor of advanced weapons to Israel, has stood by and watched while Israel has carried out its assaults on both fronts. While wanting to appear concerned about civilian casualties in Gaza and in Lebanon, the Bush administration supports Israel’s strategic objective on both fronts, as does the Harper government in Canada. The visit of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Beirut yesterday can only be described as surreal. She met with the Lebanese prime minister who was recently welcomed to the White House and touted by George W. Bush as the leader of Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution. Now Lebanon lies in ruins as the U.S. does nothing more than a little hand wringing.
· The U.S. wants to see a NATO force deployed in southern Lebanon, along the Israeli border. The purpose of the force would be to take on whatever remains of Hezbollah. There is a strong possibility that in southern Lebanon, a NATO force would be resisted as an occupying army just as the NATO forces in Afghanistan are seen as outsiders by a large segment of the population.
· The United States has strategic aims in the region that go well beyond Hamas and Hezbollah. Dating back to the last days of the Roosevelt administration during the Second World War, every subsequent American administration has regarded the oil reserves of the Middle East as a strategic American concern. The goal has been, and remains, maintaining American control over the oil states of the Persian Gulf and preventing any other great power from gaining control of the oil of the region. The rising power that most concerns the Bush administration today is Iran. With Iran’s rival Iraq in a state of ungovernable chaos, Iran threatens to become the power around which other Middle Eastern states could revolve---Shia-Sunni internecine struggles notwithstanding. The struggle over Iran’s intention to process uranium, supposedly with the intention of acquiring fuel to generate nuclear power, has set off a fateful contest between Washington and Teheran. Whether Iran’s goal is to follow in the footsteps of Pakistan and India to build its own nuclear bombs, no one can say for certain. Armed with nuclear weapons, Iran would gain authority in the struggle against Israel, a state experts believe possesses as many as two hundred nuclear weapons. Both the U.S. and Israel are determined to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
· Hezbollah, which emerged in southern Lebanon in response to the Israeli incursion into that country in 1982, has political sponsors and weapons suppliers both in Syria and Iran. The current conflict could widen into a much larger war that would involve both Syria and Iran. With the Bush administration at a low ebb in public support in the United States, attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities---advocated by some neo-conservatives---would be a very difficult sell. If either Syria or Iran were to become directly involved or implicated in the present fighting, however, such a wider war could erupt in the very near future.
· Canadians, like people all over the world, have a very great interest in preventing the fighting in the Middle East from lighting the fuse of a wider war. As a member of the United Nations, Canada is committed to halting the human suffering that is occurring as soon as possible. Canada, however, is in a very different position from the United States. As the world’s leading imperial power, the U.S. is determined to maintain is position of hegemony in the Middle East. As a country that now imports over fifty per cent of its oil, the U.S. has become highly dependent on sources of petroleum from this dangerous part of the world. Canada, on the other hand, is not a world power and has no imperial stakes on the line in the Middle East. Moreover, Canada is capable of meeting its own petroleum needs from domestic sources, although NAFTA rules force us presently to continue exporting oil to the U.S. even in the event of a shortage of supplies from offshore.
· Canada would do well to consider the conflict in the Middle East from the perspective of a North American middle power. Canadians have a very great interest in halting a conflict which has put tens of thousands of Canadians in the line of fire in Lebanon. As a country widely respected around the world for its commitment to fairness and to peacekeeping, Canada may be able to play a role along with other countries in calling for sanity, an immediate ceasefire, and the provision of humanitarian aid to those who are in need. Canada should not line up unequivocally on one side or the other in the Middle East. We are witnessing a conflict that historical precedent sadly informs us is likely to flare for a long time to come. Canada should do what it can to contain the conflict and to aid in finding interim and long-term solutions. For a start, we need a dialogue that is drained, to the extent possible, of inflammatory and simplistic rhetoric, and partial truths.
This exceedingly one-sided picture excludes so much reality that it amounts to the worst sort of wartime propaganda.
A few strategic realities need to be kept in mind by Canadians to offset the simplicities being offered by Ottawa.
· Two peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, have been fighting over parts of, or all of, a common territory since the creation of Israel in 1948, indeed even before that. That basic starting point is well known but is regularly left out of discussions of the Middle East question. Struggles of this kind in other parts of the world---for instance Ireland, the Balkans, and Kashmir to name a few---are extremely intractable and can continue for decades, even centuries.
· The Six Day War in 1967 dramatically altered the strategic situation in the Middle East. It left Israel occupying the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. The occupied territories have been a battleground ever since. The settler movement in Israel, a powerful force in the country’s politics, has managed to established Israeli settlements whose populations now number several hundred thousand people. While Israel pulled its small settlements out of Gaza last year, the major settlements in the West Bank are quite another matter. The settlements pose an enormous stumbling block to a lasting peace with the Palestinians. Any Israeli government that decided to dismantle the major settlements would face enormous domestic resistance, possibly even civil war.
· The plight of the Palestinians has become a rallying cry for political mobilization throughout the Middle East. The question will not go away and it enflames the relationship between all the Muslim peoples of the region and the West. Even the governments of Arab states that are clients of the United States dare not criticize movements such as Hezbollah for fear of losing ground to their political opponents.
· The mainstream media in Canada largely insists on viewing the Middle East crisis through the prism of the American “war on terror”. Since the attacks on New York City and Washington DC on September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has packaged its foreign policy under this rubric. The invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq were justified to the American people and the world as elements of the war on terror. Hamas and Hezbollah are depicted as terrorist organizations committed to the destruction of the state of Israel. More broadly terrorism is understood as the option chosen by those who hate the freedoms of the West and who are determined to establish theocratic regimes that exclude all but their own particular brands of Islam. The term “terror” is used to characterize acts of force that are launched by non-state actors, who resort to suicide bombings and the bombing of “soft” targets that result in large numbers of civilian casualties. The term “terror” is not used as an epithet to describe attacks carried out by state forces---aerial bombardment, artillery shelling, and tank incursions---that lead to huge civilian casualties. Even though about ninety percent of the casualties in the current fighting have been in Lebanon compared to about ten percent in Israel, the highly loaded term “terrorist” is applied only to one side in the conflict.
· The alternative to terror, according to leaders such as Tony Blair and George W. Bush, most recently promulgated by Blair in London yesterday at a press conference with the Iraqi prime minister, is democracy. Blair’s theory is that the struggle is between the regressive, primitive forces of terrorism and the modernizing forces of democracy. The terms “terrorism” and “democracy” have become slogans whose purpose is to stifle discussion and analysis both in the West and in the Middle East.
· The current struggles, on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon frontier and in Gaza were provoked by incursions into Israel and the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. In both cases, however, Israel seized on the provocations to launch major campaigns aimed at achieving strategic gains. In the south, the goal has been to undermine the Hamas government of the Palestinian Authority. In the north, the goal is to destroy the military power of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
· The United States, the supplier of both monetary aid and the purveyor of advanced weapons to Israel, has stood by and watched while Israel has carried out its assaults on both fronts. While wanting to appear concerned about civilian casualties in Gaza and in Lebanon, the Bush administration supports Israel’s strategic objective on both fronts, as does the Harper government in Canada. The visit of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Beirut yesterday can only be described as surreal. She met with the Lebanese prime minister who was recently welcomed to the White House and touted by George W. Bush as the leader of Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution. Now Lebanon lies in ruins as the U.S. does nothing more than a little hand wringing.
· The U.S. wants to see a NATO force deployed in southern Lebanon, along the Israeli border. The purpose of the force would be to take on whatever remains of Hezbollah. There is a strong possibility that in southern Lebanon, a NATO force would be resisted as an occupying army just as the NATO forces in Afghanistan are seen as outsiders by a large segment of the population.
· The United States has strategic aims in the region that go well beyond Hamas and Hezbollah. Dating back to the last days of the Roosevelt administration during the Second World War, every subsequent American administration has regarded the oil reserves of the Middle East as a strategic American concern. The goal has been, and remains, maintaining American control over the oil states of the Persian Gulf and preventing any other great power from gaining control of the oil of the region. The rising power that most concerns the Bush administration today is Iran. With Iran’s rival Iraq in a state of ungovernable chaos, Iran threatens to become the power around which other Middle Eastern states could revolve---Shia-Sunni internecine struggles notwithstanding. The struggle over Iran’s intention to process uranium, supposedly with the intention of acquiring fuel to generate nuclear power, has set off a fateful contest between Washington and Teheran. Whether Iran’s goal is to follow in the footsteps of Pakistan and India to build its own nuclear bombs, no one can say for certain. Armed with nuclear weapons, Iran would gain authority in the struggle against Israel, a state experts believe possesses as many as two hundred nuclear weapons. Both the U.S. and Israel are determined to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
· Hezbollah, which emerged in southern Lebanon in response to the Israeli incursion into that country in 1982, has political sponsors and weapons suppliers both in Syria and Iran. The current conflict could widen into a much larger war that would involve both Syria and Iran. With the Bush administration at a low ebb in public support in the United States, attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities---advocated by some neo-conservatives---would be a very difficult sell. If either Syria or Iran were to become directly involved or implicated in the present fighting, however, such a wider war could erupt in the very near future.
· Canadians, like people all over the world, have a very great interest in preventing the fighting in the Middle East from lighting the fuse of a wider war. As a member of the United Nations, Canada is committed to halting the human suffering that is occurring as soon as possible. Canada, however, is in a very different position from the United States. As the world’s leading imperial power, the U.S. is determined to maintain is position of hegemony in the Middle East. As a country that now imports over fifty per cent of its oil, the U.S. has become highly dependent on sources of petroleum from this dangerous part of the world. Canada, on the other hand, is not a world power and has no imperial stakes on the line in the Middle East. Moreover, Canada is capable of meeting its own petroleum needs from domestic sources, although NAFTA rules force us presently to continue exporting oil to the U.S. even in the event of a shortage of supplies from offshore.
· Canada would do well to consider the conflict in the Middle East from the perspective of a North American middle power. Canadians have a very great interest in halting a conflict which has put tens of thousands of Canadians in the line of fire in Lebanon. As a country widely respected around the world for its commitment to fairness and to peacekeeping, Canada may be able to play a role along with other countries in calling for sanity, an immediate ceasefire, and the provision of humanitarian aid to those who are in need. Canada should not line up unequivocally on one side or the other in the Middle East. We are witnessing a conflict that historical precedent sadly informs us is likely to flare for a long time to come. Canada should do what it can to contain the conflict and to aid in finding interim and long-term solutions. For a start, we need a dialogue that is drained, to the extent possible, of inflammatory and simplistic rhetoric, and partial truths.
Tags: Lebanon , Middle East , Israel
2 comments:
Regarding this quote:
"The Six Day War in 1967 dramatically altered the strategic situation in the Middle East. It left Israel occupying the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. The occupied territories have been a battleground ever since. The settler movement in Israel, a powerful force in the country’s politics, has managed to established Israeli settlements whose populations now number several hundred thousand people. While Israel pulled its small settlements out of Gaza last year, the major settlements in the West Bank are quite another matter. The settlements pose an enormous stumbling block to a lasting peace with the Palestinians. Any Israeli government that decided to dismantle the major settlements would face enormous domestic resistance, possibly even civil war."
I find two things very interesting. First, that you can mention the Six Day War and not mention that it was started by Egypt kicking U.N. Peacekeepers out of the Sinai, blockading Israel, and moving troops and tanks to Israel's border. Oh, and that it was followed by a combined strike of Egyptian, Iraqi, Jordanian and Syrian military forces in a clear attempt to finally wipe Israel off the map.
Now, yes, the Israeli's survived, and occupied some of their neighbours territory afterwards. Perhaps because they were afraid that the combined armies that just tried to destroy them might try again (which they did) and that maybe it wasn't the smartest thing to have countries that want you utterly destroyed right on your border with no buffer.
Secondly though, you're perfectly right about the political difficulties Israeli politicians would face if they tried to pull settlers out of the West Bank. After all, they pulled out of Lebanon and Gaza (sending in the IDF to forcibly remove their own citizens from Gaza) and all they got for it was more terrorism. If I were an Israeli, I wouldn't want my government to pull out of the West Bank either. Hezbollah and Hamas have clearly shown that concessions from Israel will be met with derision and violence (when they're not taking credit for forcing the Israelis into concessions with their their terrorist strikes).
The problem is, Israel is facing terrorists, and everyone seems to want to deal with "states". Well, Hezbollah and Hamas are not states. If Israel attacks, Hezbollah and Hamas will attack Israel. If Israel withdraws, Hezbollah and Hamas will attack Israel. Establish buffer zones of occupied land? The terrorists attack. End the occupation of occupied land? The terrorists attack.
Eventually, someone has to destroy the military capabilities of Hezbollah and Hamas. If not now, later, if not the Israelis, someone else. As we wait though, the inevitable price in blood and treasure is going up, not down. A lot of innocent civilians are going to be killed if we try to take out Hezbollah and Hamas now. Many more will most likely die if we wait another six years and try to do it then.
No previous Canadian government, including Mulroney's, has so shamefully identified itself with the interests of the US, and its surrogate Israel, at our expense. First a family of Canadians are bombed and killed. Now a Canadian UN peace keeper is killed--and our prime minister blames the UN and continues to insist on Israeli innocence. This is surreal. Furthermore, by shifting Canadian policy to such an ideological, hard right, pro-US position, Harper is endangering all of us who try to live in the world and not huddle behind the empire's ever more breachable walls. And how can we as Canadians bear to be complicit in the fate of millions of refugees, and the dead, wounded and maimed people who are the victimes of the US's hard power policy, to which Stephen Harper is attaching himself so closely? How can we get rid of this disgraceful (and clearly ignorant and incompetent) government? Where is the parliamentary opposition--they are the majority after all? Where is the Bloc, the NDP, the Liberals? If we don't act we will be equally to blame. We will have deserved to share in the disgrace and shame that Canada is now bringing down on us around the world.
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