Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Having learned nothing in the aftermath of Qana II, Haaretz reports that Israel is rolling up its sleeves and mounting an expanded ground invasion of southern Lebanon:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s political-security cabinet voted in the early hours of Tuesday morning to expand Israel’s ground operation in south Lebanon.

Under the plan, and similar to last week’s [ed., highly successful] operation carried out in Bint Jbail, IDF forces will mount raids on villages that have served as Hezbollah bases…

The cabinet voted nearly unanimously in favor of the plan, with none opposed and one abstention.

It shows the depths of cluelessness of the Israeli government and the IDF’s military strategy. What strikes me is the fact that Israel does not want to leave the field with Hezbollah still standing triumphantly. It’s still itching to inflict that bloody nose, to land that blow that will take Nasrallah to his knees. And it knows it has not done this, not nearly, despite the foolhardy braggadocio of comments like this:

Senior officers assessed on Monday that the damage sustained by Hezbollah is far greater than originally believed. They said many of the organization’s senior commanders have been killed or wounded.

According to Israeli estimates, Hezbollah still has about 9,000 Katyusha rockets.

‘Far greater damage than originally believed’…the IDF originally announced it had degraded Hezbollah’s fighting capacity by 50%. Yet here it acknowledges that Hezbollah has only lost 25% of its stock of Katyushas. Is anything they say credible?? As for losing senior commanders, you’ll recall that Israel was all set to announce it’d killed Nasrallah the night it rained 23 tons of TNT on his supposed bunker. So we’ll just have to see whether this unsupported statement has any basis in fact. And even if it does, insurgencies like Hezbollah always make provisions for the loss of such personnel. You’ll recall that the previous Hezbollah leader before Nasrallah was assassinated by Israel. It hasn’t seemed to have had any long-term effect on the group’s military effectiveness.

My goal here is not to extol Hezbollah as a guerrilla army, but rather to point out the bankruptcy of Israeli policy which believes the group can be vanquished by military force.

Even Olmert had to get in on the act, trumpeting the dubious fact that Hezbollah has been “hard hit” and decimated by the Israeli assault:

Olmert also lauded the operation’s successes: “The achievements are very significant,” he said. “Hezbollah of today does not look like the Hezbollah of 20 days ago - threatening, arrogant and dangerous. They have taken a hard hit, and it will take them a long time to recover from it - if at all,” he said.

“We have pushed Hezbollah back from its positions along the border with Israel, and we have eliminated this immediate threat,” the prime minister said. “We will no longer consent to Hezbollah’s returning to these positions and continuing to threaten to abduct soldiers and fire on northern communities.

“This is a unique opportunity to change the rules in Lebanon,” he said…

“The organization’s leadership is in hiding; they are afraid for their lives, and we will continue to pursue them wherever they are and at all times,” the prime minister said.

He still labors under the delusion that Israel can “change the rules” in Lebanon. Hasn’t anyone been able to take that cue card away from him yet? I’d have thought that notion would’ve died a dishonorable death after Qana II. Olmert brags that Israel has “pushed Hezbollah back from its positions along the border with Israel” without noting that as soon as Israeli forces withdraw whether it be a week or a year from now Hezbollah will walk right back in and take up where it left off. And if the IDF stays in Lebanon indefinitely, Hezbollah will just attack from whatever territorial position it finds itself in as it did before Israel’s 2000 withdrawal. Killing Israeli civilians is but one way for Hezbollah to make Israel pay for its invasion and occupation of Lebanon. Killing Israeli military personnel is another.

We can talk about whether or not an international force can prevent this from happening. But as of this minute, there is almost no likelihood such a force will be in place anytime soon. You’ve got the U.S. maintaining that the force can enter Lebanon without the acquiescence of Hezbollah. Then you’ve got the French, who will likely provide the lion’s share of military personnel for the force, wisely saying they will not enter until Hezbollah says it will stand down. So the prospects for an international peacekeeping force look pretty bleak right about now.

Here is more fatuousness from Olmert:

Addressing the people of Lebanon, he told them that they were not Israel’s enemy, but rather Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah - whom he accused of carrying out the policies of Syria and Iran - was.

“We are not fighting against the Lebanese people. We are not fighting against its government. We are fighting terrorism and we will not stop the fight against them until we push them away from our borders,” he said.

The idea that Olmert could stand up and say this crap after the Qana massacre shows the guy’s got ice running in his veins.

The only true statement Olmert made concerning the expanded invasion is this:

“We should be ready for pain, tears and blood,” he said. “Missiles and rockets will still land in Israel in the coming days.”

More pain, more suffering, and for naught.

tags ehud-olmert, france, hezbollah, idf, international-peacekeeping-force, israel-expanded-ground-invasion-of-lebanon, nasrallah

Memorable Quote of the Night Award goes to Billmon for this keeper:

All in all, looking at how the war has progressed so far, I would say the Olmert government has come down with a stunning case of the reverse Midas touch: everything it touches turns to shit.

This too is quite mordantly funny:

How many more innocent people die between now and then [when the war ends] is something Shrub and Ms. Rice will eventually have to take up with St. Peter — and then with the other fellow.

Billmon is one of the bitterest satirists around. I think he’s the blogging equivalent of Jonathan Swift. It’s a pleasure to share a country with him.

tags billmon, israeli-invasion-of-lebanon

I’m calling it A.Q–After Qana. Everything that happens after Qana in this miserable conflict will be colored by Israel’s grisly massacre there yesterday. And everything that happened before as well. At the beginning of the current war, I predicted here that such a gruesome event would occur and that it would spell the end of the operation. I didn’t know what precisely would happen and when. But I knew such a horrible accident had to happen given the IDF’s awful record of killing the guilty with the innocent in Gaza. Now it has.

The only question is whether the Bush Administration has enough saychel (”common sense”) to realize that Israel has played its last card and that it’d be best to call it quits before far worse things transpire. The NY Times characterizes our ‘disastrous’ position thus:

By refusing to call for an immediate cease-fire, even in the face of the Qana bombing, Ms. Rice was teetering on the edge of a public relations disaster, particularly in the Arab world. All day on Sunday, scenes of dead children being pulled out of the wreckage at Qana dominated the airwaves…

Israeli officials continued to say, publicly, that they needed more time to diminish Hezbollah’s military abilities, and America’s insistence on reaching agreement on a political package before calling for a cease-fire worked to give Israel that time.

But that left the impression that Ms. Rice and the Bush administration were willing to stomach the killing of innocent children to reach their larger aims.

And given this cloud-cuckoo land comment from the State Department’s number 3 official, I’d say the U.S. is still willing to drink that Israeli cool-aid:

This has not been a good 2 1/2 weeks for Hezbollah from a military point of view, and they’ve got to be worried about continued Israeli offensive operations.”

I’d say Mr. Nicholas Burns, you’ve got a lot more to be worried about than Hezbollah does. Israel has just blown U.S. Mideast policy and its own invasion to smithereens and you’re still crowing about how cool the Israeli operation has been. Reality bites and it’s just bitten you, Mr. Secretary.

I’m hoping that this abrupt turnabout in Israel policy is the beginning of the end of its abominable invasion of Lebanon. But you wouldn’t know it from this desperate Israeli attempt to escape the obvious:

A senior government source said Monday morning that despite a 48-hour halt in Israel Air Force activity in Lebanon, “there is no cease-fire.”

…[Justice Minister Haim] Ramon told Army Radio: “This (suspension) decision will allow us to continue the war over time and it will take off some of the political pressure, so I am sure this is the right decision for now. It is not stopping the war.

“If it ends today it means a victory for Hezbollah … and for world terror, with far-reaching consequences. Therefore this war is not about to end, not today and not tomorrow,” he said.

Imagine the incredulity with which I greeted this bit of chutzpah from the IDF which essentially says, “well, maybe we weren’t responsible after all:”

The Israel Defense Forces indicated yesterday that it might not have been responsible for the deaths of at least 54 Lebanese, including 37 children , when a building bombed in an Israeli air strike in the village of Qana collapsed yesterday - but was unable to offer an alternative explanation.

The IDF is claiming that it bombed the building at 12 midnight but that it didn’t fall down immediately. What it’s leaving out is that a precision guided bomb could easily kill all the inhabitants with its impact without necessarily immediately bringing the structure down. If you look at images of the dead you can see that the bodies of almost all are quite intact. It wasn’t the building’s colapse that killed them but the blast force of the bomb. To argue otherwise is, well, simply preposterous. I’d urge them to give it up, face facts and fess up.

You’ll recall that Israel responded to Jan Egeland’s recent proposal for a 72 hour ceasefire allowing Lebanese refugees to flee their villages for safety by saying there was no need for it. Amazing how a grisly massacre can make a nation suddenly become a little bit more responsive to the world’s moral concerns:

The bombing, the bloodiest incident in Israel’s 18-day campaign against Hizbullah, drew condemnation from around the world. Late last night Israel announced a suspension of aerial activities in southern Lebanon for 48 hours and said it would coordinate with the UN to allow a 24-hour window for residents in southern Lebanon to leave the area if they wished.

For more on this ghastly massacre read the Guardian’s heartbreaking coverage. This article says the death toll will climb north of 60 and that 34 of the dead were children. There were only eight known survivors of 100 people sheltering in the building. I never would have thought that I would call the IDF child murderers. I don’t go in for histrionics and overstatement. But what else can you call this? There are now 750 Lebanese dead, mostly civilians and half children.

Oh and hey, George Bush, your fingerprints are all over this too. Guess who supplied the bomb that killed them:

The strike that destroyed the building was a precision-guided bomb dropped from the air, the same kind of bomb that destroyed a UN position in Khiyam last week, killing four UN observers. Writing on an olive green fragment of the munition which appeared to have caused the explosion read: GUIDED BOMB BSU 37/B.

The IDF response to their deadly act has been worse than pathetic. The reason they bombed the building? Because rockets had been fired from Qana. Notice they didn’t say that rockets had been fired from the building. In fact they admit that they hadn’t:

…The house that was hit had no direct connection to the rocket-launching cells.

It appears that the building may’ve been hit because of the IDF’s contention that Hezbollah fighters run for cover to civilian buildings after launching rockets:

IAF officials said that immediately after firing rockets at Israel, some Hezbollah cells hide in civilian houses in built-up areas in southern Lebanon.

So in order to deprive Hezbollah of cover you destroyed a building killing 60 civilians in the process. Bravo!

What about that vaunted IDF intelligence prowess? Listen to the clear logic of this Qana resident:

Mohsen Hachem stared at the images. “They had to have known there were children in that house,” he said. “The drones are always overhead, and those children - there were more than 30 - would play outside all day.”

You mean to tell me that the IAF bombed a building without taking any daylight reconnaissance photos of it? And if they’d taken those photos you could undoubtedly tell civilians were in and around it. It simply beggars belief.

More from the masters of moral obfuscation at the IDF:

“We don’t know what the people were doing in the basement. It is possible they were being used as shields or being used cynically to further Hizbullah’s propaganda purposes,” the spokesman said. “We apologise. We couldn’t be more sorry about the loss of civilian life.”

Why certainly. It’s all Hezbollah’s fault. Somehow a Hezbollah fighter managed to drop that bomb on that building. But really, to say Hezbollah forced the civilians to be in the building without providing a shred of evidence that this is so–it shows utter desperation on the IDF’s part to foist the blame where it doesn’t belong. No, I’m afraid this time you’ll have to shoulder all the blame yourself, IDF.

Let’s give the last word to one of the eight survivors:

Zaineb Shalhoub, in the next bed, rested quietly.

“There’s nobody left in our village,” she said. “Not a human or a stone.”

tags bush-administration-support-for-israel, hezbollah, iaf, idf-bombing-lebanese-civilians, israeli-ceasefire, lebanon-invasion, nicholas-burns, qana-massacare, u.s.-arming-israel

The IDF seems to meet its Waterloo in the village of Qana whenever it invades Lebanon. In 1996, during Operation Grapes of Wrath (another anti-Hezbollah military action) the army shelled a UN peacekeeping position that happened to house refugees fleeing the battles. More than 100 died. And that was the end of Operation Grapes of Wrath.

Now Haaretz reports that history has repeated itself in almost the same terms. The IDF attacked today a building in Qana that was sheltering 100 civilian refugees:

Some 35 Lebanese civilians were killed, 21 of them children, in an Israel Air Force strike on a building in the south Lebanon village of Qana on Sunday morning. Dozens of others were reportedly trapped in the rubble…

Several houses collapsed and a three-story building where about 100 civilians were sheltering was destroyed, witnesses and rescue workers said.

The IDF said it had warned residents of Qana to leave and said Hezbollah bore responsibility for using it to fire rockets at Israel.

Reuters also reports this sorry-assed statement from Ehud Olmet:

“All the residents were warned and told to leave. No one was ordered to fire on civilians and we have no policy of killing innocent people,” Israeli media quoted Olmert as saying.

Does anyone believe this joker anymore? I am sorry to be so disrespectful. I usually accord prime ministers at least a modicum of respect. But this garbage is beneath contempt.

Al Jazeera reports 65 dead while Reuters reports the death toll is likely to rise somewhere near 60 people. It would appear that many more names may be added to the current death toll based on the number of missing buried under the rubble.

The utter moral depravity of the Israeli reaction is underscored by the IDF blaming the victims for remaining in their village rather than obeying the order to evacuate. Because the civilians refused (in the IDF’s eyes) their order, they were no longer civilians but somehow dupes of Hezbollah who no longer deserved any rights of protection reserved for civilians. How utterly bankrupt a position!

AP reports this interaction with those searching for bodies in the rubble:

Residents said the dead were from four families who had gathered to spend the night on the ground floor of a three-story building, believing they would be safer from bombings.

Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV station said 21 children were killed.

”We want this to stop!” shouted Mohammed Ismail, a villager whose brown pants were covered in dust. ”May God have mercy on the children. They came here to escape the fighting.”

”They are hitting children to bring the fighters to their knees,” he said.

The Times is also reporting that George Bush may be placing Israel on a shorter leash after his meeting with Tony Blair. In other words, he may be giving Israel even less time than previously thought to wrap up its Lebanon misadventure. I have little doubt that Qana may be the seal of doom for the current invasion. In a single bombing today, Israel has produced over 10% of all the Lebanese civilian fatalities in this war.

The Lebanese prime minister has refused to see Condi Rice on her current Mideast trip till there is a ceasefire in place. I’d say that puts the kibosh on any progress she can make. And it just might put the kind of pressure that is necessary on both the U.S. and Israel to cave on the “immediate ceasefire” issue. Let’s hope.

End this war now!!

tags civilian-deaths, haaretz, hezbollah, israeli-invasion-of-lebanon, lebanon-ceasefire, new-york-times, qana-idf-massacre

Well, it’s finally happened. Mel Gibson has finally allowed the liquor to loosen his tongue enough so that he can get all of those anti-Semitic slurs he’s been harboring for so long out of his system. I’m sure he feels he’s a better man for it now that he’s done it. But the question is whether he’s now burned so many bridges that his career will suffer. There is no doubt that Gibson is a gifted actor and creative talent. Until he released The Passion of Christ I’d seen many of his films and admired his work. But that stopped when Passion came out. And I’ll never view another of his films. Let all his evangelical friends take my place. But I wonder what the evangelicals will have to say about his latest tirade. They’ll probably call him a God-fearing fellow and forgive him.

Here’s what the NY Times is reporting:

The film star and director Mel Gibson apologized Saturday for belligerent behavior and for saying what he called “despicable” things that he does “not believe to be true” when he was arrested here on a drunken-driving charge early Friday.

But Mr. Gibson, in a statement, stopped short of addressing claims that he made virulently anti-Semitic remarks to an arresting officer, as described on a Web site that posted several pages of the sheriff’s report.

The sheriff’s report, carried on TMZ.com, a Web site owned by Time Warner, said Mr. Gibson had demanded to know if the officer, James Mee, was a Jew. During an obscenity-laced tirade, according to the report, Mr. Gibson also said “the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.”

Very nice, Mel. Now, I wonder what all those rapacious Hollywood folks will think about cooperating with Gibson in the future. To those Jewish film executives I have one question: “This man hates your guts. Why for crying out loud are you doing business with him?” Of course, the simple answer is that Gibson makes money for them. And money is the bottom line. Make it and you’re golden. Lose it and you’re history. Mel makes it. Or has until now.

One wonders how Gibson can continue as producer of the four part planned miniseries about the life of Dutch Holocaust survivor Flory Van Beek. How can an anti-Semite make a movie about a Holocaust survivor? It’s preposterous. Hollywood are you listening??

One also wonders how his fans and the general public will react to this new development. Will they stand by him or not? Given the obvious lack of candor in his statement one wonders whether he can dig himself out of this hole:

I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable. I am deeply ashamed of everything I said, and I apologize to anyone I may have offended.”

He clearly DOES believe what he said. The only difference between that fateful night and any other is that he managed to keep his big trap shut when he was sober. Loose lips have sunk his ship. I hate to revel in someone’s unhappiness, but this guy had it coming if anyone did.

Here’s what TMZ had to say about the matter:

According to the report, Gibson became agitated after he was stopped on Pacific Coast Highway and told he was to be detained for drunk driving Friday morning in Malibu. The actor began swearing uncontrollably. Gibson repeatedly said, “My life is f****d.” Law enforcement sources say the deputy, worried that Gibson might become violent, told the actor that he was supposed to cuff him but would not, as long as Gibson cooperated. As the two stood next to the hood of the patrol car, the deputy asked Gibson to get inside. Deputy Mee then walked over to the passenger door and opened it. The report says Gibson then said, “I’m not going to get in your car,” and bolted to his car. The deputy quickly subdued Gibson, cuffed him and put him inside the patrol car…

Once inside the car, a source directly connected with the case says Gibson began banging himself against the seat. The report says Gibson told the deputy, “You mother f****r. I’m going to f*** you.” The report also says “Gibson almost continually [sic] threatened me saying he ‘owns Malibu’ and will spend all of his money to ‘get even’ with me.”

The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: “F*****g Jews… The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” Gibson then asked the deputy, “Are you a Jew?”

The deputy became alarmed as Gibson’s tirade escalated, and called ahead for a sergeant to meet them when they arrived at the station. When they arrived, a sergeant began videotaping Gibson, who noticed the camera and then said, “What the f*** do you think you’re doing?”

A law enforcement source says Gibson then noticed another female sergeant and yelled, “What do you think you’re looking at, sugar tits?”

TMZ then reveals some potentially troublesome (if true) information about an effort by the police officer’s superiors to “sanitize” the arrest report for containing language that was considered “too inflammatory:”

Deputy Mee then wrote an eight-page report detailing Gibson’s rampage and comments. Sources say the sergeant on duty felt it was too “inflammatory.” A lieutenant and captain then got involved and calls were made to Sheriff’s headquarters. Sources say Mee was told Gibson’s comments would incite a lot of “Jewish hatred,” that the situation in Israel was “way too inflammatory.” It was mentioned several times that Gibson, who wrote, directed, and produced 2004’s “The Passion of the Christ,” had incited “anti-Jewish sentiment” and “For a drunk driving arrest, is this really worth all that?”

We’re told Deputy Mee was then ordered to write another report, leaving out the incendiary comments and conduct. Sources say Deputy Mee was told the sanitized report would eventually end up in the media and that he could write a supplemental report that contained the redacted information — a report that would be locked in the watch commander’s safe.

I imagine that effort to sanitize the report has just died a deserved death after these media revelations.

TMZ quotes Gibson’s mea culpa from which I’ll only quote the last sentence:

I apologize for any behavior unbecoming of me in my inebriated state and have already taken necessary steps to ensure my return to health.”

Yeah, Mel. You can get treatment for alcoholism. Maybe you’ll even become a recovering alcoholic if you’re lucky. But how can you cleanse your mind of Jew-hatred? That’s even harder than going straight.

tags gibson-holocaust-mini-series, jew-hatred, mel-gibson-drunk-driving-arrest-and-anti-semitic-tirade, new-york-times

They finally did it. The folks at Daily Kos have sunk so low it's downright embarrassing. You see, I published a post here and at Dkos a month ago or so saying that Kos and all political bloggers should maintain higher standards of disclosure in their blogs. They should inform their readers of any financial or other type of material relationship (including political advertising) with political campaigns. Man, were the Kossites hoppin' mad. There was a tempest in a teapot that was even picked up by the right blog world to posit the ridiculous notion that my treatment signaled the demise of DKos as a ...

The Seattle Times has new reporting on the Seattle Jewish Federation shooting case. Yesterday, many were wondering how the suspect could've breached fairly tight security designed to prevent just such types of incidents. Here is the answer: The gunman who forced his way into the offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle on Friday afternoon put a gun at the back of a 13-year-old girl to gain entry to the building, police said this afternoon. An earlier report claimed that he'd rushed into the building after an employee had punched in her ID information to gain entrance. It would appear that the 13 year old might've been the one who did that. Though this is only ...

It is important when hatred strikes, as it did yesterday here in Seattle, to invoke the dead, to celebrate them as human beings, to appreciate what they brought to life so that he may feel all the more what has been lost. And we also must note the killer because he is a human being too, though a destructive and malevolent one. Just as there is tragedy on both sides of the Israeli-Arab conflict, so there is a double tragedy in Seattle. The Seattle Times profiles both the dead and the killer today. Pam Waechter, Seattle Jewish Federation employee murdered (photo: Seattle Jewish Federation) Pam Waechter, ...

In case anyone ever wanted to peek into the conscience of an Israeli Air Force senior officer to examine how he justifies to himself the tactics used in the current war in Lebanon, Meron Rappaport has done the world a service with his interview in Haaretz. It is clear that the commander whom Rappaport interviews has a formidable and nimble mind. But the greater the mind the greater the ability to obfuscate moral principles: if there are doubts in the IDF regarding the necessity of the war, they are not being harbored by the base commander or the squadron commander, Lieutenant Colonel K... Every case of civilian deaths - "the uninvolved" is the preferred label today in the ...

Richard Armitage, former number 2 at the State Department has profound doubts about Bush policy in Lebanon. You'll recall he served at State during the first Bush presidency and presided over the 1983 Beirut bombing fiasco. So he knows whereof he speaks and he recently spoke to Renee Montaigne of NPR (audio). He doesn't believe a multinational peacekeeping force will work. First, the term of the mission would have to be "years, rather than months," since he does not believe the Lebanese government would be able to do any of the "heavy lifting for a long time to come." Second, he believes there are very few nations in the world with sufficient troops to take on ...