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R. S. Refugee
Joined: 29 Sep 2004
Location: Shangra La, ROK
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 Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 2:37 am Post subject: This may resonate with ddeubel |
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Why Doesn't Israel Work For Peace?
Holocaust victims would decry the slaughter of innocent
children during attacks on Hezbollah
by Silvia Tennenbaum
As a Jew who escaped the Holocaust by moving with my family to America in 1938, I turn on the BBC at night. And what I see are clouds of black smoke, explosions; the dead and the dying - children crying bitterly, cities in ruins. Only yesterday, these piles of rubble in Lebanon were home to thousands. Now, the cars roll out onto the highways, white flags attached to the windshields and doors. More than half a million are homeless.
The Israelis told them to leave, but then strafed one convoy from a helicopter. The military people exert their force without pity. They win their wars proudly. They are the masters of force.
Using the most modern weapons the United States can supply to search out the Hezbollah guerrillas, the Israeli soldiers destroy Lebanon. They wreck all of Gaza, seeking to murder the leaders of Hamas.
Many American Jews gather proudly to cheer them on. The face of the American president remains blank. A patter of platitudes issues from his lips. He is not interested in peace. He is happy to see Israel do the dirty war for him. Diplomacy is a word not in his dictionary.
But lo and behold - even as the destruction builds and the war continues through its third week - it seems suddenly no longer such a lark. Success is hard to come by; Israel is no longer the perennial victor. But will it know what to do when faced with the need to talk with the enemy? It has always felt so invincible that discussion seemed the weapon of fools and weaklings, much like the way the earnest work of its principled and dedicated peace camp - Jewish to the core, in an "old-fashioned" way - seemed pathetic and misguided.
But the peace camp knew that each and every Israeli atrocity nurtured another enemy, a potential terrorist, while every Palestinian home that the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions helped to rebuild, every olive tree it planted tenderly in occupied soil, brought another possible friend, another partner in dialogue.
Meanwhile, back at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, deep in the heart of the Jewish Lobby, the call to action is, as always, a call for solidarity, for good public relations. Denounce terrorism, suicide bombers and anti-Semitism in all its endless variations, which includes the "self-hatred" of the misguided Jew who asks us to give some thought to where we - obsessed with brutal retaliation - may have gone wrong.
And, it goes without saying, loyal Jews must talk about the Holocaust. Ignore the images of today's dead and dying, and focus on the grainy black-and-white pictures showing the death of Jews in the villages of Poland, at Auschwitz and Sobibor and Bergen-Belsen. We are the first, the only true victims, the champions of helplessness for all eternity.
No matter what great accomplishments were ours in the diaspora, no matter that we produced Maimonides and Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn and hundreds of others of mankind's benefactors - not a warrior among them! - look at the world of our long exile always in the dark light of the Shoah. But this, in itself, is an obscene distortion: Would the author of "Survival in Auschwitz," Primo Levi, or the poet Paul Celan demand that we slaughter the innocents in a land far from the snow-clad forests of Poland? Is it a heroic act to murder a child, even the child of an enemy? Are my brethren glad of it and proud?
I am heartsick, and still I see a glimmer of hope (there must be that glimmer, to go on at 78 years).
The American peace camp reports a sudden massive increase in membership. All over the country, Jews whose consciences have not been crippled are writing in, speaking up, gathering, to raise their voices. Is this not what we have always done? What we were brought up to do? What - since the days of the Bible and the prophets - our forefathers taught us? If Israel had worked for peace as hard as it has worked for war, might it not all be settled now?
Three hundred British Jews took out an ad in the Times of London to ask the question, "What is Israel doing?" This question has now been taken up by Jewish Voice for Peace, and by Alan Sokal and Bruce Robbins who, some years back, placed an ad in The New York Times, that read, "Not in Our Name."
The time is long overdue for Jews to return to their role as the world's conscience, who come to the aid of the dispossessed, the wretched of the earth. Once again, we must join those who demand the end to unjust wars - in Iraq as well as Lebanon - and an unjust occupation in Gaza. We must honor the example of American civil rights workers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, not that of the mass murderer Baruch Goldstein or Yigal Amir, killer of Yitzhak Rabin.
And perhaps the day will come that we will be counted - by Jew and Arab alike - as among the Just, perhaps even given a place at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, for the lives we helped to save in a lawless, savage time.
Silvia Tennenbaum, a writer in East Hampton, is author of the novels "Yesterday's Streets" and "Rachel, the Rabbi's Wife."
� 2006 Newsday
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0804-27.htm
Last edited by R. S. Refugee on Sun Aug 06, 2006 2:31 am; edited 1 time in total |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 6:14 am Post subject: |
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It doesresonate and thanks, can't read/hear enough of this...
I remember "way back when" exchanging several letters with Irving Layton on precisely the same premise. If I can find it, I will post some of his poems on how he saw Israel as better as a fighter pilot than a moral compass.
I especially liked her comment,
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The time is long overdue for Jews to return to their role as the world's conscience, who come to the aid of the dispossessed, the wretched of the earth. |
I've been reading an author close to my heart this weekend, or rather his biography. Wole Soyinka. He wrestled with this same question all his life -- when is it justified to take up arms and kill???? What is the line of LIFE, where does it unravel? His prison letters in A Man Dies are a rare offering about this question....
But I am off topic. Let's just say I prefer not only Jews but anyone to be the world's conscience but as Wole once said, "civil society constantly collaborates in its own humiliation" and he doesn't have much hope.......
Thanks, more on Wole when I can breathe, given the heat. But atleast I am alive....and safe....and loved.
DD |
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sundubuman
Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Location: seoul
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| Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 12:32 pm Post subject: |
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easy for her to write that from East Hampton-
thousands of miles removed from murderous facist armies camped on the border pf your tiny nation, pumped with hatred, and suppled with thousands of missiles with your name written on them. |
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R. S. Refugee
Joined: 29 Sep 2004
Location: Shangra La, ROK
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| Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 3:51 pm Post subject: |
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| sundubuman wrote: |
| ...murderous facist armies camped on the border pf your tiny nation, pumped with hatred, and suppled with thousands of missiles with your name written on them. |
By "your tiny nation" are you referring to Lebanon?  
Israeli girls write messages on a shell at a heavy artillery
position near Kiryat Shmona, in northern Israel, next to
the Lebanese border, Monday, July 17, 2006.
...photo source: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0720-01.htm |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 4:48 pm Post subject: |
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easy for her to write that from East Hampton-
thousands of miles removed from murderous facist armies camped on the border pf your tiny nation, pumped with hatred, and suppled with thousands of missiles with your name written on them.
Sundubum,
Not easy for her to write and by saying so, you lack understanding of what she has gone through and how she has reached her opinion. Once again, you are someone tramping on "memory' and those who seek higher ground.
Please read the following detailing the massacres/terrorism evoked by Israel and the current commander Dan Halutz in 1996. Another act of Israeli terror and killing of hundreds of civilians. Especially the last paragraph, if you are in the mood to again not educate yourself about the uneven barbarity.
Still so many here on this board continue to say Hizbollah is just Al Qaeda etc....and should all be killed , including the kids. Horrid thoughts. Please read and note there is justification defensively for Hizbollah to retaliate, protect. Given the massive bombing and cruelty of Israel, targeting houses, supermarkets, gardens.....
This is another article written by a Jew who wants Israel to regain its consciousness......
Please read and tell me how you can say 1) the military leadership cares about civilian casualties (and thus, isn't insane) 2) Hizbollah is pure terrorism and isn't a legitimate feature/participant in democratic Lebanese society 3) how killing so many and destroying so much will help Israel remain secure and NOT lead to thousands of young men wanting revenge
Some sane people on this board noted correctly that there is NO WAY Israel can win without talking, negotiating. This is the final point. Terror is an error.
| Quote: |
Israel's error, then and now
Avi Shlaim International Herald Tribune
Published: August 4, 2006
OXFORD, England Massacres in Qana
Lebanon is the victim of the cruel geopolitics of the Middle East, with the massacre of innocent civilians a recurrent feature of Israeli military intervention in this fragile, democratic, multiethnic republic. The history of Israel's involvement in the affairs of its northern neighbor is replete with lessons about the perils of intervention.
Leaders who ignore the lessons of history are more likely to repeat its mistakes. One of the few wise decisions ever made by Israel in relation to Lebanon was to withdraw its forces in May 2000 after an 18-year misadventure.
Comparisons are being drawn between the current campaign and the ill- conceived and ill-starred invasion of Lebanon in 1982. But the more instructive comparison is between the recent incursion and the strangely named Operation Grapes of Wrath, which the Labor prime minister Shimon Peres mounted in April 1996.
Both operations reflect the same predisposition to shun diplomacy and rely on military force to achieve political objectives. In both cases, civilian leaders accepted uncritically the advice of the military in order to bolster their popularity with the Israeli public.
Shimon Peres, who became prime minister after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, tried to recast himself from Mr. Peace to Mr. Security. Ehud Olmert, who succeeded the hawkish Ariel Sharon, is trying to prove that he can be just as tough and decisive when Israel's security is at stake.
The Israel Defense Force has always been influential in policymaking, but its influence today is without parallel. When Hezbollah mounted an unprovoked attack across the border and captured two Israeli soldiers, Olmert presented only a military plan of action to his security cabinet; Israel holds 15 Lebanese prisoners, but the option of negotiations on a prisoners' exchange was not even considered.
In both cases the main aim of the operation was to break Hezbollah - and in both cases the aim was unrealistic.
In 1996 the idea was to put pressure on the civilians of southern Lebanon, so that they would put pressure on the government of Lebanon, so that it would put pressure on the Syrian government which, finally, would curb Hezbollah and grant immunity to Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. In short, the plan was to compel Syria to act as an Israeli gendarme in Lebanon. Syria did not oblige and Hezbollah went from strength to strength.
The original aim of the present campaign was said to be to destroy Hezbollah. This aim, too, is completely unrealistic. No amount of external military pressure can bring about the forcible disarming of Hezbollah. The Lebanese government is a fragile coalition that includes two Hezbollah representatives. The writ of the Lebanese Army does not extend to the south and an attempt to disarm Hezbollah there would probably provoke a revolt from the Shiite rank and file.
In Lebanon Hezbollah is widely seen not as a terrorist organization but as an authentic Islamic resistance movement. It was not the Lebanese Army but Hezbollah that drove the mighty Israel Defense Force out of Lebanon in 2000 with its tail between its legs. Hezbollah empowers the poor and underprivileged Shiite community. To destroy Hezbollah, Israel would have to kill all the Shiite population.
Both Israeli incursions into Lebanon involved the deliberate targeting of civilians in flagrant violation of the laws of war. In Operation Grapes of Wrath, Israel's strategy was the equivalent of using a bulldozer to weed a garden. The commander of the current operation, Dan Halutz, is a former commander of the air force, and the leading advocate of the use of air power against civilians. Asked what he felt when he dropped a bomb on a civilian target, Halutz replied that there was a slight judder when the bomb was released and that was it. The reply speaks volumes about the depth of moral depravity of Israel's top soldier.
It was on Halutz's advice that the Israeli cabinet last month authorized the most savage air attack in Lebanon's history, which destroyed Beirut Airport, power stations, bridges, highways, civilian houses and even a UN post. In 1996, Israeli forces drove about 400,000 civilians from their homes. Currently the number is more like 800,000, added to which there are 515 civilian dead and more than 3,000 wounded. A high proportion of these casualties are children.
In 1996, a massacre of civilians brought Operation Grapes of Wrath to its inglorious end. One hundred and two refugees sheltering in a UN compound in Qana were killed by a barrage that was later described by Amnesty International as deliberate. The massacre gave Hezbollah a decisive moral victory. An international outcry forced the United States to arrange an immediate cease-fire to halt the bloodshed. Operation Grapes of Wrath was a political, military and moral failure.
Last weekend, in the same town of Qana, Israeli bombs killed at least 28 innocent civilians. Once again there was universal condemnation of the Israeli action; this may yet prove to be the tipping point in this ugly war. Hezbollah is ready to cease fire as soon as Israel does. America, having given Israel the green light to continue this war, is still opposed to the immediate cessation of hostilities but is working to bring about what it calls a sustainable cease-fire. So far, however, America has been part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Never in its history has Israel been subject to less restraint from America than it is today.
Whether Israel ends this war in a better strategic position than the one from which it started remains to be seen. But no strategic gain would justify in moral terms the death and destruction that Israel has visited on its defenseless neighbor. As in 1982, the effect of this savage assault on the Lebanese people will be to breed a new generation of angry young men dedicated to resistance.
Killing children is wrong. Period. A "war on terror" cannot be won by a democratically elected government acting like a terrorist organization. War is too serious a business to be left to the generals.
Avi Shlaim is a British Academy Research Professor at St Antony's College, Oxford, and author of "The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World."
OXFORD, England Massacres in Qana |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 7:15 pm Post subject: |
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| R. S. Refugee wrote: |
| sundubuman wrote: |
| ...murderous facist armies camped on the border pf your tiny nation, pumped with hatred, and suppled with thousands of missiles with your name written on them. |
By "your tiny nation" are you referring to Lebanon?
Israeli girls write messages on a shell at a heavy artillery
position near Kiryat Shmona, in northern Israel, next to
the Lebanese border, Monday, July 17, 2006.
...photo source: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0720-01.htm |
Do the comparison as you want.
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 7:57 pm Post subject: |
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| sundubuman wrote: |
easy for her to write that from East Hampton-
thousands of miles removed from murderous facist armies camped on the border pf your tiny nation, pumped with hatred, and suppled with thousands of missiles with your name written on them. |
Got brain? |
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Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
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| Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 9:13 pm Post subject: |
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They should have invaded 3 or 4 years ago. As it is, Hezbollah has had 6 years of UN intransigence to stockpile a massive arsenal thanks to Syria and iran. The monster has been allowed to grow too big.
Its a fact that people suffer for the mistakes of the government they elected. Lebanon should've taken strenuous steps to avoid the serious influence of Hezbollah and Syria. The Un should've insisted in resolution 1551 being enforced. Now, 6 years on the Israelis are having a very tough job of subduing hesbollah.
It had to be done. Hisbollah is a force bent on the destruction of Israel. of course they can't be tolerated. Bush is happy to let israel do the job because hesbollah have been involved in many terror attacks on the west.
The killing of children is regrettable indeed. But do you think hesbollah would hold back from killing Jewish children? i don't think so.
The apparent targetting of civilians in some cases by Israel is clearly wrong. But perhaps worse is the deliberate mingling of hesbollah fighters amongst civilians. When you persistently have an enemy employing the use of human shields..what do you expect.. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 9:08 am Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
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the poster in the background says, "No God." Well actually it says alah and not allah. Nice misspelling there. You'd think that of all the words they would be able to spell, Allah would be one of them.
Anyway, I'm guessing "except God" is written next to it (so it would therefore read "no god except god"). Or maybe they're saying there is no god in america. i'll never know. tragic.
Thanks for the pics RS and Joo. Nice compare and contrast there. I'm going to be a copy cat and add them to my blog. |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 6:18 am Post subject: |
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I think zionism is a not particularly a good idea.
However what I know about that organzation is this:
Given the choice that organization would allow every Israeli to die if it meant Israel is gone. It is not that they wish Israelis dead it is more like they think the most important thing of all is not having Israel until god says so.
They are like natural medicine people who think it is a sin to use medicine. They don't wish their kids sick . but they would allow their kids to die rather then give them medicine. |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 4:00 am Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| Given the choice that organization would allow every Israeli to die if it meant Israel is gone. |
You really think so?
Whatever the case, what you're proposing would be just like the Zionists who were willing to sacrifice any assimilationist Jew etc. in order to help bring about an apartheid Israeli. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 4:45 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
You really think so? |
Yep
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Whatever the case, what you're proposing would be just like the Zionists who were willing to sacrifice any assimilationist Jew etc. in order to help bring about an apartheid Israeli. |
[/quote]
prove it.
Including the aparteheid Israel part.
Besides whatever the history.
There is one good reason for Israel now. Bathists, Khomeni followers and Bin Laden followers all pracitce something worse than apartheid. No?
They can't be trusted to protect their minorites or govern .
That is a good reason for Israel now. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 8:26 am Post subject: |
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http://www.arabsforisrael.com/
To Muslims and Arabs across the globe:
Arabs and Muslims who Support the State of Israel and the Cause of Peace in the Middle East
Reject hate, embrace love. Bring out the best in Islam by showing your compassion, gratitude and forgiveness. Make the holy land truly holy by giving Israel and the Jewish people the respect they deserve in their tiny little country. This is not a crisis over land. It is a crisis of the soul; a crisis in our faith, judgement and self confidence. Israel should not be regarded as an enemy, but as a blessing to our neighborhood. We need not fear peace, but embrace it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR-jMY9e5wI
True Muslims Support Israel |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 3:35 pm Post subject: |
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You are making this into a "war" of ideals.............
It plainly isn't. It is a war of aggression and hate. Started by Israel. If they had concern for love and peace, they would have taken another path..........Israel actions bring shame to their nation and unfortunately, only more bloodshed in years to come. Travesty.
Get REAL. Stop the tired refrain of , "if only everyone will obey and do what Israel wants, it will all be fine...."..........this is neopolitic at its finest. My head is spinning!
So don't put out such stupid sources, one guy on the street mumbling incoherently about how he is "muslim but would like to be a Jew but he can't because he is a Muslim". The guy is an idiot.....
DD |
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