It is simple
math. One only needs to look at the casualties in Lebanon and
Israel to see what is wrong with the current Middle East
conflict. Like any conflict in which violence is being committed
on both sides, the proportionality of response to provocation
can be easily judged by the civilian casualties in the ‘accused’
provocateur country – or, the country in which an independent
targeted organization resides in – and the ‘alleged’ victim
country.
Israel has subjected the Lebanese population
under brutal collective punishment under the pretext of
defending the Israeli population and to dismantle Hezbollah
militarily and politically. It has been generally accepted that
Israel is the innocent bystander in all this and that Hezbollah
provoked this most serious Israeli/Arab violence in years. In
fact, even Kofi Anan, the U.N. Secretary General, has accepted
this argument in his recent address to the U.N. Security
Council. One cannot even begin to fathom how the timeline toward
the rise of violence has been conveniently arranged to fit the:
“attack-retaliation formula”.
Months leading up to the current outbreak of
violence in Lebanon and Israel, the death toll in Gaza does not
even come close to supporting the thesis that Israel is an
innocent victim. Between September 2005 and June 2006, according
to an Israeli human rights group B’tselem, 144 Palestinians in
Gaza were killed -- 29 were children –- by Israeli forces. No
Israeli’s were killed during the same time period. Predictably,
no media attention was given to the fact that Israel captured
two Palestinians –- said to be Hamas members which is vehemently
denied by Hamas -- on June 24th. Included in this is
the killing of a Palestinian family picnicking at a Gaza beach
which prompted Hamas to end its 16-month-old informal ceasefire.
These deaths have been mentioned by Hamas spokespeople in their
statements which justified their cross-border raid that captured
an Israeli soldier.
As the London Times have stated, another
major incident that fuelled the cycle of violence was a May 26,
2006 car bombing in Sidon, Lebanon which killed a senior
official of Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian group that is aligned
with Hezbollah. Israel has denied involvement but Israeli’s like
Yedio Aharonot, a writer for the country's top-selling daily,
are even skeptical about this denial. Of course, Hezbollah
responded in kind against military targets inside Israel and
Israeli forces returned fire via severe and brutal airstrikes
against Palestinian camps in Lebanon.
It is quite odd as well that much attention
has been given to some 1,000 crude Kasam missiles that was
launched from Gaza into Israel in which no fatalities resulted
from. On the other hand, no attention was given to the 7,000 –
9,000 heavy artillery shells that were fired into Gaza during
the same time period. As the Mandela Center for Human rights
have asked, if Israel has every right to see the capture of
their leaders as provocation, then what must Palestinians do
about the more than 9,000 prisoners – including 342 juveniles
and over 700 held without trial – that are currently held in
Israel? Furthermore, Israel has continued to control Gaza’s
borders and tens of millions of dollars of tax revenue in
response to the Hamas electoral victory in January 2006. This
has crippled the Gaza economy and has prompted the U.N. to issue
a warning about a looming humanitarian disaster. In Gaza, Israel
has destroyed the main power plant and water system which has
left tens of thousands of Palestinians without access to medical
care, food, and water. In Lebanon, Israel has killed over 600
people, most of them civilians, and displaced half a million.
One only needs to look and compare the casualties in Israel to
judge the proportionality of Israeli action. In this case, it is
clearly not a response or retaliation.
Hamas and Hezbollah share in the rise of
violence in the Middle East. Both have regularly ignored the
distinction between military and civilian targets as well.
Hence, while it must be recognized that they are the only line
of defense for the Lebanese people, supporting them
ideologically or in every action they take is beyond
irresponsibility. Every action they take should always be put
into question. They must be disarmed through political means
which will never happen until Israeli hostility no longer looms
over the people of Lebanon and Palestine. Clearly, we are
nowhere close to that conclusion. All violence must stop but the
onus is on Israel to halt its “state terrorism” which is
currently seen as legitimate. Israel’s current campaign is a
well-planned operation that has been years in the making. Their
current actions are not a spontaneous reaction to aggression, it
is state-terrorism in its most potent form. Of course, I have
not even touched on United States state terrorism which has been
going strong far longer than that of Israel.
