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Out Of Proportion
Somehow this was not a good day to wake up. First I found that TypePad had eaten yesterday’s posts and comments and then I started to read the news, which are terrible.
Hamas has abducted an Israeli soldier some days ago to press for a few of the 9,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails to be freed. Since then, Israel has responded with wrath.
More than 70 people in Gaza have been killed. The last strike did murder seven children in one strike. The indended target escaped. The only powerstation has been bombed (it’s insured by American taxpayers, so it will be rebuild one day), water and sewage systems are out of function and yesterday the Israel Defense Force did cut the strip into two halfs.
Also yesterday Hezbollah killed three Israeli soldiers and abducted two in a raid from south Lebanon into north Israel. The Israeli cabinet puts the responsibility on the Lebanese government even though that government has no control over Hezbollah and the south. It also does not have the ability to achieve such a control.
Hezbollah positions in south Lebanon get bombed and Hezbollah is firing Katyushas into Israels north. But Israel also bombed the Beirut airport, the only international one, and roads and bridges in central Lebanon.
Like in Gaza, Israel does take the whole population hostage for what some untouchable fringe groups in their mids do. This is totally out of proportion and a war crime.
The international community is standing by and doing nothing. Russia and China are said to have made a deal with the "west" to put Iran in front of the UN security committee. Some think they exchanged North Korea for Iran, but I do not see how that would make any sense.
The middle east situation is escalating too fast. Though Israel does not yet threaten Syria and Iran over the Hezbollah and Hamas actions, that may change any hour. An air attack on Damaskus might be near. A US air attack on Iran is possible. Olmert and Peretz try to prove to be harder hardliners than Sharon ever was. On all sides the lunatics are in control.
In Iraq the death are piling up. The US military asks to reinforce its troops in Baghdad.
Ledeen’s wet dream of a big cauldron in the Middle East is coming true. Are there any sane people left who can stop this?
From Nir Rosen’s book:
IN LATE JUNE [2003] rumors abounded in Baghdad of Jews and Israelis buying land and property. University students handed out leaflets on the streets warning of the Jews swarming their city to “buy homes, control the media, and control trade.” The University of Baghdad’s walls were pasted with leaflets beseeching Muslim brothers not to sell their land regardless of the price, because it would go to the Jews. The leaflets singled out the lqal hotel as the base for Jewish investors, and the Samaritan Hospital as full of Jewish doctors. At the time that hotel was under renovation, empty of guests, with only a few confused staff who insisted that neither Jews nor anybody else was staying there. The Samaritan Hospital, located next to the Red Cross headquarters, had been opened a decade earlier by an Iraqi Arab, and was also devoid of Jews.
On Friday, June 20, Sheikh Mahmud al-Khalaf spoke at the [58] Abdul Qadar al-Gailani mosque in Baghdad, warning his congregation that the American occupiers. were opening Iraq to the Jews. He condemned Iraqis who sold land to them and prohibited any association with them. In the Mother of All Battles mosque, Sheikh Thaer Ibrahim al Shomari also warned that the Jews were buying land, as they had done in Palestine prior to 1948, in order to take over the country. He asked his congregation to be careful and not sell their dear country and dear land.
A common belief in Iraq and the Arab world in general is that when held to a mirror and reversed, the Coca-Cola logo says “No Mecca, No Muhammad.” This is attributed to the alleged Jewish ownership of Coca-Cola. Many Iraqis in the summer of 2003 believed that trucks were smuggling Iraqi oil through Jordan into Israel, every night. And the rumors continued ad nauseam. The fact that the Old Testament contains references to Jewish hegemony over the lands between the Nile and the Euphrates did little to ease concerns.
Works purporting to be scholarly were available in every book market, elaborating on themes of the Jewish threat. The ubiquitous Protocols of the Elders of Zion detailing a Jewish plot to rule the world, long proven in the West to be a fabrication written at the behest of a Russian czar, was popular in an Arabic edition. Another book, called The Crimes of the Jews, was on display on Baghdad streets alongside a book about Drugs and the Sons of the Devil. These sons, of course, were the Jews. A book in Kurdish was also available, its cover bearing a Star of David within which a monster dripped blood from its fangs. The book was titled In the Jaws of the Jews.
The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq itself sold a book called Jewish Nights, refuting various Jewish claims about their history, and in Najaf, the office of the cleric Seyid Moqtada Sadr sold a book called Ali and the Jews, detailing All’s conversion of Jews to Islam.
[59]
After the war, with the flowering of new Iraqi publications, newspaper articles helped to spread the panic that Jews were invading the country. The independent Iraqi daily Al YaW al-Aakh’er reported that “the frantic campaign to resettle the Jews [in Iraq] has aroused the annoyance of Iraqis, particularly the clerics.” Al-Adala, a newspaper published by the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution, warned that “a number of Jews are attempting to purchase factories in Baghdad.” An eyewitness was quoted who claimed to have observed Jews making such transactions. Nearly everyone in Baghdad swore he had a friend or relative who had seen Jews buying land. Meanwhile, the newspaper Al-Sa’ah warned Iraqis to check Taiwanese- and Chinese-made appliances for concealed Stars of David because the Israelis were said to be surreptitiously selling their products in Iraq.
Another rumor going around was that Michel Aflaq, the nowhated founder of the Baath Party, was a secret Jew who had converted to Christianity. It was even rumored that in Israel, Jewish brothels were built to look like mosques, complete with the minaret. Iraqi Shiites believe that a final battle between Jews and Muslims would occur when the Jews came to the city of Ki61 on the Euphrates to visit the tomb of an alleged Jewish prophet. There Muslims and Jews would fight, and the Jews would hide behind rocks, until the rocks spoke to say “there is a Jew behind me,” allowing the Muslims to be victorious. Not a day went by that I did not hear another story about the Jews.
Posted by: slothrop | Jul 15 2006 16:29 utc | 50
RGiap:
i find it difficult to not see the current israeli state as a proxy for the u s in their long war on the middle east & then china
Agree although I’m not sure about China where US policy is ambivalent. In fact, one of the forms of anti-semitic argument in the US is “Jewish lobby makes us do bad things” as if, without the nefarious Yids, the US government would be handing out fair-trade organic chocolate and condoms world-wide and asking everyone to have a pleasant party.
i am reminded also that the great mass of european jewry before the holocaust were in fact not zioniosts but bundists – socialists in any case out of necessity & their proved care for the interestss of other dispossessed
The last European Jews, following tradition, had an argument as they saw the tsunami rolling in. Most said “I hope it will pass”. Some said “God will save us.” Some said, “the revolution will save us”. Some said, “Going to America/Australia anywhere but here will save us” and some said “Going to a Jewish state will save us.” Events proved that wishful thinking, God, and revolution were equally worthless and most of the proponents of these three arguments were turned into soap or pushed into mass graves. So some form of runnning away was the correct answer, and we move to the next historical question. For myself, I don’t see running from a hopeless situation as wrong, and strongly advise both Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to use this form of self-preservation whenever possible. The russian anti-semitic euphemism of “rootless cosmopolitan” seems to me to be often a good idea. Australia would benefit from a million or so Palestinian strivers.
but in israel this has all been turned upside down – with israel siding with the most brutal of entitites – apartheid south africa being one obvious example
Well, Israel’s trade with Apartheid SA grew as a result of Arab boycotts and economic incentives that destroyed Israeli trade with most of the rest of Africa and other parts of the world. May I dare to mention, however, French trade with Bokassa, Duvalier, and Mobutu, or the reluctance of everyone to let the destruction of Tibet interfere with the China trade, or even the way that Saudi princes are treated with such great respect world wide? The dream of the Zionists was that the Jews would have a state like any other. And they do, unfortunately for the Palestinians.
but it is true as you have pointed out that in europe the anti semitic strain has never entirely been eliminated – however i would argue that the israel has sometimes made melodramatic with a history that is sacred – that this
strain has never been eliminated does cloud the question
Israel tries to use anti-semitism as a protection against valid criticism. Anti-semites try to use Israeli crimes as excuses for anti-semitism.
but underneath this fact – there are some elemental truths – the palestinians have been dispossessed of their land, they have been cruelly occcupied & been treated as less than zero,
Sure. They have been treated abominably, inexcusably, and with revolting levels of hypocritical double-talk. Their elites have also totally failed them: preferring romantic apocalyptic visions to boring compromise and incremental success and fearing to confront religious stupidity. Shall I again point out that over half of Israelis are in the same sense refugees from the Islamic nations. Seems intractable.
Since, as you note, Europe missed its obligations to solve the Jewish refugee problem by creating a Jewish state in Europe, I suggest that the Europeans can make it up by welcoming Arab refugees from Israeli oppression – the oppression so eloquently denounced by Chirac. Living in the Midi or Thuringia or Flanders would surely be preferrable to living in Gaza or South Lebanon. Oh, wait. Too many dirty arabs in Europe already, and only 60 years after it appeared that there had been a final solution to the dirty levantine question. Too bad.
In fact, to me the situation is very grim and only there is this delicious horrible irony that after putting 6 million middle-easterners in the ovens, the Europeans find themselves again plagued by dark-skinned levantine outsiders with peculiar religious practices and head coverings. All that work, and no advance. So frustrating. It is almost enough to make one believe in God with a sick sense of humor.
Posted by: citizen k | Jul 15 2006 22:44 utc | 56
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