No, Israel Should Not Flatten Beirut
Thursday, 18 February 2016 00:00 By Belén Fernandez, teleSUR | Op-Ed
This week, the prominent Israeli newspaper Haaretz ran an opinion piece by
Amitai Etzioni, titled "Should Israel Flatten Beirut to Destroy Hezbollah's
Missiles?"
The short answer is yes - but we'll get to that in a minute.
Who, you may ask, is the fellow who has taken it upon himself to ponder this
important matter? As it turns out, Etzioni is not some random foreign policy
novice but rather a professor at the George Washington University in
Washington, DC, having formerly taught at other prestigious US universities
including Columbia and Harvard. Also on his CV are stints of service in the
Palmach militia, which fought for Israeli "independence" until 1948, and the
Israeli military.
Etzioni begins his philosophy session with a claim from an anonymous
"Israeli representative" in DC that Hezbollah's alleged stockpile of
"100,000 missiles [is] now Israel's number two security threat," second only
to a nuclear-armed Iran.
He then jumps across the ocean to a previous conference in Herzliya, Israel,
where he says the Israeli chief of staff "revealed that most of these
missiles are placed in private homes," raising another question on top of
the to-flatten-or-not-to-flatten one: "If Hezbollah starts raining them down
on Israel, how can these missiles be eliminated without causing massive
civilian casualties?"
Never mind that Hezbollah has never started raining anything on Israel
without serious provocation - or that civilian casualties generally haven't
been at the top of that country's list of concerns.
According to Etzioni, some of the participants at the Herzliya conference
were invited to an Israeli military base near Haifa, the amenities of which
include a model Lebanese village. There the guests were "treated to a
demonstration of the way Israel plans to clear these missiles - by Israeli
soldiers dashing from building to building to find them."
To Etzioni's dismay, a "minor breeze" arrived mid-performance and blew away
the grenade smoke intended to conceal the troops' movements, leaving them
exposed to hypothetical snipers.
Given the time-consuming and likely casualty-heavy nature of the
house-to-house strategy, Etzioni reasons that there must be superior option.
In debating "what else could be done," he mentions a recollection by someone
in the visiting group that, in the 2006 war on Lebanon, "Israel was charged
with bombing Shia neighborhoods in Beirut in order to pressure Hezbollah to
stop firing missiles."
He goes on to caution, however, that "many studies have shown that such
bombing
do not (sic) have the expected effect, nor did it in 2006
(assuming that such bombing actually occurred)." Indeed, when I myself
visited Shia and other varieties of Lebanese neighborhood a month after this
particular war, it still wasn't clear from the ubiquitous rubble-and craters
in the ground where buildings had once stood-whether "such bombing" had
actually transpired.
More to the point, the fact that Israel has already flattened large sections
of Lebanon, in Beirut and beyond, would seem to make the article's title a
bit redundant.
Upon returning to the US from Israel, Etzioni says that he "asked two
American military officers what other options Israel has" for missile
eradication. And what do you know: "They both pointed to Fuel-Air Explosives
[FAE]."
These bombs, Etzioni explains, "disperse an aerosol cloud of fuel which is
ignited by a detonator, producing massive explosions." And that's not all:
"The resulting rapidly expanding wave flattens all buildings within a
considerable range."
Lest we devote too much thought to the fact that this professor at a
prestigious American institution of higher learning has literally just
advocated for the total destruction of a "considerable" piece of territory,
Etzioni stages a slight retreat: "Such weapons obviously would be used only
after the population was given a chance to evacuate the area." But this
obviously fails to account for the Israeli military habit of ordering
civilians to evacuate areas and then bombing them en route.
And it may be news to Etzioni, but the intentional targeting of civilian
areas and civilian infrastructure happens to be a war crime.
Etzioni himself acknowledges that, "still, as we saw in Gaza, there are
going to be civilian casualties." Of course, we've also seen plenty of
civilian casualties in Lebanon, where in 2006 the majority of the estimated
1,200 fatalities were not Hezbollah.
During my own recent visit to south Lebanon, I spoke with a young man from a
village near the Israeli border who was 13 at the time of the war and who
remained in his village for the duration of the 34-day assault. He described
the pain in 2006 of encountering detached heads and other body parts
belonging to former neighbors, blasted apart by bombs or crushed in
collapsed homes.
But forget sympathy. The moral of the FAE story in Etzioni's view is that,
because there will inevitably be FAE-induced casualties, "the time to raise
this issue is long before Israel may be forced to use" them - presumably so
that the international community can warm up to the idea of a flattened
Beirut. He writes:
"One way this can be achieved is by inviting foreign military experts and
public intellectuals, who are not known to be hostile to Israel, to
participate in war games in which they would be charged with fashioning a
response to massive missile attacks on Israeli high rise buildings, schools,
hospitals, and air bases."
There are various problems with this reasoning. For one thing, Israel takes
the cake when it comes to "massive" attacks. For another, the obsessive
portrayal of the Israelis as forever engaged in legitimate and retaliatory
self-defense severely obscures reality. If you invent a country on land that
doesn't belong to you and begin regularly slaughtering and otherwise
harassing people, you're pretty much permanently denied the whole "victim"
alibi.
Regarding his proposed FAE public relations strategy, Etzioni concludes: "In
this way, one hopes, that there be [sic] a greater understanding, if not
outright acceptance, of the use of these powerful weapons, given that
nothing else will do."
A better hope might be that such warmongering ravings were not permitted to
pass as civilized analysis.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not
be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
BELÉN FERNANDEZ
Belén Fernandez is a member of the editorial board for Jacobin magazine and
writes regularly for Al Jazeera English. Her articles have also appeared in
the London Review of Books blog, Salon, AlterNet, In These Times, Al Akhbar
English, Guernica Magazine, The Electronic Intifada, Upside Down World, and
Venezuelanalysis.com, among others. She is the author of The Imperial
Messenger and Coffee With Hezbollah.
RELATED STORIES
Israel-Palestine: As Stabbings, Shootings Kill Dozens, Endless Occupation
Fuels Resistance
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! | Video Interview
Israel-Backed Group Sues Food Co-op for Boycotting Israeli Products
By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | News Analysis
Israel Demolishes 24 More Homes in the South Hebron Hills
By Cassandra Dixon, Speakout | News Analysis
________________________________________
Show Comments
Hide Comments
<a href="http://truthout.disqus.com/?url=ref";>View the discussion
thread.</a>
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
No, Israel Should Not Flatten Beirut
Thursday, 18 February 2016 00:00 By Belén Fernandez, teleSUR | Op-Ed
font size Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
reference not valid.
This week, the prominent Israeli newspaper Haaretz ran an opinion
piece by Amitai Etzioni, titled "Should Israel Flatten Beirut to Destroy
Hezbollah's Missiles?"
The short answer is yes - but we'll get to that in a minute.
Who, you may ask, is the fellow who has taken it upon himself to ponder this
important matter? As it turns out, Etzioni is not some random foreign policy
novice but rather a professor at the George Washington University in
Washington, DC, having formerly taught at other prestigious US universities
including Columbia and Harvard. Also on his CV are stints of service in the
Palmach militia, which fought for Israeli "independence" until 1948, and the
Israeli military.
Etzioni begins his philosophy session with a claim from an anonymous
"Israeli representative" in DC that Hezbollah's alleged stockpile of
"100,000 missiles [is] now Israel's number two security threat," second only
to a nuclear-armed Iran.
He then jumps across the ocean to a previous conference in Herzliya, Israel,
where he says the Israeli chief of staff "revealed that most of these
missiles are placed in private homes," raising another question on top of
the to-flatten-or-not-to-flatten one: "If Hezbollah starts raining them down
on Israel, how can these missiles be eliminated without causing massive
civilian casualties?"
Never mind that Hezbollah has never started raining anything on Israel
without serious provocation - or that civilian casualties generally haven't
been at the top of that country's list of concerns.
According to Etzioni, some of the participants at the Herzliya conference
were invited to an Israeli military base near Haifa, the amenities of which
include a model Lebanese village. There the guests were "treated to a
demonstration of the way Israel plans to clear these missiles - by Israeli
soldiers dashing from building to building to find them."
To Etzioni's dismay, a "minor breeze" arrived mid-performance and blew away
the grenade smoke intended to conceal the troops' movements, leaving them
exposed to hypothetical snipers.
Given the time-consuming and likely casualty-heavy nature of the
house-to-house strategy, Etzioni reasons that there must be superior option.
In debating "what else could be done," he mentions a recollection by someone
in the visiting group that, in the 2006 war on Lebanon, "Israel was charged
with bombing Shia neighborhoods in Beirut in order to pressure Hezbollah to
stop firing missiles."
He goes on to caution, however, that "many studies have shown that such
bombing
do not (sic) have the expected effect, nor did it in 2006
(assuming that such bombing actually occurred)." Indeed, when I myself
visited Shia and other varieties of Lebanese neighborhood a month after this
particular war, it still wasn't clear from the ubiquitous rubble-and craters
in the ground where buildings had once stood-whether "such bombing" had
actually transpired.
More to the point, the fact that Israel has already flattened large sections
of Lebanon, in Beirut and beyond, would seem to make the article's title a
bit redundant.
Upon returning to the US from Israel, Etzioni says that he "asked two
American military officers what other options Israel has" for missile
eradication. And what do you know: "They both pointed to Fuel-Air Explosives
[FAE]."
These bombs, Etzioni explains, "disperse an aerosol cloud of fuel which is
ignited by a detonator, producing massive explosions." And that's not all:
"The resulting rapidly expanding wave flattens all buildings within a
considerable range."
Lest we devote too much thought to the fact that this professor at a
prestigious American institution of higher learning has literally just
advocated for the total destruction of a "considerable" piece of territory,
Etzioni stages a slight retreat: "Such weapons obviously would be used only
after the population was given a chance to evacuate the area." But this
obviously fails to account for the Israeli military habit of ordering
civilians to evacuate areas and then bombing them en route.
And it may be news to Etzioni, but the intentional targeting of civilian
areas and civilian infrastructure happens to be a war crime.
Etzioni himself acknowledges that, "still, as we saw in Gaza, there are
going to be civilian casualties." Of course, we've also seen plenty of
civilian casualties in Lebanon, where in 2006 the majority of the estimated
1,200 fatalities were not Hezbollah.
During my own recent visit to south Lebanon, I spoke with a young man from a
village near the Israeli border who was 13 at the time of the war and who
remained in his village for the duration of the 34-day assault. He described
the pain in 2006 of encountering detached heads and other body parts
belonging to former neighbors, blasted apart by bombs or crushed in
collapsed homes.
But forget sympathy. The moral of the FAE story in Etzioni's view is that,
because there will inevitably be FAE-induced casualties, "the time to raise
this issue is long before Israel may be forced to use" them - presumably so
that the international community can warm up to the idea of a flattened
Beirut. He writes:
"One way this can be achieved is by inviting foreign military experts and
public intellectuals, who are not known to be hostile to Israel, to
participate in war games in which they would be charged with fashioning a
response to massive missile attacks on Israeli high rise buildings, schools,
hospitals, and air bases."
There are various problems with this reasoning. For one thing, Israel takes
the cake when it comes to "massive" attacks. For another, the obsessive
portrayal of the Israelis as forever engaged in legitimate and retaliatory
self-defense severely obscures reality. If you invent a country on land that
doesn't belong to you and begin regularly slaughtering and otherwise
harassing people, you're pretty much permanently denied the whole "victim"
alibi.
Regarding his proposed FAE public relations strategy, Etzioni concludes: "In
this way, one hopes, that there be [sic] a greater understanding, if not
outright acceptance, of the use of these powerful weapons, given that
nothing else will do."
A better hope might be that such warmongering ravings were not permitted to
pass as civilized analysis.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not
be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Belén Fernandez
Belén Fernandez is a member of the editorial board for Jacobin magazine and
writes regularly for Al Jazeera English. Her articles have also appeared in
the London Review of Books blog, Salon, AlterNet, In These Times, Al Akhbar
English, Guernica Magazine, The Electronic Intifada, Upside Down World, and
Venezuelanalysis.com, among others. She is the author of The Imperial
Messenger and Coffee With Hezbollah.
