Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Israel's Premeditated Assault on Lebanon

As I pointed out earlier, Isreal had planned their current campaign in Lebanon at least a year in advance and simply waited for a convenient excuse to launch it.

...Hezbollah, they say, is responsible for all of this because on July 12th they launched the cross-border raid that ended in the death of 9 Israeli soldiers and the abduction of 2 others. However, if this is a defensive action it is certainly an incredibly prescient one because, as we have recently learned, Israel had been planning this action for the last year and the Hezbollah raid simply provided the pretext for setting it into motion (in self-defense, of course). So, to surmise, we are to believe that Israel is defending itself, as per American policy, by implementing an action they'd decided upon a full year before the attack from which they're defending themselves.

Or we can be reasonable and see that argument for the nonsense it is. We can believe that this is indeed American policy, yes. But it is in no way even comparable to "self-defense". The response we're seeing is disproportionate, collective punishment that we now know was also premeditated. Even the Hezbollah raid against which they are ostensibly defending themselves was perhaps intentionally provoked. Unreported in the major US media is the fact that Israel had been abducting Lebanese civilians and militants, attempting targeted assassinations and firing rockets of their own into Lebanon for months.

Now George Monbiot of the Guardian of London lays it all out in detail. Please check it out.

2 comments:

Brian said...

Sorry, I can not let this one slip by... You and the article refuse to make a point about the fact that Hezbollah has been planning this for 6 years. It is good news that finally the world understands that Iran is a premium arms dealer to entities that are not part of a state. If Hezbollah was not asking for a war by arming themselves like they did.. what else were they planning on doing with the missles? Using them as Iranian souvenirs to hang over the fireplace? Please...

And BTW, the U.S. will not get involved in any military action (conspiracy theory with Israel) in Iran... if anyone needs to step up to the plate with that mess, it needs to be Europe (in their backyard).

FearItself said...

I think the point you're missing here is the Israel has never stopped it's aggressive activitiesin Lebanon, so Hezbollah's arming of itself is not happening in a secure and peaceful context as you seem to believe. Even after driving Israel out of most of Lebanon there is still an occupying Israeli presence in the disputed Sheeba Farms area.

Furthermore, Isreal continues to hold thousands of Lebanese prisoners without charge and conducts abductions of Lebanese civilians as well as fighters and targeted attacks in violation of Lebanon's borders on a regular basis.

There's a lot of discussion of Israel's "right to exist" and it's "right to defend itself", and that's all well and good, but preceious little discussion of anyone else's. Make no mistake, Israel is not the underdog in this. They have the most lethal military in the region, including nuclear capability, and the people they are fighting have nowhere near the hardware to compete. Who really faces an existential threat?

Lastly, Europe will not pinch-hit in any of our wars. They don't want this stuff. This is our Rosemary's baby. The rest of the world just pays the price for it.

Finally, I don't really believe it took Hezbollah 6 years to plan for this attack. They've done this sort of thing before. There was a prisoner exchange of exactly the kind they were seeking here less than 6 years ago.

Thanks again for your response.