Instead of another anodyne NY Times editorial today about Netanyahu injecting himself into our election campaign, the Times decided to take off its gloves. Netanyahu has clearly crossed its “red line” with his recent activities. It wasn’t so long ago that “A Preventable Massacre,” the op-ed by Seth Anziska on the 30th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, would have been too toxic to be “fit to print.”
Anziska sheds light on the U.S role in the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Recently declassified Israeli documents show that the
Israelis misled American diplomats about events in Beirut and bullied them into accepting the spurious claim that thousands of “terrorists” were in the camps. Most troubling, when the United States was in a position to exert strong diplomatic pressure on Israel that could have ended the atrocities, it failed to do so. As a result, Phalange militiamen were able to murder Palestinian civilians, whom America had pledged to protect just weeks earlier.
We see the familiar dynamic of Israeli leaders browbeating American diplomats while demanding their support. Of course this goes on while the Zionist maxim of
“when it comes to our security, we have never asked. We will never ask. When it comes to existence and security, it is our own responsibility and we will never give it to anybody to decide for us”
is repeated, by Ariel Sharon. By caving in to the Israeli bullying, the U.S. “effectively gave Israel cover to let the Phalange fighters remain in the camp.” So the U.S. was “unwittingly complicit in the tragedy of Sabra and Shatila.”
Anziska concludes:
The Sabra and Shatila massacre severely undercut America’s influence in the Middle East, and its moral authority plummeted. In the aftermath of the massacre, the United States felt compelled by “guilt” to redeploy the Marines, who ended up without a clear mission, in the midst of a brutal civil war.
On Oct. 23, 1983, the Marine barracks in Beirut were bombed and 241 Marines were killed. The attack led to open warfare with Syrian-backed forces and, soon after, the rapid withdrawal of the Marines to their ships. As Mr. Lewis(Samuel Lewis ambassador to Israel) told me, America left Lebanon “with our tail between our legs.”
The archival record reveals the magnitude of a deception that undermined American efforts to avoid bloodshed. Working with only partial knowledge of the reality on the ground, the United States feebly yielded to false arguments and stalling tactics that allowed a massacre in progress to proceed.
The lesson of the Sabra and Shatila tragedy is clear. Sometimes close allies act contrary to American interests and values. Failing to exert American power to uphold those interests and values can have disastrous consequences: for our allies, for our moral standing and most important, for the innocent people who pay the highest price of all.
Is there a more appropriate time than now to reflect on the events of 30 years ago? Once again Israel is trying have the U.S. be complicit in its machinations and won’t take no for an answer. The decades-long campaign to attach the U.S. to the Israeli hip relentlessly goes on. The Times says enough is enough. When Netanyahu said yesterday on Meet the Press “you can understand why they [Iran] are so antagonistic to us because for them we are you and you are us” the Times responds, Yes exactly, that indeed is the problem.
This op-ed is a huge inflection point for the lobby. Its publication is a terrible blow, and I suspect the usual suspects will say nothing about it hoping it doesn’t get any attention. Because really, how does hasbara deal with it? It is devastating, and gives the lie to all the talking points about the “special relationship.”
Too bad the New York Bloody Times did not draw its own red lines with Judith “I was fucking right” Miller before the invasion of Iraq. Instead of demanding facts they allowed her to pass her bloody lies through on to their black lines across the front page of their paper over and over again. Oh yeah “they have taken off the gloves” and their hands are read with the blood of the dead in Iraq. On the I/P issue they seem to be joining the better late than never crowd. Par for the course
important slice of Anziska’s text not included in blockquote:
this is a must read article from the nyt. clips won’t suffice. thanks yakov for bringing it to our attention with your excellent coverage.
Once again. Using the US, setting us up against the Arabs….and if Americans end up being the ones killed?… well too bad, so sad, better a 100 Americans die than one Jewish Israeli. The zionist really have achieved a twofer with Israel, not only do they get physically to whip on the Palestines till their heart’s content, they get their revenge on the inferior gentiles by degrading and using our countries to sustain themselves. How many times do we have to see this?….just cut Israel loose from the US, like the scorpion that aways stings the frog carrying it across the river, Israel and the zionist won’t change.
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/p-neff.html
Israel Charged with Systematic Harassment of U.S. Marines
Donald Neff has been a journalist for forty years. He spent 16 years in service for Time Magazine and is a regular contributor to Middle East International and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. He has written five excellent books on the Middle East.
By Donald Neff
Former Time Magazine Bureau Chief, Israel
Washington Report, March 1995
It was also published in Fifty Years of Israel
It was 12 years ago, on March 14, 1983, that the commandant of the Marine Corps sent a highly unusual letter to the secretary of defense expressing frustration and anger at Israel. General R.H. Barrow charged that Israeli troops were deliberately threatening the lives of Marines serving as peacekeepers in Lebanon. There was, he wrote, a systematic pattern of harassment by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that was resulting in “life-threatening situations, replete with verbal degradation of the officers, their uniform and country.”
Barrow’s letter added: “It is inconceivable to me why Americans serving in peacekeeping roles must be harassed, endangered by an ally…It is evident to me, and the opinion of the U.S. commanders afloat and ashore, that the incidents between the Marines and the IDF are timed, orchestrated, and executed for obtuse Israeli political purposes.”1
Israel’s motives were less obtuse than the diplomatic general pretended. It was widely believed then, and now, that Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, one of Israel’s most Machiavellian politician-generals, was creating the incidents deliberately in an effort to convince Washington that the two forces had to coordinate their actions in order to avoid such tensions. This, of course, would have been taken by the Arabs as proof that the Marines were not really in Lebanon as neutral peacekeepers but as allies of the Israelis, a perception that would have obvious advantages for Israel.2
Barrow’s extraordinary letter was indicative of the frustrations and miseries the Marines suffered during their posting to Lebanon starting on Aug. 25, 1982, as a result of Israel’s invasion 11 weeks earlier. Initially a U.S. unit of 800 men was sent to Beirut harbor as part of a multinational force to monitor the evacuation of PLO guerrillas from Beirut. The Marines, President Reagan announced, “in no case… would stay longer than 30 days.”3 This turned out to be only partly true. They did withdraw on Sept. 10, but a reinforced unit of 1,200 was rushed back 15 days later after the massacres at the Palestinian refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila that accompanied the Israeli seizure of West Beirut. The U.S. forces remained until Feb. 26, 1984.4
During their year-and-a-half posting in Lebanon, the Marines suffered 268 killed.5 The casualties started within a week of the return of the Marines in September 1982. On the 30th, a U.S.-made cluster bomb left behind by the Israelis exploded, killing Corporal David Reagan and wounding three other Marines.6
Corporal Reagan’s death represented the dangers of the new mission of the Marines in Lebanon. While their first brief stay had been to separate Israeli forces from Palestinian fighters evacuating West Beirut, their new mission was as part of a multinational force sent to prevent Israeli troops from attacking the Palestinian civilians left defenseless there after the withdrawal of PLO forces. As President Reagan said: “For this multinational force to succeed, it is essential that Israel withdraw from Beirut.”7
“Incidents are timed, orchestrated, and executed for Israeli political purposes.”
Israel’s siege of Beirut during the summer of 1982 had been brutal and bloody, reaching a peak of horror on Aug. 12, quickly known as Black Thursday. On that day, Sharon’s forces launched at dawn a massive artillery barrage that lasted for 11 straight hours and was accompanied by saturation air bombardment.8 As many as 500 persons, mainly Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, were killed.9
On top of the bombardment came the massacres the next month at Sabra and Shatila, where Sharon’s troops allowed Lebanese Maronite killers to enter the…..
….read all the gory details at the link above
I just came from reading this at the Times and hoped you folks at MW would be on it. Color me impressed: the Ol’ Grey Lady just whipped out her hatpin and stuck Bibi in the eye! (Bill Keller’s surprisingly good op-ed in favor of the containment option for Iran’s nukes was another recent shocker.)
Israel’s closet is packed to the rafters with skeletons, and Seth Anziska, the Columbia grad student who wrote today’s Sabra and Shatila piece, just heaved one of the bloodiest, most gruesome specimens out onto America’s front lawn.
Hey, AIPAC! Winter is coming…
I wonder if we’ll get a ‘balance’ piece shortly.