Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times
24/07/2006
The public record is replete with 'historical' accounts of the cause and effect of the many wars enjoyed by the sprawling masses of humanity. A little known fact however is that, from the point of view of accuracy, the public record stinks.
Spinning the truth about the reasons for war has always been easy. With the major media magnets donating large sums to political parties, and war reports pre-approved by military press liaison officers, military, government and media quickly take on the appearance of one big, happy family.
In the case of the current Israeli invasion of Lebanon therefore, you will (or should) be somewhat less than surprised to learn that all is not as it seems.
To begin our impromptu lesson in reality, a few brainteasers:
What event precipitated the current Israeli invasion of Lebanon? Was it the 'unprovoked' attack by Hamas on the Israeli post when Corporal Shalit was captured? Or was it the 'unprovoked' attack by Hizb'allah when they captured two Israeli soldiers two weeks later?
According to most mainstream papers and American and Israeli government officials, the Hamas attack on June 25th that led to Shalit's capture was an unprovoked act of aggression. What they fail to mention however, is that the day before the Hamas attack, on June 24th, Israeli troops entered Gaza and abducted two Palestinian civilians, a doctor and his brother. The Israeli army asserted that the men were members of Hamas, a claim which Hamas refuted. Yet even if the men were Hamas members, while Israel had been happily pounding the Gaza strip and its civilians with up to 1,000 missiles per week, the seven month-old Hamas government had been holding to a 16 month unilateral ceasefire with Israel. The only reason for Israel to abduct the two men therefore would seem to be for its value as an act of provocation, and the capture of Shalit the following day cannot be claimed as an "unprovoked attack" but retaliation to Israeli aggression. Of course, this is assuming that Israel did not also have a hand in the retaliation. The Israeli daily Haartez published a report which suggested that Israel knew several months in advance that the tunnel attack was planned. Which this leads us to conclude that the Israeli government may have allowed the attack in which Shalit was captured to happen, or facilitated it, for a very specific reason, which in turn means that Israel is to one extent of another fighting the "war on terror" on both sides. So what's new?
Also according to the oh-so reliable mainstream press, on July 12th, Hizb'allah captured two Israeli soldiers "in a cross border raid", which Israel called an "act of war" and which provided plausible justification for the current massive Israeli bombardment of Lebanon and its civilians. However, according to several non-Western or foreign language news agencies, it was Israeli soldiers who had invaded Lebanese territory, leading to the capture of two of their number by Hizb'allah, an expected conclusion to a foolish foray into enemy territory and definitely not an "act of war". Indeed, in this light, it is Israel that is guilty of provoking Hizb'allah.
The Indian Daily tells us:
The Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement announced on Wednesday that its guerrillas have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon. "Implementing our promise to free Arab prisoners in Israeli jails, our strugglers have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon," a statement by Hezbollah said. "The two soldiers have already been moved to a safe place," it added. The Lebanese police said that the two soldiers were captured as they "infiltrated" into the town of Aitaa al-Chaab inside the Lebanese border. [New Kerala 12/07/06]
According to the Bahrain News Agency:
The Lebanese Hezbollah movement announced Wednesday the arrest of two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon. Lebanese police said that the two soldiers were arrested as they entered the town of Aitaa al-Chaab inside the Lebanese border. Israeli aircraft were active in the air over southern Lebanon, police said, with jets bombing roads leading to the market town of Nabatiyeh, 60 kilometers south of Beirut. [Bahrain News Agency 7/12/06]
The strange thing is, almost all English language Western news reports proclaimed loud and clear that Hizb'allah had invaded Israel! How can this be?
Try this:
Israeli Censor Wielding Great Power
Thursday July 20, 2006
Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM (AP) - Here's some news you may never hear about Israel's war against Hezbollah: a missile falls into the sea, a strategic military installation is hit, a Cabinet minister plans to visit the front lines.
All these topics are subject to review by Israel's chief military censor, who has - in her own words - "extraordinary power." She can silence a broadcaster, block information and put journalists in jail.
"I can, for example, publish an order that no material can be published. I can close a newspaper or shut down a station. I can do almost anything," Col. Sima Vaknin said Wednesday. [...]
Now think about this for a moment. Say Israel had drawn up plans for a military invasion/attack on its Arab neighbors for some time, but was in need of some kind of justification, some rationale that could be presented to the world public. How easy would it be to stage the capture of an Israeli soldier in Gaza and two in Lebanon? Soldiers are not privy to intelligence information, unless their superiors supply it to them, and they are entirely dependent on their military commanders to not place them in danger. But in war, or war planning, all is fair, as they say.
But what evidence is there to suggest that Israel had been planning to provoke a wider Middle East war for some time?
Not much, just that provided by the Israeli military itself:
Israel set war plan more than a year ago posted
07/22/2006
SF Chronicle
Israel's military response by air, land and sea to what it considered a provocation last week by Hezbollah militants is unfolding according to a plan finalized more than a year ago.
In the years since Israel ended its military occupation of southern Lebanon, it watched warily as Hezbollah built up its military presence in the region. When Hezbollah militants kidnapped two Israeli soldiers last week, the Israeli military was ready to react almost instantly.
"By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board." said Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University
More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail. Under the ground rules of the briefings, the officer could not be identified.
Notice the newsroom spin that the plan was drawn up because Hizb'allah was "building its military presence in Southern Lebanon." If Hizb'allah has any military prowess they certainly have a strange way of flaunting it. Since the beginning of the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon, Hizb'allah has fired hundreds of their "deadly" weapons at Haifa (the only Israeli town within reach), resulting in the death of 15 Israeli civilians, 2 of them Israeli Arabs. About 95% of Hizb'allah's rudimentary 'Katyusha' rockets miss their targets or fail to explode, or both, in very much the same way as Hamas' and Islamic Jihad's 'Qassam' rockets fired from Gaza, which have killed 5 Israelis in one town in 5 years. A real 'threat' to the state of Israel indeed.
Remember last year, when the Israeli Mossad murdered Rafik Hariri? Hariri had been Lebanese Prime Minister from 1992 until 1998 and again from 2000 until 2004 when he resigned. By all accounts, he was slated to return to the postion again at the next elections. Apart from being a billionaire, Hariri had a lot of friends in high places. He was as happy enjoying a beer with French President Chirac in down-town Beirut as he was strolling the halls of Boston University's School of Management which bears his name.
Hariri was one of the few "men of peace" left in the Middle East. In his two terms as Lebanese PM since 1992, he had brought Lebanon out of the carnage wrought by 15 years of civil war and set it well on the way to reclaiming its status as the "Paris of the Middle East." Hariri willingly expended his personal fortune on Lebanon's recovery pouring millions into the reconstruction of Beirut. Viewed as a leading Arab-world reformer, he was also credited with restoring Lebanon's reputation abroad as a liberal, open Middle Eastern country. He paid for the 1989 Christian-Muslim peace conference in Taif, Saudi Arabia, which laid the foundation for the ceasefire that came a year later. During his tenure as Prime Minister, Harari also made it his goal to ensure that the religious divisions (Christian and Islamic) were kept out of politics.
Since 1976 and until last summer, 14,000 Syrian troops were stationed in Lebanon. The troops had initially arrived in 1976 at the request of the Lebanese government in order to protect the Lebanese population from Israeli attacks. When Mossad murdered Hariri, not only did they remove the most powerful man in Lebanese politics, but they also, by way of a whitewashed investigation, pinned the blame for his murder on Syria and successfully forced the removal of the Syrian military presence in Lebanon, the final obstacle to dissuading Israel from re-invading Lebanon. At the time, I wrote:
While Hariri might have been quietly pressuring Syria for the ultimate removal of it's troops, he was also well aware of the reason for those troops - to dissuade Israel from staging another invasion of Lebanese territory. Having manipulated Lebanese and world opinion into believing that Syria killed Hariri and with the withdrawal of Syrian troops already under way, Lebanon and its people will once more be exposed to the predations of the butcher Sharon.
The name has changed, but the goal of the current Israeli Prime Minister remains the same. All of it, it seems, has been set up very nicely indeed.
Of course, Israel would not be in a position to dominate any conflict with its Arab neighbors if it were not for the generous support of American taxpayers. We are yet again unsurprised to learn therefore that while Israel was busy planning the current attack on Lebanon and its justification, the Bush administration was right there beside them:
Secret 2001 Pentagon Plan to Attack Lebanon
Wesley Clark, the retired four-star general who is one of 10 candidates for the Democratic nomination for president, has written a new book that is just arriving on bookstore shelves. Called Winning Modern Wars, it’s mostly about the Iraq war and terrorism—and it is laced with powerful new information that he held back from the public when he was a CNN military commentator during the Bush administration’s preparations for the war.
For example, he says he learned from military sources at the Pentagon in November 2001, just two months after the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, that serious planning for the war on Iraq had already begun and that, in addition to Iraq, the administration had drawn up a list of six other nations to be targeted over a period of five years.
Here’s what he writes on page 130:
"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan." Clark adds, "I left the Pentagon that afternoon deeply concerned."
So there you have it, and you thought it was all about Osama bin Laden attacking the US on September 11th. How could you have been so wrong?!
Certain "Middle Eastern analysts" (who couldn't analyse their way out of a chair) have stated that Hizb'allah provoked the current conflict with Israel in order to "reduce the pressure on Palestinians and force Israel to fight on two fronts", but such 'analysis' either completely misses (or conveniently ignores) the above facts - that Israel has long sought an opening to 'deal with' its Arab problem. Further inane 'analysis' is provided by Noam Chomsky, an alleged expert on the Middle East, where he criticises Hizb'allah for the "irresponsible" act of capturing the two Israeli soldiers, which, he claims, has exposed the Lebanese people to the dire threat from Israeli bombs and guns. Chomsky seems to forget that Israel needed no encouragement to butcher 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians in their last full-scale invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Chomsky, for all his credentials, seems oblivious to the long-standing violent intentions of successive Israeli governments towards almost all of its Arab neighbors, neighbors who have the audacity to attempt to remind Israel and the world that Israel is occupying stolen Arab land!
Not only have the Lebanese people witnessed Israel's malevolent intentions first hand many times in the past, but Hizb'allah has surely been watching carefully over the past few years as Israel set the scene for yet another Lebanese bloodbath. Yet when Hizb'allah captures two Israeli soldiers that invaded their territory 2 weeks ago, Chomsky blames Hizb'allah for putting the Lebanese people in danger! Talk about having your head in the sand!
Thankfully, there are those of us who have long-since dispensed with any semblance of wishful thinking about the intentions of the state of Israel and the psychopaths that run the Zionist show, and as such, are in a position to definitively answer the following questions:
Is Israel lying about the source of the present conflict? Undoubtedly.
Are Israeli lies being promoted by American media outlets?
No question.
Has Israel manipulated the current crisis and wantonly murdered 350 Lebanese civilians? The answer is clear.
Does the Bush government wholeheartedly endorse and support Israeli manipulations? It's a 'no-brainer'
But what of the bigger question? What of the "why" of the actions of these few wild-eyed nut-jobs-in-suits in power? Why is Israel doing this? Why is the American government supporting them? What of the future? Where is all of it leading?
Well, according to Condi Rice it is nothing less than the "birth of a new Middle East", which of course sounds like a wonderfully noble ideal.
And therein lies the hook.
Every war ever waged by a major state player (which is pretty much all of them), has been presented to the public in terms of an ideal, like 'freedom' for example, when in reality, the main motivating factor boils down to personal profit or gain. That psychopathic warmongers would engage in such mass manipulation is elementary - they know that ordinary, decent people would never knowingly support a war in which they, their children, or other innocent human beings are certain to die, purely to serve the personal ambitions of an elite few. Ordinary, decent people will, however, always rally to the cause of 'freedom' and allow that ideal to steel them against the massive suffering and death that war entails as they make the 'ultimate sacrifice' 'for freedom's sake'.
I trust you can see just how intrinsically evil such a manipulation is. But more important than seeing the manipulation, is recognizing its authors, and realizing that their cold-blooded, calculated manipulations, leading to the deaths of millions of innocent people - people like you and I, our sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers - is something you and I could never do.
Yet they can - and do, over and over and over again.
Not only can they do it, but they are aware enough to know that they must ensure, at all costs, that you and I never understand why they do it or how they can do it. We must never fathom the mechanism that allows them to commit acts of extreme barbarity while simultaneously presenting themselves to the world as the progenitors of honorable human values. We must never be allowed to know their true nature or the sick game they play. For the day that you and I possess such knowledge and realize who the real enemy is, is the day that we no longer serve the interests of the pathocracy - the psychopaths in power - through our naivety and gullibility. On that day, their spell will be broken. No longer will thousands march to war under their banner of fake "freedom", no longer will millions shrink in fear of illusory "terrorism" and permit atrocities to be committed in their name. On that day, our planet shall be retaken for the sane, rational and decent human beings, and the fifth column that has dwelt for so long in our midst shall be confined to the asylum where they belong.
Let's make it happen. Wake Up, and spread the word. These people are not like you and I. They have no conscience, they have no ability to feel empathy for the suffering of another. They are psychopaths, and they are our leaders.
American thespian Fritz Williams wrote:
"Suffering and joy teach us, if we allow them, how to make the leap of empathy, which transports us into the soul and heart of another person. In those transparent moments we know other people's joys and sorrows, and we care about their concerns as if they were our own."
In recent weeks, as we pondered the pictures showing the horror wrought by Israel in Lebanon, all decent human beings instinctively made the leap of empathy spoken of by Williams. Some, however, did not. They could not. And it just so happens that they are same people responsible for bringing the horror of mass murder into our lives.
