Efficient Warfare

First Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and now Defense Minister Ehud Barak declare that the world needs to redefine the rules of war to allow armies to "deal efficiently with terror coming out of crowded areas and constructed areas." It seems that both Netanyahu and Barak fail to understand that the rules of war have as a sole purpose to protect non-combatants from harm during times of war. They aren't meant to allow armies to "deal efficiently" with anything. And when looking at the context in which these statements are made, one cannot help but think if what is meant by "dealing efficiently with terror" has something to do with what the Goldstone report is accusing Israel of having done: deliberately targeting civilians, bombing a mosque suspected of housing weapons during prayer time, using white phosphorous incendiary bombs in crowded civilian areas, and generally disregarding the weight of loss of civilian life compared to the potential military benefit of an action. In Israeli eyes, it seems, bombing a UN-run school housing 1300 refugees because shots had been fired at the IDF from that location is morally justified, and thus needs to be accommodated for in the new laws of war. How sick and twisted do you need to be to think that if it's illegal to kill 800 civilians out out of 1300 casualties in a 30-day conflict then there's something wrong with the rules?

Maybe I'm overreacting. But there's something about the use of the word "efficient" in the context of war that gives me chills.

The Blame Game

I once read about an interesting distinction made by American sociologist Harvey Sacks between two types of consequences for actions. Class 1 consequences are effects that naturally result from an action, for example, if you put your hand in the fire, you will get burned. Class 2 consequences are those that require the action of another human being, for example, if you murder someone, then you go to jail. You don't automatically get teleported to jail as soon as you pull the trigger. Someone has to put you there. This is very different from Class 1 consequences which are a direct result of your action. Human adults can tell the difference between the two, but children can't. That's why, when they're young enough, children don't bear grudges against their parents when they are punished, because to them the punishment is a Class 1 consequence of their actions, i.e. it could not have been avoided. The parent didn't CHOOSE to punish the child. A child then wouldn't hate his parent for spanking them in much the same way that an adult wouldn't hate a candle for burning him.

So what does all that have to do with anything? Well, it seems to me that it isn't only children that don't understand this distinction. A few days ago, Israeli president Shimon Peres made a statement about the threat Hezbollah poses to Lebanon. During a speech he said, "It's not Israel that is endangering Lebanon, but rather Hezbollah, just as Hamas is endangering the Palestinians." This is not the first time this type of talking point is used by an Israeli politician. Several times in the past the Israelis have attempted to get the Lebanese to turn against Hezbollah by convincing them that latter's actions lead to the destruction of Lebanon, as though they, the Israelis, have nothing to do with it. Now I don't know if Mr. Peres actually believes this to be true, or if he just says it hoping people are naive enough to accept it. To him, when Israel deals out death and destruction to its enemies, it is merely a direct consequence of Hezbollah (or Hamas) action. But we are not children, and while we may understand that Hezbollah's actions are what instigated a war to start with, we are old enough to realize that the individual atrocities committed by the IDF are not natural and unavoidable consequences of Hezbollah's behavior, but are rather Israeli actions implementing Israeli decisions.

So the whole "the Lebanese should understand that Hezbollah is their enemy, not Israel" paradigm doesn't work on rational adults. Sure it might make us dislike Hezbollah, but it makes us deeply despise Israel far more. After all, if some guy walks up to you and shoots you in the leg, you might blame the guy who provoked him, and you might even get pissed off at the guy who made the gun, but the person you're gonna hate the most and seek revenge against is the one who pulled the trigger.

Three Reasons for Calm

I've been silent for a while again, but in my defense, so has Hariri. Since the elections, positive signs began to appear here and there, with the M8/M14 divide beginning to seem weaker. Meetings between rivals, most notably Hariri and Nasrallah, were a-plenty and things seemed to be heading towards a tension-free transition.

Berri's reelection as parliament speaker defied all political logic (given his past role in paralyzing in the parliament for the better part of 2007-2008) and proved that Lebanon's hope for a better future has overcome its fear of a bitter past. It was also a very visible reminder that Lebanon does not function like other democracies where the majority gets to pick, regardless of what the minority wants.

But the political lovemaking seems to be over and an eerie silence has taken hold. Of course, there's a few statements here and there with specific demands and claims by individual parties, but the general atmosphere is nothing compared to what took place after the Doha agreement, where Sanioura had the seemingly impossible task of distributing 10 portfolios to 15 eager ministery hopefuls. Hariri himself has been awefully quiet and I thank him for that. Hezbollah has been less quiet, but when they have spoken, steered clear of tension-generating words such as "the disruptive third" or even the more positive "insuring third." Instead they refer to "a new formula" that ensures "effective participation", which, to be honest, seems to say pretty much the same thing.

This quiet does not, to me, indicate that things are going well. Sure they're not going horribly wrong, but I suspect several not so encouraging reasons behind this:

1. A slightly positive explanation is this: Parties involved are aware that eventually a government has to be formed and the higher they raise the stakes, the more difficult it will be for a "no-winner no-loser" agreement to be reached. And we all know too well, from May of last year, what a "winner-loser" formula costs. So unlike last year, when both parties cut off any route for retreat for themselves, the positions now are a lot softer. Hariri is not declaring every other day that he is against giving the opposition a third of government seats, and Nasrallah is not declaring everyday that he will accept nothing less. Aoun and some of the lesser M14 players are a different story, but even they seem to be quieting down a bit.

2. A less positive but similar alternative explanation: The final outcome of the discussions are dependant on a lot of external factors, namely Syria's new found love with the international and Arab communities. The Lebanese players themselves are remaining somewhat silent because they aren't as much in control of the situation as they would like to be. They certainly want to avoid making grandiose statements about what they accept and do not accept as government makeup only to find out that an agreement made in the halls of international diplomacy says otherwise.

3. Finally, the least optimistic alternative: The actual division is still as deep as it used to be. Hezbollah's weapons are still the fudamental problem with Hariri wanting to form a government strong enough to get rid of these weapons once and for all and Nasrallah wanting, well, none of that. The only reason they aren't yelling and screaming at each other is that summer is here. A temporary truce has been called, because despite of all their differences, all parties agree on how badly Lebanon's economy needs a successful touristic season. Tourism this summer in Lebanon is expected to reach a historic record high of up to 2 million tourists (in a country that houses 4 million remember). So all real discussion is postponed until something like September when the tourists go home and the loud political bickering resumes.

Results Are In

There's something strangely calming about the democratic process even when you're not completely satisfied with the results. And as political pundits all around the world were discussing the scope and effect of a Hezbollah win, the Lebanese were busy voting for the March 14 coalition. This means that, as bad as the last four years were in terms of security and economy, the Lebanese seem to think it's still better than the alternative. What the alternative is, no one really knows, and no one will know for the time being. Some think it's an Islamic republic where women are forced to wear chadors, others think it's a utopia of progress, transparency, strength and stability. Both are probably wrong, and I think the alternative is much closer to the current reality than our politicians on both sides would want us to think.

But let's not dwell on what could have been, and focus on what is and what will be. So March 14 won the election again with somewhere around 70 seats in the 128 seat parliament. That's a healthy majority (more than the slim majority the Hezbollah camp were expected to win, and similar to the one March 14 won four years ago), but it doesn't change much in the composition of the previous parliament. So I don't see much change coming to Lebanon. The petty political haggling over cabinet seats will continue, the parliament will not regain it's full constitutional role and will still be chaperoned by the national dialogue table.

To be honest, I'm not too worried about the future. With Obama at the helm of the West, the 14 Marchers will not be encouraged or pressured into an aggressive stance against Hezbollah as they were under the Bush administration. And hopefully, if Ahmedinejad loses elections on Friday, Iran's stance would be moderated as well, and that will certainly have a positive influence of Lebanese political stability.

Add to that the benefit of taking away Israel's excuse of treating Lebanon as a "terrorist state" under a Hezbollah-led government, I'd say all in all the election result has a pretty thick silver lining...

My only regret is that my curiousity has not been satisfied. It's easy supporting the opposition when you've never seen them in power, and I was looking forward to see how both sides would act in a new balance of paliamentary power. Would March 14 have made a more responsible opposition? And would Hezbollah and Aoun have remained as keen on national unity and dialogue and fighting corruption as they were the past three years? Well I guess we won't find out before at least another 4 years.

Until then, we have a couple of weeks of intense political bickering to look forward to as the next government is formed... Keeping in mind that the government that comes out of the new parliament gets a complete four-year term, I wouldn't bet on a tension-free process considering also how hard it was to agree on the previous government even when it only had a nine-month mandate.

One last thought... The March 14 and Hezbollah-FPM alliances aren't immune to the changes in the international and regional political climates, and some changes in the makeup of these blocs should not be ruled out.

Request to Syria

Few months after President Suleiman visited Syria after an invitation delivered to him by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem, Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad officially announced t today the decision to establish diplomatic ties with Lebanon. This is a historic first as our two neighboring countries have never had such relations since both gained their independance in the 1940s.

The two countries now have to make a common declaration on the date the respective embassies would be opened, and they have to decide where each embassy will be located.

Finally, many Lebanese will have a place to vent their anger and hold anti-Syria demonstrations and sit-ins. So I ask Syria to consider this when picking a location and to pick a place with a really large parking lot, so demonstrators won't have to clog up the streets causing traffic jams everywhere around.

Photo by AP.

"Chaos" is Not the Answer

Shortly after arriving home, Sheikh Saleh Aridi, member of the Democratic Party and aide to Talal Urslan, got into his car at 9:30 p.m. last night, and that was the last thing he did. 500 grams of TNT, placed under the driver's seat of the car, exploded killing Aridi and wounding several others.

Given that this assassination has come during a period that has seen the most positive political atmosphere since longer than a lot of us care to remember - a day after President Suleiman announced the beginning of national reconciliation dialogue on the 16th of September, Hariri's peace tour that included a reconciliation agreement in Tripoli with Bekaa as his next stop, Nasrallah's reaching out to Al-Mustaqbal, Jumblatt's reconciliatory rhetoric, and even Geagea's belief that dialogue could lead to coexistence with Hezboallah - it is easy to argue that those behind the attack are targeting national reconciliation and are only interested in maintaining a state of chaos in Lebanon.

Jumblatt accused "those who are hurt by reconciliation" (Al-Mustaqbal). PM Sanioura said the attack was meant "to divide the Lebanese," and Speaker Berri said it is a message "against civil peace in Lebanon" (Naharnet). Urslan also said the perpetrators are those who would benefit from internal civil strife in Lebanon, but he went further and directly named Israel as his prime suspect (As-Safir).

Though I'm glad Lebanese politicians agree (more or less) on something for a change, I myself find it hard to believe that someone who is against civil peace in Lebanon would go and do something like that. If the main goal is simply to divide the society and slow down reconciliation, there are far easier (and I daresay more effective) ways of doing so than a highly-professional and surgically precise assassination of one particular politician. If the goal is to target civil peace, the perpetrators would find it easier commit one or more arbitrary acts of terrorism aimed at groups of people rather than target an individual. I'm not gonna give any ideas, but I think you know what I mean.

I think there's more to this than just "someone spreading chaos." You don't spread chaos with 500g of TNT under the seat of someone's car. The questions we need to ask ourselves are: Who is Saleh Aridi? What has he done in his life? What was he doing when he was killed? Who would want him dead? Maybe if we try to answer these questions instead of yelling out "chaos", we might know where to begin looking for the murderers.

Photo by AFP taken from BBC.

Poke Wars

A New York based Jewish new group called Yeshiva World News reported that Hezbollah "terrorists" are using Facebook to track Israeli soldiers and possibly befriend them with the intention of kidnapping them or stealing classified information. The IDF is apparently conducting an aggressive awareness campaign to make sure its soldiers are aware of this.

Not really sure about how close this report is to the truth, but either way I think it's funny... Plus it gives me the opportunity to make this cool mock Facebook logo.

Bomb in Tripoli

11 people (according to the latest reports at this point) were killed in a bomb blast in Tripoli this morning. The bomb was placed on the sidewalk and apparently detonated remotely.

This particular bus normally transports off-duty soldiers to their positions, so most of the victims were soldiers. So who did it? The correct answer is, "I have no idea. Let's not dish out accusations and wait for the investigation to take its course." But in the mean time, let's bring out the usual suspects:

1. Fateh Al-Islam: a fundamentalist islamist militant group that fought our army last year, were defeated. On January 7, 2008, their leader Shaker Al-Absi made a speech in which he vowed revenge against the Lebanese army (YaLibnan). Some 300 people accused of belonging to Fateh Al-Islam are currently detained at Roumieh prison, and some of them are on hunger strike to protest the delay in their trials (The Daily Star). Yesterday I talked about how their families staged a protest demanding that they be released.

2. Jabal Muhsen/Bab El-Tabbaneh conflict: the sectarian conflict between the Sunnis and Alawites in these two neighborhoods of the north has been going on for a while. With the army trying to end the conflict using force (Ya Libnan), it's possible that one of them is fighting back. But the sectarian nature of their conflict and the very un-sectarian nature of the attack make the matter a bit more complicated.

And of course, no suspect list would be complete without our two favorite accusees:

3. Syria: Our sisterly neighbor is always accused of something. If not directly accused of committing the crime (CNN), then they're indirectly accused of supporting or inciting those who did it (Time). The most common argument is that Syria wants to invoke chaos in Lebanon cause that would permit it to regain its military presence there. But of course we cannot overlook the fact that Syria is quite comfortable these days with the way things are happening in Lebanon. Its allies in Lebanon are now in the government, and our president is visiting Damascus today. Why they would start causing chaos today is beyond me.

4. Israel / United States: Up until 2004, this duo had a virtual monopoly on accusations concerning anything that goes wrong. What about today? Do we have a case against them? I don't think so. Sure, they might be pissed off at the formation of a new government in which Hezbollah has some power. Sure they're definitely pissed off that the new government platform implicitly allows Hezbollah to keep its weapons for the time being (Jerusalem Post). Sure they're pissed off at how the Lebanese celebrated the return of Samir Kuntar (Jerusalem Post). And it’s also possible that they’re not very happy about the Lebanese president visiting Damascus today, a clear sign of improving relations between Lebanon and Syria. But the very nature of the attack all but eliminates the possibility that Israel was behind it. Why Tripoli? Why attack the Lebanese army? Why blow up a civilian bus? I'm sure there are people out there who are already cursing at Israel and the US. But not me. Not this time.

Photo by AFP taken from BBC.

The Case for Lebanese Morality

Israeli media these days is filled with stories about the prisoner swap and in almost every one of these stories there is someone calling the Lebanese people disgusting or pathetic or monstrous because they are celebrating the return of a brutal child-killer who bashed the head of a 4-year-old with the butt of his rifle. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert himself said, “I pity the people who are celebrating at this time the release of an animal who crushed the skull of a little girl of four.” And I agree… Anyone who celebrates such a brutal man would likely be disgusting, pathetic or monstrous.
For this argument to work, however, two conditions need to be met: (1) the Lebanese people should be aware of the details of the 1979 Naharia attack and (2) they should believe it. And here’s the catch: they don’t.
I don’t have any kind of statistics on the matter, so I might not be able to convince you, but believe me when I say that a lot (if not most) Lebanese have never heard the four-year-old child head-bashing story. I know this because, among the people I know (who are educated middle-class people with multiple university degrees, who live outside Lebanon), many were surprised to hear the story. I myself had not heard that story until after the July 2006 war when my sister (who was living in the US at that time) mentioned it to me to argue against the capture of the two Israeli soldiers.
For those who have heard that version of the story, many of them do not believe it. And why should they? It is important to note that Kuntar himself maintains a different story. His version, as told by his brother, claims that he was on a mission to capture Dan Harran, a nuclear scientist, and other hostages if possible, in order to exchange them in a prisoner swap. The operation went wrong and the policeman was killed in the ensuing gun battle and Harran and his daughter were killed in the crossfire. After his release he also described in more detail the events of that story, claiming he wouldn't have even kidnapped Haran's daughter if the latter hadn't insisted she stays with him. But regardless of which version of the story is true, it is easy to assume that on the Lebanese side, most people are going to believe Kuntar’s story.
The bottom line is that when passing moral judgment, we must look at how people behave given their own beliefs, not someone else’s. The Lebanese people aren’t a bunch of disgusting pathetic monsters. They believe they are celebrating the return of one of them who has spent 29 years in jail after being captured while on a mission to serve his cause. What the Israelis think of that person and what they believe he did is irrelevant.

Photo by Getty Images/AFP

Worst Telemarketing Ever

Here’s a fun story. Several Lebanese people, among them some of my friends, received phone calls this morning from the State of Israel. She told them that Hezbollah are bad people and that they’re trying to build a state-within-a-state. She also threatened devastating retaliation if Hezbollah were to attack them. My question is this: when is the State of Israel going to realize that Lebanon doesn’t really like her? When will she realize that every time she does anything in Lebanon, the almost unanimous response is “Go away!”?
So here’s a tip to Israel. You want Hezbollah disarmed? Then leave us the hell alone!

The Two Coffins

I can’t tell you how disappointed I was this morning when I found out the two Israeli soldiers are dead. Actually, I can… I was really really disappointed. And although every possible rationalization led to the conclusion that they are dead, I was still hoping (not nearly as much as their families) that they are alive. I am also somewhat ashamed that on the Lebanese side, we have people who have actually killed two soldiers, stole their bodies, and kept their families in the dark. Whichever way you look at it, this kind of action is not nearly as admirable as the cause for which its perpetrators claim they support.
Finally, I am angry… at the thought that the July 2006 war was fought over the bodies of two dead soldiers. That Israel waged a 34-day catastrophic war in which around 1400 people died, in an attempt to rescue two dead soldiers. It makes you wonder if this whole thing could have been avoided had the Israelis known that the soldiers were already dead. I know it’s simplistic, but it still does make you wonder…
Photo from Getty Images.

Memory Leak

From the Jerusalem Post:

"Hizbullah must be disarmed," she said. "We now have an opportunity to disarm Hizbullah, and we must not lose it...if we do not do it now, it will be much more difficult later on."

It's official. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's brain has a maximum learning memory capacity of 23 months-worth of history. Anything that was learned further in the past is discarded.

Moral Superiority

Amnon Meranda from YNet reports:

Just a short while after the bulldozer attack shocked Jerusalem, the Knesset approved in a preliminary reading two bills revoking the rights to citizenship from the families of terrorists.

Not much to say here except kudos once again to Israel for shining bright as "the only true democracy in the Middle East." Of course we would need to accommodate this by redefining the word "democracy" to include "mob-like forms of government that substitute vengeance for justice and disregard, when the need arises, basic human rights such as protection from arbitrary or collective punishment." But that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

See, the clever argument here is that, even though it's illegal and downright immoral, it's worth it if it might help save people's lives by preventing future terrorists from commiting acts of terror. Hmmm... Makes sense...

...

Hey, remember last time you tried something like this and went around demolishing homes of suicide bombers in an attempt to prevent future attacks? That totally worked, didn't it...

Blood Money

Ok, this is my first post on the blog and I'm already speechless...

Roni Lifshitz from YNet reports:
Israelis who have lost their dear ones or were injured during the Second Lebanon War have filed a lawsuit in the US against Lebanese banks who they claim had aided Hizbullah during the conflict. The amount of the claim is estimated at $100 million.

Wow... Why didn't Hezbollah think of that before? Imagine how much money they could have made by suing Israeli Banks along with Israeli taxpayers and the US Congress for knowingly providing financial support to the IDF in their killing of over 1000 Lebanese civilians and their intentional destruction of Lebanon's civilian infrastructure during the exact same time period.

I guess when people look at a world larger than their own through their extremely narrow perspective they end up behaving like idiots.

The scary thing though is that US courts aren’t famous for their sane decisions when it comes to these things. Not too long ago a US court “ordered Iran to pay 2.6 Billion Dollars in damages” to families of the 241 US marines killed in Beirut in 1983 in an attack commonly attributed to Hezbollah (AFP).

Ok, turns out I wasn't as speechless as I thought I was.

Update: According to Naharnet the a spokesperson from one of Lebanese banks involved denied being sued and said his bank hadn't received any notification of legal action... Hmmm... If that's true, it makes my first rant kind of pointless...