The head of the investigation that said Israel made some mistakes but basically did the right thing in raiding the Mavi Marmara on May 31 is General Giora Eiland. A note from Norman Finkelstein:
It's useful to remember who Giora Eiland is. The Goldstone Report listed Eiland as one of the ideological architects of the Gaza massacre:
[Paragraph] 1196. After the war in southern Lebanon in 2006, a number of senior former military figures appeared to develop the thinking that underlay the strategy set out by Gen. Eiskenot. In particular Major General (Ret.) Giora Eiland has argued that, in the event of another war with Hizbullah, the target must not be the defeat of Hizbullah but “the elimination of the Lebanese military, the destruction of the national infrastructure and intense suffering among the population… Serious damage to the Republic of Lebanon, the destruction of homes and infrastructure, and the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people are consequences that can influence Hizbollah’s behaviour more than anything else”. [Giora Eiland, "The Third Lebanon War: Target Lebanon," Strategic Assessment (November 2008)]
Update from Finkelstein on the central issue here:
Israeli philosopher Asa Kasher, despite doing his utmost to defend the Gaza massacre, nonetheless said that “a democratic state...cannot use human beings as mere tools to create deterrence. Human beings are not tools to be used,” and that “killing for the sake of deterrence is something akin to terrorism.” Asa Kasher, “Operation Cast Lead and Just War Theory,” Azure (Summer 2009), p. 51; Asa Kasher, “A Moral Evaluation of the Gaza War,” Jerusalem Post (7 February 2010).
“It’s useful to remember who Giora Eiland is.”
Your comment on Hezbollah and Israel belies the theory of deterrence, that is by a single violent act, litanies of subsequent ones become unnecessary.
If the math is right, then the theory results in less violence than a war of attrition. If the math is wrong for either side, then acts of war end in multiplied acts of war, escalation rather than either justice and/or reconciliation.
Hezbollah escalates (incrementally shelling larger and larger towns and cities in 2006, and currently amassing a much larger arsenal than then, and with more backing from Iran in the form of a prospective nuclear threat, even if only radioactive material). Hamas escalates (incrementally shelling larger and larger towns and cities in 2008, BEFORE Israel’s military assault).
I so wish that your mode of dissent did not start with a character assassination, a definition of who is politically correct distinct from who is enemy.
I get distrust, skepticism. I don’t get dismissal.
How is Robert Aumann different from Mengele? Aumann heads Israel’s Center for the Study of Rationality, where Israel models and tests its war tactics as well as its propaganda campaigns.
link to israelnationalnews.com
“The theory of deterrence.” In short, the theoretical basis of Israeli aggression and war crimes.
In WWII, the Nazis practiced this. When German soldiers were killed by partisans, they would line up all the men in a village and shoot them down, in order to deter further partisan attacks.
The Nazis used the same math as the Israelis, a math in which each death of their own counts, each death of the untermenschen does not count. According to this math, if killing a hundred Frenchmen or Slavs prevents the death of a single German soldier, the deterrence has worked.
Richard Witty has earned his Honorary SS card.
When the Germans did it, it was called Schrecklichkeit.
Bibi and his boys can put out hasbarat until all the world’s land fills are crammed full with them, yet it can’t stop the world from seeing the fundamental wrongness of current Israeli policy.
One can falsely scream “anti-semite!” all one wishes, but that can’t hide forever that Israel is an apartheid state.
In the end truth always wins out.
ynet reports that Knesset accused Arab MK Hanin Zoabi of “dual loyalties.” link to ynetnews.com
Knesset discussed whether Zoabi should be stripped of her seat in Knesset. One Knesset member thrust into Zoabi’s hands an Iranian passport with Zoabi’s photo in it, telling the MK from Belin that she should petition Ahmadinejad for Iranian citizenship.
When the Israeli’s do it it is called justice
Anyone want to make up Israeli passports for Schumer and Cantor?
Or would that be antisemitic?
witty, could you please use blockquotes or a copy and paste to back up your whining. i’m reading the same post as you and not encountering any definition of who is politically correct nor a character assassination. unless you mean the theory of deterrence is not an ideology but that would conflict w/reality. even wiki’s link on the deterrence theory references it as an ideology. norm is presenting us w/facts not telling us to think about them.
that was supposed to read norm is presenting us w/facts not telling us what to think about them.
maybe you think presentation of the facts is in itself character assassination. to a certain extent i tend to agree. by this definition tho if one offered information about any war criminal or madman you’d be defining it as character assassination. you don’t support withholding facts for the purpose of protecting one’s reputation do you?
I get distrust, skepticism, dismissal. embrace truth witty and quit trying to dissect norm. your critiques become meaningless because you always demean those whose information conflicts w/your constant defense of israels action.
speaking of the theory of deterrence. i’m reminds me of a story i heard once of an uncle who used to put this niece in a closet all day because he thought it would teach her a lesson and improve his behavior.
now i’m not engaging in character assassination am i? i’m sure he was just a proponent of the same ideology mr witty is educating us about.
oh shit shit shit. improve her behavior.
>> NF: “It’s useful to remember who Giora Eiland is.”
>> RW: I so wish that your mode of dissent did not start with a character assassination, a definition of who is politically correct distinct from who is enemy.
Followed by:
>> RW: Hezbollah escalates … Hamas escalates …
He goes straight to the character assassination, ol’ RW does! Unless, of course, he alone is arbiter of “who is politically correct distinct from who is enemy”.
“Remember the Holocaust…and bring on the hugs!”
“It’s useful to remember who Giora Eiland is.”
I’m still trying to remember who Abbie Hoffman was.
Me too, Mooser–from Witty’s comments it seems he was somebody’s national treasure. He was hairy, the age of acquarius, steal this book–and spitting on returning US troops who couldn’t afford a college deferment, if memory serves.
Witty says this Abbie Hoffman is involved in water-pollution abatement now, so that laudable, I guess. But that’s the way it goes, all the time. I’m not kidding, if you’re Jewish people think you must know every other Jew in the world! Or rather, every other person whose name seems Jewish to them.
I’d argue that that these acts don’t occur strictly in a “military conflict” vacuum. Syria was forced out of Lebanon. Israel had every opportunity to negotiate with Syria back in 2003 to return the Golan and in exchange Syria would end it’s support of Hezbollah & Hamas. Israel refused and prompted the lobby to prompt congress to turn the screws on Syria.
Israel also had an opportunity to negotiate with the PA after Hamas won the elections, but Israel won’t negotiate with terrorists. Unless of course Arik is in charge and he’ll negotiate with Hezbollah for the return of bones.
In fact, isn’t it dismissal to not negotiate with Hamas? I mean, I get distrust, skepticism, but I don’t get dismissal.
Too shay! You win the prize for mock-Witty.
Witty: “I so wish that your mode of dissent did not start with a character assassination, a definition of who is politically correct distinct from who is enemy.”
Translation: Don’t confuse me with facts.
” the theory of deterrence, that is by a single violent act, litanies of subsequent ones become unnecessary.”
Christ, I live in a screwed-up country! We couldn’t even do deterrence right! Remember all that “deterrence” crap during the atomic arms race? Now I see what we did wrong. If we had just loosed a few atomic missles towards Russia, then “by a single violent act, litanies of subsequent ones become unnecessary”! Instead, we just didn’t, and the whole thing was a failure. If only we had followed through on “deterrence” a la Witty!
Well, you have to give it to Witty, Shock & Awe was a great success–want some yellow cake?
Or how about a few shovels of depleted uranium from the soil of Gaza?
That’s hilarious, Richard. Sometimes you’re so grotesque I can’t even get mad about it. So the great advocate of pacifism (for Palestinians) is now defending the honor of a man who thinks inflicting harm on large numbers of civilians is justifiable for “deterrence” purposes. Criticizing this view is “character assassination”.
I also enjoyed the fact that when you decided to give examples of “escalation”, you could only find it in yourself to talk about Hamas and Hezbollah “escalating”.
Don’t ever change, Richard. If you did we’d suspect the real RW had been abducted by evil alien anti-Zionist pod people, perhaps even members of Amnesty International.
Uhh, the who put the what where???
Who put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy’s Ovaltine?
That’s a hep jingle daddy!
Witty: I really wish you would stop posting on this site because you have become an embarassment to humanity
First, Mr. Witty, you write badly. I can’t figure out what you’re trying to say in the first two paragraphs, though it seems to be quite profound. You tuck fantasies into little conditional phrases (“even if only radioactive material:) as if everybody shared in them.
Second, Mr. Witty, you write inaccurately: Hezbollah repeatedly offered a ceasefire. Israel, which was out to destroy, refused, and Israel’s pimps concurred: you may remember the appalling statements by Blair and Rice about how a mere ceasefire wouldn’t bring true peace, so bombs away.
He masks his words because they are lies
and he never has a solid argument.
That’s because he’s use to “creative accounting.”
Amen, Jim. I have engaged in very few exchanges with Richard, and marvel at those who do. The first step is the most arduous one, figuring out what he is saying. Richard, after you draft a comment, try to read it over from the perspective of someone who is reading it for the first time and does not know what is in your head, and then make necessary revisions. I am genuinely mystified by a high percentage of your comments. I don’t know how many I would answer if I knew what you were talking about, but I can’t even think of responding to your confusing comments. It’s not worth the extra time.
Jim, as for your history lesson, it cannot be repeated often enough. I have seen numerous “recollections” of how Hezbollah was shelling Israel, thereby provoking the invasion, as opposed to shelling in reaction to the Israeli assault. I recall those statements, by Rice at least, resisting calls for a ceasefire, and it was clear to me that she felt that Israel had not yet killed enough people. Even while it was happening, many tried to conceal or distort the indisputable but inconvenient fact that Hezbollah repeatedly said, stop bombing and remove your troops, and we will stop shelling your cities.
Israel now complains bitterly about Hezbollah re-arming, because in a future attack on Lebanon, Israel’s cities will be even more vulnerable than before. Hardly anyone says to Israel, OK, so don’t attack Lebanon and your cities will be just fine. Israel is allowed to have nukes for deterrence purposes, but Lebanon is not allowed to have any deterrence at all. Relatedly, Israel insists it must keep concrete out of Gaza because it can be used to build bunkers. Bunkers? Right. Everyone in Gaza (and Lebanon) should remain absolutely killable, and it somehow is a threat to Israel for anyone to have protection from Israeli bombs.
DAVID SAMEL- You are quite correct. The constant, never-ending repetition of known lies is an essential feature of successful propaganda. Over time, these lies become an accepted part of the popular mythology and conventional wisdom. And it never ends. Witness the case of the former Yugoslavia, where the US/German dismemberment of that hapless country continues to be misrepresented as a noble humanitarian intervention, and alleged massacres faithfully remembered 5, 10, 15 years later. The Serbs, who suffered so grievously at the hands of the Nazis, Croats and Muslims during World War II, became the new Nazis, whereas, the German “peace keepers” and their former allies became the righteous freedom fighters. At the time, it was the most massive and effective propaganda blitzkrieg I have ever witnessed. And it never ends. Any honest accounting of the conflict would lay most of the responsibility on the US and Germany. At this point in time, an honest accounting is virtually impossible, the truth of the matter buried under a mountain of bullshit.
Greg Stanton, The Eight Stages of Genocide:
Keith oh so true. What really happened in Yugoslavia between 1992 and 1999 is covered by mountains of lies. There is one whopper that persists that is very similar to the lies against Hezbollah. Why did the US begin bombing Serbia in 1999? The standard answer is because of ethnic cleansings of the Moslems in Kosovo. This answer was given within days after the bombing began. Problem was the mass expulsion of the Moslems did not begin until after the bombing started. What story was given before the bombing started? Well because of the ongoing genocide. Unfortunately for the Clinton propagandists that story had to be dropped after the war and NATO occupation of Kosovo when it was revealed that there was in fact no evidence for the mass killings that were claimed. Hence, the fall back position, believed to this day by most Americans, is the ethnic cleansing one.
Even worse, studies have shown that when people believe in lies, even exposure to the facts will not change their minds. Often, their belief in the falsehood only strengthens on exposure to truth, owing to the psychological inability to admit that they were wrong.
link to boston.com
Israel gets there fustest with the mostest lies, hammers them into receptive brains, and there they remain, cemented in place.
SYVANEN- “Unfortunately for the Clinton propagandists that story had to be dropped after the war and NATO occupation of Kosovo when it was revealed that there was in fact no evidence for the mass killings that were claimed.”
While the official story may have changed, the propaganda assault goes on. In the July 12, 2010 Seattle times, there is a prominent picture of a grieving Bosnian women holding a tombstone and crying under the headline “Bosnia marks 1995 massacre.” Below the picture is one paragraph of concentrated propaganda, part of which says “Some 30,000 Muslim men and boys were executed after Serb forces overran the U.N.-protected town on July 11, 1995, during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.”
No mention is made of the fact that this U.N. protected town was heavily armed, and had conducted murderous raids against local Serb villages. No mention is made of the Muslim commander Naser Oric, who delighted in showing reporters his videos of decapitated Serbs, and who, along with other officers were pulled out of Srebrenica just prior to the Serb attack leaving the town poorly defended. No mention is made of the U.N. troops nearby who observed no massacre. Or that 6 years later ICTY forensic teams had only recovered less than 2400 bodies, including Serbs. Significantly, no mention is made that the separatist Muslims received support from the US, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, including Mujahadeen fighters from Afghanistan, all involved in this “civil war.”
It goes on and on and on. Bullshit quoted as fact long after it has been shown to be bullshit. It has even grown worse with time. The original bogus claim of 8,000 executions in Srebrenica has now grown to 30,000. In spite of initial debunking by people like Edward S. Herman, the lies continue, and are now so accepted that even if one had the time and energy to write a letter to the editor, the likely result would be to brand yourself a Serbo-Nazi sympathizer. Part of the persona which the US seeks to project is being mean and vindictive. The US is making an example of the Serbs to show others what can happen when you piss off Uncle Sam.
DS, you are correct–Witty’s notion of deterrence theory.
“Witty’s notion of deterrence theory…”
You mean what an anti-Semite would call “preventitive war” or “state terrorism” or even just “aggressive war”? That “deterrence theory”?
He’s losing it, Citizen. They will find him sitting in a corner, picking straw men out of his hair.
Hey, Bernays got all the girls to smoke; then I was given cigarets in my c-rations (pre-MREs)–and in between, Goebbels praised Bernays as his mentor–of course, it was Adolph who laid out the usefulness of the Big Lie in Meine Kampf–he had studied the use of propaganda by the Americans and Brits in WW1 after he survived that war. Now we have certain Israeli leaders recommending Goebbels, and we have Witty, lame local keeper of the most precious jewel in the world.
Too, historically propaganda was not viewed as a pernicious activity until Goebbels did so well with it.
God only knows why anybody would bother to read, let alone reply to his nonsense is beyond me. Every once in a while I just leave an ascerbic comment,anything more would be gratuitous. I have seen threads devolve into mere E-theater where he will be refuted, then return with more nonsense, then be insulted and return again posing as the reasonable pedagouge. It really strikes me as ritual at this point. But if that’s what gets folks through the day. I don’t think I will comment again on this subject. My take is if ignored long enough, it will eventually vacate.
Absolutely agree Demize. He is playing them like a string guitar and the site seems to increasingly revolve around him to a large degree. Far from being insulted by the abuse he gets he appears to relish this and laps up the attention. It’s not as if he is sincere about debate or taking on anybody else’s point of view. Hasbara attention whore alert! Kinda boring however.
Relatedly, Israel insists it must keep concrete out of Gaza because it can be used to build bunkers. Bunkers? Right. Everyone in Gaza (and Lebanon) should remain absolutely killable, and it somehow is a threat to Israel for anyone to have protection from Israeli bombs.
Whenever any statement about Israel is made, assertions of its sacrosanct “right to defend itself” must be uttered in the same breath.
Yet the Palestinians are offered no such right at all.
Obama’s silence was telling when he said that if his daughters came under rocket attack, he would not sit by, but retaliate.
The Palestinians, on the other hand, must suffer the Israeli attacks without the luxury of bunkers or a roof over their head. You cannot retaliate if you do not survive the attack in the first place.
Just one of the ways America will accommodate Israeli interests in any way it can.
In short, one war criminal washes another.
Good for Finkelstein, finding that quote.
tangent to the topic (Eiland’s paper plots the Third Lebanon war; Israel insists that Iran arms Lebanon/Hezbollah. )
Eric Brill, a participant at the Leveretts blog, raceforiran, posted an evaluation of Israel’s claim that weapons on the Francop, interdicted by Israel in 2009, were from Iran; Brill demolished Israel’s claim that weapons on Francop came from Iran.
Israel’s total warfare strategy is clearly backfiring. The holocaust victim strategy that was so effective for decades, but it doesn’t even matter to new generations today.
All one sees is this regime and their fascist tactics stealing lands in the biggest swindle of last century. The right of return is a bad joke, backed by DNA studies. East Jerussalem was ‘promised’ to us in the bible.
People who believe this bunk should not have a governmental position in the US or Israel. They are fanatics.
thank goodness for the work of Norman Finkelstein.
Oh the Goldstone Report the critical report that Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Keith Olberman, CNN, Diane Rehm, Neil Conan, Scott Simon, Terry Gross and the rest of the MSMEr’s completely ignored. Completely ignored. Silence
Ah yes, you know that report that the alleged fearless and libral Rachel Maddow and feisty humanist Keith Olbermann did not even whisper about.
On Lebanon, in rearming and way beyond prior levels, Hezbollah is in violation of international law (ratified international law, not the general assembly only provisions that Norman frequently sites as IF they were international law).
Second, If you actually read the history of the Lebanon encounter, rather than only propaganda, the encounter began with military confrontation in Gaza and the West Bank, and unilateral shelling by Hezbollah positions on unrelated Israeli military AND civilian sites as a distraction from the long-planned abduction.
Israel offered a cease-fire as well, IF the soldiers were returned.
You amaze me, how you can look at a circle and describe it as “starting here”.
Hezbollah had options of NOT escalating. It chose to, in hopes of deterrence.
That is an example of a deterrant effort that does NOT result in reduced violence, but in escalated.
The theory of deterrance was Colin Powell’s stock in trade. He complained that in situations where the decision to adopt a military approach was already taken, to do so unconvincingly (without overwhelming force) was to invite extended and escalating conflict, rather than putting a period on the sentence.
Israel certainly participates in escalation, but the relationship is of mutual violence, mutual escalation, to which Hezbollah is considerably responsible.
The post was about Eiland’s argument for attacking civilians as a mode of deterrence, not about how the 2006 Lebanon War began. You jumped in with your kneejerk defense of any Israeli caught committing or advocating war crimes. There’s a difference between hitting military targets hard and hitting civilians hard. Everything you wrote is distraction from this point.
As far as rearming, after the massive pounding by Israel I can understand why they would do so. Israel has rearmed too, yes?
I don’t think of it as a circle, to me it’s more of a line that goes back way before this conflict.
For arguement sake, I’ll give that Hezbollah started it and bears considerable responsibility. Now, do you honestly think if Sharon was still in power at that time he would have taken Israel down that path?
Using overwhelming force against the civilian population and civilian infrastructure breeds popular support for the group that is fighting the invader. Hezbollah was far more popular at the end of the conflict than at the beginning.
I guess what I’m saying, was the juice worth the queeze for Israel? Hezbollah fought the IDF to a draw and the IDF is not looking quite so invincible after the war. The IDF chief resigned and it was Israel that had to do an evaluation on what went wrong. To my knowledge, Hezbollah hasn’t canned anyone over the outcome of the war.
Big picture. They need to pick battles wisely my friend. It’s starting to look like spray-and-pray even though the battle plan was in the works for months prior to the war.
For those that don’t understand what I mean, ASK.
thanks for the update norm. oh, This Time We Went Too Far is a great book, especially the very end.
From another thread but germane to this discussion.
Time mag 1982, glosses over roots of the wars but helpful:
“In the Arab world, there is a widespread belief that if a child is too beautiful or brilliant, he may attract the evil eye. Parents were once known to disfigure especially pretty babies in order to protect them. God should have arranged some such mild, pre-emptive mutilation for Lebanon. He did not, however.
Lebanon was always as sweet and cunning and ancient and beautiful as the world. It was literate, rich, fabulous, chic as Atlantis in better days. No land was ever luckier, more cosmopolitan. If you drove in from the east, out of the deserts of Jordan, Iraq or Syria, Lebanon was the coolest, greenest, richest land in the imagination of Allah. You climbed the Lebanon Mountains, and suddenly beheld the Mediterranean. Its deep blue waters played in the eye against the snow on the tops of the mountains. The air was dense with the scent of thyme and cedar.
It was a profoundly favored place. No oil, of course. Oil was the geological dumb luck of certain desert peoples. But Lebanon had beauty and protective fastnesses in its mountains. Shrewd and unusual people found refuge there, sects like the Maronite Christians and the Druzes. Lebanon was never really a nation in the ordinary sense, but a sort of charmed collection of tribes. Its pace in the old days was a delight. TIME Correspondent Wilton Wynn, who has written about Lebanon since 1946, remembers the hospitality of the countryside, the farmers in their fruit groves forcing a stranger to accept gifts of grapes and white figs and apples and pears. He remembers the magnificent village breakfasts of arak, kebab, grilled liver, tomatoes, yogurt, onions, eggs fried in pottery pans and flavored with sumac.
The merchant genius of the Phoenicians seemed to linger over the land that Lebanon inherited from them. Beirut, a bright, amiable amalgam of beach resort and international bank and world-class shopping mall and neon whorehouse, was invariably called the Paris of the Middle East. It may have been more like Monte Carlo, crossed with Miami Beach and Zurich. The Lebanese were cultured and vividly commercial. They stood precisely at the intersection of Western and Middle Eastern culture, and took a handsome profit by mediating between the two. They have the highest literacy rate and the only real parliamentary democracy in the Arab world.
Desert sheiks banked their oil wealth there, took their pleasures there. Money poured in. Multinational companies installed their regional headquarters. Lebanese lawyers would know more about Iraqi law than Iraqi lawyers, or more about Saudi law than Saudis. The Lebanese were cheerfully prepared to do anything for a price.”
more:
link to time.com