Tag Archives: middle-east

September 18, 2024 · 3:37 pm

A NEW PAGE(R) IN HISTORY

By the brutal nature of war, urban battles always cause disproportionate civilian death tolls. When Rome suppressed the Great Jewish Revolt in 70 CE, they faced an army in Jerusalem of about 21,000 men. The civilian death toll has been estimated as between 600,000  (Tacitus) and over one million (Josephus). When the Red Army conquered Berlin in 1945, it faced a German force of about 45,000 soldiers.  Over 300,000 civilians died in the battle.

Since October 7, it has become almost routine in fashionable circles to accuse Israel of “genocide.” But the events of the past 48  hours show the opposite. In conducting its war against Hezbollah, a terrorist organization sworn to its destruction, Israel has accomplished a feat virtually unimaginable in the annals of military history. It has disabled or killed thousands of enemy combatants, in urban settings, deeply embedded within the local civilian population, with almost no civilian casualties.

On Tuesday, thousands of pagers exploded in Beirut and other locations in Lebanon and Syria, wounding about 2,800 people. Almost exactly 24 hours later, dozens of walkie-talkies exploded, injuring an additional 450 people.

Nearly every single victim was a soldier or member of Hezbollah. Well, not every victim. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon was also wounded. He is not employed by Hezbollah. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that Hezbollah is employed by the ambassador. The fact that the Iranian ambassador was using a Hezbollah pager reveals much about Hezbollah’s status as an Iranian puppet.

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April 14, 2024 · 1:19 pm

THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE AGAINST ISRAEL

Israel’s response to the October 7 Hamas rampage has led to an unprecedented increase in public hostility. This hostility has been directed not only toward Israel’s military strategy of urban warfare, which, like any such strategy, has led inevitably to widespread death and destruction, but also toward the Jewish State itself. Much of this hostility can be attributed to plain old antisemitism.

At Princeton, the Near Eastern studies department offers a course whose reading list includes a book that claims that Israelis systematically maim Palestinians to harvest their organs.

At the University of Michigan, benches in front of the Hillel House have been defaced with the Star of David, followed by the equal sign, followed by the swastika.

At Harvard, visibly Jewish students have been jeered at and physically assaulted walking to class.

There have been countless other incidents of such run-of-the-mill antisemitism. Still, it would be a mistake to conclude that antisemitism alone undergirds the current hostility toward Israel. After all, some of this hostility comes from Jews themselves.

One of the most visible organizations criticizing Israel has been Jewish Voice for Peace. Commentary Magazine’s Eli Lake has even identified what he calls the “AsAJew” phenomenon, to describe the many Jewish anti-Israel activists who cite their religion to legitimize their tactics. Some of these activists may be fairly described as “self-hating” Jews – but they are Jews nonetheless.

To those who would stand up for Israel, it is important to look beyond antisemitism, and to recognize that hostility toward the Jewish State is also based on something different: the settler-colonial paradigm. According to this conceptual framework, the State of Israel is an illegitimate entity designed and populated by Europeans colonizers who invaded a foreign territory to exploit the indigenous people, and to impose their culture and religion on them. This paradigm views Israelis as comparable to the British settlers in Kenya or the French in Senegal or the Belgians in the Congo.

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December 7, 2023 · 5:09 pm

SHOULD AMERICA LECTURE ISRAEL?

The latest reports from the Gazan “Health Ministry” state that the death toll has topped 16,000.  Of course, such figures must be taken with a grain of salt. The “Health Ministry” officials work for Hamas, a terrorist organization which routinely lies.  Moreover, the number does not distinguish between Hamas soldiers and true civilians. Nor do the figures account for the inhabitants killed by Hamas’s or Islamic Jihad’s own rockets, 20% of which fall into Gaza.

But even allowing for exaggeration and fabrication, there is little doubt that the Gazan civilian death toll far exceeds the number of Israelis and other nationalities murdered by Hamas on October 7. This lack of “proportionality” has become a problem for the Biden administration. Its support for Israel, rock solid right after October 7, has softened and become more qualified as the toll increases.

On his third trip to the Middle East since the war began, Secretary of State Blinken declared that America’s support requires Israel’s “compliance with international humanitarian law.” He urged Israel “to take every possible measure to avoid civilian harm.”

Two days later, Vice President Harris issued a similar statement after a meeting with Egyptian President el-Sisi: “Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” she said. “Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images coming from Gaza are devastating.”

Are these lectures deserved?

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