“Long Live Independent Libya! Qaddafi is facing a civil war!” proclaimed Hugo Chavez on Twitter.

I have had several rather heated debates over the last year or two about the merits of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. I have been told that, as the leader of the Latin-American countries that have freed themselves from U.S. dominance, and a fighter against Capitalism, Hugo Chavez deserves our support. He is fighting great forces, I have been told when I complained about his repression of free speech in his country. The opposition TV channels are after all controlled by rich men, who have an outsize influence created by wealth rather than by popular support.

Hugo Chavez, I’ve been told, is a good man who works hard for his people.

Well, my view is and has always been that nothing justifies taking freedom away from the people, and that all the trinkets and bribes in the world, even big and important ones like economic rights, don’t justify stifling dissent, however reactionary it may be, and that ideological repression does not stem from a lack of choice but betrays the instincts and nature of a despot. Despotism, in my opinion, cannot beget justice.

The mere fact that someone is fighting the same forces of injustice that we are does not mean that they do not represent another force of injustice. There is more than one such force afoot, just as there is more than one force, one way to promote justice.

Justice does not tolerate realpolitik, the notion that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” It is not possible, while fighting for justice, to say (as the United States likes to): “he may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard.” That sort of thing never brings the desired results, and there is plenty of historical fact to support this assertion. Such an example is the slaughter of the Anarchists in the wake of the Civil War in Russia. The Bolsheviks, once they have won against the White Army, no longer needed the support of the Anarchists to survive, and, having been done with them, executed them all as competitors for power. That an act that foreshadowed the U.S.S.R. becoming just as great a force of repression and injustice as any other in History.

So how do we judge Hugo Chavez? We could judge him by his efforts to redistribute the wealth of his nation, although they seem to have been directed more at centralizing it in the hands of the State than at giving it back to the people in forms other than oil-funded subsidies; we could judge him by his rhetorical defiance of United States power, which is commendable but has yet to acheive results; or we could do so by his efforts to silence opponents of all stripes, for which there are plenty of excuses but no justification.

It is hard to judge a regime battling against such great odds, to figure out where its loyalty lies — with its people or with its power. But the crisis in Libya has given us a rare opportunity into the soul of this particular “Champion of the People:” in the battle for Libya, his loyalty lies with his good friend Muammar Qaddafi.

You can make what you will of it. On my part, I am utterly unsurprised.

Photo by Nayef Hashlamoun

You have seen the walls and chain-link fences, the cold concrete barriers, corralling thousands of tired, angry, desperate, grey-faced, tearful human beings; you’ve seen the ruins where a house stood just some hours, maybe days, before.

You’ve seen the jackboot stamping on the neck.Now see the cold, hard gaze six feet above the boot; see what lies behind that impenetrable veil: A battle raging, blood boiling, a hint of a clenched jaw, a spot of spittle and foam at the corner of the mouth; a flushed cheek; a quiver; bravado and a constricted breath— all signifying what? Triumph? Pleasure? Maybe even a hint of fear, bewilderment and shame, as the breath and livers of old stormtroopers attest. Look as you might, and you will not find out; the veil is, after all, impenetrable.

And yet you have to look, and search, and wonder: For what kills, enslaves, uproots, tears brick from brick, is not a force of nature but a human being too, with blood, flesh, tendons, and a soul. So you must ask: What lies behind the evil that lurks within the hearts of men? You must do this not to make its cause more just; but to understand it, for that evil also lurks within your heart, and mine, and only through compassion can it be defeated.

If you look past the iron curtain that veils the invader’s soul you can perceive what makes him tick: For the curtain is not so much to hide his evil from you, but to hide it from himself. Very, very few the men and women are that see evil in themselves; instead, they make believe that they protect, and not destroy; not for nothing it is said: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The invader would not invade, the guard would not beat down, and the soldier would not shoot if it were not for the impenetrable veil that hides from them the humanity of their victim. Look, and you will see the fragile, fervently defended house of cards of false beliefs and futile fears, of promises and lies, and of illusions and excuses that brace and underlie the iron curtain without which the evil it enables could not exist.

Though the leak of the Palestine Papers, we can see that Israel’s claims are nothing but tripe and horseshit. They have been offered a great deal—such a great deal, in fact, that it is better than the deal that they claimed to have offered Abbas. This deal was so generous, that if the Israeli public had known about it, it would have supported it enthusiastically, something that could not be said of the likely Palestinian reaction to such an agreement. Therefore we must give Abbas this credit: whether intentially or not, it was he and his team who finally, undeniably, and irreversibly called the Israelis’ bluff.

Whether calling the Israelis’ bluff was Abbas’ team’s intention in these talks or not is impossible to tell. Personally, I think that their intention was at least partly born out of a desperation—clearly seen in the minutes of the Palestine Papers—to finally free his people of the misery and suffering to which they have been subjected for so long. Even though it can easily be argued that he was working for the Israelis, and working for a paycheck, I think that he really felt that time was running out, that he didn’t have the answers, and that the main thing was to figure out a way for his people to have at least a modicum of peace. Not Peace, which is inseparable from Justice, but peace with a lowercase p, which means nothing but the ability to go to work, to school, to raise children without being bombed every other day and held up at checkpoints. It is conceivable that he believed that he had no other choice but to try and give Israel as much as possible on the off-chance that they might just agree to leave the Palestinians alone.

One could claim that this is the reasoning of a coward and a sellout; but I caution my readers against condemning, from a comfortable place of safety, the hopes of a desparate man. Simple, lowercase peace may not seem like much when you have it, but when things get bad enough it can be worth more than all the Justice in the world, such as it is.

Beyond that, I am sure that Abbas was at least aware of the possibility that is now coming to pass. Maybe he was even bluffing himself—he must have known that an agreement such as he was offering would be unacceptable to many, perhaps most, of his constituents—and hoping, praying that the Israelis would reveal themselves by saying no, giving his people the greatest victory since the beginning of their struggle against Israel.

Abbas is finished; his reputation will not recover from the “greatest Yerushalayim.” But maybe it was, even for him, worthwhile.

As Israel’s military supremacy grew more absolute, and its crimes became more brazen and harder to ignore, its political landscape began to change. Starting with the first Lebanon War and the massacre at Sabra and Shatila, people in Israel began to protest the militarist nature of their state, question the fundamental goodness of its military, and even doubt its image as the victim, barely hanging on to physical survival. Israel, which has always portrayed its wars as “wars of no choice,” has so obviously chosen to go to war, against an opponent that was obviously no match for its powerful military. People began to ask, “what are we sending our sons and daughters to die for?” and even, “is this right?”

Thoughout the 1990′s and 2000′s, with the rise of right-wing Palestinian organizations like Hamas, the failure of the Oslo Accords and the Second Intifada, the Zionist left kept shedding support. Many in its ranks grew disillusioned with the prospect of peace and defected to the Right. Others saw the growth of settlements under both left- and right-wing governments, the increasingly harsh repression of the Palestinian national movement, and understood the obvious insincerity of the Zionist “Peace Camp.”

Sooner or later they were forced to come to terms with the fact that their humanist values are fundamentally incompatible with a segregated, racially stratified state.

Thus the Israeli Center was hollowed out. It now has almost no representation in the Knesset: Labor and Meretz are all but gone; Kadima, the Center-Left party, committed one of the conflict’s worst massacres, Operation Cast Lead, during its time in power, all the while talking about peace, negotiations, and coexistence. The old ruses seem pretty tattered and transparent now.

The Zionist Left is dead, and with it the illusion of a Jewish-Democratic State. The time is now to choose— Democracy for all, or Fascism.

Galant in Gaza. Photo: Avi Ohayon, GPO

The appointment of a new Chief of Staff to the Israeli Military is frequently an interesting event. The Chief of Staff, who is appointed by the Government according to the recommendation of the Minister of Defence, is the highest commanding officer in the Israeli Military, and as such receives his orders directly from the Minister of Defence, and is in charge of implementing them.The newly appointed Chief of Staff, who is scheduled to begin his tenure on Feb. 14th, is Gen. Yoav Galant. Like any CEO, he will influential in determining the effectiveness and character of the organization of which he will be chief.

Galant, who began his military career as a Navy commando in 1977, headed  Southern Command from 2005 until Oct.21st, 2010. In that position he commanded Operation Cast Lead (also known as The Gaza Masscre, a more accurate, but ambiguous description), a role which earned him widespread praise inside Israel.

Galant’s appointment is not yet certain. He is involved in corruption scandals involving theft of public lands and building a road without a permit, and a controversial decision by the Lands Administration in 2003 to legally transfer about 9 acres of public land to his possession.

The Israeli Supreme Court has received a petition from the Israel Green Movement to suspend Galant’s appointment until the case is resolved. The petition was denied, but the allegations of corruption and perjury are still being investigated, and might lead to the cancellation of Galant’s appointment on ethical grounds.

Amira Hass at Ha’aretz has something to say on Galant’s appointment:

The seizure of public land, unauthorized road paving, misleading testimony, double standards in land allocation – all under the cover of an army uniform. Is this a precis of the history of Israeli colonialism? Not at all. These claims are the basis of the High Court of Justice petition by the Green Movement political party against Yoav Galant’s appointment as the next Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, accusations that Maariv journalist Kalman Liebeskind has made repeatedly in investigative reports over the past two years.

Read More…

I will leave no door for the rusted iron key to open.

Look at the image of a ruined house; it is not just the blood of an individual or the suffering of a family. It is the final and ultimate destruction of past and future, the murder of not just a person, but of generations of people: those who have died in that house and those who will in it never now be born. It is the murder of a style of arch, of a particular period of column, of a characteristic configuration of hearth and bench. The destruction of a house is the murder of a people, of their culture, and of their history.

• Two Palestinian Members of Parliament, Taleb a-Sana and Ahmad Tibi, have received death threats. “You’re dead, dirty Arab” said the voice-mail recordings. A-Sana responded by accusing “the right-wing MKs (Members of Knesset—the Israeli Parliament) of fanning the hatred.”

• Hanin Zouavi, an Arab-Israeli MK who was on board the Mavi Marmara when it was boarded by Israeli commandos, stands to lose her parliamentary privileges. The Knesset Committee voted 7-1 to recommend revocation her parliamentary rights. A leaflet distributed in the Knesset by Dr. Michael Ben-Ari, a MK from the right-wing National Union party, featured an image of a smiling Zouavi with the words “erasing the smile from the Terrorists’ face.”

• 400 Palestinian schoolchildren were cursed and abused by a crowd while on a parade celebrating the world soccer championship. The schoolchildren, aged 6-13, carried flags of the participating countries as well as the Israeli flag (although Israel did not make it into the competition, they were advised by the Ministry of Education to carry its flag for safety reasons). Nonetheless, they endured thrown eggs and tomatoes, and cries of “do you think it’s your country that you can do what you want?”

According to Ha’aretz, Israel’s arsenal of JDAM bombs, which have come into widespread use during the 2006 assault on Lebanon and in Operation Cast Lead in 2008-’09, will “significantly increase” as a result of this purchase, which requires Congressional approval.

As well as increased arms purchasing, Israel is asking the US to increase the value of its emergency arsenals in Israel by 50%, from $800m to $1.2bn. Har’el reports that the Obama Administration has decided to place the emergency arsenals in December of last year as a part of “a series of steps” meant to improve US assistance to Israeli security.

Ha’aretz reports that the US equipment includes “rockets, shells, airborne weaponry and armored vehicles.” The equipment is fully compatible with Israeli weaponry, and is catalogued upon arrival so it can be used by the IDF after receiving permission from the US Government.

Analysis

It has been a long time since any of Israel’s neighbors who are capable of fielding a conventional force have shown any interest in having a war with Israel. Why, then, is the Israeli defense apparatus preparing for a “prolonged, regional war?” As far as I can tell, there are two possible reasons: (1) to wage an air war against an Arab state, possibly Syria or Iran, or (2) to commit another massacre against the Palestinians or Lebanese.

War is used in Israel not only to advance foreign-policy goals, but also—some would say primarily—to raise morale and increase the popularity of the Government. Israel is perpetually awaiting a ‘good war,’ in the same way that people in other nations might await a good party or a good sports season. There is nothing like images of destruction wreaked by the mighty IDF to ‘stir up’ the Israeli base.

Israel may also be irritated by Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s continued defiance of its military might. It would not be preposterous to expect some border incident, an abduction or a missile launch into Israeli territory that would precipitate a prolonged and vicious bombardment campaign against the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, or both.

There is, of course, no way to tell what the future holds; but in light of this important piece of news, we should all be keeping our ears open for new developments.

Update:

It appears that Israeli sources now claim that Osama bin-Laden is in Iran, and that Turkey knows about it..

I agree that the Freedom Flotilla was indeed a political mission rather than a humanitarian one. As such, despite—or because of—its tragic climax it must be considered a success. This is not in any way a stain on either the activists’ characters or their motivations; rather it is a credit to their courage and wisdom.

I cannot at this stage pass judgment on whether or not the violence of the Israeli commandos was provoked or not; we just don’t know. Israel has been known to fire unprovoked upon civilians before, and, when it did, had every reason to lie about it. This might well have been the case this time.

On the other hand, it is entirely possible that a few hotheads on the boat attacked the commandos first. Because sticks and stones make less noise than guns, it could well have seemed to the rest of the passengers that the commandos fired first. A video recently released by activists, which shows a gap of several minutes between the commandos descending onto the boat and the first sounds of gunfire, seems to support this theory.

It is also possible that, while they didn’t come down shooting, the soliders were looking for a fight. When you go armed looking for trouble, trouble is generally easy to find.

Frankly, one thing that Israel has taught me is that exercises in ‘who started it’-ism are both meaningless and futile. The fact is that this flotilla has achieved its (political) objective better than any of the previous attempts to break the siege, and did so thanks to the violence of the Israeli troops. We all “regret the loss of life,” as Mr. Obama likes to say, but we are thankful for the sacrifices made by those who died.

It is a depressing thought that activists have had to give their lives so that the objective of drawing attention to Israel’s terrible siege of the Gaza Strip could be achieved; but we must remember that the sacrifices made by a handful in solidarity are nothing compared to those of the Palestinians, who have been suffering unregarded by the heavy hand of Israel for decades.

It is the Palestinians’ suffering that the activists on board the Mavi Marmara sought to lighten. They sought to do so not by delivering some 10,000 tons of aid—which is a drop in the ocean of Gaza’s need—but by exposing Israel’s cruelty and attempting to break its illegal and inhuman siege.

The objective of the Freedom Flotilla was political because its focus, the Gaza blockade, is primarily a political, not a humanitarian, issue. The crisis there is political because it is not the result of some natural disaster or act of God, but the result of deliberate policy on the part of successive Israeli governments.

From Israel’s perspective, the blockade is designed to pressure the people of Gaza into doing its bidding. By showing the population that supporting Hamas “doesn’t pay,” Israel hopes that the Gazans will overthrow the Hamas government, and Gaza will be brought under the control of the more malleable Fatah.

Israel isn’t the only entity that uses the suffering of Gazans as a political tool. Hamas, although it did not create the crisis, still uses it to prove that Israel is a cruel and heartless occupier, and to bolster its position as the true defender of Palestinians—unlike Fatah, which is willing to cooperate with the perpetrators of such giganic crimes.

With whom then does illegitimacy lie? I think that it does not lie with a group of activists who use an attack on an aid convoy for the political end of lifting a cruel blockade. Rather it lies with a brutal occupier who, for its own political ends, has created the blockade in the first place.

With whom does hypocrisy lie? Certainly not with humanitarian blockade runners who defy a violent and bullying State and its high tech army. It lies with the State, which, under the pretext of a captured soldier and a few dozen primitive missiles fired at its rural districts, bombards a city (which ranks in the 5% most dense urban areas in the world) with advanced rockets and artillery, and imprisons tens of thousands without trial or the hope of release (other than through a prisoner swap, of course).

Israel’s violence and abuse have seemed to pass unnoticed in the world while they were directed only against Palestinians. The world, to its shame, only sees the Palestinians’ plight when ‘Internationals’ are hurt. Therefore, instead of accusing them of hypocrisy, we should applaud the brave political activists who defied the Israeli commandos in order to remind the rest of us of the horror of the Israeli blockade.

The problem is that, despite the video’s title, none of what I saw in the video constitutes evidence of IDF soldiers shooting before boarding the vessel. In fact, it seems to support the opposite claim — the video shows soldiers rappelling down from the helicopters about three minutes before the first shots are heard.

The ambiguity around this event is intolerable. The raid of the Marmara is potentially a pivotal event in History, and the current situation, where we essentially have two competing sets of propaganda cannot be allowed to continue. Not only does it show a philosophical disregard for the truth on both sides, who prefer to rely on their pre-conceived notions of how the events should have transpired, it also prevents the fence-sitters, the middle, from forming an opinion and reacting appropriately. This situation gives false claims and propaganda the same weight as it does true and honest statements. In fact, it makes it impossible to tell the difference.

I admit that I don’t know what happened on board the Mavi Marmara—but I would like to know. The autopsies released by the Turkish Council of Forensic Medicine are a good and important step forward, and they show some disturbing results. But since Turkey is not exactly a neutral party in this conflict of words, those results need to be reviewed by an impartial international inquiry into the events of the 31st of May.

Any investigation conducted by Israel or Turkey would be tainted with a conflict of interest, whether it be real or perceived; only an independent, international inquiry stands a chance of piercing the fog of propaganda surrounding this event. I am sure that no matter how credible and thorough such an investigation would be, some partisans will reject its findings. Certainly it seems likely to me that many Israelis will. But for those of us who prefer to base our views and opinions on evidence rather than on internal beliefs and biases, an international investigation is the only way to find out what really happened on board the Merchant Vessel Mavi Marmara.