Saturday, August 05, 2006
Middle East War Report for Friday, August 4
Updated January 29, 2008:
12 Israelis were killed and 145 more were wounded in the Middle East War today. 70 Israelis, 44 servicemen and 26 Israeli civilians, have been killed so far.
8 IDF soldiers were killed and 8 more were wounded, all in fighting in Lebanon.
4 Israeli civilians were killed and 137 more were wounded in a 220-rocket barrage on northern Israel.
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3 IDF soldiers were killed and 4 more were wounded in anti-tank missile attacks inside Lebanon in Taibe and Rajmin. It looks like at least one Merkava tank was destroyed in Rajmin. 3 of the 4-man crew in a tank in Rajmin was hit by a missile and the other crewmember was seriously wounded. These casualties apparently occurred very early on Friday morning.
Rajmin could not be located on any map but it is reportedly in the far southwest of Lebanon near the Israeli border and the coast, just north of Nahariyah. Taibe is about 4 miles west of Metulla and is the scene of very heavy fighting in the past 2 days.
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3 more IDF soldiers were killed by anti-tank fire in Merkabe in heavy fighting before dawn. Merkabe is 3 1/2 miles west of Kiryat Shemona and 1 mile west of the border. The IDF forces were attacked with a barrage of anti-tank missiles and machine gun fire in the village.
2 more soldiers were wounded. Hezbollah said this was an attack on a Merkava tank and that the tank was destroyed. Al Arabiya TV was saying that 5 Israeli soldiers were killed in this attack, but that is not confirmed yet.
*****
1 more IDF soldier was killed in fighting in Taibeh late on Friday night.
Hezbollah fighters detonated an antitank mine on an IDF bulldozer in the eastern section of southern Lebanon in the town Atabiyeh, wounding 2 IDF troops, 1 seriously. Hezbollah said the bulldozer was destroyed.
There was heavy fighting in the villages of Shihin and Tayr Harfa, 2 miles north of the border in the western sector, opposite the Israeli town of Adamit.
****
Heavy fighting continued in Aita Al Shaab and Bint Jbeil. Bint Jbeil was reportedly conquered by Israel last weekend and the Hezbollah force in the city was wiped out. When Israel left, however, the city was still in the hands of Hezbollah and it remains in the hands of Hezbollah at the moment.
Hezbollah said that in fighting near Aita al-Shaab and Taibeh, 7 IDF tanks and 1 armored personnel carrier were destroyed in house to house fighting. There was no confirmation of these claims.
*****
IDF forces tried to take a strategic hill near the town of Naquora on the coast, 2 miles north of the border and 2 1/2 miles north of the Israeli town of Rosh Hanriqa.
There are 10,000 IDF troops fighting in southern Lebanon right now against an unknown number of Hezbollah and other Lebanese fighters.
Hezbollah rained rockets down on Israeli military bases in the Golan Heights yesterday. Some rockets hit the Syrian city of Kuneitra in the demilitarized zone on the border of the Golan Heights and Syria.
*****
4 Israeli civilians were killed and 135 more were wounded in Katyusha attacks in another Katyusha barrage on Israel's north. 220 rockets rained down on Israel. The 4 civilians were killed in Magdal Krum, Kfar Mughar, Kiryat Shemona and Deir al Asad. 3 of the missiles landed all the way down to Hadera and Pardes Hannah, the furthest so far.
Hadera is a large city 50 miles south of Lebanon and about 1/2 way between Haifa and Tel Aviv. We don't yet know what kind of rocket hit Hadera. Another missile in the same volley landed in the nearby Jezreel Valley southeast of Haifa. That missile was aimed at the Ramat Dan Air Force Base.
It is useful to note that many of Hezbollah's rocket attacks are aimed at Israeli barracks, military bases and arms factories. These are often located right next to towns, often cynically right next to Israeli Arab and Druze towns.
*****
Another insane, Hellish Katyusha rocket barrage pummeled Israel Friday, with 220 rockets raining down by evening. The barrages are continuing with no end in sight. The economy in the north of Israel has slammed to a halt. Rescue vehicles fill the roads, racing to and from the scenes of attacks.
The IDF says they killed at least 23 Hezbollah fighters, wounded 1 more and took several POW's in fighting in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has lost at least 70 fighters, and possibly many more, so far.
*****
At least 33 Syrian Kurdish farmworkers were killed and 20 more were wounded when an Israeli jet fired 3 missiles at a farm warehouse in Qaa, 30 miles northeast of Baalbeck on the border of Syria and Lebanon in the Bekaa Valley. Another 7 workers are still buried under the wreckage.
Five Syrian refrigerator trucks arrived at the warehouse to load up peaches and apples for the Syrian market, in order to bring them back into Syria and sell them. There were about 150 people present at the warehouse at the time.
The warehouse was located past Lebanese customs in the no mans land before the Syrian border. It was actually 2 miles past the Lebanese border, so the assumption is that it was inside Syria. Syrian troops helped in the rescue operation. This attack is hard to figure. Looks like a case of bad intelligence.
The IDF thought that the warehouses were suspicious and were thought to be holding weapons. Just more Israeli "attack first, think later", that we have seen so much of in this war. Either Israeli intelligence is terrible in this war or they are trying to stop all truck traffic from going across the border in either direction.
US TV is now stating that all of the Kurdish farmworkers were really Hezbollah in disguise and the plum warehouse was really a weapons warehouse. That sounds pretty dubious to me, and it was contradicted by the Israeli site Debka, which has direct links to Israeli intelligence.
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IDF aircraft bombed a home in Aita al Shaab in southern Lebanon where 17 civilians were hiding - initially, they were all buried in the rubble but later, 10 of them were found to be dead and 7 more were found to be wounded.
Another home in Taibe was also bombed by the IDF. There were 50 civilians hiding there - initial reports were that they are all buried in the rubble also. Later reports indicated that there were not 50 people hiding in this home and that only 1 person was killed here.
*****
Israeli jets attacked in the town of Budai, west of Baalbeck, killing 1 civilian and wounding 4 more.
Israeli jets and ships attacked the southern Beirut suburbs of Ruweiss and Ouzai, killing 1 Lebanese soldier and wounding 3 more. It's strange how the Lebanese army just sits there and lets themselves get attacked over and over by Israel and does nothing about it. You would think at some point they might start fighting back? These attacks targeted a Hamas office and the Bourj al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp.
The death toll in Lebanon, including those missing and buried under rubble, is now approximately 1000, if the latest massacres in Qaa and Aita Al-Shaab are credible. Of those, at least 120 are either guerrillas or Lebanese military. That leaves about 880 Lebanese civilians killed, missing, or buried in rubble right now. Not only is there no end in sight, but the situation appears to be escalating dangerously.
An IDF attack on the village of Dayr Qanun, 4 1/2 miles southeast of Tyre, destroyed a home.
Israeli aircraft and artillery also battered a number of towns around Tyre.
*****
Egyptian judges are urging President Mubarak to abrogate the peace treaty with Israel as null and void due to the fighting in Lebanon. Also, there are rumors that the military is getting restive and that a military coup may be imminent in which Mubarak is overthrown and a military regime takes its place.
The first move of the military regime would reportedly be an abrogation of the peace treaty with Israel. I regard these rumors as valid, but I am not sure if a coup is going to really come down or not.
*****
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Middle East War Report for Wednesday, August 2
Updated November 30, 2008:
*****
On the Israel-Lebanon War Wednesday, Israel suffered 2 killed and 144 wounded. Most of the casualties were from Katyusha missiles. 1 IDF soldier was killed and 20 more were wounded. 1 IDF soldier was killed and 18 more were wounded in fighting in Lebanon. 2 more soldiers were wounded by a rocket attack along the border inside Israel.
1 Israeli civilian was killed and 124 more were wounded. 1 civilian was killed in rocket attack on a kibbutz near Nahariyah. 123 were wounded in a brutal Katyusha missile barrage on northern Israel, the worst so far. 1 more Israeli was wounded when a Qassam missile hit Ashkelon.
66 Israelis have been killed in the war so far, 36 soldiers and 28 civilians.
*****
****
An incredible barrage of at least 230 rockets rained down on northern Israel on Wednesday, the heaviest barrage ever. 1 civilian was killed and 123 more were wounded and air raid sirens sounded all over Israel.
32 rockets fell on battered Kiryat Shemona, 20 on Nahariyah, 15 on Safat, 11 on Tiberias and 6 on Accra. The fatality was a cyclist who was killed when a rocket hit Kibbutz Saar near Nahariyah at 2 PM.
Metulla, Rosh Pinna and Karmiel came under heavy attack. 7 long-range missiles landed at the northern entrance to Afula. Maalot and Hatzor were attacked and one rocket fell in Occupied Golan Heights. Fires are burning across the area and there is widespread damage to homes and cars.
Fires were burning in the city of Tiberias. More fires are burning all around Nahariyah. A home in Nahariyah suffered a direct hit and went up in flames. Another home in Accra was also hit. Northern Israel was in chaos.
Rockets hit far to the south in Beit Shean, a new record for a rocket that was not a rangefinder. Beit Shean is near the Jordan River and the West Bank. At 1:40 PM, that record was broken by a rocket that actually reached into the West Bank village of Pqua near Jenin, to the cheers of Jenin residents.
The IDF believes that these rockets are older Syrian 302mm rockets, some of which are being referred to disgustingly as Khaibar-1 rockets. It is a Syrian-made variation on the Iranian Fajr-5. It contains 170 pounds of explosives and has a range of 46-62 miles.
During the height of the barrage, radio reports were interrupted every 4-5 minutes with more reports of incoming rockets, in a reminiscence of the Blitz of London in World War 2.
*****
****
Early on Wednesday, August 2, several helicopters full of IDF Special Forces landed in the Bekaa Valley in a town east of Baalbeck deep inside Eastern Lebanon, only 7 miles from the Syrian border, where the Hezbollah commander for the Bekaa Valley has turned a local hospital into a headquarters for his forces. Israeli forces successfully dropped in, then raided the hospital and started asking for ID's inside.
A major Hezbollah force invaded the hospital and the IDF and Hezbollah and IDF were both in the hospital fighting in close quarters, often face to face. Hezbollah claimed to have trapped the IDF force inside. Many Israeli jets circled overhead and carried out a number of bombing missions.
This penetration is deep into the heartland of the nation. It also has a serious risk to draw Syria into the fight.
The latest information is that the commando force was evacuated out of the area with no casualties. They reportedly captured several Hezbollah operatives, but the Lebanese government said they were just low-level fighters, not high-ranking members. The IDF is claiming that they have taken high-ranking members POW.
Hezbollah is claiming that those captured were just civilians. 12 persons were said to have been killed in this mission, all civilians, including a number of civilians. The IDF is claiming that they killed 10 Hezbollah in this raid.
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This just in - earlier in the war, Hezbollah rocket barrages hit IDF Northern Operations Headquarters on Mount Meron and IDF Northern Command Headquarters in Safad were hit a number of times.
No one reports this because all reports out of Israel have to go through Israeli censors, and any information about any strategic targets in Israel is blacked out. The notion that Hezbollah is aiming only to wantonly attack Israeli cities and towns to hurt or kill Israeli civilians is not completely true.
A certain number of the rocket attacks are basically terrorist in nature, but many others are actually trying to hit either IDF troop concentrations, bases - headquarters or Israeli arms factories. Many of these strategic facilities have been cynically located near Israeli Arab cities and towns in order to use the Israeli Arab population as unwitting human shields in case of attack by Israel's enemies.
******
Wednesday:
8 AM: IDF forces in the West Bank were attacked with 3 homemade bombs in Kabatia, near Nablus. There were no casualties.
8:30 AM: 11 more IDF were reported wounded in heavy fighting in various places along the Lebanese-Israeli border. That puts IDF casualties for about the last 24 hours at 3 killed and 41 wounded. The IDF claimed that 10 Hezbollah were killed in this fighting.
9 AM: A Qassam rocket from Gaza slammed into Ashkelon, wounding 1 Israeli .
2:42 PM: Rocket attack on Israeli troops on the Israel-Lebanon border wounded 2 soldiers.
*****
3 IDF were killed and 29 more were wounded in heavy fighting in Ayta al Shaab Tuesday. Hezbollah ambushed an IDF force, again, as they did in Bint Jbeil earlier, as the IDF entered town. This time Hezbollah fired a very heavy anti-tank missile barrage, heavy sniper fire and rockets.
IDF forces had to evacuate their wounded by hand under heavy fire. The 3 killed could not be evacuated for hours due to very heavy fire. 10 Hezbollah were reportedly killed, according to the IDF.
There is considerable evidence that Ayta al Shaab, inside Lebanon, was where the initial July 12 incident that set off the war occurred. In other words, the purported Hezbollah cross-border raid may not have even occurred. As of 7 AM on Wednesday, small arms exchanges were again reported in the area of Ayta al Shaab and A-Haviv.
According to the Lebanese police, Hezbollah and numerous media outlets, this is where the IDF patrol was attacked in the original July 12 incident that set off the war. Israel said that the attack was a cross-border raid that struck between Zarit and Shetula. I do not yet feel that it has been conclusively proved one way or the other that the attack occurred on either the Lebanese or the Israeli side.
*****
5 more IDF soldiers were wounded in a Hezbollah mortar attack on IDF troop concentrations on the Lebanon-Israel border. The attack occurred at 11 PM on Tuesday night.
Rockets landed in Metulla, the Galilee and Nahariyah on Tuesday. There was damage but no casualties.
*****
More Lebanese armed groups have joined fight against Israel - the Lebanese Communist Party militia, the Amal Shia militia (Amal is the other major Shia party in Lebanon and is a rival to Hezbollah. They are generally more secular than Hezbollah), the PFLP-GC, Jamaa Islamiya, and the Islamic Action Group.
There are now seven armed guerrilla groups fighting Israel. In addition, the Lebanese military is occasionally fighting the IDF and the Syrian military has carried out a couple of attacks - one on an IDF drone on the Lebanon-Syria border and the other an apparent detonation of a mine on the Syria-Golan Heights border. Hence, there are at least nine armed forces who are fighting the IDF, at least occasionally:
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Druze leaders in Syria are itching for a fight against Israel in the Golan Heights - the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights consists mostly of Druze villages.
In a meeting the other day, they petitioned Syrian President Assad to allow them to open a front on their own (without the Syrian military) on the Golan-Syrian border. Lawmaker Marwan Habash and cleric Sheik Asad Kopertu are among those advocating opening up this front.
*****
Earlier, in an operation similar to the one currently ongoing, Israel attempted to land troops via helicopter near Baalbeck in the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon, but they were beaten back by heavy fire from the Lebanese military.
Recently, Syria shot down an Israeli drone over the Lebanon-Syria border.
A mine went off on the Golan Heights border, but there were no Israeli casualties. The suggestion is that Syrian forces triggered this mine..
Israel bombed a border post on the Lebanon-Syrian border, killing several border guards.
*****
According to a recent poll, 87% of Lebanese support Hezbollah - 80% of Christians, 80% of Druze, 89% of Sunnis and apparently over 90% of Shia. This is simply a disaster for Israel. In the beginning, many Lebanese were furious at Hezbollah, especially Maronite Christians. Sectarian violence saw a serious upswing early in the Israeli operation.
Shia refugees heading into Sunni districts were taunted and berated by local Sunnis. Druze leader Walid Jumblatt openly attacked Syria and two major Maronite leaders openly backed the Israeli operation.
Later, as the IDF proceeded to begin to destroy Lebanon as a nation, that turned around. Interviews with former Phalangists in Christian districts of Beirut said they were training to fight both Israel and Hezbollah. Local Druze opened their districts to Shia refugees fleeing the fighting.
In recent days, as you can see by the survey above, Israel has succeeded in uniting Lebanon around a common enemy. That 80% of Druze and Christians are supporting Hezbollah is simply stunning and shows a serious failure of this US-British-Israeli operation. The Anglo-Zionist Coalition failed to consider a basic human tendency - nationalism.
*****
Israel is ferociously shelling, bombing and rocketing Southern Lebanon. In many cases, IDF helicopters are deliberately rocketing ambulances, obvious civilian vehicles with white flags flying from them and any humans who happen to be in the area, even people swimming in rivers. It's pretty much a free-fire zone and they are often just shooting at anything that moves in many areas.
Map detailing the targets Israel has been bombing in its destruction of Lebanon and the number of attacks on each target.
The US, for some bizarre reason, is pushing hard on Israel to attack Syria, but Israel is reluctant to do that. Tell me why the US is more anxious to attack Syria than Israel itself?
*****
Hezbollah is making very good use of anti-tank missiles in this combat and has damaged or destroyed quite a few of the IDF's state-of-art Merkava tanks, one of the best tanks in the world. The Merkava-4, the latest iteration, is particularly good. Hezbollah is using the following Soviet-made anti-tank missiles:
In December 2005, Hezbollah attacked some IDF Merkavas with Saggers, but the results were disappointing because the tanks were not hit in their vulnerable places, and Hezbollah was using Saggers and Spigots, which are not the top-of-the-line Soviet technology.
Iranian advisors reviewed the results of the battle and went back to Iran to study the Merkava, determine where its vulnerable points were, and to upgrade the Saggers and Spigots with higher-grade missiles, in particular the Kornets.
In this war so far, Saggers, Spigots and Kornets are all doing fairly well against Merkavas (considering how impervious it is), and quite well against armored vehicles and especially dismounted troops. This indicates that Hezbollah has learned from its mistakes and has learned where the vulnerable places on the Merkava are. Also, Hezbollah seems to have a very large supply of these AT-variants, especially the Saggers.
This is apparently a photo of a Hezbollah guerrilla with an anti-tank missile. I assume that the missile is an AT-variant such as an AT-3 Sagger, AT-4 Spigot or an AT-14 Kornet. The photo is from the Arabic edition of Al Arabiya on August 3. Since I can't read Arabic, I am guessing at the subject of the photo.
All three of these missiles are guided anti-tank missiles. They can be launched either by hand or by a ground-based launcher. The missile is fairly slow - it is not like a bullet in that you can actually see it launch and then follow it with the eye as it heads towards its target.
The attacker launches the missile and then guides it along the path to the tank via a wire-guided missile system. In that way, if the tank starts to move, the attacker can follow the tank's maneuvers and adjust the missile along the path of the moving tank.
The IDF has a variety of means to deal with these missiles - one of them is to shoot a plume of smoke as soon as they see the missile launch in order to make it difficult for the launcher to see his target.
The Iranians also reportedly make a version of the top-notch US anti-tank missiles, the TOW and Dragon missiles. Little is known about these knock-offs except for a claim in Al Arabiyah that these knockoffs are proving to be the most effective of all of the anti-tank missiles that Hezbollah is using.
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Hezbollah has lost possibly 120 fighters so far, maybe more. Hezbollah casualties are difficult to determine because the totals they release seem too low. The IDF typically releases very high figures for Hezbollah KIA, but US intelligence sources say that Israel has grossly exaggerated the number of Hezbollah killed.
Looking at Hezbollah's homepage here, you can see that they have announced the names of 22 KIA's just in the past day or two, so they are obviously not shy about reporting their KIA's. However, in some cases, there seems to be a long delay in Hezbollah announcing the names of those who have fallen. Right now, some of the KIA's they are announcing fell around 10 days ago.
*****
IDF claims of having degraded 50% of Hezbollah's fighting capability, killing 40% of its force (400 KIA out of a supposed 1,000 man fighting force) and having wiped out 75% of their potent Zilzal missiles (which can reportedly reach Tel Aviv) are meaningless. The IDF has no way whatsoever of knowing what missile capacity Hez has or how much is degraded or destroyed. These are all just wild-ass guesses (WAGS).
Hezbollah apparently hit another Israeli ship with a missile off the coast of Sidon Monday. The missile damaged the ship but did not sink it. The IDF is denying that a ship was hit, but an excellent source, the Lebanese National Police, said that the ship indeed was hit.
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Hezbollah claimed that they fired the missile in response to the many civilian deaths after an Israeli bombing in Qana, which killed 28 civilians who were sheltering on the ground floor of a building. An IDF airstrike hit a target near the building but did not hit the building itself around 12:30 AM on the night of the incident. The attack left a large hole in the street near the building.
This damage to the street apparently rocked the foundation of the building. Those inside apparently went back to sleep after the air raid. The weakened building appears to have collapsed 7 1/2 hours later. Charges that the IDF deliberately attacked a building full of civilians are false.
Similarly, variations of desperate Israeli and Phalangist propaganda about the incident are also false.
One of these fog of war tall tales is that the Qana incident was actually a controlled blast carried out by Hezbollah in order to kill their own people so as to create an international incident and hopefully stop the fighting.
Another is that the entire incident was faked, with previously dead bodies placed in the rubble so as to make it appear they were killed in the air raid.
Pro-Israeli allegations that the photographed aftermath of the incident had the air of theater are valid, but it appears that the dead were actually killed in the building collapse, and that the building collapse was caused, as noted above, by a nearby IDF air raid 7 1/2 hours earlier, which weakened the building foundation and caused it to belatedly collapse.
*****
So far, the Lebanese High Relief Committee is reporting a shocking 828 dead and over 3,200 wounded. It is not known how many fighters are amongst the dead. The toll does not include those who are still buried under rubble.
*****
On the Israel-Lebanon War Wednesday, Israel suffered 2 killed and 144 wounded. Most of the casualties were from Katyusha missiles. 1 IDF soldier was killed and 20 more were wounded. 1 IDF soldier was killed and 18 more were wounded in fighting in Lebanon. 2 more soldiers were wounded by a rocket attack along the border inside Israel.
1 Israeli civilian was killed and 124 more were wounded. 1 civilian was killed in rocket attack on a kibbutz near Nahariyah. 123 were wounded in a brutal Katyusha missile barrage on northern Israel, the worst so far. 1 more Israeli was wounded when a Qassam missile hit Ashkelon.
66 Israelis have been killed in the war so far, 36 soldiers and 28 civilians.
*****
****
An incredible barrage of at least 230 rockets rained down on northern Israel on Wednesday, the heaviest barrage ever. 1 civilian was killed and 123 more were wounded and air raid sirens sounded all over Israel.
32 rockets fell on battered Kiryat Shemona, 20 on Nahariyah, 15 on Safat, 11 on Tiberias and 6 on Accra. The fatality was a cyclist who was killed when a rocket hit Kibbutz Saar near Nahariyah at 2 PM.
Metulla, Rosh Pinna and Karmiel came under heavy attack. 7 long-range missiles landed at the northern entrance to Afula. Maalot and Hatzor were attacked and one rocket fell in Occupied Golan Heights. Fires are burning across the area and there is widespread damage to homes and cars.
Fires were burning in the city of Tiberias. More fires are burning all around Nahariyah. A home in Nahariyah suffered a direct hit and went up in flames. Another home in Accra was also hit. Northern Israel was in chaos.
Rockets hit far to the south in Beit Shean, a new record for a rocket that was not a rangefinder. Beit Shean is near the Jordan River and the West Bank. At 1:40 PM, that record was broken by a rocket that actually reached into the West Bank village of Pqua near Jenin, to the cheers of Jenin residents.
The IDF believes that these rockets are older Syrian 302mm rockets, some of which are being referred to disgustingly as Khaibar-1 rockets. It is a Syrian-made variation on the Iranian Fajr-5. It contains 170 pounds of explosives and has a range of 46-62 miles.
During the height of the barrage, radio reports were interrupted every 4-5 minutes with more reports of incoming rockets, in a reminiscence of the Blitz of London in World War 2.
*****
****
Early on Wednesday, August 2, several helicopters full of IDF Special Forces landed in the Bekaa Valley in a town east of Baalbeck deep inside Eastern Lebanon, only 7 miles from the Syrian border, where the Hezbollah commander for the Bekaa Valley has turned a local hospital into a headquarters for his forces. Israeli forces successfully dropped in, then raided the hospital and started asking for ID's inside.
A major Hezbollah force invaded the hospital and the IDF and Hezbollah and IDF were both in the hospital fighting in close quarters, often face to face. Hezbollah claimed to have trapped the IDF force inside. Many Israeli jets circled overhead and carried out a number of bombing missions.
This penetration is deep into the heartland of the nation. It also has a serious risk to draw Syria into the fight.
The latest information is that the commando force was evacuated out of the area with no casualties. They reportedly captured several Hezbollah operatives, but the Lebanese government said they were just low-level fighters, not high-ranking members. The IDF is claiming that they have taken high-ranking members POW.
Hezbollah is claiming that those captured were just civilians. 12 persons were said to have been killed in this mission, all civilians, including a number of civilians. The IDF is claiming that they killed 10 Hezbollah in this raid.
*****
*****
This just in - earlier in the war, Hezbollah rocket barrages hit IDF Northern Operations Headquarters on Mount Meron and IDF Northern Command Headquarters in Safad were hit a number of times.
No one reports this because all reports out of Israel have to go through Israeli censors, and any information about any strategic targets in Israel is blacked out. The notion that Hezbollah is aiming only to wantonly attack Israeli cities and towns to hurt or kill Israeli civilians is not completely true.
A certain number of the rocket attacks are basically terrorist in nature, but many others are actually trying to hit either IDF troop concentrations, bases - headquarters or Israeli arms factories. Many of these strategic facilities have been cynically located near Israeli Arab cities and towns in order to use the Israeli Arab population as unwitting human shields in case of attack by Israel's enemies.
******
Wednesday:
8 AM: IDF forces in the West Bank were attacked with 3 homemade bombs in Kabatia, near Nablus. There were no casualties.
8:30 AM: 11 more IDF were reported wounded in heavy fighting in various places along the Lebanese-Israeli border. That puts IDF casualties for about the last 24 hours at 3 killed and 41 wounded. The IDF claimed that 10 Hezbollah were killed in this fighting.
9 AM: A Qassam rocket from Gaza slammed into Ashkelon, wounding 1 Israeli .
2:42 PM: Rocket attack on Israeli troops on the Israel-Lebanon border wounded 2 soldiers.
*****
3 IDF were killed and 29 more were wounded in heavy fighting in Ayta al Shaab Tuesday. Hezbollah ambushed an IDF force, again, as they did in Bint Jbeil earlier, as the IDF entered town. This time Hezbollah fired a very heavy anti-tank missile barrage, heavy sniper fire and rockets.
IDF forces had to evacuate their wounded by hand under heavy fire. The 3 killed could not be evacuated for hours due to very heavy fire. 10 Hezbollah were reportedly killed, according to the IDF.
There is considerable evidence that Ayta al Shaab, inside Lebanon, was where the initial July 12 incident that set off the war occurred. In other words, the purported Hezbollah cross-border raid may not have even occurred. As of 7 AM on Wednesday, small arms exchanges were again reported in the area of Ayta al Shaab and A-Haviv.
According to the Lebanese police, Hezbollah and numerous media outlets, this is where the IDF patrol was attacked in the original July 12 incident that set off the war. Israel said that the attack was a cross-border raid that struck between Zarit and Shetula. I do not yet feel that it has been conclusively proved one way or the other that the attack occurred on either the Lebanese or the Israeli side.*****
5 more IDF soldiers were wounded in a Hezbollah mortar attack on IDF troop concentrations on the Lebanon-Israel border. The attack occurred at 11 PM on Tuesday night.
Rockets landed in Metulla, the Galilee and Nahariyah on Tuesday. There was damage but no casualties.
*****
More Lebanese armed groups have joined fight against Israel - the Lebanese Communist Party militia, the Amal Shia militia (Amal is the other major Shia party in Lebanon and is a rival to Hezbollah. They are generally more secular than Hezbollah), the PFLP-GC, Jamaa Islamiya, and the Islamic Action Group.
There are now seven armed guerrilla groups fighting Israel. In addition, the Lebanese military is occasionally fighting the IDF and the Syrian military has carried out a couple of attacks - one on an IDF drone on the Lebanon-Syria border and the other an apparent detonation of a mine on the Syria-Golan Heights border. Hence, there are at least nine armed forces who are fighting the IDF, at least occasionally:
- Syrian military - Very minor involvement described above.
- Iranian military - Some Revolutionary Guards are advising Hezbollah.
- Lebanese military - Minor involvement, but they have suffered significant casualties.
- Lebanese Communist Party militia - Full activation. They have already lost some fighters in Sarifa.
- Jabhat al-Amal al-Islami (Islamic Action Group) - A very fundamentalist Sunni group that has just decided to take up arms and fight alongside Hezbollah. Supposedly it is an amalgam of numerous Sunni groups from all over Lebanon.
- Al-Jama Al-Islamiya - An Sunni Islamist group, the Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood, representing South Lebanese Sunni villages on the border - Full activation and heavy combat. They are currently operating alongside Hezbollah in their Sunni villages.
- Amal militia - Declaration of war. They have suffered some casualties are are currently fighting alongside Hezbollah in a location called Kfar Kila.
- Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) - Declaration of war, but their involvement in the fighting is not known. This group is very closely aligned with Syria and is believed by some to be almost an arm of the Syrian government.
- Hezbollah - Full activation, very heavy combat and heavy casualties.
****
Druze leaders in Syria are itching for a fight against Israel in the Golan Heights - the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights consists mostly of Druze villages.
In a meeting the other day, they petitioned Syrian President Assad to allow them to open a front on their own (without the Syrian military) on the Golan-Syrian border. Lawmaker Marwan Habash and cleric Sheik Asad Kopertu are among those advocating opening up this front.
*****
Earlier, in an operation similar to the one currently ongoing, Israel attempted to land troops via helicopter near Baalbeck in the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon, but they were beaten back by heavy fire from the Lebanese military.
Recently, Syria shot down an Israeli drone over the Lebanon-Syria border.
A mine went off on the Golan Heights border, but there were no Israeli casualties. The suggestion is that Syrian forces triggered this mine..
Israel bombed a border post on the Lebanon-Syrian border, killing several border guards.
*****
According to a recent poll, 87% of Lebanese support Hezbollah - 80% of Christians, 80% of Druze, 89% of Sunnis and apparently over 90% of Shia. This is simply a disaster for Israel. In the beginning, many Lebanese were furious at Hezbollah, especially Maronite Christians. Sectarian violence saw a serious upswing early in the Israeli operation.
Shia refugees heading into Sunni districts were taunted and berated by local Sunnis. Druze leader Walid Jumblatt openly attacked Syria and two major Maronite leaders openly backed the Israeli operation.
Later, as the IDF proceeded to begin to destroy Lebanon as a nation, that turned around. Interviews with former Phalangists in Christian districts of Beirut said they were training to fight both Israel and Hezbollah. Local Druze opened their districts to Shia refugees fleeing the fighting.
In recent days, as you can see by the survey above, Israel has succeeded in uniting Lebanon around a common enemy. That 80% of Druze and Christians are supporting Hezbollah is simply stunning and shows a serious failure of this US-British-Israeli operation. The Anglo-Zionist Coalition failed to consider a basic human tendency - nationalism.
*****
Israel is ferociously shelling, bombing and rocketing Southern Lebanon. In many cases, IDF helicopters are deliberately rocketing ambulances, obvious civilian vehicles with white flags flying from them and any humans who happen to be in the area, even people swimming in rivers. It's pretty much a free-fire zone and they are often just shooting at anything that moves in many areas.
Map detailing the targets Israel has been bombing in its destruction of Lebanon and the number of attacks on each target.The US, for some bizarre reason, is pushing hard on Israel to attack Syria, but Israel is reluctant to do that. Tell me why the US is more anxious to attack Syria than Israel itself?
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Hezbollah is making very good use of anti-tank missiles in this combat and has damaged or destroyed quite a few of the IDF's state-of-art Merkava tanks, one of the best tanks in the world. The Merkava-4, the latest iteration, is particularly good. Hezbollah is using the following Soviet-made anti-tank missiles:
- AT-3 Saggers (An Iranian variant called the Raad)
- AT-4 Spigots (via Syria)
- AT-14 Kornets - the best of all - also via Syria.
In December 2005, Hezbollah attacked some IDF Merkavas with Saggers, but the results were disappointing because the tanks were not hit in their vulnerable places, and Hezbollah was using Saggers and Spigots, which are not the top-of-the-line Soviet technology.
Iranian advisors reviewed the results of the battle and went back to Iran to study the Merkava, determine where its vulnerable points were, and to upgrade the Saggers and Spigots with higher-grade missiles, in particular the Kornets.
In this war so far, Saggers, Spigots and Kornets are all doing fairly well against Merkavas (considering how impervious it is), and quite well against armored vehicles and especially dismounted troops. This indicates that Hezbollah has learned from its mistakes and has learned where the vulnerable places on the Merkava are. Also, Hezbollah seems to have a very large supply of these AT-variants, especially the Saggers.
This is apparently a photo of a Hezbollah guerrilla with an anti-tank missile. I assume that the missile is an AT-variant such as an AT-3 Sagger, AT-4 Spigot or an AT-14 Kornet. The photo is from the Arabic edition of Al Arabiya on August 3. Since I can't read Arabic, I am guessing at the subject of the photo.All three of these missiles are guided anti-tank missiles. They can be launched either by hand or by a ground-based launcher. The missile is fairly slow - it is not like a bullet in that you can actually see it launch and then follow it with the eye as it heads towards its target.
The attacker launches the missile and then guides it along the path to the tank via a wire-guided missile system. In that way, if the tank starts to move, the attacker can follow the tank's maneuvers and adjust the missile along the path of the moving tank.
The IDF has a variety of means to deal with these missiles - one of them is to shoot a plume of smoke as soon as they see the missile launch in order to make it difficult for the launcher to see his target.
The Iranians also reportedly make a version of the top-notch US anti-tank missiles, the TOW and Dragon missiles. Little is known about these knock-offs except for a claim in Al Arabiyah that these knockoffs are proving to be the most effective of all of the anti-tank missiles that Hezbollah is using.
*****
*****
Hezbollah has lost possibly 120 fighters so far, maybe more. Hezbollah casualties are difficult to determine because the totals they release seem too low. The IDF typically releases very high figures for Hezbollah KIA, but US intelligence sources say that Israel has grossly exaggerated the number of Hezbollah killed.
Looking at Hezbollah's homepage here, you can see that they have announced the names of 22 KIA's just in the past day or two, so they are obviously not shy about reporting their KIA's. However, in some cases, there seems to be a long delay in Hezbollah announcing the names of those who have fallen. Right now, some of the KIA's they are announcing fell around 10 days ago.
*****
IDF claims of having degraded 50% of Hezbollah's fighting capability, killing 40% of its force (400 KIA out of a supposed 1,000 man fighting force) and having wiped out 75% of their potent Zilzal missiles (which can reportedly reach Tel Aviv) are meaningless. The IDF has no way whatsoever of knowing what missile capacity Hez has or how much is degraded or destroyed. These are all just wild-ass guesses (WAGS).
Hezbollah apparently hit another Israeli ship with a missile off the coast of Sidon Monday. The missile damaged the ship but did not sink it. The IDF is denying that a ship was hit, but an excellent source, the Lebanese National Police, said that the ship indeed was hit.
*****
Hezbollah claimed that they fired the missile in response to the many civilian deaths after an Israeli bombing in Qana, which killed 28 civilians who were sheltering on the ground floor of a building. An IDF airstrike hit a target near the building but did not hit the building itself around 12:30 AM on the night of the incident. The attack left a large hole in the street near the building.
This damage to the street apparently rocked the foundation of the building. Those inside apparently went back to sleep after the air raid. The weakened building appears to have collapsed 7 1/2 hours later. Charges that the IDF deliberately attacked a building full of civilians are false.
Similarly, variations of desperate Israeli and Phalangist propaganda about the incident are also false.
One of these fog of war tall tales is that the Qana incident was actually a controlled blast carried out by Hezbollah in order to kill their own people so as to create an international incident and hopefully stop the fighting.
Another is that the entire incident was faked, with previously dead bodies placed in the rubble so as to make it appear they were killed in the air raid.
Pro-Israeli allegations that the photographed aftermath of the incident had the air of theater are valid, but it appears that the dead were actually killed in the building collapse, and that the building collapse was caused, as noted above, by a nearby IDF air raid 7 1/2 hours earlier, which weakened the building foundation and caused it to belatedly collapse.
*****
So far, the Lebanese High Relief Committee is reporting a shocking 828 dead and over 3,200 wounded. It is not known how many fighters are amongst the dead. The toll does not include those who are still buried under rubble.
What Is Zionism?
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here.
Updated December 1, 2008:
I was visiting my Mother the other day (she lives 15 miles away) and she had just read some articles on my blog. She made some negative remarks about "Zionists", at which point I informed her that she was a Zionist. She looked horrified, which is the way any decent person should look when accused of such a thing. I then patiently explained to her than anyone who supported a Jewish state in Palestine was a Zionist.
She looked disappointed. On further questioning, it turned out that she pretty much thought that the founding of Israel was a great big mistake and a crime - like the founding of the USA via the conquest of the American Indians. However, she said you can't undo history, and people have to try to make do with reality as it is.
I then told her that her views were probably "non-Zionist" - that being someone who disapproved of the Zionist project, but that that we should live with the reality of it, as Israel is there, and it's not going away. My brother, on questioning, also did not really know what Zionism is, and also qualified as a non-Zionist who thought we needed to deal with reality as it exists, not as it ought to be.
The views that they espouse - "That the creation of Israel was a mistake, but they are there, not leaving, and we have to deal with that" - ought to rationally be considered by progressives as neither Zionism nor anti-Zionism, but non-Zionism.
In the course of my conversations with these two brilliant, highly-educated immediate family members, I realized that even the best and the brightest in the US did not really know what Zionism was.
So, with that in mind, I felt it was time for a post describing exactly what Zionism was and is, it's history and its various forms. Obviously, this brief post will barely begin to nudge the edges of this subject, but still it ought to serve as a nice primer.
What is Zionism anyway? I see Zionism every day on the net. In a nutshell, most Zionists, but not all, argue that both the formation of the state of Israel and the settler-colonial project that created it were right, just and proper.
A principal Zionist argument (though not shared by all Zionists) is this:
There are actually a fair number of Zionists who feel that all (or some) of this should be reconquered.
When an aide to President Truman visited the Holy Land around 1947 to try to understand the Zionist-Arab conflict, he said that all of the Jews he met there held the Nile to Euphrates view. He also noted that they did not like to talk about it too much, and they seemed to want to keep it a sort of secret, as if they were afraid of the reaction of outsiders if they learned of the Zionist plans.
Despite super-liar and modern-day Crusader Daniel Pipes' articulate lie, The Nile to Euphrates Calumny , Nile to Euphrates Zionists are not mythological, and I have run across them fairly regularly on the Net, especially lately.
Does Mr. Pipes feel that I have hallucinated all of these Greater Israel types? Were they all just Arab agents out to make the Zionists look bad? Inquiring minds want to know. Mr. Pipes or his supporters are encouraged to email me here to explain how it is that I keep running into these nonexistent phantasms.
A lesser view holds that "Eretz Israel" at least covers all of Green Line Israel, all of the West Bank, the Golan Heights and the Gaza Strip. Some also include the Sinai Peninsula (or at least a small part of it up to the Wadi Arish) and southern Lebanon to the Litani River.
A map demonstrating Zionist armed settler-colonialism in action. Note the progressive loss of Arab land to Zionist colonization. This was deliberate and planned from the very start.
It all stems from the Zionist principle that all of Israel, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights is Jewish land and that the local Arabs are "squatting" on Jewish land and live there only at the whim of the Zionist owners. Presently, the project is to make the remaining Arab enclaves so miserable that the Arabs will leave and then the Zionists can colonize their land.
This is a Minimal Greater Israel view and is very common. It was the "minimal view" adopted by the "progressives" of Left Socialist Zionism under David Ben-Gurion, the founder of Israel. It could logically be called Minimal Greater Israel.
Ben-Gurion's ideological opponents, Vladimir Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionists, held similar views, except that they typically claimed all of Jordan for the Jewish state also.
Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement. He authored The Iron Wall in 1923, in which he openly advocated a Zionist settler-colonial movement, to be implemented by armed force backed by an imperial power. The reason armed force was needed, he said, was because of inevitable Arab resistance. Before that, Zionism had been largely focused on buying out the Arabs' land, then throwing them off the land and settling it with Zionists.
A poster for the Irgun Zionist armed guerrilla group. This was one of the three major armed Zionist guerrilla factions in Palestine. It focused on attacks against both the British and the local Arabs. Note that Irgun claimed that not only all of Palestine, but also all of Jordan, was Jewish land, to be cleansed of Arab "squatters", and to be conquered by force (note the rifle).
Irgun dissolved after the founding of Israel and since then Mainstream Revisionist Zionism has gone pretty quiet about claims to Jordan. Look carefully at the map to see that Irgun also claimed the Golan Heights for the Zionists.
I have recently met Zionist Jews on the Net who are still upset at the British and the League of Nations for "promising" all of Jordan to the Zionists in the early 1920's, and then "going back on their word". Actually neither party did any such thing, and such thinking is based on a misreading of the League of Nations Mandate.
In a recent interview, a leader of the Zionist Organization of America, a very powerful, very militant Jewish Zionist group in the US, noted with a twinkle in his eye that all of Jordan was actually part of Israel and implied that Israel should conquer it at some future time. The attitudes of ZOA fanatics are rampant amongst the neoconservatives associated with the Bush Administration.
The notion of Greater Israel, not some phony notions about buffer zones or security zones, is and was the real reason for the occupation and colonies in the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan and the Sinai, and for the occupation of Southern Lebanon.
As you can imagine, this political project, Zionism, terrifies the Arabs and sends them into conniptions. My opinion is that Zionism is poisonous and that no people should have to put up with such a dangerous project, least of all the backwards Arabs.
There is a lot of nonsense about Greater Israel on the Internet, with devious Zionist sophists like Pipes holding that it is just a deranged, paranoid Arab fantasy. On the other hand, many anti-Zionists, especially Islamists, insist that all Zionists hold the radical Nile-to-Euphrates view.
As you can see above, that is not the case. The truth is that some Zionists do hold the Nile-to-Euphrates view, but the Israeli government does not, and most major Israeli political parties and political figures do not either.
The Minimal Greater Israel project described above is much more common and relevant. Anti-Zionists should focus on the minimal project for now and forget about the Nile To Euphrates project until we get some evidence that it amounts to more than the ravings of some Zionist radicals.
Anti-Zionism is a radical position, like Zionism. In general, not only do anti-Zionists strongly oppose the whole Zionist project, but they go usually so far as to say that, ideally, Israel has no right to exist, and should be dismantled in one way or another. The vast majority of Arabs are anti-Zionists in one way or another. If they tolerate Israel's existence at all, it is only grudgingly.
Anti-Zionists differ on what should be done with the Zionist Jews who have settled in Israel.
Some say that all of those who themselves or whose relatives came to Palestine after 1917, when the Balfour Declaration was signed, have to go back where they came from.
This was the line espoused in the original PLO Charter of 1964 and continues to be espoused by some very radical Arab nationalist types, especially some Arab Communists.
Examples of organizations holding such views are NACAZAI (North American Congress Against Zionism and Racism), headed by Ziad Shaker AlJishi, a Palestinian refugee living in the US, and the the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) militants who run the Free Arab Voice website.
The FAV site is edited by Ibrahim Alloush (see photo on this page of Alloush after being beaten up by the Jordanian secret police) and Mohammad Abu Nasr. Everyone associated with the FAV website is apparently a member of the political wing of the PFLP.
One of the editors takes the not-so-obvious nom de guerre of Nabila Harb. This pseudonym derives from Nabil Harb, an obscure PFLP cadre from the 1970's who was part of a small PFLP cell that hijacked a Lufthansa airliner in Spain in an attempt to win the release of German urban guerrillas from the Baader-Meinhoff Gang.
The attempt failed, when the plane was stormed by German Special Forces in Mogadishu, killing 3 of the 4 PFLP terrorists, but not before the cell had executed the captain of the plane in Yemen an act of gross criminality and stupidity.
The imprisoned members of the German ultra-Leftist group committed suicide right afterwards, effectively ending the existence of Baader-Meinhoff. But from its ashes would rise its successor, the much larger and more successful Red Army Faction.
However, unlike the PFLP, which is fairly heterodox and not necessarily extremely Arab nationalist anymore, the FAV is a hardline, pro-Saddam Arab nationalist site that is an excellent example of Arab Nationalist "Arab fascism" and "Arab Nazism", as is NACAZAI. Free Arab Voice would be better characterized as a Palestinian Baathist site.
The 40 year old Dr. Alloush is a son of Palestinian refugees in Jordan. He is a Professor of Statistics and Economics at a university in Amman, Jordan. The mysterious Abu Nasr (a nom de guerre) is the author of the Iraqi Resistance Reports that can be found on the Internet.
The 54-year-old Nasr is a Palestinian who may have left Palestine after the 1967 war, may live somewhere in the West, may have a PhD and may also be a member of the PFLP political wing. He is fluent in Russian as well as English, which suggests he may have received education in the former Soviet Union. The PFLP was sending its higher-ranking cadres to the Soviet Union for education some years ago.
Alloush also runs an Arab nationalist list on the Net and a Yahoo group by the same name. Alloush has received some notoriety for appearing at a conference of Holocaust Deniers in Lebanon and endorsing their views. In fact, the FAV website foments Holocaust Denial itself. Both Nasr and Alloush are virulently anti-Semitic Arab Communists and excellent examples of "Arab fascism" and "Arab Nazism", to their eternal discredit.
NACAZAI also holds Holocaust Denial views, in addition supporting the genocidal Khmer Rogue, being strongly pro-North Korea, pro-Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime and in favor of the genocidal ultra-racist Arab-Nazis in Sudan. FAV takes similar positions, except I don't know how they feel about the Khmer Rogue.
Even worse, this virulently anti-Semitic, Nazi-like position statement by NACAZAI shows that the Zionists and neocons who rant about the anti-Semitic Left are not entirely incorrect. Such beasts do exist.
Other members of NACAZAI include John Paul Cupp, a Communist supporter of North Korea who lives in Oregon, and Kevin Walsh, a Communist white supremacist who was recently arrested in Arizona for threatening to kill President Bush and has been diagnosed as mentally ill under suspicious circumstances (I suspect he may be bipolar). Both Cupp and Walsh are virulent, Nazi-like anti-Semites.
The entire Left should distance itself from Cupp, Walsh, AlJishi, Nasr and Alloush, along with Arab Nazis and Arab fascists in general (which includes a large segment of the Arab nationalist movement) until they pull their heads out and quit preaching racism in the name of anti-racism.
I would like to point out that the ultra-radical views of Nasr and Alloush and some of their colleagues are not held by the PFLP leadership, which envisions a single state in Palestine for both Jews and Arabs (see the recent interview with top PFLP leader Leila Khaled, for example)
The view that all Jews coming after 1917 need to take off was recently reiterated by the late Sheik Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas, who was assassinated by an IDF missile.
Another related view is held by others, including Ayatollah Khameini, spiritual leader of Iran, who has stated that ideally all of those Jews who themselves or whose relatives came to Palestine after the 1948 founding of the Israeli state have to go back where they came from. It is possible that Hezbollah may hold similar views, since the close relationship of its leadership with that of the Iranian government.
Other Arab radicals say that Mizrachi Jews (Jews who lived in the Arab World) can stay in the region, but that Ashkenazi Jews, who trace their recent ancestry back to Europe, have to go home.
Many anti-Zionists (especially progressives and Leftists) believe that all of the Jews can stay in Israel, but that they must share the state and land with the Arabs and dismantle the Jewish state.
This view has been espoused by the leadership of the DFLP and PFLP leftwing Palestinian armed fronts, some members of the PLO, the Hamas Charter, an Islamic Jihad leader in an interview 13 years ago, and Libya's Moammar Qaddafi, who has proposed a state called Izratine.
This view has been quite popular with Palestinian Christians and secularists like Edward Said, Mazin Qumsiyeh and Ghada Karmi.
In general, the vast majority of anti-Zionists do not advocate killing all the Jews in Israel, though I have heard some Arab hotheads say that on the Internet. No Arab or Muslim armed group (including Al Qaeda) takes that position, to my knowledge.
Yet this is a staple of Zionist propaganda - that all anti-Zionists and armed anti-Israel groups are all intent on "carrying out a second Holocaust". If it were true, it would be an excellent reason to support Israel, but there is little evidence for this.
Furthermore, there is a question of how killing 5 million Jewish residents of an industrialized society in a rapid manner in our day and age, given recent human historical memory, is even feasible.
That said, I do not think that Al Qaeda or the groups allied with them are good for the Jews, to say the least. I can't prove they want to kill all of the ones in Palestine, much less all the ones on Earth, but I do not think these radicals have the best interests of the Jewish people at heart, to put it mildly.
The official Al Qaeda line is that after the liberation of Palestine by Islam, all of the Jews will have to leave. According to Al Qaeda, once the Caliphate is established on Muslim lands, all non-Muslims in these lands will have to either convert to Islam if they wish to remain in Caliphate lands, or leave if they do not convert. Those who will not convert or leave will have to be killed.
For the record, some of those associated with the British Al Qaeda fronts Al-Muhajiroun, The Savior Sect and Al Ghurabaa such as Omar Bakri Mohammad and Abu Hamza have made statements that all Jews on Earth must be killed.
Variations on Qaddafi's one-state solution, described above, are called the one-state project. That is the position of this blog. There are many variations on this view. Some hold that ideally the region should be an Islamic state and that the Jews should have to live under Islamic Law. This position is held by Islamists and is strongly opposed by this blog.
It is interesting that Qaddafi's Izratine was considered a slap in the face to Hamas, who apparently are not wild about living in a state with 5 million Jews.
Some high-ranking Hamas members have said as much, admitting that they have had enough misery from the Jews in the region and want a "divorce" from the Jews, hence the popularity of 2 states as an interim solution by some high-ranking pragmatists in the Hamas leadership.
Others hold that the single state should be a "secular state", which is a great idea except that most citizens of such a state would be anything but secular. Many Arabs (especially Arab nationalists) insist that the single state be an Arab state and that Jews should live as a minority in such a state. Obviously, that view is not popular with Jews at all.
Does the two-state solution look feasible to you anymore? Me either. Note how the Separation Wall actually snakes far into the West Bank to include as many Zionist colonies as possible. Note also the Zionist theft of much of the West Bank (in dark green). The logical progression of history is rendering the 2-state solution a complete non-starter.
Others would grant Jews and Arabs some sort of local rule akin to Switzerland's cantons. One proposal wants to make the single state a homeland for the Jews and Palestinians, two terribly persecuted peoples. This proposal would retain aliya rights for Jews while allowing all Palestinians to have their own sort of aliya.
It's clear there are many versions of this single state project. The primary resistance to this project at the moment comes not from Arabs or Muslims but from the very real fears of the Jews in Israel. These reality-based fears will have to be addressed in any such single state solution.
As you can see, there is not much left of the 2-state solution, since Zionist colonialism has devoured much of what was to be the Palestinian state. The remaining Palestinian enclaves are nothing more than disconnected bantustans, surrounded by armed Zionist colonies, bases and roads for colonists. It's like living in a home but being locked in only one room so you could not access the other rooms in the house.
Getting back to Greater Israel, the Internet is full of statements by Zionist fanatics fantasizing about Greater Israel. They are not made-up lies but instead are well-documented statements. Here is one by David Ben-Gurion (formerly David Green):
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Updated December 1, 2008:
I was visiting my Mother the other day (she lives 15 miles away) and she had just read some articles on my blog. She made some negative remarks about "Zionists", at which point I informed her that she was a Zionist. She looked horrified, which is the way any decent person should look when accused of such a thing. I then patiently explained to her than anyone who supported a Jewish state in Palestine was a Zionist.
She looked disappointed. On further questioning, it turned out that she pretty much thought that the founding of Israel was a great big mistake and a crime - like the founding of the USA via the conquest of the American Indians. However, she said you can't undo history, and people have to try to make do with reality as it is.
I then told her that her views were probably "non-Zionist" - that being someone who disapproved of the Zionist project, but that that we should live with the reality of it, as Israel is there, and it's not going away. My brother, on questioning, also did not really know what Zionism is, and also qualified as a non-Zionist who thought we needed to deal with reality as it exists, not as it ought to be.
The views that they espouse - "That the creation of Israel was a mistake, but they are there, not leaving, and we have to deal with that" - ought to rationally be considered by progressives as neither Zionism nor anti-Zionism, but non-Zionism.
In the course of my conversations with these two brilliant, highly-educated immediate family members, I realized that even the best and the brightest in the US did not really know what Zionism was.
So, with that in mind, I felt it was time for a post describing exactly what Zionism was and is, it's history and its various forms. Obviously, this brief post will barely begin to nudge the edges of this subject, but still it ought to serve as a nice primer.
What is Zionism anyway? I see Zionism every day on the net. In a nutshell, most Zionists, but not all, argue that both the formation of the state of Israel and the settler-colonial project that created it were right, just and proper.
A principal Zionist argument (though not shared by all Zionists) is this:
- Jewish land, not Arab land - All of Israel is Jewish land. The Arabs have no right to any of this land.
- Historical - Jews had a continuing presence in the land for 3,000 years, so therefore it is their land. The Arab presence is illegitimate. When the Zionist project began, there were only a few Arabs in Palestine anyway, and they were the ancestors of Arabs who invaded Jewish land in 640 and have been occupying Jewish land ever since.
Arabs never controlled Palestine anyway, and all Palestinians are Arab invading colonists who have no right to be there and need to go back to Arabia where they came from. Jews were completely in their right to reclaim their homeland after so many years in exile.
This is one of the most vicious and wicked Zionist arguments, and it is extremely popular amongst the hardest of the hardline, blood-and-soil, organic nationalist types. One can argue that this is the philosophy that it is at the core of the mindset of the leaders of the Zionist movement from 1897 to the present. It is this argument, that, like most primordialist ethnic nationalist projects that rose out of Central and Eastern Europe in the 1800's, is most similar to Nazism.
On the other hand, all modern ethnic nationalisms (in particular Arab nationalism, Indian Hindu nationalism, Lebanese Phalangist nationalism and all of the ethnic nationalist projects that swept Central and Eastern Europe in the 1920's and 1930's) came from the same 19th Century core as Nazism, so it is somewhat unfair to single out Zionism in that regard. - Religious - God gave the land to the Jews. It is Jewish land and will always be so. God watches over the Jews and Israel and no one can mess with them. Anyone who messes with the Jews or Israel gets punished by God. This is obviously a favorite of conservative Zionists, though some secular liberal Zionists use it too, usually cynically in an effort to get Gentile Christians to go along with the project.
- Holocaust - Jews needed a safe haven in Israel due to the Holocaust and it was ok to throw out the Arabs to get this haven. A favorite of liberal Zionists, many of whom are ignorant of the specifics of the project. When questioned, many of this type will insist that no Arabs were thrown out to make the Jewish state. Apparently the land was just empty or something.
- Freedom From Persecution - Related to the above. Jews have been persecuted everywhere they have been, so it is reasonable for them to have their own state where they can be safe. A favorite of more liberal Zionists. One of their favorite lines is that Zionism is "affirmative action for Jews". Micheal Lerner of Tikkun is fond of that phrase.
- UN and League of Nations - These two organizations agreed to give away Arab land to Jews for a homeland at different times. Therefore, Israel is legitimate. Once again, a favorite of more liberal Zionists and folks who are fond of the UN and international law.
- Self-determination and National Liberation - All other ethnic groups have a right to self-determination on their homeland and many have developed national liberation movements to obtain their nation-state. Zionism is the Jewish equivalent. This argument is a favorite of Zionist liberals and Leftists.
- British Donation - Britain gave the land - British land - to the Jews. Therefore, it is the Jews' land. This one is also a favorite of more liberal Zionists, because it avoids the question of whether or not Israel is Jewish land.
There are actually a fair number of Zionists who feel that all (or some) of this should be reconquered.
When an aide to President Truman visited the Holy Land around 1947 to try to understand the Zionist-Arab conflict, he said that all of the Jews he met there held the Nile to Euphrates view. He also noted that they did not like to talk about it too much, and they seemed to want to keep it a sort of secret, as if they were afraid of the reaction of outsiders if they learned of the Zionist plans.
Despite super-liar and modern-day Crusader Daniel Pipes' articulate lie, The Nile to Euphrates Calumny , Nile to Euphrates Zionists are not mythological, and I have run across them fairly regularly on the Net, especially lately.
Does Mr. Pipes feel that I have hallucinated all of these Greater Israel types? Were they all just Arab agents out to make the Zionists look bad? Inquiring minds want to know. Mr. Pipes or his supporters are encouraged to email me here to explain how it is that I keep running into these nonexistent phantasms.
A lesser view holds that "Eretz Israel" at least covers all of Green Line Israel, all of the West Bank, the Golan Heights and the Gaza Strip. Some also include the Sinai Peninsula (or at least a small part of it up to the Wadi Arish) and southern Lebanon to the Litani River.
A map demonstrating Zionist armed settler-colonialism in action. Note the progressive loss of Arab land to Zionist colonization. This was deliberate and planned from the very start.It all stems from the Zionist principle that all of Israel, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights is Jewish land and that the local Arabs are "squatting" on Jewish land and live there only at the whim of the Zionist owners. Presently, the project is to make the remaining Arab enclaves so miserable that the Arabs will leave and then the Zionists can colonize their land.
This is a Minimal Greater Israel view and is very common. It was the "minimal view" adopted by the "progressives" of Left Socialist Zionism under David Ben-Gurion, the founder of Israel. It could logically be called Minimal Greater Israel.
Ben-Gurion's ideological opponents, Vladimir Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionists, held similar views, except that they typically claimed all of Jordan for the Jewish state also.
Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement. He authored The Iron Wall in 1923, in which he openly advocated a Zionist settler-colonial movement, to be implemented by armed force backed by an imperial power. The reason armed force was needed, he said, was because of inevitable Arab resistance. Before that, Zionism had been largely focused on buying out the Arabs' land, then throwing them off the land and settling it with Zionists.
A poster for the Irgun Zionist armed guerrilla group. This was one of the three major armed Zionist guerrilla factions in Palestine. It focused on attacks against both the British and the local Arabs. Note that Irgun claimed that not only all of Palestine, but also all of Jordan, was Jewish land, to be cleansed of Arab "squatters", and to be conquered by force (note the rifle).Irgun dissolved after the founding of Israel and since then Mainstream Revisionist Zionism has gone pretty quiet about claims to Jordan. Look carefully at the map to see that Irgun also claimed the Golan Heights for the Zionists.
I have recently met Zionist Jews on the Net who are still upset at the British and the League of Nations for "promising" all of Jordan to the Zionists in the early 1920's, and then "going back on their word". Actually neither party did any such thing, and such thinking is based on a misreading of the League of Nations Mandate.
In a recent interview, a leader of the Zionist Organization of America, a very powerful, very militant Jewish Zionist group in the US, noted with a twinkle in his eye that all of Jordan was actually part of Israel and implied that Israel should conquer it at some future time. The attitudes of ZOA fanatics are rampant amongst the neoconservatives associated with the Bush Administration.
The notion of Greater Israel, not some phony notions about buffer zones or security zones, is and was the real reason for the occupation and colonies in the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan and the Sinai, and for the occupation of Southern Lebanon.
As you can imagine, this political project, Zionism, terrifies the Arabs and sends them into conniptions. My opinion is that Zionism is poisonous and that no people should have to put up with such a dangerous project, least of all the backwards Arabs.
There is a lot of nonsense about Greater Israel on the Internet, with devious Zionist sophists like Pipes holding that it is just a deranged, paranoid Arab fantasy. On the other hand, many anti-Zionists, especially Islamists, insist that all Zionists hold the radical Nile-to-Euphrates view.
As you can see above, that is not the case. The truth is that some Zionists do hold the Nile-to-Euphrates view, but the Israeli government does not, and most major Israeli political parties and political figures do not either.
The Minimal Greater Israel project described above is much more common and relevant. Anti-Zionists should focus on the minimal project for now and forget about the Nile To Euphrates project until we get some evidence that it amounts to more than the ravings of some Zionist radicals.
Anti-Zionism is a radical position, like Zionism. In general, not only do anti-Zionists strongly oppose the whole Zionist project, but they go usually so far as to say that, ideally, Israel has no right to exist, and should be dismantled in one way or another. The vast majority of Arabs are anti-Zionists in one way or another. If they tolerate Israel's existence at all, it is only grudgingly.
Anti-Zionists differ on what should be done with the Zionist Jews who have settled in Israel.
Some say that all of those who themselves or whose relatives came to Palestine after 1917, when the Balfour Declaration was signed, have to go back where they came from.
This was the line espoused in the original PLO Charter of 1964 and continues to be espoused by some very radical Arab nationalist types, especially some Arab Communists.
Examples of organizations holding such views are NACAZAI (North American Congress Against Zionism and Racism), headed by Ziad Shaker AlJishi, a Palestinian refugee living in the US, and the the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) militants who run the Free Arab Voice website.
The FAV site is edited by Ibrahim Alloush (see photo on this page of Alloush after being beaten up by the Jordanian secret police) and Mohammad Abu Nasr. Everyone associated with the FAV website is apparently a member of the political wing of the PFLP.
One of the editors takes the not-so-obvious nom de guerre of Nabila Harb. This pseudonym derives from Nabil Harb, an obscure PFLP cadre from the 1970's who was part of a small PFLP cell that hijacked a Lufthansa airliner in Spain in an attempt to win the release of German urban guerrillas from the Baader-Meinhoff Gang.
The attempt failed, when the plane was stormed by German Special Forces in Mogadishu, killing 3 of the 4 PFLP terrorists, but not before the cell had executed the captain of the plane in Yemen an act of gross criminality and stupidity.
The imprisoned members of the German ultra-Leftist group committed suicide right afterwards, effectively ending the existence of Baader-Meinhoff. But from its ashes would rise its successor, the much larger and more successful Red Army Faction.
However, unlike the PFLP, which is fairly heterodox and not necessarily extremely Arab nationalist anymore, the FAV is a hardline, pro-Saddam Arab nationalist site that is an excellent example of Arab Nationalist "Arab fascism" and "Arab Nazism", as is NACAZAI. Free Arab Voice would be better characterized as a Palestinian Baathist site.
The 40 year old Dr. Alloush is a son of Palestinian refugees in Jordan. He is a Professor of Statistics and Economics at a university in Amman, Jordan. The mysterious Abu Nasr (a nom de guerre) is the author of the Iraqi Resistance Reports that can be found on the Internet.
The 54-year-old Nasr is a Palestinian who may have left Palestine after the 1967 war, may live somewhere in the West, may have a PhD and may also be a member of the PFLP political wing. He is fluent in Russian as well as English, which suggests he may have received education in the former Soviet Union. The PFLP was sending its higher-ranking cadres to the Soviet Union for education some years ago.
Alloush also runs an Arab nationalist list on the Net and a Yahoo group by the same name. Alloush has received some notoriety for appearing at a conference of Holocaust Deniers in Lebanon and endorsing their views. In fact, the FAV website foments Holocaust Denial itself. Both Nasr and Alloush are virulently anti-Semitic Arab Communists and excellent examples of "Arab fascism" and "Arab Nazism", to their eternal discredit.
NACAZAI also holds Holocaust Denial views, in addition supporting the genocidal Khmer Rogue, being strongly pro-North Korea, pro-Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime and in favor of the genocidal ultra-racist Arab-Nazis in Sudan. FAV takes similar positions, except I don't know how they feel about the Khmer Rogue.
Even worse, this virulently anti-Semitic, Nazi-like position statement by NACAZAI shows that the Zionists and neocons who rant about the anti-Semitic Left are not entirely incorrect. Such beasts do exist.
Other members of NACAZAI include John Paul Cupp, a Communist supporter of North Korea who lives in Oregon, and Kevin Walsh, a Communist white supremacist who was recently arrested in Arizona for threatening to kill President Bush and has been diagnosed as mentally ill under suspicious circumstances (I suspect he may be bipolar). Both Cupp and Walsh are virulent, Nazi-like anti-Semites.
The entire Left should distance itself from Cupp, Walsh, AlJishi, Nasr and Alloush, along with Arab Nazis and Arab fascists in general (which includes a large segment of the Arab nationalist movement) until they pull their heads out and quit preaching racism in the name of anti-racism.
I would like to point out that the ultra-radical views of Nasr and Alloush and some of their colleagues are not held by the PFLP leadership, which envisions a single state in Palestine for both Jews and Arabs (see the recent interview with top PFLP leader Leila Khaled, for example)
The view that all Jews coming after 1917 need to take off was recently reiterated by the late Sheik Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas, who was assassinated by an IDF missile.
Another related view is held by others, including Ayatollah Khameini, spiritual leader of Iran, who has stated that ideally all of those Jews who themselves or whose relatives came to Palestine after the 1948 founding of the Israeli state have to go back where they came from. It is possible that Hezbollah may hold similar views, since the close relationship of its leadership with that of the Iranian government.
Other Arab radicals say that Mizrachi Jews (Jews who lived in the Arab World) can stay in the region, but that Ashkenazi Jews, who trace their recent ancestry back to Europe, have to go home.
Many anti-Zionists (especially progressives and Leftists) believe that all of the Jews can stay in Israel, but that they must share the state and land with the Arabs and dismantle the Jewish state.
This view has been espoused by the leadership of the DFLP and PFLP leftwing Palestinian armed fronts, some members of the PLO, the Hamas Charter, an Islamic Jihad leader in an interview 13 years ago, and Libya's Moammar Qaddafi, who has proposed a state called Izratine.
This view has been quite popular with Palestinian Christians and secularists like Edward Said, Mazin Qumsiyeh and Ghada Karmi.
In general, the vast majority of anti-Zionists do not advocate killing all the Jews in Israel, though I have heard some Arab hotheads say that on the Internet. No Arab or Muslim armed group (including Al Qaeda) takes that position, to my knowledge.
Yet this is a staple of Zionist propaganda - that all anti-Zionists and armed anti-Israel groups are all intent on "carrying out a second Holocaust". If it were true, it would be an excellent reason to support Israel, but there is little evidence for this.
Furthermore, there is a question of how killing 5 million Jewish residents of an industrialized society in a rapid manner in our day and age, given recent human historical memory, is even feasible.
That said, I do not think that Al Qaeda or the groups allied with them are good for the Jews, to say the least. I can't prove they want to kill all of the ones in Palestine, much less all the ones on Earth, but I do not think these radicals have the best interests of the Jewish people at heart, to put it mildly.
The official Al Qaeda line is that after the liberation of Palestine by Islam, all of the Jews will have to leave. According to Al Qaeda, once the Caliphate is established on Muslim lands, all non-Muslims in these lands will have to either convert to Islam if they wish to remain in Caliphate lands, or leave if they do not convert. Those who will not convert or leave will have to be killed.
For the record, some of those associated with the British Al Qaeda fronts Al-Muhajiroun, The Savior Sect and Al Ghurabaa such as Omar Bakri Mohammad and Abu Hamza have made statements that all Jews on Earth must be killed.
Variations on Qaddafi's one-state solution, described above, are called the one-state project. That is the position of this blog. There are many variations on this view. Some hold that ideally the region should be an Islamic state and that the Jews should have to live under Islamic Law. This position is held by Islamists and is strongly opposed by this blog.
It is interesting that Qaddafi's Izratine was considered a slap in the face to Hamas, who apparently are not wild about living in a state with 5 million Jews.
Some high-ranking Hamas members have said as much, admitting that they have had enough misery from the Jews in the region and want a "divorce" from the Jews, hence the popularity of 2 states as an interim solution by some high-ranking pragmatists in the Hamas leadership.
Others hold that the single state should be a "secular state", which is a great idea except that most citizens of such a state would be anything but secular. Many Arabs (especially Arab nationalists) insist that the single state be an Arab state and that Jews should live as a minority in such a state. Obviously, that view is not popular with Jews at all.
Does the two-state solution look feasible to you anymore? Me either. Note how the Separation Wall actually snakes far into the West Bank to include as many Zionist colonies as possible. Note also the Zionist theft of much of the West Bank (in dark green). The logical progression of history is rendering the 2-state solution a complete non-starter.Others would grant Jews and Arabs some sort of local rule akin to Switzerland's cantons. One proposal wants to make the single state a homeland for the Jews and Palestinians, two terribly persecuted peoples. This proposal would retain aliya rights for Jews while allowing all Palestinians to have their own sort of aliya.
It's clear there are many versions of this single state project. The primary resistance to this project at the moment comes not from Arabs or Muslims but from the very real fears of the Jews in Israel. These reality-based fears will have to be addressed in any such single state solution.
As you can see, there is not much left of the 2-state solution, since Zionist colonialism has devoured much of what was to be the Palestinian state. The remaining Palestinian enclaves are nothing more than disconnected bantustans, surrounded by armed Zionist colonies, bases and roads for colonists. It's like living in a home but being locked in only one room so you could not access the other rooms in the house.Getting back to Greater Israel, the Internet is full of statements by Zionist fanatics fantasizing about Greater Israel. They are not made-up lies but instead are well-documented statements. Here is one by David Ben-Gurion (formerly David Green):
David Ben Gurion, Report to the World Council of Poale Zion (the forerunner of the Labor Party), Tel Aviv, 1938. Cited by Israel Shahak, Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring 1981.Keep in mind that this frighteningly fanatical statement was uttered by the founder of the state of Israel, a socialist, a liberal and a moderate. Note that his rightwing opponents were even more extreme. Note also that his rightwing Revisionist opponents were the forerunners of the modern-day Likud and Kadima Parties, not to mention the many smaller rightwing parties.
"We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria, and Sinai."
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Incitement To Racism
Over and over, around the world, no single ethnic group pushes anti-racism (publicly at least) more than the Jews. If it were an honest endeavor, we anti-racists ought to tip our hat to our Chosen brethren for being a Light Unto Nations once again. And for many progressive Jews who actually do take the Light Unto Nations bit seriously, our commendations are due.
But for those Jews, progressive, reactionary and all places in between, who continue with the Ghetto-tribal mindset, their constant exhortation to anti-racism is as phony as a three dollar bill.
Number One, their profound Ghetto ethnocentrism virtually insures that they will be extremely racist themselves.
Number Two, their promotion of Zionism, as vicious a form of racism as Jim Crow or Apartheid, insures that their self-righteous super-victim anti-racist game will flounder and splash in the muddy quicksand of hypocrisy.
*****
I recall a recent visit with a Jewish professional I meet with on a regular basis. I informed him, quite honestly, that when I go to certain towns and neighborhoods in the Central Valley, I feel lost, alienated, disturbed and angry.
Why?
Because when you go to towns like Madera, California or many neighborhoods in Fresno, California, you feel like you are in a city in Central Mexico. Not a nice, pretty, charming, middle class neighborhood, or even a tony, flashy, ornate, upper-class neighborhood. I mean a dirty, trashy, low-down, smelly, crime-ridden Third World Mexican neighborhood.
Now, many of you have probably not been to Mexico, but most of us Californians have. I feel very sorry for the poor Mexicans, and really anyone who has to live in that Third World rathole. Those who have never been out of the US will experience real, shocking Third World, cardboard shack poverty for the first time. It's breathtaking, infuriating, surreal and repulsive. If you have a heart, it will spark a revolutionary fervor.
Nevertheless, America, for all its faults, is not a Third World country. It is First World country, even in its worst ghettos. When I go to a city that looks like Oaxaca, where almost every sign is in Spanish, where impoverished, often-pregnant, dirt-poor peasant women and their cowboy-hatted illiterate peasant husbands drag their ragged children in tow, I do not feel that I am in the America I grew up with.
Dammit, that is not America! That is Mexico, or El Salvador, or Guatemala, or Peru, or [name your Latin American rathole state]. I feel a profound alienation, and I feel anger. Then I see the cultural cross-breeds - the predatory Hispanic gang members - the children of the illegal alien hordes - sociopaths with tattoos, hard looks and long criminal records.
I see the gang graffiti spattered over almost every walled surface, as if a child had thrown his food against the wall. Those scribbled walls are dirty - dirty with crime, nihilism and malevolence.
I see all of this, and I want to leave that town. I do not feel that I am in America. I feel this town is ugly, degraded, dangerous and overrun by non-American criminals who have no right to be in my country. I do not wish to live in that town, or even visit regularly. I may as well be on the Moon.
Now, I told all this to my Jewish friend and his face curled into a frown. This Jew, a passionate Zionist who is deeply worried that Jewish assimilation (whereby Jews stop being Jews and join the rest of us in being Americans) is a deathly threat to the Jews, informed me darkly that I was a racist. A racist! Because I think America should look like America and not a backwards, feudal, stinking Mexican slum.
*****
The world over, Jews are one of the main ethnic groups pushing something called Hate Speech laws. They are joined in this rather sordid endeavor by Gentiles, PC liberals and leftwingers, usually Whites, in Europe and Canada. Only White Gentiles and Jews are pushing these laws anywhere on Earth - no other groups are. A few cynical Muslims are along for the ride, so that no one can "diss" their precious religion.
One of the core principles behind these extremely problematic Hate Speech laws is the principle of "incitement to racism". The theory is that Hate Speech incites others to racism, and that can be a dangerous thing. Let us suppose for a moment that this theory of Hate Speech is valid and noble. Now let us logically expand it into some outrageous territory.
Let us make a case, a strong, logical, well-attested case, that Zionism - the philosophy on which the state of Israel was founded - is itself incitement to racism!
Now, to pursue this a bit further, let us suggest that persons living in Canada and European countries afflicted by Hate Speech laws file Hate Speech charges against any persons, Jewish or not, who espouse Zionism.
Now, is that revolutionary or what?
For two excellent, progressive, principled, calm, reasoned articles that show conclusively that Zionism is racism, without splashing in the mud of anti-Semitism, see Israeli Apartheid, by Bruce Dixon, from the great progressive Black site Black Commentator . See also Who Are The Real Terrorists in the Middle East? on the always excellent Common Dreams site, by US Jewish philosophy professor Oren Ben-Dor.
Ben-Dor asks what Israeli troops are fighting for. Are they fighting against terrorism and for democracy? Are they fighting Islamofascists intent on starting another Holocaust? No, no and no. What they are really fighting for is the same thing the Apartheid South African military was fighting for - an apartheid, racist system characterized by Ben-Dor as "primordial immorality".
But for those Jews, progressive, reactionary and all places in between, who continue with the Ghetto-tribal mindset, their constant exhortation to anti-racism is as phony as a three dollar bill.
Number One, their profound Ghetto ethnocentrism virtually insures that they will be extremely racist themselves.
Number Two, their promotion of Zionism, as vicious a form of racism as Jim Crow or Apartheid, insures that their self-righteous super-victim anti-racist game will flounder and splash in the muddy quicksand of hypocrisy.
*****
I recall a recent visit with a Jewish professional I meet with on a regular basis. I informed him, quite honestly, that when I go to certain towns and neighborhoods in the Central Valley, I feel lost, alienated, disturbed and angry.
Why?
Because when you go to towns like Madera, California or many neighborhoods in Fresno, California, you feel like you are in a city in Central Mexico. Not a nice, pretty, charming, middle class neighborhood, or even a tony, flashy, ornate, upper-class neighborhood. I mean a dirty, trashy, low-down, smelly, crime-ridden Third World Mexican neighborhood.
Now, many of you have probably not been to Mexico, but most of us Californians have. I feel very sorry for the poor Mexicans, and really anyone who has to live in that Third World rathole. Those who have never been out of the US will experience real, shocking Third World, cardboard shack poverty for the first time. It's breathtaking, infuriating, surreal and repulsive. If you have a heart, it will spark a revolutionary fervor.
Nevertheless, America, for all its faults, is not a Third World country. It is First World country, even in its worst ghettos. When I go to a city that looks like Oaxaca, where almost every sign is in Spanish, where impoverished, often-pregnant, dirt-poor peasant women and their cowboy-hatted illiterate peasant husbands drag their ragged children in tow, I do not feel that I am in the America I grew up with.
Dammit, that is not America! That is Mexico, or El Salvador, or Guatemala, or Peru, or [name your Latin American rathole state]. I feel a profound alienation, and I feel anger. Then I see the cultural cross-breeds - the predatory Hispanic gang members - the children of the illegal alien hordes - sociopaths with tattoos, hard looks and long criminal records.
I see the gang graffiti spattered over almost every walled surface, as if a child had thrown his food against the wall. Those scribbled walls are dirty - dirty with crime, nihilism and malevolence.
I see all of this, and I want to leave that town. I do not feel that I am in America. I feel this town is ugly, degraded, dangerous and overrun by non-American criminals who have no right to be in my country. I do not wish to live in that town, or even visit regularly. I may as well be on the Moon.
Now, I told all this to my Jewish friend and his face curled into a frown. This Jew, a passionate Zionist who is deeply worried that Jewish assimilation (whereby Jews stop being Jews and join the rest of us in being Americans) is a deathly threat to the Jews, informed me darkly that I was a racist. A racist! Because I think America should look like America and not a backwards, feudal, stinking Mexican slum.
*****
The world over, Jews are one of the main ethnic groups pushing something called Hate Speech laws. They are joined in this rather sordid endeavor by Gentiles, PC liberals and leftwingers, usually Whites, in Europe and Canada. Only White Gentiles and Jews are pushing these laws anywhere on Earth - no other groups are. A few cynical Muslims are along for the ride, so that no one can "diss" their precious religion.
One of the core principles behind these extremely problematic Hate Speech laws is the principle of "incitement to racism". The theory is that Hate Speech incites others to racism, and that can be a dangerous thing. Let us suppose for a moment that this theory of Hate Speech is valid and noble. Now let us logically expand it into some outrageous territory.
Let us make a case, a strong, logical, well-attested case, that Zionism - the philosophy on which the state of Israel was founded - is itself incitement to racism!
Now, to pursue this a bit further, let us suggest that persons living in Canada and European countries afflicted by Hate Speech laws file Hate Speech charges against any persons, Jewish or not, who espouse Zionism.
Now, is that revolutionary or what?
For two excellent, progressive, principled, calm, reasoned articles that show conclusively that Zionism is racism, without splashing in the mud of anti-Semitism, see Israeli Apartheid, by Bruce Dixon, from the great progressive Black site Black Commentator . See also Who Are The Real Terrorists in the Middle East? on the always excellent Common Dreams site, by US Jewish philosophy professor Oren Ben-Dor.
Ben-Dor asks what Israeli troops are fighting for. Are they fighting against terrorism and for democracy? Are they fighting Islamofascists intent on starting another Holocaust? No, no and no. What they are really fighting for is the same thing the Apartheid South African military was fighting for - an apartheid, racist system characterized by Ben-Dor as "primordial immorality".
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