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Self pity { May 9 2002 } Subject: Fwd: Herman on whining and self-pity, a forward
>"Israel's Willing Executioners" May 09, 2002
>By Edward Herman
>
>It should be obvious that the above title is an oxymoron, because Israel
>is good, only a victim, not a victimizer, besides
>which Israel is a U.S. client and friend. So an invidious phrase like
>"willing executioners" can no more be applied to Israel
>than the words "terrorism" or "ethnic cleansing."
>
>This is all internalized by mainstream politicians, journalists and
>editors, and intellectuals as part of an integrated structure of
>thought. Terrorism is what the Palestinians do and what Arafat is
>responsible for ending; the Israeli army and settlers, in
>clearing Palestinians off their lands to permit Jewish settlements, have
>only been--settling--and preventing terrorist
>responses to settling.
>
>What can be more reasonable, especially as the Bible shows that these
>lands are for the chosen people and that Midianites,
>Canaanites, and now Palestinians can be removed according to the word of
>God?
>
>So if these people being removed, and sometimes killed in the process,
>object very strongly and eventually start to
>immolate themselves in suicide bombings--terrorizing to achieve their
>ugly design of non-removal--certainly it is reasonable
>to deal with them as the chosen people dealt with the Amorites,
>Hittites, et al.: "thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy
>them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them"
>(Deuteronomy 7).
>
>This was God's instruction, and the ongoing counter-terror, if it
>utterly destroys and shows no mercy, is situated in a great
>tradition. Currently it is designed to remove the "nests of terrorists"
>and to teach a lesson to people who harbor terrorists
>and who object to their own steady displacement by chosen-people
>settlers.
>
>Thus if the UN brazenly proposes sending observers to the cleansed West
>Bank towns, who will in their biased fashion and
>with their "humanitarianism" focus on what happened to the nests of
>terrorists, what can be more reasonable than that the
>democratic government of the chosen people tell them:
>
>NO, you cannot come, especially with a team that fails to understand
>about terrorism and terrorist nests and the need to
>eradicate these, with terrorism properly defined. The threat of these
>observers sticking their noses into business that doesn't
>concern them has helped unify the chosen people behind their valiant
>leader, Ariel Sharon.
>
>Besides, these criticisms of Sharon and Israel's attack on nests of
>terrorists are clearly part of the "rising tide of global anti-
>Semitism." This tide has nothing to do with anything Israel has done
>that is reprehensible and unjust, because the world, or
>at least the Bush administration, U.S. mainstream media, and Tony Blair,
>acknowledge that we only retaliate to terror, we
>never terrorize, although occasionally we make mistakes, like everyone
>else.
>
>There may have been soldiers in Jenin, Nablus and Bethlehem that
>vandalized, and bombs that missed their targets, but
>these were rogue individuals, and regrettable errors; the Israeli army
>is humane and believes in human equality as it protects
>the chosen people. We all know how biased everybody has been against
>Israel all these years and favorable to Arafat and
>the Palestinians.
>
>On the other hand, it might be argued, in the light of Israel's leveling
>of much of the West Bank, and killing hundreds of
>Palestinian civilians, and given that Israel is a democratic state- -at
>least for Jews--that the open, informed support of
>Sharon by the Jewish populace makes the Israeli people truly "willing
>executioners."
>
>As Daniel Jonah Goldhagen has said, "Any people that commits such deeds
>in open defiance of international law and the
>vehement condemnation of virtually the entire international community
>consists of individuals with damaged faculties of
>moral judgment and has sunk into a moral abyss from which it is
>unlikely, anytime soon, to emerge unaided" ("A New
>Serbia, New Republic, May 10, 1999).
>
>Of course, Goldhagen was writing about Serbia. But in that case, and
>even more clearly in the one he featured earlier, Nazi
>Germany, the people were far less free and less informed, so that their
>"willingness" to support the deadly acts of their
>government is much less clear than in the case of Israel.
>
>The Israelis know what is being done to Palestinians on the West Bank,
>they have long been able to read about the
>institutionalized torture of Palestinians in their papers, and they are
>well aware of the character and scope of the recent
>devastation and killings, yet despite significant dissent they openly
>approve, vote brutalizing governments into power and
>keep them there. Sharon's popularity has risen in the wake of his "war"
>on the Palestinian refugee camps and cities. The
>prima facie case is that the Israelis are more clearly "willing
>executioners" than the Germans or Serbs.
>
>Of course, we know why this is wrong, and why, by rule of deep bias,
>even if the Israelis were to import used gas
>chambers from Germany and started to push "terrorists" in, Goldhagen
>would never find the Israelis willing executioners
>and the U.S. establishment would find the action a matter of legitimate
>"self defense." But a comparison of the Serb/Israel
>cases has enlightening features.
>
>WHO ARE THE "WHINERS"?
>
>The Israelis claim to suffer from "antisemitism" and an anti-Israeli
>bias, as much of the world outside Israel and the United
>States finds the operations of the Israeli army outrageous and criminal.
>The U.S. mainstream media report these Israeli
>sentiments objectively.
>
>In the case of the Serbs, by contrast, although Serbia was subjected to
>severe sanctions from the early 1990s, was the
>target of the Tribunal organized by the NATO powers, and was eventually
>attacked and bombed for 78 days, the
>complaints of Serbs that they were suffering from an "anti-Serb" bias
>was repeatedly sneered at in the U.S. media as
>"whining."
>
>It was the media consensus that the Serbs were cry-babies, who were not
>willing to face up to the fact that they had done
>ugly things and deserved to suffer themselves. Roger Cohen in the New
>York Times speaks of Milosevic having "only one
>theme: Serbian victimhood and self-defense" (July 1, 2001); a theme
>certainly preeminent for the U.S. media.
>
>New Humanitarian Michael Ignatieff, a Harvard professor of human rights
>and media favorite, expressed it, "The myth of
>Kosovo Polje began the story of Serbian self-pity, and self-pity has
>justified crime down the centuries" ("Only in Truth Can
>Serbs Find Peace," Calgary Herald, June 26, 1999).
>
>No such thoughts appear in the media as regards the Israelis, although
>the Israelis are whining even though still protected by
>the Godfather and subjected to no sanctions or any penalties whatsoever,
>and the naming of the attack on refugee camps
>by the fourth largest army in the world "Operation Defensive Shield"
>elicits not a word of ironical comment.
>
>Israelis whine and complain of antisemitism at mere criticism of their
>ugly behavior, which is the culmination of REAL and
>long-term ethnic cleansing. But as a U.S. client, the media not only
>don't notice; no references to "self-pity," and they treat
>the Israeli whining and talk of "self defense" as legitimate and even
>making valid points.
>
>
>WHO TERRORIZES AND WHO RESPONDS TO TERROR?
>
>The Israelis have suffered serious casualties from suicide bombers,
>although Palestinian casualties from Israeli assassinations
>and raids have recently exceeded Israeli casualties by three to one or
>better (it was far higher in earlier years).
>
>In Kosovo, the Serb army, police and civilians also suffered serious
>casualties in the ongoing civil war prior to the NATO
>bombing war, with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) trying to provoke the
>Serbs in order to induce NATO
>intervention. The Serb army and police did retaliate, and killed and
>turned into refugees quite a few Kosovo Albanians.
>Their retaliatory actions did induce escalating NATO interventions, just
>as the KLA desired.
>
>Suicide bomber killings have helped justify Sharon's war on the West
>Bank refugee camps and towns, and a number of
>Israeli analysts have made a strong case that a number of his "targeted
>assassinations" were DESIGNED to induce a
>Palestinian response, to assure continued warfare and eventually allow
>him to fulfil his objective--to crush the Palestinian
>authority and society to protect and possibly expand the occupation of
>Palestinian lands.
>
>He could get away with this because his wholesale terror against a
>civilian population, in contrast with Serb actions in
>Kosovo, would NOT induce a NATO or any other international response. He
>could devastate and kill freely, although
>global civil society would not like it.
>
>The media and New Humanitarian responses to the two cases have of course
>followed and rationalized the U.S. policy of
>protecting the ethnic-cleansing Israeli state, allowing it to be
>responding to terrorism, but not allowing the Serbs to be doing
>the same.
>
>The Serbs were terrorizing civilians, the Israelis are going after
>terrorists. This purely political bias was well captured in a
>statement by Michael Ignatieff. Discussing the case where the KLA
>murdered six Serb teenagers in Kosovo, Ignatieff said:
>
>"Doubtless a KLA provocation, intended to goad the Serbs into
>overreaction and then to trigger international intervention.
>The Serbs responded by killing 45 civilians in Racak in mid-January. The
>international community duly intervened. Yet it is
>worth asking why the KLA strategists could be absolutely certain the
>Serbs would react as they did. The reason is
>simple....only in Serbia is racial contempt an official ideology"
>(ibid.).
>
>We may note first that for Ignatieff the KLA killings were only a
>"provocation," not a murderous act to be severely
>condemned. Can you imagine Ignatieff speaking of a Palestinian suicide
>bombing being only a "provocation" with a focus on
>the Israeli "overreaction" rather than on the tragic act itself? Note
>also that although there is serious evidence that the Racak
>incident was arranged into a "massacre" following a furious battle, and
>is therefore of questionable authenticity, Ignatieff
>takes it as unquestionably valid.
>
>On the certainty of the Serb reaction, provocations such as those
>carried out by the KLA produce similar responses in civil
>conflicts everywhere, so that Ignatieff's blaming it on Serb racism is
>nonsensical for that reason alone.
>
>But it also flies in the face of Serb tolerance of Albanians in
>Belgrade, along with the Roma--in contrast with Kosovo
>Albanian intolerance of both in NATO-occupied Kosovo--and the German
>Foreign Office finding that the actions of Serb
>security forces in Kosovo were "not directed against the
>Kosovo-Albanians as an ethnically defined group, but against the
>military opponent and its actual or alleged supporters."
>
>But can you imagine Ignatieff or the mainstream media suggesting with a
>sneer that Sharon's response to a suicide bomber
>provocation was entirely predictable because Sharon WANTED a
>provocation, even provoked it himself, in order to carry
>out a planned assault on Palestinian civil society?
>
>And that this willingness to respond with violence was based on racist
>bias? Not imaginable, though based on compelling
>evidence of racist bias as "official policy," and a plausible scenario.
>
>The deep-structured bias internalized by Ignatieff (and most mainstream
>pundits) makes it possible to smear the Serbs on
>misrepresentations of fact and nonsensical reasoning, but an analogous
>argument supported by evidence is ruled out for
>Israel, just as the idea of Israelis being "willing executioners" is
>outside the bounds of proper thought.
>
>WHO NEEDS MONITORS?
>
>The Serbs were induced to allow up to 2,000 OSCE monitors into Kosovo
>late in 1998, under threat of U.S. bombing.
>The OSCE mission was headed by William Walker, former U.S. Ambassador to
>El Salvador under Reagan, who had
>been severely condemned in Jesuit publications as an apologist for the
>Salvadoran murder of six Jesuit priests in 1989, and
>who gave evidence of serious bias as a supposedly neutral observer of
>human rights violations. But Milosevic accepted this
>mission, and protested when it was withdrawn just before NATO resorted
>to its bombing war.
>
>Kofi Annan and most of the world have thought that the occupied
>territories needed an international armed presence, to
>protect the Palestinians and possibly also to help contain suicide
>bombers (on the logic that the introduction of such a force,
>and evidence of some international concern for Palestinians, would
>strengthen Palestinian authority, but more importantly,
>give desperate Palestinians some hope of relief and improvement).
>
>But Israel and the United States have objected, therefore no armed
>personnel have been introduced. And not even an
>investigative body can be admitted to the occupied territories.
>
>The rules are simple. Push around civilians who the United States
>chooses to protect, or claims to be protecting, and you
>must admit monitors, no matter how biased and even if they are helping
>arrange for a future military assault. This may not
>be enough if U.S. officials decide that a country "needed a little
>bombing" (as a State Department official said about
>Yugoslavia).
>
>But if you are a favored U.S. client, you may kill freely, ethnically
>cleanse, even in legally "occupied territory" in which the
>cleansed civilians are "protected persons" under the Fourth Geneva
>Convention, and you will not even be subjected to
>investigation, let alone having to suffer a foreign armed presence or
>monitors, let alone being bombed! And the Godfather
>will even increase your funding as you escalate your ethnic cleansing!
>
>This is the New World Order system for settling disputes and bringing
>justice to the peoples of the world.
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