Israel: “Sowing The Seeds Of Hatred”

Posted on July 25, 2006

The progressive website CommonDreams.org is currently carrying a rant written by Rana El-Khatib, a “Palestinian writer born in Haifa and living in Beirut” (she’s basically lived everywhere but in Palestine; must be that everyday life kinda sucks under the leadership of corrupt former terrorists and religious fanatics).
Of course, you might have guessed it, her skewed vision of the current conflict Israel is engaged in does not read like anything realistic and balanced. Indeed, her very first question does not bode well for fairness and reason:

What is the definition of defense and what are its acceptable limits?

Don’t hold your breath. Here is the beginning of her answer:

Hezbollah seized two Israeli soldiers along the border with Lebanon to force an exchange for Lebanese prisoners that Israel has held without due process. One of them, Samir Quntar, has been held for 27 years.

Hezbollah’s attack may not have been justified, but it has learned through past experience that Israel pays no heed to United Nations resolutions and international law and only responds to force. For this, Israel is pounding all of Lebanon to a pulp.

Hear the ironic hypocrisy dripping for these words: Hezbollah has usurped the rights and prerogatives of the legitimate Lebanese government (as Hezbollah-infected as it may be) and decided to kidnap some Israeli soldiers for a prisoner exchange. Wow. 2 words: brilliant… and peace-fostering. And what is with this “Israel only responds to force” bovine feces? Is that why Hezbollah has been lobbing all kinds of rockets over their northern border? As a way to enforce international law and U.N. resolutions with personnel and equipment outlawed by other U.N. resolutions? Methinks some people would do well to change the bong water…

Its U.S.-made F-16s and bombs crash down on the fragile cities below, demolishing homes, lives, a country that has tried to get back onto its unstable feet after an uncivil civil war that had turned a little paradise into a little forgotten hell.

Israel claims that Iranian hands are all over the bombs and training of Hezbollah and its arms.

The hypocrisy is not lost on any Arab, because we all know, especially those of us at the receiving end, that U.S. hands are all over Israeli bombs and ammunitions and war machines.

Yes indeed, Lebanon has been eminently unstable since the end of the civil war; to wit, the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri (and the hands all pointed to Damascus’ guilt) and the political rot that is Hezbollah (and all the voices professed Tehran’s guilt) to the poppy fields of the Bekaa Valley (”More money for us!” roared the Syrian regime), not to forget the Hezbollah training camps organized and funded by the Iranian Pasdaran. If that is someone’s definition of a “little paradise”, then I think I should close on that Fallujah house I was thinking about retiring in (you know, the one right between the insurgent safehouse and the IED factory, right behind the train station…).

Israel cannot win over an entire population of people by pulverizing them. America needs to also understand that what goes around comes around. There is a point where even the meek will fight back.

Israel does not want to win over an entire population. It wants to destroy Hezbollah (read: bomb it, shoot it and crush it to the point where it will be reduced to insignificance). And it is not pulverizing the Lebanese population. While the approximately 392 civilian deaths are certainly grim and sobering casualties of war, they don’t amount to the genocide that some Arab voices have denounced in an attack of verbal diarrhea. Oh, and the barely veiled threat to America (”what goes around comes around”) is sooooo pre-9/11 it’s actually kind of cute, in a psychotic kind of way.

If Israel had sown the seeds of resentment in the past with its oppression of Palestinians, it has now not only watered them but fertilized the soils of detestation toward it.

It is an unwise place to be, no matter how “strong” Israel is. Arabs are no longer willing to serve as the game board of the world to play out their subjugation games on our soil.

And when everything here is lost, what is to stop the anger from reaching the “disseminators” of the devastation who sit, mindlessly manipulating the world from behind stately desks?

As do we, Israel is already perfectly aware that there is no love lost for her in Arab capitals (how many suicide bombers does it take to awaken to that reality?) She is also aware that the U.N. is doing everything it can to make the entire world that is deeply regrets having given her statehood in 1948 (yup, it must have been the “Zionism Is Racism” conference that gave it away; or was it the standing-o given to that peacemaker Arafat when he came to address the General Assembly in 1974?)

So here is my request to Ranan El-Khatib: spare us the snake-like whining. Just let Israel perform the removal of a tumor that not only threatens to kill it, but the entire Middle East.

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