Written July 2006

It is simple math. One only needs to look at the casualties in Lebanon and Israel to see what is wrong with the current Middle East conflict. Like any conflict in which violence is being committed on both sides, the proportionality of response to provocation can be easily judged by the civilian casualties in the ‘accused’ provocateur country – or, the country in which an independent targeted organization resides in – and the ‘alleged’ victim country.

Israel has subjected the Lebanese population under brutal collective punishment under the pretext of defending the Israeli population and to dismantle Hezbollah militarily and politically. It has been generally accepted that Israel is the innocent bystander in all this and that Hezbollah provoked this most serious Israeli/Arab violence in years. In fact, even Kofi Anan, the U.N. Secretary General, has accepted this argument in his recent address to the U.N. Security Council. One cannot even begin to fathom how the timeline toward the rise of violence has been conveniently arranged to fit the: “attack-retaliation formula”.

Months leading up to the current outbreak of violence in Lebanon and Israel, the death toll in Gaza does not even come close to supporting the thesis that Israel is an innocent victim. Between September 2005 and June 2006, according to an Israeli human rights group B’tselem, 144 Palestinians in Gaza were killed -- 29 were children –- by Israeli forces. No Israeli’s were killed during the same time period. Predictably, no media attention was given to the fact that Israel captured two Palestinians –- said to be Hamas members which is vehemently denied by Hamas -- on June 24^th. Included in this is the killing of a Palestinian family picnicking at a Gaza beach which prompted Hamas to end its 16-month-old informal ceasefire. These deaths have been mentioned by Hamas spokespeople in their statements which justified their cross-border raid that captured an Israeli soldier.

As the London Times have stated, another major incident that fuelled the cycle of violence was a May 26, 2006 car bombing in Sidon, Lebanon which killed a senior official of Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian group that is aligned with Hezbollah. Israel has denied involvement but Israeli’s like Yedio Aharonot, a writer for the country's top-selling daily, are even skeptical about this denial. Of course, Hezbollah responded in kind against military targets inside Israel and Israeli forces returned fire via severe and brutal airstrikes against Palestinian camps in Lebanon.

It is quite odd as well that much attention has been given to some 1,000 crude Kasam missiles that were launched from Gaza into Israel in which no fatalities resulted from. On the other hand, no attention was given to the 7,000 – 9,000 heavy artillery shells that were fired into Gaza during the same time period. As the Mandela Center for Human Rights asked, if Israel has every right to see the capture of their leaders as provocation, then what must Palestinians do about the more than 9,000 prisoners – including 342 juveniles and over 700 held without trial – that are currently held in Israel? Furthermore, Israel has continued to control Gaza’s borders and tens of millions of dollars of tax revenue in response to the Hamas electoral victory in January 2006. This has crippled the Gaza economy and has prompted the U.N. to issue a warning about a looming humanitarian disaster. In Gaza, Israel has destroyed the main power plant and water system which has left tens of thousands of Palestinians without access to medical care, food, and water. In Lebanon, Israel has killed over 600 people, most of them civilians, and displaced half a million. One only needs to look and compare the casualties in Israel to judge the proportionality of Israeli action. In this case, it is clearly not a response or retaliation.

Hamas and Hezbollah share in the rise of violence in the Middle East. Both have regularly ignored the distinction between military and civilian targets as well. Hence, while it must be recognized that they are the only line of defense for the Lebanese people, supporting them ideologically or in every action they take is beyond irresponsibility. Every action they take should always be put into question. They must be disarmed through political means which will never happen until Israeli hostility no longer looms over the people of Lebanon and Palestine. Clearly, we are nowhere close to that conclusion. All violence must stop but the onus is on Israel to halt its “state terrorism” which is currently seen as legitimate. Israel’s current campaign is a well-planned operation that has been years in the making. Their current actions are not a spontaneous reaction to aggression, it is state-terrorism in its most potent form. Of course, I have not even touched on United States state terrorism which has been going strong far longer than that of Israel.

In the spirit of resistance
Critical Mood