After getting out of Lebanon, writer June Rugh told Reuters: "As an
American, I'm embarrassed and ashamed. My administration is letting it
happen [by giving] tacit permission for Israel to destroy a country." The
news service quoted another American evacuee, Andrew Muha, who had been
in southern Lebanon. He said: "It's a travesty. There's a million
homeless in Lebanon and the intense amount of bombing has brought an
entire country to its knees."
Embarrassing. Shameful. A travesty. Those kinds of words begin to
describe the alliance between the United States and Israel. Here are a
few more: Government criminality. High-tech terror. Mass murder from the
skies. The kind of premeditated action that the U.S. representative in
Nuremberg at the International Conference on Military Trials -- Supreme
Court Justice Robert L. Jackson -- was talking about on August 12, 1945,
when he declared that "no grievances or policies will justify resort to
aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of
policy."
The United States and Israel. Right now, it's the most dangerous
alliance in the world.
Of course, Israeli officials talk about murderous crimes against
civilians by Hezbollah and Hamas. And Hezbollah and Hamas officials talk
about murderous crimes against civilians by Israel. Plenty of real crimes
to go around. At the same time, by any measure, Israelis have done a lot
more killing than dying. (If you doubt that, take a look at the website
of the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem and its documentation of
deadly events.)
In American media, the current mumbling about the need for
"restraint" is little better than window-dressing for bomb-dropping. The
prevalent dynamic is based on a chain of rarely spoken lies, however
conscious or unconscious: none more important than the lie that a
religion can make one life worth more than another; render a human death
unimportant; elevate certain war-inflicted agonies to spiritual
significance.
"Israel has overwhelming military superiority in both southern
Lebanon and Gaza," the New York Times noted in mid-July. A pattern is
deeply entrenched in U.S. media and politics: the smaller-scale killers
condemned, the larger-scale killers justified with endless rationales.
Stripping away the righteous rhetoric, media manipulation and
routine journalistic contortions, what remains in joint U.S.-Israeli
policy is the unspoken assumption that might makes right. Myths spin
around as convenient. Israel ceremoniously "withdraws" from Gaza, only to
come back with missiles and troops however and whenever it pleases. The
West Bank also continues to be a place of subjugation and resistance.
And, as W.H. Auden observed, "Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in
return."
The Israeli leaders who launched July's state-of-the-killing-art air
assault on Gaza and Lebanon had to know that many civilians would be
killed, many others wounded, many more terrorized. The smug moral
posturing that Israel's military does not target specific civilians is
moldy political grist -- and, in human terms, irrelevant to the totally
predictable carnage.
"There are terrorists who will blow up innocent people in order to
achieve tactical objectives," President Bush said on July 13. Of course
he was referring to actions by Hezbollah and Hamas. We're supposed to
pretend that Israel does not also "blow up innocent people in order to
achieve tactical objectives."
Israel calls itself a Jewish state, and its leadership often claims
to represent the interests of Jewish people. Killers who terrorize often
claim to be acting on blessed behalf of others of the faith. Muslims,
Christians, Jews, Hindus... By now, such demagoguery ought to be
transparent.
In the 40th year of Israel's unconscionable occupation of
Palestinian territories, Israeli leaders have their agenda. What's ours?
It should include clearly opposing the most dangerous alliance in
the world.
In the United States, evading the "might makes right" core of the
alliance is easy. The dodge makes dropping bombs on Lebanon and Gaza that
much easier for the Israeli government. As usual, you can hear it in the
weasel-worded statements from even the better politicians on Capitol
Hill. You can read it in New York Times editorials. Instead of saying
that aggressive war by Israel "is utterly renounced and condemned as an
instrument of policy," the message is that aggressive war by Israel is
accepted and embraced as an instrument of policy.
Most of all, you can hear it in the silence.
_________________________________________
Norman Solomon's latest book, "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits
Keep Spinning Us to Death," was published in paperback this summer. For
information, go to:
www.normansolomon.com