"Stop that shit!" ~ Uri Avnery

[UndertheOcean]

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1153268185



"Stop that shit!"

18-7-2006


A WOMAN, an immigrant from Russia, throws herself on the ground in total despair in front of her home that has been hit by a missile, crying in broken Hebrew: "My son! My son!" believing him dead. In fact he was only wounded and sent to the hospital.

Lebanese children, covered with wounds, in Beirut hospitals. The funeral of the victims of a missile in Haifa. The ruins of a whole devastated quarter in Beirut. Inhabitants of the north of Israel fleeing south from the Katyushas. Inhabitants of the south of Lebanon fleeing north from the Israeli Air Force.

Death, destruction. Unimaginable human suffering.

And the most disgusting sight: George Bush in a playful mood sitting on his chair in St. Petersburg, with his loyal servant Tony Blair leaning over him, and solving the problem: "See? What they need to do is get Syria to get Hizbullah to stop doing that shit, and it's over."

Thus spake the leader of the world, and the seven dwarfs - "the great of the world" - say Amen.

~SNIP~

But all this does not explain the timing. After all, Nasrallah could have acted a month before or a month later, a year before or a year later. There must have been a much stronger reason to convince him to enter upon such an adventure at precisely this time.

And indeed there was: Palestine.

TWO WEEKS before, the Israeli army had started a war against the population of the Gaza Strip. There, too, the pretext was provided by a guerrilla action, in which an Israeli soldier was captured. The Israeli government used the opportunity to carry out a plan prepared long before: to break the Palestinians' will to resist and to destroy the newly elected Palestinian government, dominated by Hamas. And, of course, to stop the Qassams.

The operation in Gaza is an especially brutal one, and that is how it looks on the world's TV screens. Terrible pictures from Gaza appear daily and hourly in the Arab media. Dead people, wounded people, devastation. Lack of water and medicaments for the wounded and sick. Whole families killed. Children screaming in agony. Mothers weeping. Buildings collapsing.

~~SNIP~~

HIZBULLAH IS the authentic representative of the Shiite community, which makes up 40% of the Lebanese population. Together with the other Muslims, they are the majority in the country. The idea that the weakling Lebanese government - which in any case includes Hizbullah - would be able to liquidate the organization is ludicrous.

~~SNIP~~

Whoever longs for a solution must know: there is no solution without settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And there is no solution to the Palestinian problem without negotiations with their elected leadership, the government headed by Hamas.

If one wants to finish, once and for all, with this shit - as Bush so delicately put it - that is the only way.

[acmavm]

1. No solution without negotiations with the Palestinians elected leaders.

Something the current thugs in charge in Israel never intend to do.

They like killing more. Frees up more land.

[bemildred]

2. Kick for a negotiated peace. nt

[MrPrax]

3. Right said...

Avi shoots and scores...

Yup...it is interesting that the Syria and Iran angle is getting so much media play with the intellectual stretch that it is Iran doing all this to 'distract' from it's nuclear problem (which is entirely the creation of the Bush administration anyway).

Israel never 'distracts' from anything; they are always righteous and so the base illegality of what they are doing is ignored as is the FACT that Hizbullah did what they did in support of Palestinians in Gaza (which were being hammered last week illegally)...but none of that is a distraction of course to Israel's internal political struggle.

[Poll_Blind]

4. Avnery is incredible. As usual. n/t

PB

[UndertheOcean]

5. He most surely is !

gotta love REAL leftists.

[cool user name]

6. Gotta love Uri Avnery ...

Love his sense of irony and he's always got a clever twist to his writings.

[eridani]

7. Another one from Avnery

http://alternet.org/story/39141/

The real aim is to change the regime in Lebanon and to install a puppet government.

That was the aim of Ariel Sharon's invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It failed. But Sharon and his pupils in the military and political leadership have never really given up on it.

As in 1982, the present operation, too, was planned and is being carried out in full coordination with the US.

As then, there is no doubt that it is coordinated with a part of the Lebanese elite.

That's the main thing. Everything else is noise and propaganda.

On the eve of the 1982 invasion, Secretary of State Alexander Haig told Ariel Sharon that, before starting it, it was necessary to have a "clear provocation", which would be accepted by the world.

The provocation indeed took place - exactly at the appropriate time - when Abu-Nidal's terror gang tried to assassinate the Israeli ambassador in London. This had no connection with Lebanon, and even less with the PLO (the enemy of Abu-Nidal), but it served its purpose.

This time, the necessary provocation has been provided by the capture of the two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah. Everyone knows that they cannot be freed except through an exchange of prisoners. But the huge military campaign that has been ready to go for months was sold to the Israeli and international public as a rescue operation.

<snip>

The public is not enthusiastic about the war. It is resigned to it, in stoic fatalism, because it is being told that there is no alternative. And indeed, who can be against it? Who does not want to liberate the "kidnapped soldiers"? Who does not want to remove the Katyushas and rehabilitate deterrence? No politician dares to criticize the operation (except the Arab MKs, who are ignored by the Jewish public). In the media, the generals reign supreme, and not only those in uniform. There is almost no former general who is not being invited by the media to comment, explain and justify, all speaking in one voice.

[Mir]

8. Uri is the man

This year and a half old piece by him immediately following the re-election of dickhead is still my favorite of all time:

http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2005%20Opinion%20Editorials/January/23o/King%20George%20By%20Uri%20Avnery.htm

[McCamy Taylor]

9. Settling Palestine-Israel is Pie in the Sky for Lebanese Dying Now

Does no one else find the fatalism with which people accept the loss of innocent life in the middle east abnormal?

"Whoever longs for a solution must know: there is no solution without settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Yes, this is the long term solution. We have known this for a long time, but the knowledge gets us no where closer to an answer and meanwhile, innocents keep getting killed in the worst possible way---while the world watches and nods its head in approval as if to say "You have to kill some innocents in order to kill the guilty." This in fact is the way that many Texans think. In a poll in this state, the majority prefer to execute innocent people if the alternative is to let one guilty person go free.

Maybe people need a new kind of knowledge? Something that shocks them out of their complacency. In Viet Nam, the turning point came when a Buddhist priest immolated himself in 1963. Afterwards, a handful of similar suicides focused attention on the corruption of the South Vietnamese government and the horrors of the US sponsored war. I do not want any holy person to feel compelled to go so far, but can we not show the same compassion and courage that those priests and nuns showed?

Pie in the Sky By and By is death and suffering now for innocents. In Lebanon. In Gaza. In Israel. In Iraq. In Turkey. Every soul that dies is a tragedy. It is unbearable. It scalds the eyes and burns the skin. How can one enjoy the false comforts of being an American citizen knowing that our privilege is founded upon such misery? How can we calmly, mathematically dissect the middle east without first embracing those in danger of dying?