July 15, 2006 Israel Makes Its 'Clean Break'
by Karen Kwiatkowski

I removed myself from TV and the Internet for a few days, and when I got back, Israel had morphed the attacks on Gaza and the odd buzzing of Damascus into a full-scale assault into Lebanon, and escalated her military threats to Syria.

John Bolton is a happy man today. That blubbering bundle of self-righteousness, speaking from the UN, is totally on board with Israel’s attacks, and her security strategy.

Justin Raimondo, as usual, is prescient and correct. "A Clean Break: Strategy for Securing the [Israeli] Realm" is progressing as planned. Re-read the whole document, if you wish. It’s just an idea, a recommendation, written by a group of passionately pro-Israel Americans for a particular Likud candidate in 1996.

Who knew?

There are dead Gazans, Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, and Israelis, ruined infrastructure everywhere, and crushing hopelessness. There is a sense that calling for peace and love in a time of war and hate is childish at best, and at worst, treason. In their own words, the Israelis are simply conducting a bloody "settling of accounts." How Old Testament of them!

The so-called Christian and liberty-loving country of the United States has truly suffered little – so far – for Israel’s lack of neighborliness.
Sure, billions of US tax revenues in aid to Israel cost us all a little something. Most foreign aid is a counterproductive and unconstitutional waste, and our aid to Israel is no exception. Sure, America has been betrayed in the past. Israel has repeatedly conducted espionage against the U.S. Israel’s government has sold and shared U.S. classified military technology with our competitors and enemies. Israel has even attacked us militarily a time or two. The most flamboyant of the Israeli attacks on her loyal benefactor was the 1967 attempt to sink the U.S.S. Liberty, including all souls on board. Was there a message here?

As the Pentagon franticly designs some kind of reasonable US citizen evacuation plan for the 25,000 Americans in Lebanon, while trying to ensure safety and tactical advantage for the entire Middle East deployment, surely intelligent men and women in the service of the United States share doubtful glances as they receive their orders. As the U.S. Marine Corps kicks into high gear, it does so with a foreboding memory of the last time we went to Beirut in response to an aggressive Israeli security strategy

Israel’s hawks have long recognized that the co-optation, or barring that, the destruction of Iraq was necessary for a more permanent approach, the clean break, the assertion of Israel’s monopoly of force in the Middle East. Our country, for only two trillion dollars and a few hundred thousand dead and maimed on all sides, has facilitated the destruction of Iraq.

Were we really needed for the next phase, launched this week?
I think not. My sense is that the reasonable minds in Washington, New York, and around the world had succeeded in maintaining a compromise of a long corrupted American foreign policy in the Middle East, dating from before the Carter Doctrine. The compromise was, and is, that we would permanently base within and preside over a shattered Iraq, but would support no further expansion of the war into Israel’s second phase target, Syria, or her third phase target, Iran.

I suspect that my conclusion was shared by those controlling Israel’s foreign policy. "A Clean Break" – the strategy apparently being implemented before our eyes – was not only about Israel’s security. It was very significantly about Israel’s independence from the United States.

Many in America oppose the U.S. knee-jerk, unquestioning support for Israel. Many more worry that the Israeli lobby is unusually influential in Washington, while remaining hidden and unaccountable to average Americans. Still others are alarmed that Israel’s constant war mentality has become our new American model, and that Iraq and our own borders have become our own occupied territories, teeming with terror and constituting a never-ending threat to our lives, prosperity and value system.
Some even wonder why no-one has told President George W. Bush that we do not currently have any treaties or formal alliances of defense with Israel – and that if Bush wishes to defend Israel against her enemies, he will either need to personally don a uniform and get on an airplane to Tel Aviv, or else defy the Constitution yet again.

However, there may be a bit of good news in this story. That uniquely Christian idea that we may be graced when we do not deserve it may be in evidence here, amidst the terror and hate we ourselves have facilitated in the Middle East.

If we can pierce the emotion, we may recognize that with Israel’s independent action this week – a cruel slap to her perceived enemies, and a betrayal of American interests in the Middle East – she has indeed progressed into a new phase of independence.

She has achieved a clean break. For many years, Israel has been completely competent to behave as a nation among nations, but she has, as American and European mothers and fathers know only too well, been afflicted with we facetiously call "failure to launch."

She has wanted a generous parent on the Security Council, to provide warmth and aid, validation and protection, a sympathetic ear and a devoted advocacy. Perhaps, as Israel executes her "Clean Break," America – led by the next Congress of the United States – can finally begin to truly celebrate Israel’s independence, and like tired parents, reorganize our own lives and objectives and dreams accordingly.

 http://www.antiwar.com/orig/kwiatkowski.php?articleid=9306

A Clean Break:
A New Strategy for Securing the Realm

 http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm

Okay, history lesson time. Remember when Germany left the the Sudetenland in 1806, then re-invaded in 1938, and the rest of the world stood by and did nothing. Then Germany, emboldened, started marhing into POland, Austria, Hungary, France, etc.

Israel is repeating that same pattern. Israel started with Gaza, first pulling out, then re-invading on a flimsy pretext. Now Israel is invading Lebanon, reportedly already attacking targets inside Syria, and openly talking of targets inside Iran. Israel has been bribing the US Congress to send American kids off to die in wars Israel wanted. Evidence clearly proves that much of the disinformation that tricked this nation into war in Iraq also came from Israel.

I know that many of you have not wanted to believe this was happening. But you cannot pretend any longer. The US Government has created a new monster on the globe which will set the world on fire in service to their religious mythology that God chose them to rule over all others.
And it is happening right now.

Putin: Israel has goals other than troops

Russian President Vladimir Putin said early Sunday he believed Israel was pursuing wider goals in its military campaign than the return of abducted soldiers.

"However complicated the questions are, maximum efforts must be applied to resolve the situation in a peaceful way and I think all efforts have not been exhausted," Putin said.

"However, it is our impression that aside from seeking to return the abducted soldiers, Israel is pursuing wider goals," the Russian president told a midnight news conference after a dinner opening the summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations. He did not elaborate
.  http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=12587

Israeli Aircraft Attack Central Beirut
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5953162,00.html

Israel Attacks Egyptian Vessel In International Waters
 http://www.sana.org/eng/21/2006/07/15/47652.htm

Two Royal Navy Ships Bound For Lebanon
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5184018.stm

A Beautiful Friendship?
In search of the truth about the Israel lobby's influence on Washington
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/12/AR2006071201627.html

Appearance, reality and the spoiling of the Holy Land
 http://theirishbulletin.blogspot.com/2006/06/appearance-reality-and-spoiling-of.html

Attention Deficit Americans Are Being Misled to War
by Paul Craig Roberts

A terrible thing is happening, and not enough Americans are aware to be able to do anything about it. Zionists in Israel and in the Bush administration are leading America into war with Iran, Syria, Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. The consequences for America, Israel and the Middle East will be disastrous, but as long as Washington is in thrall to Zionist paranoia, nothing can be done about it. Bush made this clear on July 14 when he rejected the plea from Lebanon’s prime minister to pressure Israel to stop its attack on Lebanon.
 http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=9311

Looks like Israel is getting exactly what it wanted from these attacks. Perhaps it’s time to again ask who killed Rafiq Hariri, in the name of Syrian troops leaving Lebanon undefended.

Assad pledges Syrian help for Lebanon
 http://today.reuters.co.uk/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-07-15T190321Z_01_L15126487_RTRUKOC_0_UK-MIDEAST-SYRIA-LEBANON.xml

Report: Israel gives Syria ultimatum
 http://www.syria-news.com/readenews.php?sy_seq=34190

Looks like Israel is also attempting to force the war it and its American partners weren’t able to dupe the world into supporting, after the whole Iraq/WMD thing. Don’t forget that the criminal Bush/PNAC Regime vowed to send the US military to Israel’s aid if Israel is attacked.

Israeli ambassador refuses to rule out strikes against Iran
 http://wpherald.com/articles/302/1/Israeli-diplomat-Iran-Syria-are-playing-with-fire/Israeli-ambassador-refuses-to-rule-out-strikes-against-Iran.html

Israel likely to concentrate on major targets in Iran
 http://wpherald.com/articles/302/2/Israeli-diplomat-Iran-Syria-are-playing-with-fire/Israel-likely-to-concentrate-on-major-targets-in-Iran.html

Lieberman suspects Iran is behind Hezbollah actions
 http://www.wtnh.com/Global/story.asp?S=5153210&nav=3YeX

Of course, we all know who Lieberman works for.

Bush Rejects Lebanon's Call for Cease-Fire
 http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060714/D8IRVGT8I.html

US vetoes UN ceasefire call
By Irwin Arieff in the United Nations
July 16, 2006

THE UN Security Council has again rejected pleas that it call for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon after the United States objected, diplomats said overnight.
 http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19806745-1702,00.html

And last but not least, the Neo-Con from Ottawa:

Harper lines up with Bush and Israel
 http://torontosun.com/News/Canada/2006/07/14/1684274-sun.html

Harper must call on Bush to urge Israeli end to escalating Gaza offensive: NDP

 http://www.ndp.ca/page/3908

'Escalation is inevitable' unless Israeli soldiers released: Harper
 http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/07/14/harper-blair.html?ref=rss

Harper sides firmly with Israel
 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060713.wHarper0713/BNStory/Front

Five Canadians Killed In Israeli Airstrike

ebanese officials said Sunday that 104 people have been killed and 286 wounded in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militants that began Wednesday.

A total of 12 Israeli civilians and 12 Israeli military personnel have been killed since Wednesday. More than 100 others have been wounded.
The AP reported Sunday that five of those killed in Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon on Sunday held Canadian citizenship.

 http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/16/mideast/index.html

Bastille Day Weekend Edition
July 14 / 17, 2006
Israel's Raids on Gaza and Lebanon

Echoes of the Wehrmacht
By GILAD ATZMON

Two weeks ago it was Palestinians militants who abducted a legitimate military target, an Israeli soldier. Yesterday it was a similar overwhelmingly orchestrated heroic attack by Hezbollah guerrilla fighters. Both attacks are there to send a message of resistance: Israel will never succeed in imposing its sickening unilateral notion of 'peace'. Indeed, the unilateral disengagement may have had a magical effect on the Israeli voters as well as some Zionised western leaders such as Bush, Blair and Merkel. Yet, the inhabitants of Gaza and the villagers of Southern Lebanon are slightly less impressed with the Israeli inclination towards peace. In Gaza and in Southern Lebanon it is rather clear that Arab resistance forces will oppose the Israeli unilateral agenda 'til the end of time. They all know that as much as it takes two to tango, peace will never prevail unless the Palestinian cause is properly addressed.

In short, the different forms of Israeli unilateral disengagements from Lebanon, Gaza or even the West Bank (to come) are not going to provide Israel with peace. Quite the opposite; Arabs are no fools, they know very well that Israel escaped Lebanon after being militarily humiliated for two decades. They know as well that Sharon ran away from Gaza not exactly because he was searching for peace. Palestinians also know that it is just a question of time before that happens in the West Bank. If to be precise, since 1973 Israel's power of deterrence is shrinking. Since 1973 Israel hasn't managed to defeat any of its enemies. On the contrary, time after time it is the enemies of Israel who are able to dictate Israeli political and tactical manoeuvres. In the last two weeks it has been two relatively small paramilitary organisations who use guerrilla techniques who managed to bring Israel to unleash its full military might against innocent civilians both in Gaza and Lebanon.

Yet, the Israeli reaction to attacks by Palestinians militants and Hezbollah is rather bizarre. Although, both Palestinian militants and Hezbollah were originally targeting legitimate military targets, Israeli retaliation was clearly aiming against civilian targets, civil infrastructures and mass killing directed against an innocent population. It doesn't take a genius to realise that this is not really the way to win a war or confront that particular sort of combat known as guerrilla warfare.

I would argue that once again the Israeli government serves us with a fascinating glimpse into the mindset of the Israeli collective psyche. I will try to elaborate on this issue.

Due to some clear historical circumstances, the Israeli army was originally formed to combat Arab armies. It was designed to win conventional war in the battlefield. It was set as well to exhaust Israel's neighbours' will to fight while exercising some overwhelming air superiority and nuclear threatening policies. Since the end of the cold war, things changed. Israel isn't threatened anymore by its neighbouring states. Moreover, in the most recent years it has become clear that it is actually the Palestinian people who will eventually shatter the dream of a Jewish national state.

Strangely enough, Israel has never adopted or revised its military doctrine to fit into the new emerging conditions. Indeed it retrained large parts of its fighting units as policing forces, it transformed some of its tanks into policing vehicles. Yet, it has never gone through a vast military doctrine shift. Very much like the Wehrmacht at the time of WWII, the IDF is still a classic follower of the offensive military doctrine. Hitherto, rather than winning in the battlefield, the IDF is now hopelessly exhausting itself in two fronts fighting relatively small paramilitary organisations. But the situation can get worse, it is rather possible that Palestinian heroic enthusiasm will spread to the West Bank. When this happens, the IDF will find itself engaged in a total war just a few kilometres from Israel's most densely populated centres. Seemingly the so-called 'strongest army in the Middle East' is fighting a desperate war it can never win, neither tactically nor morally.

Tactically, we have enough historic references to conclude that no colonial army has ever won against guerrilla warfare. The reason is simple, the more destruction a colonial army spreads, the more popular the guerrilla fighters become amongst their surrounding supportive population. This is absolutely the case in Gaza and in Beirut today. The more carnage there is in Gaza, the stronger the Hamas becomes. The more bombs dropped over Beirut's Airport, the more will young men be willing to join the Hezbollah.

But it goes further, both the Palestinian militants and the Hezbollah were very clever in picking pure military targets. While in the past, Hamas was associated with suicidal attacks against Israeli civilians, this time it was Israeli soldiers and pure military posts that were targeted. In other words, it is rather impossible to dismiss the fact that Palestinian militants and the Hezbollah were actually operating as legitimate resistance paramilitary groups fighting a colonial army and occupation forces.

However, reading the news from the Middle East, it is rather obvious that the Israeli government has no clear agenda to counter the current daring military operations against its army and if this isn't enough, the IDF has no means to counter such guerrilla assaults. Today's merciless collateral damage in Beirut as well as in Gaza proves that at least militarily, Israel is in total despair. It has neither the political nor the military answer to counter Arab resistance. But here comes the catch; Israel doesn't need an answer as such, it doesn't even look for one.
Israel is a racially orientated democracy. Its leaders are engaged in one thing only, i.e. maintenance of the their political power. As far as the Israeli political game is concerned, the rule is very simple, the more Arab blood you have on your hands the more you are suited to get on with your governing job. This rule obviously was in favour of Rabin, Sharon, Barak and Netanyahu. Olmert and Peretz are still quite far behind. Both the prime minister and his defence minister lack some real experience in military and security matters. Hence they have a lot of catching up to do.

In other words, Peretz and Olmert have to provide the Israeli people with a glorious spectacle of merciless retaliation. They have to prove to their keen voters that they have internalised the real biblical meaning of 'an eye for an eye'. Looking at the carnage in Beirut today it somehow seems as if they even try to give the old Hebraic say a new meaning. As devastating as it may sound, this is exactly what the Israelis want them to do. Within democratic Israel the biblical call "pour out your fury upon the goyim" is translated into a Jewish secular pragmatic political practice. This isn't sad. This is a real tragedy. And I wonder whether there is anyone out there who is still overwhelmed with the Israeli unilateral peace agenda?

Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military. He is the author of two novels: A Guide to the Perplexed and the recently released My One and Only Love. Atzmon is also one of the most accomplished jazz saxophonists in Europe. His recent CD, Exile, was named the year's best jazz CD by the BBC. He now lives in London and can be reached at:  atz@onetel.net.uk

 http://counterpunch.org/atzmon07142006.html

Look who's been kidnapped!
By Arik Diamant
Jul 8, 2006, 13:21

Hundreds of Palestinian 'suspects' have been kidnapped from their homes and will never stand trial

It's the wee hours of the morning, still dark outside. A guerrilla force comes out of nowhere to kidnap a soldier. After hours of careful movement, the force reaches its target, and the ambush is on! In seconds, the soldier finds himself looking down the barrel of a rifle.

A smash in the face with the butt of the gun and the soldier falls to the ground, bleeding. The kidnappers pick him up, quickly tie his hands and blindfold him, and disappear into the night.

This might be the end of the kidnapping, but the nightmare has just begun. The soldier's mother collapses, his father prays. His commanding officers promise to do everything they can to get him back, his comrades swear revenge. An entire nation is up-in-arms, writing in pain and worry.

Nobody knows how the soldier is: Is he hurt? Do his captors give him even a minimum of human decency, or are they torturing him to death by trampling his honor? The worst sort of suffering is not knowing. Will he come home? And if so, when? And in what condition? Can anyone remain apathetic in the light of such drama?

Israeli terror
This description, you'll be surprised to know, has nothing to do with the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. It is the story of an arrest I carried out as an IDF soldier, in the Nablus casbah, about 10 years ago. The "soldier" was a 17-year-old boy, and we kidnapped him because he knew "someone" who had done "something."

We brought him tied up, with a burlap sac over his head, to a Shin Bet interrogation center known as "Scream Hill" (at the time we thought it was funny). There, the prisoner was beaten, violently shaken and sleep deprived for weeks or months. Who knows.

No one wrote about it in the paper. European diplomats were not called to help him. After all, there was nothing out of the ordinary about the kidnapping of this Palestinian kid. Over the 40 years of occupation we have kidnapped thousands of people, exactly like Gilad Shalit was captured: Threatened by a gun, beaten mercilessly, with no judge or jury, or witnesses, and without providing the family with any information about the captive.

When the Palestinians do this, we call it "terror." When we do it, we work overtime to whitewash the atrocity.

Suspects?
Some people will say: The IDF doesn't "just" kidnap. These people are "suspects." There is no more perverse lie than this. In all the years I served, I reached one simple conclusion: What makes a "suspect"? Who, exactly suspects him, and of what?

Who has the right to sentence a 17-year-old to kidnapping, torture and possible death? A 26-year-old Shin Bet interrogator? A 46-year-old one? Do these people have any higher education, apart from the ability to interrogate? What are his considerations? If all these "suspects" are so guilty, why not bring them to trial?

Anyone who believes that despite the lack of transparency, the IDF and Shin Bet to their best to minimize violations of human rights is naïve, if not brainwashed. One need only read the testimonies of soldiers who have carried out administrative detentions to be convinced of the depth of the immorality of our actions in the territories.

To this very day, there are hundreds of prisoners rotting in Shin Bet prisons and dungeons, people who have never been –and never will be – tried. And Israelis are silently resolved to this phenomenon.

Israeli responsibility
The day Gilad Shalit was kidnapped I rode in a taxi. The driver told me we must go into Gaza, start shooting people one-by-one, until someone breaks and returns the hostage. It isn't clear that such an operation would bring Gilad back alive.

Instead of getting dragged into terrorist responses, as Palestinian society has done, we should release some of the soldiers and civilians we have kidnapped. This is appropriate, right, and could bring about an air of reconciliation in the territories.

Hell, if this is what will bring Gilad home safe-and-sound, we have a responsibility to him to do it.

Arik Diamant is an IDF reservist and the head of the Courage to Refuse organization.

 http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_22471.shtml

Israeli Bombings could lead to Escalation of Middle East War

 http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m24658&hd=0&size=1&l=e

Wildly disproportionate attack on Lebanon seems like pretext to confront Iran, says Linda McQuaig

 http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar%2FLayout%2FArticle_Type1&c=Article&cid=1152913812442
Israeli Assault Reveals Months of Planning
If Lebanese dislike Hizbollah, they hate Israelis

By Robert Fisk

07/16/06 "The Independent" -- -It will be called the massacre of Marwaheen. All the civilians killed by the Israelis had been ordered to abandon their homes in the border village by the Israelis themselves a few hours earlier. Leave, they were told by loudspeaker; and leave they did, 20 of them in a convoy of civilian cars. That's when the Israeli jets arrived to bomb them, killing 20 Lebanese, at least nine of them children. The local fire brigade could not put out the fires as they all burned alive in the inferno. Another "terrorist" target had been eliminated.

 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14006.htm
Israel accused of using illegal weapons
 http://news.aol.co.uk/article.adp?id=20060716094809990001
Israel Uses “Bunker Busters” In Lebanon
 http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150886004129&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Fleeing Lebanon villagers caught in Israeli inferno
By Hussein Saad
TYRE, Lebanon (Reuters) - The child was holding a sandwich when an Israeli missile killed him and 19 other people fleeing their Lebanese border village in a van.
Two little blackened hands could be seen still clutching the bread to the child's chest when U.N. peacekeepers recovered the corpse along with the bodies of some of the others.
 http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/7/16/worldupdates/2006-07-15T233037Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_-259706-1&sec=Worldupdates