Logic of hate might doom Gilad

Israeli children allowed to scribble taunts on artillery shells bound for Lebanon. (courtesy of AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

The Israeli soldiers captured by militants are not coming back alive. Politically, they serve as too useful an excuse for Israel to grind two of its deadliest enemies, Hamas and Hezbollah, into dust. I say deadliest because unlike ordinary Arab governments, the militants have managed to inflict real damage on the pariah of the Middle East. Pariah from the Arab perspective, of course.

Consider that the suicide bombers of these groups are more lethal than any standing army controlled by any Arab government. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan have American hardware to match Israel's, but they aren't about to betray American interests by attacking America's favorite democracy. Israel is safe from them for the moment, content that all they are dealing with are poorly-made Qassams and woefully inaccurate Katyusha rockets. Katyusha-s have enjoyed a degree of success only because Hezbollah launch them with such punishing regularity and in swarms toward Israeli cities.

Where the rockets have struck, they have either killed, maimed or terrorized. And because Hamas and Hezbollah field militants rather than uniformed soldiers, Israel is constrained in its response. It has not, for example, launched a 'scorched-earth' policy that was used by the Americans and British against German cities in World War 2.

Yet, there is little doubt that the Israelis are inflicting collective punishment on people who have nothing to do with the kidnappings in Gaza and Lebanon. It irrationally holds the Lebanese government responsible for the actions of a militant movement it neither has power over, nor influence. Israeli shells have hit critical civilian infrastructure like bridges, shipping docks and even the international airport. In Gaza, the added destruction of the only power station has made everyday life difficult and medical aid almost impossible.

Israeli targets all across Lebanon clearly reflect their belief that the Hezbollah are nothing but a proxy army for external parties like Syria and Iran. While the escalation has directly granted Iran some respite from international scrutiny over its nuclear ambitions, the United States holds Syria to be the main puppetmaster behind Hezbollah, as revealed by George Bush in an unguarded moment.

"The irony is, what they really need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it's over..."

By targeting major byways, Israel seeks to stifle the import of weapons and ammunition from outside. But since the Israeli withdrawal from a 22-year occupation of Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah has never relinquished its state of battle-readiness. Crude watchtowers built along the border between South Lebanon and Israel speak of a group that knows all too well the value of closely monitoring its enemy. Even before the deadly ambush that killed eight Israeli soldiers and captured two, Katyusha launchpads had been carefully spread out across Hezbollah strongholds.

Civilian casualties have been high in Lebanon compared to Gaza primarily because Israel has limited intelligence assets on Lebanese territory. Furthermore, there seems to be a willful attempt by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to target communities instead of the movement itself. For the past two years Lebanon has been divided into pro-Syrian and anti-Syrian camps, with the split culminating in the assassination of Rafik Hariri and the subsequent departure of Syrian soldiers from Beirut. The anti-Syrian camp is a fragile alliance of Christians, Sunnis and Druze. Syrian allies include the two main Shia groups, Hezbollah and Amal. The Shia form about forty percent of the Lebanese population. It is therefore unsurprising that entire towns have been warned to empty out hours before air and artillery bombardments.

Israel reasons that it must act in an overwhelming manner if it wants to prevent further kidnappings in the future. While such thinking is sound military doctrine, it ignores the fact that the present conflict is grounded in several root causes, chief of which is Israel's refusal to abide by international law in leaving the Occupied Territories and allow a contiguous Palestinian state to come into being. Israel speaks blithely of Palestinian groups like Hamas desiring to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, but does little to acknowledge that its present policy of undermining Palestinian statehood by controlling its air and sea space (and hence, economy), attempting to assassinate democratically-elected government officials and the sometimes deliberate targeting of civilian lives and property has exactly the same effect on Palestinians. Both sides justify genocide on the genocidal tendencies of the other.

The media mill has made the most of this present conflict to provide a workable but typically flawed background to the whole Middle East crisis. The question is, how far back should the context go? The Israelis say it began with the kidnapping of Corporal Gilad Shalit, but Hamas counters by calling the kidnapping a retaliation of careless Israeli shelling of Palestinian civilians. Whatever the case, most mainstream media only go as far back as the Israeli version, which in my humble opinion, is a crass miscarriage of journalistic integrity. Undoubtedly, both the Palestinians and Israelis have been criminal in their actions, but covering up one side of the story only means that the other side has a freer reign to kill those it regards as enemies.

Even though Israeli commanders take far greater pains to avoid killing civilians than say their American counterparts in Iraq, the IDF's response has been frankly illogical from the outset. Firing shells into the urban centers of Gaza and Lebanon does not harm the militants one bit, and in fact, strengthens the militant's ideological cause. Demolishing civilian infrastructure allows the superbly-organized social services of these militant movements to rebuild them and claim moral credit. Killing innocent children allows the propaganda machine of the militant movements to use their deaths as reasons for savage retaliation, on Israelis who share the same distinction of being not only civilian, but innocent. More dangerously, Israel's relative impunity in territories that have ostensible military forces whose duty is to protect civilian lives and property betray the utter irrelevance of these forces' existence.

The Israelis are fostering an environment where resistance, in the form of radical militancy, becomes the only option. So even though Israel might triumph in this particular battle and leave Hamas and Hezbollah virtually rudderless, it cannot win the overarching war unless it progresses to the natural conclusion that extreme Zionism foists upon the Israeli nation, that is, the total suppression of those who oppose the ideal of a Biblically-promised Greater Israel.

Israel has a running economy, schools, running water that is often taken directly from Palestinian streams, a tourism industry; all the trappings of a developed country which cannot sustain a drawn-out war. The Palestinians can because they have nothing to begin with, and in their minds, are fighting to obtain their rightful share in the world; namely, a state of their own.