Month: August 2006

Frankly, I am tired of Israel accusing Hezbollah of “using human shields.” Even if Hezbollah truly are hiding behind children, the Israelis act as if they believe this excuses their military killing well over 600 (possibly closer to 900) people in Lebanon. At best, their seeming inability to find a way to attack Hezbollah without killing civilians makes them look inept or careless. At worst, they look like cynical monsters trying to pin the blame on their victims, a charge they have made against Hezbollah.

The Israeli inquiry into the Qana “mistake” alleged that, “had the information indicated that civilians were present…the attack would not have been carried out.” At the same time, a former senior Israeli military officer stated that the IDF believed the apartment building demolished in Qana “was the residence of two Hezbollah operatives.” In other words, a couple of Hezbollah members were living in a building along with their civilian neighbors. The IDF also bombed, allegedly on purpose, the home of a Lebanese bank manager in hopes that it would scare other bank officers into rejecting Hezbollah accounts. So which is it? They don’t bomb civilian homes, or they do?

Israel’s defenders like to point out that leaflets often warn residents of an impending strike, but these same leaflets also warn Hezbollah. So if the enemy has left the building too, what’s the point of demolishing it? Even without leaflets, if the Lebanese know that rocket launchers will attract Israeli attacks, why do they remain in those buildings? They didn’t notice somebody launching a rocket from their backyard? Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, has suggested that Hezbollah force the civilians, “in a cynical and brutal way,” to remain behind as shields, but that doesn’t make any sense. The Israelis have demonstrated that they will bomb human shields. Besides, if the Israelis truly believe that those civilians are hostages, that’s one more reason to make sure they are not attacked.

That wasn’t the only time that Gillerman has called Hezbollah cynical. Last Sunday, during his speech at the UN Security Council’s emergency meeting on the Qana catastrophe, he again referred to Hezbollah’s cynicism. Earlier in the day, Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres, while speaking on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” also called Hezbollah “cynical”; however, it seems more and more like a case of the pot calling the kettle “cynical.”

I suppose it could be that the Israelis are merely annoyed that Hezbollah haven’t gone to the same lengths, that the Lebanese Army has, to make themselves easy targets. On the other hand, they could be ticked off that Hezbollah also use Lebanese soldiers as human shields. Or was that base bombing, or the other base bombing, or that other base bombing a different variety of intelligence mistake? And how about those banks in Beirut? Vaults must be great places to stash rocket-launchers on the fly, huh?

I don’t recall any old Western where the heroic sheriff complains to his horse about having to kill a pioneer family in order to save them from desperados. He’d spend a good part of the movie seeking a way to bring the enemy over to his side or defeat them without harming innocents. Likewise, the Israelis should take some of their famous intelligence resources and those fancy weapons with the superior tracking and figure out a way not to slaughter children, instead of whining about how they were forced to…unless, of course, they enjoy blaming the victims.

Ira Glunts sends the following:

Israeli Newspaper Reports That The Army Lied About Qana

In its lead story August 1, the Hebrew edition of Ha’aretz online reported that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) claim that Hezbollah missile launchers and Hezbollah fighters were in and around the building in Qana which they shelled early Sunday morning was false.

Oddly, this article, which points to Israeli culpability and recklessness in what some are calling the IDF’s second massacre in Qana (the first was in 1996), has been largely ignored in the international press.

According to the newspaper, the IDF “decided to attack houses in a specific radius of a place that was used in the past to launch missiles.” The article states that the tactic of choosing buildings as targets that are near areas from which rockets were launched in the past has been used before.

Initially, Israeli military sources had reported that the deaths in Qana where caused not by the Israeli air attack early Sunday morning, but by an accidental explosion, many hours later, of Hezbollah ordnance that was stored inside the building. According to the Ha’aretz article, this is not true. Israeli Air Force sources have admitted, according to Ha’aretz, that the deaths in Qana were caused by the Israeli shelling. Between 30 and 60 deaths were reported as a result of the building collapse. Many bodies are still believed to be buried beneath the rubble.

Additionally, the claim of the IDF that leaflets were dropped on the weekend warning of an attack were also untrue. The leaflets were actually delivered “some days” before the weekend, according to military sources.

Here in Miami, it’s the third night of the Raúl Castro Ruz era. Although I wouldn’t say the euphoria (or the schadenfreude) has entirely evaporated, calm has returned just in time for everyone to rush to the supermarket to stock up on water and batteries should Tropical Storm Chris decide to spoil any weekend festivities. Only a man as evil as Fidel could pick the Monday before a weekend hurricane to drop dead. Thoughtless bastard.

All kidding aside, it’s been fairly surreal down here. Coverage of the crazy Cubans shaking their booties across several major thoroughfares in Miami has been on all the national networks. We saw hours of videos here. Yes, we’ve danced on Fidel’s grave before, but this time it’s different. It really is. The announcement that Fidel was ceding power — even if it is only temporary — was like watching a coma patient twitch his eyes after 47 years. You simply just don’t sit back and relax when something like that happens. We’re celebrating and waiting to see what twitches next.

We don’t really pretend to know what’s going on down there, but fueled on shots of high-octane Cuban coffee, everyone is speculating. Maybe for once they told the truth. Maybe he’s already embalmed. Maybe he’s just in a coma or stroked out in a hospital bed. Maybe — as my friend Robert suggested — he’s on Calle Ocho dressed as a little old lady, spying on his Miami Mafia funeral. And with Raúl missing in action too, the conspiracy theories multiply with each passing hour. Maybe it’s an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned, backroom coup d’état. The possibilities are endless, and I suspect we’ll never really know.

I’ve rolodexed through a number of emotions these last three days — mostly disbelief, grief for family and friends who didn’t live to see this, and hope that the future starts now for Cuba instead of after another couple of years of close calls — but I never expected in my wildest dreams to actually be concerned for the Castro butchers. For all the trouble those two have caused I guess I want them to have a more fitting end than gastro-intestinal trouble and some quick “demise” in a dark hallway. Just what the hell has happened to Raúl? Until this mystery surfaced everything had been going according to my schedule of how the changeover was likely to happen.

It’s almost a traitorous feeling, I suppose. My Mom and most of her family fled their adopted island home within a couple years of the glorious revolution in ’59. Then again, if it weren’t for the Castros, she wouldn’t have moved to Miami, and I would never have been born, so I guess they do deserve a smidgen of concern from me…or maybe I was just hoping for the better entertainment value of a nice, public lynching.

(I posted a bit about this on Monday night over at Crash Landing, one of my regular blathering haunts.)

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George W. Bush has apparently given up any aspiration of receiving an honorary award from the American Civil Liberties Union.

His administration is responding to the Supreme Court ruling striking down his military tribunals with a legislative proposal that would place far more Americans in peril of having their rights nullified. 

The Washington Post reports today:

A draft Bush administration plan for special military courts seeks to expand the reach and authority of such “commissions” to include trials, for the first time, of people who are not members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban and are not directly involved in acts of international terrorism, according to officials familiar with the proposal.

The plan, which would replace a military trial system ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June, would also allow the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to those under the military court’s jurisdiction. The two provisions would be likely to put more individuals than previously expected before military juries, officials and independent experts said.

That last sentence evoked from me the phrase I heard most often during my  summers working as a peach picker:  No s**t.

The system would permit hearsay evidence (which the defendant would not be permitted to see) to seal their fate, including death sentences.  A U.S. government official told the Washington Post that defendants would have to count on “the trustworthiness of the system.”   (The fact that the Bush administration has almost always been wrong when it accuses people of terrorist connections was not mentioned in this piece; I dealt with that subject a few weeks ago for the Boston Globe.).

The fact that the Bush proposal would seek to empower Rumsfeld to act as legislator, jury, and executor of anyone accused of future specified crimes – based on the shabbiest standards of evidence and kangaroo court procedures – vivifies the total contempt of the Bush team for American liberty.

Jonah Goldberg, the former editor of National Review Online who owes his status as a “conservative” pundit to his mom’s proximity to the stain on Monica Lewinsky’s dress, is now applying his journalistic talents to shilling for Israel’s war. But would somebody please call the re-write department? His latest screed denies the Qana massacre even took place:

“Aspects of the Qana story don’t jibe, starting with the timeline. The building collapsed seven hours after the bombing (which remains the likely explanation now). Some of the bodies don’t look like they were killed in a building collapse, and refrigerated trucks were reportedly brought in before the media could visit the site, perhaps delivering corpses. An elaborate 30-foot-long banner condemning a bloody lipped Rice for the attack was improbably at the ready for a protest that morning. Bloggers around the globe are steadily picking apart other details, to the dismay of many who like their anti-Israel storylines tidy (see confederateyankee.mu.nu for a summary).”

Jefferson Morley gives us the lowdown on the growing “revisionist” movement among Israel’s amen corner, which denies each and every atrocity committed by the Israelis even as they occur:

“The Qana conspiracy theory not only underscores how the Internet can misinform (an old story), it also reveals a popular demand for online content that attempts to explain away news reports that Israel (and by proxy, its closest ally and arms supplier, the United States) was responsible for the deaths of dozens of women and children in a Hezbollah stronghold. At a time when American and Israeli public opinion of the war diverge radically from the world opinion elsewhere, the emergence of a right-wing equivalent of the Sept. 11 conspiracy theories is worth noting.”

It turns out that the “report” about refrigerated trucks being brought in with fresh corpses for the Hezbollah “show” originated with the “Israel Insider,” a vehemently pro-Israel web site based in Israel that backs its claim up with — nothing:

“Citing news images of the event, [Israel Insider publisher Reuben] Korvet said the bodies of 57 civilians ‘looked like they had been dead for days’ and suggested that Hezbollah operatives planted them there.”

How did refrigerator trucks get to the scene without being seen by the Israelis, whose aerial photography noted other details of the scene? Korvet insists the dead bodies “must be something else,” and asks “who were these people.” Morley, with an audible sigh of astonished resignation, answers:

“That question has been definitively answered in the mainstream press. Almost all of the victims belonged to two extended families, the Hashems and the Shalhoubs, who lived in the area, according to the independent accounts of The Washington Post‘s Anthony Shadid and the Daily Star‘s Nicholas Blanford.”

And Morley has a few questions for the “revisionists”:

“Who killed the Hashems and Shalhoubs, if it wasn’t an Israel bomb? Korvet and the other bloggers don’t offer any theories.

“How did Hezbollah truck in bodies to the Qana site without the pervasive Israeli aerial surveillance catching it on film? Israel has released footage of what it says are Hezbollah fighters firing rockets from the area. Presumably, the Israeli Foreign Ministry is not covering up the story.”

Goldberg’s suspicions about the “timeline” of the Qana massacre are definitively answered in this story in Ha’aretz:

“The survivors spoke of two bombings, one at 1 A.M., and the second some 10 minutes later. However, what appeared to the survivors as a second bombing may have been the sound of the building coming down. None of the survivors said that the building only collapsed several hours later.” 

But, then again, what do they know?

Morley e-mailed one prominent denialist blogger, Richard North, asking for proof of his contentions, and received this telling reply: “All I have to go on is gut instinct.” That instinct which tells him Israel can do no wrong.

“I appreciate his candor,” writes Morley. “It confirms that he has no evidence to support the central claim of his blog posts. North says he is just trying to ‘raise questions,’ which is certainly a legitimate goal. My question is: What is it about the photos from Qana that made Israel’s supporters prefer fantasy to fact?”

Senor North, Goldberg, and their ilk have always preferred fantasy to reality: indeed, the neocons, in their more effusive moods, openly disdain what one administration official described to writer Ron Suskind as “the reality-based community,” which is based on the old-fashioned method of studying empirical facts, and is today being tossed in the dustbin of history by the War Party:

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'”

It isn’t the historians, however, who will discover the roots of what I call the Goldberg Syndrome — the tendency to make up “facts” when reality doesn’t fit your pre-determined ideological convictions. Because this isn’t politics, it’s psychopathology we’re dealing with here — a form of mental derangement that is sure to become more widespread in certain quarters as evidence of Israel’s ruthless brutality begins to pile up. By the time the Israelis finish their blitzkrieg, it no doubt will have reached epidemic proportions.