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From: jim@ism780.UUCP (Jim Balter)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re(2): Double standards
Message-ID: <40@ism780.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-Sep-83 23:48:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ism780.40
Posted: Tue Sep 20 23:48:00 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 21-Sep-83 23:36:32 EDT
Lines: 77

I agree with Steve Silberberg that the Israeli people are not "common scum",
and that the terms "Israelis" and "Jews" and "PLO" and "Palestinians"
are not interchangeable.  I would add that "Israelis" and
"the Israeli government" are also not interchangeable (which leaves the
possibility that certain members of the Israeli government are common scum,
although I consider such a label to be simplistic).
On September 25, 1982, while Begin was still fighting hard to prevent
a full-fledged inquiry, and he had just proposed a weak one-man inquiry
by Itzhak Kahan, president of Israel's Supreme Court, 250,000 to 400,000
people, at least 1 out of every 10 Israeli adults, rallied in Tel Aviv
to protest Israel's complicity in the Beirut massacre and to demand a
full investigation.  According to a poll the following day in
Yedoit Aharonot, 51% of all Israelis favored such a probe.

When the Commission of Inquiry came in with its findings and recommendations,
it found Ariel Sharon indirectly responsible for the massacre, and it
recommended that he step down and be denied any other position of power.
By precedent there was strong case for the whole government to resign;
in April 1974, a similar commission appointed to investigate why Israel was
unprepared for the October 1973 war found military commanders, but not Cabinet
members, personally responsible.  Yet then opposition leader Menachem Begin
demanded the resignation of Premier Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe
Dayan because, he claimed, they were ultimately responsible.  After a short
period, they were forced by public pressure to step down in favor of
Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.

The Commission's most well-documented point was that Israel's leaders
should have known that the Phalangists, if allowed into the refugee camps,
were likely to massacre Palestinian civilians if they weren't strictly
supervised, in light of their record of random killings and their undisguised
hatred of the Palestinians.  The Phalangists were not only allowed into
the camps, but they were sent by Israel on September 16; pre-war briefings
by Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan indicated that Israel would invade from
the south and the Christian "Lebanese Forces" from the north.  They would
cut the Beirut-Damascus highway and "meet in West Beirut".  When interviewed
on Israeli television, Ariel Sharon had admitted that the professed purpose
of the entry of the Iraeli Defense Forces into West Beirut--
to "maintain order" after the assasination of Lebanese President-elect Bashir
Gemayel--was "camouflage" for the true purpose: a search-and-destroy mission
against remnants of the PLO forces left in the city's Palestinian quarters.
This is even more significant in light a tactic used throughout the war:
heavy bombardment and shelling of other refugee camps and West Beirut.
This caused many times more civilian deaths than the Phalangist massacre did.
The justifications given in both cases were similar: the PLO was said to be
"hiding behind civilians" in Sabra and Shatila as well.  That is what all the
Israeli army officers standing nearby during the massacre claimed to have
thought all the shooting was about.

I find Steve's comments about Israel having to attack to prevent the massacre
(and his placing of that word in quotes), and being in a no win situation,
incomprehensible.  There are far more Jews in Israel who are critical of the
the Israeli government than there are in the U.S.  If there is ever going to
be peace in the area, people all over the world will have to reject such
simplistic notions as that all Jews or Israelis or Palestinians or PLO are
scum, and such ahistorical ideas as that Israel is trying to take over the
Middle East or that Begin and Sharon were always on the side of right or that
the Israelis are just like the Nazis or that the Arabs were the sole
instigators of the 1948 war (read your history!  The U.N. Security Council
had failed to endorse the partition resolution, the U.S. had withdrawn its
support for it, and a plan for trusteeship was being discussed in the General
Assembly when the Zionists proclaimed the State of Israel on May 14 and
Truman recognized it a few hours later; this was shortly after the massacre
by Palestinian Jews of the entire population of the Arab village of Deir
Yasin), or whatever ravings are popular at the moment.  Pride in nation,
race, religion, or whatever usually leads to blindness.  Think rationally, be
empathic with your antagonists, and eschew dogma.  As a Jew, how often do you
find yourself taking the Arabs' side (what, those scum!)?  As an Arab, how
often do you find yourself taking the Israeli side (what, those scum!)?  Why
not?  How often do you examine why you are so consistent, why you are such a
strong defender of "your side"?  Unless more Jews are able to talk like
Arabs, more Russians like Americans, more British like Irish, our stupid
antagonisms are going to destroy us all.

Ready for an onslaught of dogma,
Jim Balter (decvax!yale-co!ima!jim)

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