The latest report by Jodi Rudoren in The New York Times, “To a Philosopher-General in Israel, Peace Is the Time to Prepare for War,” profiles Herzl Halevi, “a triathlete and father of four who said his university studies in philosophy proved more salient to military leadership than courses in business administration.”
Some quotes–
“I don’t think there is the war or the operation that will solve the problem,” General Halevi explained during a recent tour of the border his troops patrol. “The interesting issue is how you create a longer gap between the wars.”
Sounds like a re-statement of “mowing the lawn”.
Hezbollah is seen as Iran’s proxy and the Palestinians’ enforcer, the boots on the ground in global terrorist attacks and the likeliest to retaliate for Israeli aggression anywhere in the world. Military officials from the chief of staff on down talk ominously in public speeches and tactically in private briefings about the group’s swelling arsenal of more than 100,000 rockets — and about Israel’s meticulous preparation for a quick, intense campaign in Lebanese cities and villages where, as one recently put it, “houses consist of a living room and a missile room.”
Excellent piece of hasbara: it gives a justification for killing over 1000 civilians in the 2006 war. By the way, the civilian death toll goes unmentioned, as does the liberal use of cluster munitions. The only thing (in the entire article) that couldn’t have been typed by an Israeli government hack are the two words “Israeli aggression”.
To the left was Ayta ash Sha’b, home to perhaps 7,000 Lebanese and “hundreds of rockets, missiles, I.E.D.s,” he said, referring to improvised explosive devices.
“We cannot shoot toward Ayta ash Sha’b because it is a village,” the general said. “This is a problem we somehow have to solve. The stronger the weapons, the stronger our response will be.”
Again, no mention of what was actually done in the 2006 campaign. (Or to allegations about Halevi’s role in the Gaza war of ’08-’09). This is as far as Rudoren goes:
Israel’s prosecution of that war was widely panned.
It’s amazing that the Times would run this. Along with the piece on pro-Israel graffiti artists the other day– “On a Mission Within Earshot of a War, Armed With Paint”– it’s like they have absolutely nothing to say in defense of Israel, so they’re printing pointless stories about graffiti artists and an embarrassing hagiography about a philosopher general, which doesn’t even pretend to be balanced.
P.S. The IDF promptly tweeted the piece.
To a Philosopher-General in #Israel, Peace Is the Time to Prepare for War http://t.co/N4MB9nKmAJ #IDF
— Peter Lerner (@LTCPeterLerner) November 16, 2013
And now for something completely different:
Human Rights Watch report on Israel’s killing of civilians in the Lebanon War
Human Rights Watch report on Hezbollah’s killing of civilians in the Lebanon War
And that’s what objective reporting is supposed to look like.
For an example of fairminded coverage of the Lebanon War, there are two HRW reports, one on Israeli crimes and one on Hezbollah crimes.
Here’s the one on Hezbollah crimes–
link
And here’s the one on Israeli crimes–
link
I hope that someone has mercy on his children, and that they will grow up to disassociate themselves from his thinking and actions. His “philosophy” is blind and doomed.
“Peace Is the Time to Prepare for War”. So sick and twisted. A true waste of “philosophy” and talent.
Déjà vu, intelligence à la White House
TTG on Syria:
Israel is not like any other country. They can do anything without accountability. They have hypnotized the United States and that provides a curtain behind which all manner of atrocities occur
This is incredibly one sided:
“about Israel’s meticulous preparation for a quick, intense campaign in Lebanese cities and villages where, as one recently put it, “houses consist of a living room and a missile room.”
It seems that once again, IDF is prepared to campaign against easy targets, cities and villages, and largely avoid so-called “nature preserves”, military installations of Hezbolah where the missiles are actually fired and which are too well fortified to be attacked without substantial losses (this is the reason for calling them “nature preserves”). Concerning “living room and missile room”, that assessment comes from the same intelligence service that failed to notice widespread use of blue denim jeans in Iran.
Somewhat puzzling in the article is the portrait of Halevi as a “philosopher” without any quotes, only that he is somehow quoting Plato, Maimonides etc.
However one-sided, the article is somewhat informative and not that propagandistic, COMPARED to the fascistic hatchet job by Alaa al Aswamy in the same issue of NYT, who described the crushing of the opposition to the coup as “struggle for democracy” and called all opponents of the regime “terrorists”, and added a paragraph of mild criticism of the regime.
Among other regional news, freedom fighters in Syria pulled out a wounded fighter from a hospital and beheaded him, and now they are issuing apologies because the victim was one of their own.