Elsewhere today (368)
Aljazeera:
Israeli troops seize Lebanese village
Saturday 22 July 2006, 18:18 Makka Time, 15:18 GMT
Hundreds of Israeli troops have crossed the border and taken control of a village in south Lebanon, despite Israel saying it has no plans for a full-scale invasion for now.
Israeli soldiers, backed by artillery and tank fire, moved into the village of Maroun al-Ras on Saturday and took control, military officials said on condition of anonymity.
Israeli tanks, bulldozers and armoured personnel carriers knocked down a border fence and entered the area at about 3pm.
Up to 2,000 troops entered the area on Saturday, but some returned to Israel during the day. No Israeli or Hezbollah casualties were immediately reported.
An Israeli army spokesman said his country's forces were making only limited incursions a few kilometres into south Lebanon.
"It will probably widen, but we are still looking at limited operations," he said. "We're not talking about massive forces going inside at this point."
Exodus
Lebanese security sources, speaking on condition of anonymity as well, said the Israeli military had made incursions of only a few hundred metres into Maroun al-Ras and another nearby village.
But an AP reporter on the Israeli side of the border saw the Israeli troops head into Maroun al-Ras and said they were battling Hezbollah fighters.
Thousands of Lebanese civilians have fled north fearing Israel will invade and expand on its 11-day-old bombardment which has already killed up to 362 people, the majority civilians.
Aljazeera learned that about 35,000 refugees had arrived in the city of Sidon alone.
Communications targets
Elsewhere Israel continued its offensive by hitting communications targets in Lebanon.
Three air raids on Saturday hit a relay station used by several Lebanese television stations and a mast of the Alfa mobile telephone network in Christian areas north of Beirut.
The bombing started a fire at facilities used by Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International. Sulaiman Shidiyaq, head of the station in Fatqa, was killed and another person was wounded.
Beirut also suffered a power cut, Aljazeera learned.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah fired at least 50 rockets into northern Israel on Saturday, hitting Carmiel, Kiriyat Shemona, Nahariya and smaller communities such as Bet Hilel, Mayan Baruch and Mashov Am. Five Israelis were wounded.
UN relief agencies have called for safe passage to take food and medical supplies to an estimated half million people who have fled their homes and Israel promised to ease humanitarian access.
Foreigners have fled the country in droves. Ships and aircraft worked through the night taking more people from Lebanon to Cyprus and Turkey.
Aljazeera + Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/34DB2F67-87F8-48E3-A463-2BC9219E0454.htm
allAfrica:
FG Panel Agrees to Halt Mass Sack
By Abdullahi M. Gulloma
Daily Trust (Abuja) NEWS
July 21, 2006
A federal government panel and workers' representatives yesterday reached an agreement for the government to halt the on-going sack of 33,000 employees and the workers to shelve their planned industrial action.
But the government delegation deferred signing the document until the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Alhaji Yayale Ahmed, approved the agreement. However, the national president of the Nigeria Civil Service Union, Comrade Fidelis Edeh, said that they are giving the government up to 9:00am today to sign the pact or the planned industrial action will go ahead.
The NCSU president warned that the trade unions would not tolerate any waste of time on the part of the federal government, saying both parties need to respect the agreement. He said union leaders will today meet with staff in the sector and brief them on the outcome of yesterday's meeting and that the decision of the workers on the matter would determine the nature of the industrial action.
Comrade Ed eh told Daily Trust that the fact that both the parties agreed on how to best maintain industrial peace and harmony in the sector made the meeting a success but that failure of government to honour its own part of the bargain will affect the progress made at the meeting. The trade unions had given the federal government a five-day ultimatum to halt the on-going sack of workers in the public sector or face an industrial action. The ultimatum expires today.
However, worried by the adverse effects of such industrial action, Yayale Ahmed, summoned a meeting of stakeholders to settle the issue amicably. While declaring open the meeting in Abuja, Ahmed assured the representatives of the unions that the issue would be adequately looked into. He said that over the last one year his office had intimated the unions with the current reform programmes of government especially as it concerned On the part of the unions, they had requested for the criteria for the right-sizing exercise whi ch we obliged and they also made recommendations to that effect," he said.
He, however, expressed regret that the turn up of event in the last few weeks had not gone down well with the union adding that the exercise was inevitable."My attempt in justifying the action of government is not because of over blotted civil service rather it is for an effective service that can meet up with the global demands," he said.
Copyright © 2006 Daily Trust. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
http://allafrica.com/stories/200607210958.html
Clarín/Revista Ñ:
La guerra civil de los escritores del mundo
HACE 70 AÑOS EN ESPAÑA
Fue tal vez el más pasional de los conflictos del siglo pasado. Casi toda la intelectualidad de Occidente tomó partido en la Guerra Civil española y se produjeron innumerables obras literarias y plásticas referidas a esa contienda. Hace 70 años, España cambió la lírica de grandes poetas como Neruda, Vallejo y Tuñón. Y convocó a Orwell, a Hemingway, a Dos Passos, a Malraux. Los ecos de aquel combate abrieron trincheras en la cultura argentina. Por ejemplo, separaron violentamente las aguas en la revista Sur. También, son un tema inagotable para historiadores.
JORGE FONDEBRIDER
22.07.2006
Hay un frecuente error de naturaleza eminentemente romántica que suele identificar a la izquierda política con el progresismo y a la derecha con el orden conservador. Bastaría con enumerar los gustos estéticos de Lenin y, sobre todo, de Stalin, confrontándolos con los de Rockefeller, para refutar ese equívoco. Ligada a ésta, hay otra falacia que consiste en ubicar las expresiones de la vanguardia artística en el bando progresista, creyendo que quienes no se identifican con la novedad, son meros conservadores, si no abiertamente retrógrados. Nuevamente, valdría la pena verificar cuál fue el credo político de T. S. Eliot y Ezra Pound o, en la vereda de enfrente, de los stalinistas Louis Aragon y Pablo Neruda, todos grandes vanguardistas, para comprobar el error. Dicho todo esto, podrá comprenderse que, leídos desde el presente, los años de la década de 1930 fueron en todo el mundo muy complejos y merecerían un análisis menos trivial y maniqueo que el que, llegada la hora de las efemérides, les corresponde.
Eric Hobsbawm, deteniéndose en los años previos al estallido de la Guerra Civil española, afirma en su famosa Historia del siglo XX que llama la atención que la mayoría de los intelectuales occidentales, de izquierda o derecha, se sintieran movilizados por lo que ocurría en España, un país periférico, ausente de todos los grandes cambios que, desde el siglo XIX, habían tenido lugar en Europa. Y agrega: "No es casual que la política interna de ese país peculiar y aislado se convirtiera en el símbolo de una lucha global en los años treinta. Encarnaba las cuestiones políticas fundamentales de la época: por un lado, la democracia y la revolución social, siendo España el único país de Europa donde ésta parecía a punto de estallar; por otro, la alianza de una contrarrevolución o reacción inspirada por una Iglesia Católica que rechazaba todo cuanto había ocurrido en el mundo desde Martín Lutero. Curiosamente, ni los partidos del comunismo moscovita ni los de inspiración fascista tenían una presencia importante en España antes de la guerra civil, ya que allí se daba una situación anómala, con predominio de los anarquistas de ultraizquierda y de los carlistas de ultraderecha".
Se supone que 10.000 franceses, 5.000 alemanes y austríacos, 5.000 polacos y ucranianos, 3.500 italianos, 2.800 estadounidenses, 1.500 yugoslavos, 1.500 checos, 1.000 húngaros, 1.000 escandinavos y mucha gente de otros países fue a pelear a España. También unos 2.000 británicos (entre los que se incluyen, claro, los irlandeses). Así, las presencias en las Brigadas Internacionales del francés André Malraux, de los alemanes Gustav Regler y Ludwing Renn, del húngaro Mata Zalka, del cubano Alejo Carpentier, como la simpatía de Ernest Hemingway o John Dos Passos —presentes en Madrid durante la guerra— y el apoyo de personalidades de la talla de Charles Chaplin, Clark Gable, Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis, Paul Robeson y Charles Laughton, entre muchísimos otros, demuestran las repercusiones de una guerra que, según unos versos del inglés W. H. Auden, ocurría "En ese árido cuadrado, en ese fragmento desgajado de la cálida/ Africa, tan toscamente unido a la ingeniosa Europa". Allá, en opinión de Auden —acaso el más notable exponente de la generación de poetas británicos de 1930—, "nuestros pensamientos tienen cuerpos".
El de Auden no fue un caso aislado dentro de su generación. En el prólogo de Poesía inglesa de la guerra española, una antología preparada por William Shand y Alberto Girri, publicada por El Ateneo en 1947, Guillermo de Torre escribió: "Los intelectuales ingleses se solidarizaron con España en todo sentido. Algunos dieron sus vidas como Ralph Fox, Julian Bell, Charles Donnelly, John Cornford; este último murió luchando en la Brigada Internacional al día siguiente de cumplir sus veintiún años. Pero no sólo los más jóvenes y nuevos, sino los que eran ya notorios en aquellas fechas, como Auden, (Stephen) Spender, (Cecil) Day Lewis, Herbert Read, (J.) Bronowsky y otros dejaron oír sus voces solidarias en poemas que rebasan el interés circunstancial y adquieren valor permanente". Así lo testimonian las varias antologías anteriores a la suya, que enumera Valentine Cunningham en las palabras preliminares a su Spanish Civil War Verse (Penguin Books, 1980): And Spain Sings: Fifty Loyalist Ballads, adapted by American Poets (1937), de M. J. Bernardete y Rolfe Humphries, que incluye versiones de Katherine Anne Porter y a Miguel Hernández traducido por William Carlos Williams; Poems for Spain (1939), de Stephen Spender y John Lehmann (1939); The Heart of Spain: Anthology of Fiction, Non Fiction and Poetry (1952), de Alvah Bessie; Poetry of the Thirties (1964), de Robin Skelton.
Respecto de las otras, la antología de Cunningham tiene varios puntos de interés. El primero, incluye muchos más nombres. Así, a los ya citados, suma a poetas distinguidos como George Orwell, Kathleen Raine, George Barker, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Laurie Lee, Ruthven Todd, Nancy Cunard y Roy Fuller. Los irlandeses Charles Donnelly —voluntario muerto en 1937 en la batalla del Jarama— y Louis MacNeice —quien a fines de diciembre de 1938, tal como señala su biógrafo Jon Stalworthty, recorrió en representación de los escritores ingleses una Barcelona incendiada en compañía de Antonio Machado— también ocupan un lugar destacado. Junto con el escocés Hugh MacDiarmid. Sorprende por la virulencia de sus opiniones el extraordinario poeta sudafricano Roy Campbell, claro simpatizante de Franco.
Además de los muy conocidos Antonio Machado, Rafael Alberti, Miguel Hernández y Manuel Altolaguirre, Valentine Cunningham incluye entre otros a Francis Fuentes, Antonio García Luque y Félix Paredes. La lista, con todo, podría ampliarse significativamente si se recurre al Romancero de la Guerra Civil española (Visor, 1984), de Gonzalo Santonja, quien añade a Vicente Aleixandre y José Bergamín entre los más notables. También si se considera a los poetas que debieron o eligieron refugiarse en el extranjero, como Juan Ramón Jiménez, Pedro Salinas, Luis Cernuda, León Felipe, Jorge Guillén. Hubo, sin duda más poetas españoles que tomaron la Guerra Civil como motivo de sus textos. Párrafo aparte merece Manuel Machado, hermano de Antonio, quien escribió en 1939, para festejar la entrada de Franco en Madrid, un panegírico en verso, titulado "Al sable del Caudillo". Menos virulentos, pero igualmente adictos al régimen, fueron José María Pemán y Dionisio Ridruejo, entre muchos otros reconocidos franquistas.
Morir en Madrid
En 1934, Pablo Neruda llegó a Madrid, transferido del consulado chileno de Buenos Aires. Aquí había conocido a Federico García Lorca y ambos se habían hecho amigos. Su vida madrileña le trajo muchas relaciones: Alberti, Hernández, Bergamín, Aleixandre, Gómez de la Serna, Salinas, Guillén y Altolaguirre, poeta e imprentero con quien Neruda hizo los cinco primeros números de la revista Caballo Verde. El sexto, según cuenta en sus memorias, quedó sin compaginar porque debía salir el aciago 18 de julio de 1936. "Un chileno simpático y aventurero —anota Neruda—, llamado Bobby Deglané, era empresario de catch-as-can en el gran circo Prince de Madrid. Le manifesté mis reservas sobre la seriedad de ese ''deporte'', y él me convenció de que fuera al circo, junto con García Lorca, a verificar la autenticidad del espectáculo. Convencí a Federico y quedamos en encontrarnos allí a una hora convenida. Pasaríamos el rato viendo las truculencias del Troglodita Enmascarado, del Estrangulador Abisino y del Orangután Siniestro. Federico faltó a la cita. Ya iba camino de su muerte. Ya nunca más nos vimos. Su cita era con otros estranguladores. Y de ese modo la guerra de España, que cambió mi poesía, comenzó para mí con la desaparición de un poeta".
La versión de Raúl González Tuñón (que con Neruda es el otro latinoamericano incluido en la antología de Cunningham, traducido por el gran etnomusicólogo inglés A. L. Lloyd, miembro del PC británico y también presente en España) es diferente. Cuenta que la última vez que vio a Lorca fue en Barcelona: "Ese mediodía fuimos a almorzar al restaurante Los Caracoles. No íbamos a volver a verlo. ¡Federico García Lorca! Se ha sabido después que a comienzos de julio de 1936, cuando Madrid se agitaba y había sido muerto un guardia de asalto republicano, Federico le dijo a Neruda, todavía cónsul en Madrid, cargo que ocupó hasta el levantamiento de Franco, pues fue relevado del mismo por adherir públicamente a la causa del pueblo español: ''Me voy a Granada en busca de tranquilidad, para escribir en paz una obra que he comenzado''. Y fue otra la paz que allá le esperaba.".
Al chileno y al argentino, la guerra les dejaría sendos libros. Neruda escribió España en el corazón, publicado por primera vez por Manuel Altolaguirre, quien había instalado una imprenta en el frente del Este, cerca de Gerona, con la ayuda de los soldados republicanos. "Mi libro era el orgullo de esos hombres que habían trabajado mi poesía en un desafío a la muerte —escribe Neruda, con su habitual falta de modestia—. Supe que muchos habían preferido acarrear sacos con los ejemplares impresos antes que sus propios alimentos y ropas. Con los sacos al hombro emprendieron la larga marcha hacia Francia. La inmensa columna que caminaba rumbo al destierro fue bombardeada cientos de veces. Cayeron muchos soldados y se desparramaron los libros en la carretera. Otros continuaron la inacabable huida. Más allá de la frontera trataron brutalmente a los españoles que llegaban al exilio. En una hoguera fueron inmolados los últimos ejemplares de aquel libro ardiente que nació y murió en plena batalla".
Tuñón, en cambio, publicará La rosa blindada en Buenos Aires, gracias a la Federación Gráfica Bonaerense, en 1936. En el prólogo a la segunda edición, de 1962, él mismo se ocupa de explicar cómo fue que lo escribió: "Pasamos en Madrid casi todo el año 1935. Allí, un día, nos presentaron a Dolores Ibárruri, dirigente de Pro Infancia, entidad encargada de organizar la ayuda a los huérfanos de los mineros masacrados por las tropas moras y el Tercio Extranjero, por los ''galápagos de pellejo duro que no se ruborizan''. Ella nos puso al tanto de algunos hechos que habíamos conocido a través de cables escuetos y detalles de otros que ignorábamos, relacionados con el heroísmo y el martirio de los mineros asturianos". Entre los poemas que surgieron de esas informaciones estaba "La Libertaria", escrito a la memoria de Aída Lafuente. Años más tarde, Tuñón le contaría a Horacio Salas: "En plena guerra civil, a un centenar de escritores y periodistas de muchas partes del mundo nos invitaron al acto que iba a realizarse en un teatro, sobre la base de un muy variado espectáculo. Al final, un coro cantó mi poema ''La Libertaria'', y como te imaginarás, me causó una impresión enorme. En seguida marché hacia el escenario, porque no habían dado el nombre del autor de la letra y pensaba decirles que era yo. Estaba orgulloso, claro. Pero algo me iluminó, pues me limité a preguntar: ¿De quién es la letra de ''La Libertaria''?. Me contestaron: ''No lo conocemos, es un autor anónimo''. ¡Autor anónimo! ¡Qué te parece! Me encantó que lo pensaran y yo casi la embarro: ¡autor anónimo a los 32 años!".
Aparta ese cáliz
Otros poetas latinoamericanos escribieron sobre la Guerra Civil. Varios de ellos publicaron sus textos en 1937, el año en que fue bombardeado el pueblo de Guernica. Octavio Paz, por ejemplo, publicó en México su "Elegía", luego incluida en Libertad bajo palabra, de 1945. El cubano Nicolás Guillén publicó ese mismo año su Poema en cuatro angustias y una esperanza.
Más importante, sin duda, fue la obra que la guerra le inspiró al peruano César Vallejo. Había llegado a París en 1923, donde vivió y murió en la más extrema pobreza. Desde allí colaboraba para el diario El Comercio y para las revistas Variedades y Mundial. En 1926, con Juan Larrea, editó la revista Favorables. En 1930 fue expulsado de Francia por su militancia política. Emigrado a España, al cabo de dos años volvió a París. Pero llegó la guerra y en 1936 regresó a España, donde un año más tarde los soldados del ejército republicano del Este publicaron los quince poemas que componen España, aparta de mí ese cáliz. A la caída de Barcelona, el libro fue destruido y sólo se haría conocido en la edición mexicana de 1940.
Se trata, probablemente, de algunos de los mejores textos escritos en castellano sobre la Guerra Civil española. En esos textos el autor de Trilce (1922), logró poner muchos de sus extraordinarios descubrimientos prosódicos al servicio de algunas de sus mayores obsesiones: el amor fraterno, la libertad, la reivindicación de la justicia y los derechos humanos, la conciencia del dolor ajeno, temas que, con extrema ligereza, la posmodernidad suele caracterizar como ingenuos.
Copyright 1996-2006 Clarín.com - All rights reserved
http://www.clarin.com/suplementos/cultura/2006/07/22/u-01237847.htm
Clarín/Revista Ñ:
La guerra y el exilio fructífero
POR RODOLFO ALONSO, POETA
22.07.2006
Generada por la espontánea y ejemplar resistencia del pueblo republicano contra el alzamiento militar franquista, la Guerra Civil española constituyó un hecho legítimamente legendario. Considerada la última guerra de hombres, antes de que la tecnología bélica alcanzara definitivamente el predominio, fue también la primera batalla de la democracia contra el fascismo, que de inmediato iba a sumergir a Europa en la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Y fue asimismo una auténtica cruz de la historia, que decidió mucho más que apenas el destino de uno de los bandos.
Dentro de esas peculiares circunstancias, el decidido y casi unánime alineamiento de una más que brillante generación de escritores, artistas e intelectuales en defensa de la legalidad republicana fue otro signo relevante, también de favorable alcance universal. Que no pocos de ellos hayan pagado con su vida y muchos más con el exilio aquella digna decisión, no dejó de agregar buena leña al gran fuego. Y allí también aparecía la poesía, de boca en boca, hecha canción y gesto, fraternidad en acto, dignidad compartida, evidencia viva, mezclando la belleza con la rebeldía y la solidaridad. Y con los propios poetas vueltos héroes o mártires. Que lo digan si no el sacrificado García Lorca, tronchado en mitad del camino de su vida, o Antonio Machado agonizando desterrado, en Collioure.
Sin duda para la relativa indiferencia posmoderna resultaría hoy inimaginable. Pero las pasiones que encendió esa gesta, marcada a fuego en la conciencia de muchas generaciones, continuaron vigentes durante décadas y en todo el planeta. Es que la instintiva resistencia de los humildes y heroicos milicianos contra una de las primeras agresiones del fascismo europeo (ya que junto con Franco asolaron a España Mussolini y Hitler), y la concomitante ilusión de estar construyendo un mundo mejor (que parecía al alcance de la mano), asociadas con las originales y emocionantes características del caso, convirtieron a ese acontecimiento no sólo en memorable sino directamente en mitológico.
Y, por si fuera poco, se trata además de una historia que continúa entre nosotros. Porque si hacía ya tiempo que estábamos recibiendo oleadas de inmigrantes, a partir de la injusta derrota republicana veríamos llegar otra clase de viajeros: los exiliados. Eran poetas, artistas, políticos, periodistas, científicos, universitarios, sindicalistas, docentes, editores. Que convertirían a Buenos Aires en la capital de la democracia española. ¿Cómo explicar si no que las principales editoriales de nuestra época de oro (Losada, Sudamericana, Emecé, Rueda), cuando eran argentinas las mejores traducciones al castellano, fueran fundadas por republicanos exiliados?
Copyright 1996-2006 Clarín.com - All rights reserved
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Clarín/Revista Ñ:
Trincheras enfrentadas en la revista Sur
Hasta 1936, yrigoyenistas como Borges y nacionalistas que habían apoyado el golpe de Estado contra el presidente radical convivían en la revista de Victoria Ocampo. Pero así como rompió amistades y matrimonios, la Guerra Civil española dividió irreconciliablemente a los escritores que formaban parte de aquel proyecto central de la cultura argentina.
Clarín.com, 22.07.2006
La Guerra Civil española dividió a la sociedad argentina, en algunos casos de manera irreparable, porque dio lugar a rupturas de amigos y familiares y hasta divorcios, en una época en que la ley argentina no lo permitía. La división entre los intelectuales también acabó con la camaradería literaria de escritores que en muchos casos habían soportado, sin romper los vínculos de amistad, la crisis política desatada por el golpe militar del 6 de setiembre de 1930. Cuando fue derrocado el presidente Hipólito Yrigoyen, algunos intelectuales que en 1928 habían firmado manifiestos de apoyo a su reelección, mantuvieron su posición. Ese fue el caso de Jorge Luis Borges, quien en noviembre de 1934 escribió un cálido prólogo para el libro del yrigoyenista Arturo Jauretche, El Paso de los Libres, una conmovedora exaltación en verso de uno de los primeros episodios de lucha armada protagonizada por civiles radicales en el siglo veinte.
El estallido de la guerra, sin embargo, profundizó la división y llegó hasta la revista Sur, cuya directora, Victoria Ocampo, había procurado mantenerse al margen de la política ordinaria de su tiempo. El primer número de la revista, datado en el "Verano de 1931", estaba tan cerca del golpe militar de la "Primavera de 1930" del general Uriburu, que no faltó la asociación de ambos acontecimientos en los cenáculos de la izquierda literaria.
Victoria Ocampo había buscado tomar distancia de la política argentina de ese momento y el hecho de que el comité de redacción de Sur, compuesto por importantes intelectuales, contara con mayoría de extranjeros (solamente 7 argentinos, incluyendo a la directora, sobre un total de 15) puede tomarse como un ejemplo de ese esfuerzo. Es menos conocida la continuada presencia de intelectuales nacionalistas en las páginas de Sur en el período que va desde la fundación de la revista hasta la guerra de España. La mayoría de los escritores nacionalistas que colaboraron con la revista Sur, a diferencia de Borges, simpatizaba con el régimen militar de Uriburu aunque en 1936, cuando estalló la Guerra Civil española ya eran enemigos declarados de su sucesor, el general Agustín P. Justo.
Los intelectuales nacionalistas que en el verano de 1931 encontraron espacio en Sur para sus ideas fueron el historiador Julio Irazusta, el jesuita Leonardo Castellani, los poetas Leopoldo Marechal, Ignacio B. Anzoátegui y Lizardo Zía, los ensayistas Ramón Doll y Ernesto Palacio, el filósofo Carlos Astrada y el narrador Homero M. Guglielmini.
La irradiación de este grupo se hizo sentir no sólo en la revista, sino también en el programa editorial de libros que aparecieron con el mismo sello. Marechal publicó Laberinto de amor en 1935 y en 1936 tradujo del francés a André Gide. Ese mismo año entraron en el programa de Sur obras donde los mismos autores incorporaron libros propios o tradujeron a otros de su preferencia. Irazusta publicó su ensayo "Actores y espectadores" y tradujo del inglés a Aldous Huxley, y Ernesto Palacio también tradujo un extenso panfleto antisoviético de André Gide, un texto de Jacques Maritain sobre la Guerra Santa y el famoso "Mea Culpa" de Celine, el novelista de moda que había girado hacia el fascismo. Todos estos títulos, contratados en 1935 y 1936, aparecieron en 1937.
La división de las aguas fue precipitada por un violento incidente entre Victoria Ocampo y el poeta español José Bergamín, enrolado en el bando republicano, quien había colaborado con la revista en la edición de enero de 1937, apenas encendida la guerra. El ensayo de Bergamín "La máscara de la sangre", fue precedido por una nota del autor donde éste afirmaba que "hoy debo mi palabra, para cumplirla por la sangre, a mi pueblo, que es quien me la dio. Y para cumplirla, lucho con mi pueblo, por su libertad, por su independencia invencible, hoy tan bárbaramente atacada, ultrajada por la mentira y por la muerte."
La publicación de Bergamín fue seguida por el duro intercambio con Victoria Ocampo. El 10 de mayo de 1937 Bergamín difundió en Buenos Aires una carta abierta a la directora de Sur fechada en Madrid. Le reprocha haber dado hospitalidad al famoso médico y escritor Gregorio Marañón "médico o curandero de su deshonra", dice el poeta, quien agrega: "Usted, con su equivocada y equívoca protección se hace cómplice suyo y enemigo nuestro". Para el apasionado Bergamín, el liberal Marañón se había pasado lisa y llanamente al franquismo. Victoria Ocampo respondió desde los diarios, a la que calificó como "carta insólita", y desde su revista con una emocionada exposición del incidente desde su punto de vista. La carta abierta a Bergamín comienza con este párrafo: "Comprendo su carta, José Bergamín, pero al comprenderla dejo de comprenderlo a usted, porque se desvanece la imagen que de usted tenía. Por eso quisiera no comprenderla, del mismo modo que quisiera usted no comprender el gesto que, ante sus ojos, me envilece". El doloroso intercambio se produjo en el preciso momento en que el grupo de Victoria Ocampo estaba registrando los primeros aunque rápidos efectos de la guerra en la propia redacción, y los escritores nacionalistas se aprestaban a abandonarla. Casi enseguida después del levantamiento de Franco en Marruecos, la misma Victoria había trazado la raya. Fue el manifiesto de 34 escritores a favor de la República, donde, junto a la directora de Sur, figuran otros cuatro miembros del comité editorial de la revista: Borges, María Rosa Oliver, Eduardo Mallea y el intelectual dominicano Pedro Henriquez Ureña.
La guerra de España libró su propia batalla en la Argentina y una temible secuela se prolongó en los años siguientes, gravitando sobre vidas y conductas y reflejando en la política nacional los odios y rencores de aquella tragedia. En esos días, Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz y Arturo Jauretche habían redactado juntos una declaración del grupo FORJA, donde, contrariando la tendencia de la sociedad a formar filas con los bandos de España, se atrevieron a calificar como "ajena a la circunstancia nacional" la motivación de la guerra y vaticinaron que iba a producirse una polarización ideológica nefasta entre los argentinos. FORJA recomendaba entonces no olvidar que el objetivo principal era luchar contra el imperialismo británico, pero a la misma hora republicanos y franquistas ya se enfrentaban a golpes en la Avenida de Mayo.
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Harper’s Magazine:
Six Questions on Lebanon for Augustus Richard Norton
By Ken Silverstein
Posted on Wednesday, July 19, 2006.
This morning I spoke with Augustus Richard Norton, a professor of anthropology and international relations at Boston University. Prior to joining the faculty at Boston University, Norton was a career Army infantry officer: his service included a dozen years on the West Point faculty, two years in combat in Vietnam (1968-71), mostly with airborne units, and fourteen months as a military observer in southern Lebanon (1980-81). He retired in 1993 as a Colonel and as Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Military Academy. He has written on Lebanon for a quarter century and much of his work has focused on Shiite political movements, including Hezbollah.
1. Why did Hezbollah snatch the Israeli prisoners last week?
This was a well-planned operation that took months of preparation. A similar operation failed earlier this year. Hezbollah was tactically very smart, but strategically they were taking a real gamble. The goal was to win the release of [three] Lebanese prisoners being held in Israeli prisons, and probably to bolster Hezbollah’s image and take advantage of Israel’s preoccupation with Gaza. I believe Hezbollah acted autonomously. This was not an Iranian decision to distract attention from its nuclear program. Iran and Hezbollah are organically connected and share a worldview but [Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan] Nasrallah convinced himself that he had a deterrent structure in place that would prevent this type of Israeli response. It was a monumental mistake.
2. Why did Israel react to the incident in this fashion?
I don’t buy the notion that [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert is trying to improve his resume, that he was feeling insecure in the shadow of Ariel Sharon. This is part of a deep strategy by the Israeli defense establishment to hit at Iran indirectly and to make it easier for Israel to strike against Iran’s nuclear program later if it chooses to do so. Hezbollah and its arsenal of rockets was an impediment to that.
3. Was Israel’s reaction excessive?
It seems to me that Israel could have taken the high ground by working through the UN and taking limited military action. What’s going on now is grossly excessive. We’re one week into this and the death toll in Lebanon is approaching 250, mostly civilians, and the Lebanese government estimates close to $2 billion in damage to infrastructure. They are attacking what is needed for normal life in Lebanon. I’ve been talking to people in Lebanon and it appears that Israel has established a killing box in south Lebanon, what the U.S. called a “free fire zone” in Vietnam. You establish a zone, which you dominate from the air, and force out civilians—there are already hundreds of thousands of Lebanese who have been displaced. Then you presume anything still moving in that zone is the enemy. This is a recipe for lots of hapless civilians dying, as happened a few days ago when 16 southern Lebanese villagers were killed in automobiles while adhering to Israel’s order to flee their homes.
4. What is the likely outcome of all this?
The key question is time. Israel has signaled that it wants a week or maybe two to operate. Will the U.S. and the international community give them the time they want? If so, Hezbollah will be significantly degraded, though it won’t disappear. Totally disarming Hezbollah is a fool's errand. It’s too easy to hide weapons and there’s too great an incentive to keep them. Hezbollah is facing an interesting dilemma. The more it uses the rockets the more it creates a rationale to keep the time period open. Inside Lebanon there is going to be a readjustment of politics. Hezbollah will be diminished in stature, it won't be able to maintain its privileged position after what has happened.
5. What’s the likely fallout for Israel?
Israel has made a profound mistake. It may have bought time in terms of the threat on its northern border but history has shown that its vainglorious attempts to consolidate hegemony over its neighbors usually provoke the emergence of even fiercer adversaries. In the Middle East, it will face an even greater amount of hatred and rejection than it already does.
6. What accounts for the passivity of the Bush Administration in regard to Israel’s actions?
I’ve been studying American foreign policy in the Middle East for 34 years and I can’t recall any U.S. president who has subordinated American interests to Israeli interests like this one. The administration is being naïve about how this is going to reverberate elsewhere, in places like Iraq. Israel is primarily targeting Shiite Muslims and that’s going to fuel the sectarianism that is feeding the civil war in Iraq. We have other concerns we should be looking out for—but George Bush apparently feels that American interests and Israeli interests coincide, so we have a no-show foreign policy.
This is Six Questions on Lebanon for Augustus Richard Norton by Ken Silverstein, published Wednesday, July 19, 2006. It is part of Washington Babylon, which is part of Harpers.org.
Written By
Silverstein, Ken
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il manifesto:
Le vere vittime sono i palestinesi
L'ultimo capitolo del conflitto fra Israele e Palestina è iniziato quando le forze Israeliane hanno rapito due civili, un dottore e suo fratello, a Gaza. Un incidente per lo più ignorato dai media, ad eccezione della stampa turca.
Il giorno seguente, i palestinesi hanno fatto prigioniero un soldato israeliano e proposto un negoziato per scambiare i prigionieri - ci sono circa 10.000 prigionieri palestinesi nelle carceri israeliane.
Che questo «rapimento» sia stato considerato oltraggioso, mentre l'occupazione militare illegale della Cisgiordiana da parte di Israele e l'esproprio sistematico di tutte le sue risorse - in particolare l' acqua - venga considerato spiacevole ma inevitabile è un tipico esempio del doppio standard continuamente impiegato dall'Occidente rispetto a ciò che viene fatto contro ai palestinesi, sulla terra promessa loro dai vari accordi internazionale da settant'anni a questa parte.
Oggi ad oltraggio segue oltraggio: missili artiginali incrociano missili più sofisticati. Questi ultimi in genere cercano il loro obiettivo proprio dove di ammassa la gente più diseredata , ancora in attesa di ciò che un tempo veniva definita giustizia. Entrambe le categorie di missili fanno a pezzi i corpi in maniera orribile. E chi, tranne i comandanti sul campo, può scordarsene anche solo un momento?
Le provocazioni e le controprovocazioni vengono ogni volta contestate o acclamate. Ma tutti gli argomenti a posteriori, accuse e promesse, finiscono col fungere da diversivo per allontanare l'attenzione del mondo da una lunga pratica militare, economica e politica il cui fine non è nient'altro che la liquidazione della nazione palestinese.
Tutto ciò deve essere ribadito chiaramente perché questa pratica, benché spesso dissimulata o nascosta, ultimamente sta andando avanti sempre più rapida. E, secondo noi, va incessantemente ed eternamente riconosciuta e contrastata per quello che è.
John Berger, Noam Chomsky, Harold Pinter, José Saramago
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/21-Luglio-2006/art40.html
Internazionale:
Reporter fortunati
David Randall
Internazionale 650, 13 luglio 2006
Sogniamo che un gruppo di uomini armati faccia irruzione nel teatro in cui ci troviamo
Qualunque giornalista degno di questo nome coltiva certe fantasie. Ma diversamente dalle fantasie delle persone normali, le nostre non consistono nel sognare che un attore o un'attrice famosi un bel giorno suonino alla porta di casa per proporci un weekend di travolgente passione.
No. Le nostre piccole fantasie sono molto più malsane di queste: sogniamo di scoprire che un foglio di carta che svolazza per strada al nostro passaggio sia in realtà un documento top secret del governo; che un gruppo di uomini armati faccia irruzione nel teatro in cui ci troviamo; oppure che, mentre camminiamo lungo una scogliera, una nave faccia naufragio sotto i nostri occhi.
Il tema comune di tutti questi sogni a occhi aperti (e di altri ancora più perversi) è il desiderio di trovarci al centro di una Grande Notizia mentre facciamo la nostra vita di tutti i giorni.
Il bello di ogni fantasia, suppongo, è che anche se quel tipo di situazione non si verifica quasi mai, succede abbastanza spesso da alimentare la sciocca convinzione che possa capitare proprio a noi. E nel caso dei giornalisti, ci sono abbastanza esempi perché valga la pena di fantasticare.
Qualche anno fa c'è stato il bizzarro caso del reporter norvegese Lars Gustavsen, inviato dal suo giornale a indagare su un inseguimento della polizia. Mentre stava andando sul posto, Gustavsen ha fatto salire un autostoppista e ha chiacchierato con lui per una decina di minuti prima di essere fermato a un posto di controllo, dove l'autostoppista è stato immediatamente arrestato. Era proprio lui l'uomo che la polizia stava cercando. A quel punto, imbarazzo a parte, il giornalista aveva una bella storia da raccontare.
Poi c'è stato il caso di William G. Shepherd, un reporter della United Press, che si trovava per caso a passeggiare a Washington Square, a New York, il 25 marzo 1911, quando vide una nuvola di fumo che si alzava da un palazzo. L'edificio apparteneva alla Triangle shirtwaist company, e quel tragico incendio sarebbe diventato famoso anche grazie ai racconti di Shepherd di giovani donne impiegate ai piani superiori che all'arrivo delle fiamme saltarono giù dalle finestre.
"Ho imparato un nuovo suono, un suono così orribile da sfidare qualsiasi descrizione", scrisse Shepherd. "È il tonfo di un corpo umano che precipita a grande velocità su un marciapiede di pietra. Tonfo-morto, tonfo-morto, tonfo-morto, tonfo-morto. Per sessantadue volte. C'era tutto il tempo di vederli cadere. L'edificio era alto 25 metri".
Ma forse il migliore esempio di un giornalista che si è trovato al posto giusto quando si è verificato un evento importante è quello di Lawrence Gobright dell'Associated Press. La sera del 14 aprile 1865 si era fermato a lavorare fino a tardi nel suo ufficio di Washington, quando un amico che si trovava al vicino Ford's theater si precipitò da lui per dirgli che avevano sparato al presidente Lincoln. Gobright scrisse un lancio e raggiunse di corsa il teatro.
C'era ancora grande confusione e così riuscì a entrare nel palco presidenziale, a esaminare la macchia di sangue sullo schienale della sedia a dondolo di Lincoln, a vedere la bandiera strappata dagli speroni dell'assassino mentre saltava giù dal palco e perfino a raccogliere l'arma che l'uomo aveva lasciato cadere nella fuga.
E poi c'è stato il caso di Alistair Cooke della Bbc, che si trovava nel punto migliore dell'hotel Ambassador di Los Angeles quando spararono al senatore Robert Kennedy.
Tutti questi reporter si possono definire fortunati, ma i più "fortunati" sono di solito quelli che si danno più da fare. Me l'ha ricordato qualche giorno fa una giovane giornalista britannica chiamata Ruth Lumley.
Un giorno stava viaggiando in treno quando ha notato una piccola scritta sulla porta della toilette: "Cercasi bambine dagli 8 ai 13 anni a scopo di sesso". C'era anche un numero di telefono. Probabilmente era solo uno scherzo di pessimo gusto ma, essendo una brava giornalista, Lumley ha deciso di indagare. Fingendo di essere una bambina di 11 anni, ha mandato un sms al numero scritto sulla porta, ricevendo come risposta una serie di messaggi osceni. A quel punto ha deciso di contattare la polizia. Ci sono stati degli arresti e quattro uomini sono stati condannati per reati sessuali. Ruth, invece, aveva un buon articolo da scrivere.
Purtroppo, le possibilità che un giornalista si imbatta in situazioni come queste diminuiscono con il passare del tempo. I tagli ai bilanci dei giornali fanno sì che, con poche eccezioni, i reporter non passino più la giornata in strada, ma chiusi in un ufficio; per fare le loro indagini usano il telefono, la posta elettronica o Google.
È un vero peccato. Neanche il più ottimista dei reporter potrebbe fantasticare di imbattersi nella Grande Notizia seduto in quello che, almeno per quanto riguarda il contatto con la vita reale, è poco più che un call center.
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L’Unità: Immigrazione, il Governo riapre i flussi:
permesso per 350mila lavoratori
«Questo decreto flussi ha un carattere semplice: prende atto della realtà e colma il gap tra le domande arrivate e quelle accettate» spiega il ministro della solidarietà sociale Paolo Ferrero presentando il provvedimento varato in Consiglio dei ministri che riapre le quote di ingresso per 350mila extracomunitari.
E i calcoli sono presto fatti. Su 520mila domande di regolarizzazione presentate dai datori di lavoro lo scorso marzo il governo Berlusconi, grazie alla legge Bossi-Fini, ne aveva accolte solo 170mila. Restavano quindi 350mila persone che avevano tutti i requisiti per ottenere il permesso di soggiorno ma che potevano in qualsiasi momento essere arrestate perché clandestine. La situazione ereditata dal governo precedente, sottolinea Ferrero, «condannava almeno 350.000 persone a lavorare in nero con relativa perdita di gettito per lo stato e il rischio per queste persone di finire in carcere». Senza contare il fatto che, tra contributi previdenziali e fisco, le nuove regolarizzazioni porteranno nelle casse dello Stato «un miliardo o un miliardo e mezzo di euro».
«Capii che la legge esistente andava cambiata – rilancia il minstro dell´Interno Giuliano Amato - quando vidi la fila di immigrati alle poste per presentare la domanda. Se la legge avesse funzionato, alle poste non ci dovevano andare gli immigrati, ma i datori di lavoro che chiedevano l'assunzione di una persona all'estero. Siamo di fronte ad una legge irrealistica ed ipocrita».
La regolarizzazione di altri 350mila lavoratori migranti è comunque solo un primo passo del governo sulla questione immigrazione. Sia Ferrero che il ministro dell´Interno Amato hanno ribadito l´intenzione di modificare,la legislazione che regola l'immigrazione in Italia: la Bossi-Fini e anche la legge sulla cittadinanza. L'obiettivo del governo è andare al decreto flussi 2007 sulle quote di ingressi di immigrati regolari in italia con «norme completamente nuove»: «La mia opinione- ha dichiarato Ferrero- è arrivare al superamento della Bossi-Fini in autunno, in modo da varare il decreto flussi per l'anno prossimo con norme completamente diverse».
Positivi i primi commenti delle organizzazioni che si occupano di migranti in Italia. «Il nuovo decreto flussi crea un clima di collaborazione e mostra che il governo è attento al fenomeno dell'immigrazione» sottolinea Oliviero Forti, responsabile immigrazione della Caritas italiana.
Pubblicato il 21.07.06
© l'Unità.
http://www.unita.it/view.asp?IDcontent=58285
Mother Jones:
The Lebanon Blitz
Israel is a nation that stands for moral rectitude. But how can it win people over when it uses means that make a mockery of those very principles?
Alvaro Vargas Llosa
July 21 , 2006
Article created by The Independent Institute.
WASHINGTON—Israel's pursuit of Hezbollah in Lebanon is a mistake. It is unwittingly targeting the best hope of civilized life in the Middle East (outside of Israel itself) and creating the kind of moral and institutional vacuum that engenders sectarian violence.
As I traveled in Lebanon two weeks ago, four things struck me: the almost miraculous reconstruction of Beirut; the free-thinking cosmopolitanism of its middle class; the spirit of peaceful coexistence among the various religious groups, thanks in part to the open-mindedness of much of the Sunni population; and the resentment against Hezbollah among Christians (who comprise more than 35 percent of the population) and Muslims almost everywhere except the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon.
Compared to any other Arab country, Lebanon was the closest thing to paradise. Yes, Hezbollah's mighty presence was obvious as I drove around Baalbek, in the east, and from Tyre to the border with Israel in the south, where the Shiite population is concentrated. The yellow Hezbollah banners, pictures of Hasan Nasrallah's bearded face or of the late Ayatollah Khomeini indicated whose bastion I was in. And I heard Walid Jumblatt, one of the leaders responsible for forcing Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon and a pillar of the parliamentary majority, express frustration with Hezbollah's influence in the nation's politics.
But Lebanon was obviously making progress. Its legendary entrepreneurial drive was back. Even with an economy not fully recovered from a civil war that reduced the country's GDP by half, one sensed a spirit of optimism. People were planning all sorts of personal projects—an unmistakable sign of civil society, whether it be opening new bars on Beirut's Monot Street or, as Nada, an assistant working at a cultural institute, had just done, persuading a publisher to start an imprint devoted to translations of Spain's modern literature.
All of this progress has now been reduced to rubble. The infrastructure that took billions of dollars to rebuild is being pulverized. The institutions that managed to hold the internal peace are being blown away. The confident embrace of the outside world is dissipating. An atmosphere is now emerging in which civil society will shrink and extremists will thrive, as happened between 1975 and 1990. The country will now be hostage to the ideological and personal designs of power-hungry leaders. (As I write these words, I get an e-mail from Nada: “... We are trapped. If Israel stops, the threat of this happening again will hang over us forever because Hezbollah is still strong. If they don't, we will be paying too high a price. ... They have just bombed Byblos (a city in northern Lebanon) ... this is hell, we are running out of fuel!”)
It is true that Lebanon in transition had many problems, including the political survival of many leaders who fought the war, a power-sharing arrangement entirely based on religious grounds and, especially, the incapacity of the political institutions to disarm Hezbollah. But Israel's reprisals are not making that right. They are punishing a moderately successful attempt at religious diversity in a climate of peaceful coexistence and modernization in the Arab world.
Hezbollah is in part a creature of Israel's presence in Lebanon from 1982 until 2000. Unlike the civil society that is being bombed, Hezbollah is trained in guerrilla fighting. And if things continue as they are, these terrorists will now be handed a failed state in which they will make themselves the only operative Lebanese force.
Few things can be more legitimate than defending oneself against the attacks of an organization such as Hezbollah, whose cowardly rockets are aimed at terrorizing the whole of the Galilee hills area in Israel, whose allies—Iran and Syria—are two of the worst human-right offenders in the history of mankind, and whose ideology is simply barbaric. But Israel's response places collective guilt on an entire society for the atrocities of a minority of which that society is itself the victim.
Gideon Levy, an Israeli commentator, put it like this in an article published in Haaretz: “Eight soldiers are killed and two abducted to Lebanon? All of Lebanon will pay. ... The (army) absorbed two painful blows, which were particularly humiliating, and in their wake went into a war that is all about restoring its lost dignity, which on our side is called 'restoring deterrent capabilities.’”
It is hard to see how a nation that stands for moral rectitude and civilization can win people over to its struggle for security by using means that tarnish that very objective.
Alvaro Vargas Llosa is a Senior Fellow and director of The Center on Global Prosperity at the Independent Institute. He is the author of Liberty for Latin America.
This article has been made possible by the Foundation for National Progress, the Investigative Fund of Mother Jones, and gifts from generous readers like you.
© 2006 The Foundation for National Progress
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2006/07/lebanon_blitz.html
Página/12:
El ejército israelí prepara una invasión
NO CONSIGUE QUEBRAR LAS DEFENSAS DE HEZBOLA CON BOMBAS Y GRUPOS COMANDO
Israel amontona tropas en la frontera con el Líbano y convoca a reservistas. Sus líderes militares dan a entender que una ofensiva terrestre es inminente, pero nadie se olvida del desastroso resultado de la última incursión, en 1982. Mientras tanto cayeron más cohetes en Haifa, que hirieron seriamente a dos personas.
Por Donald Macintyre*
Desde Haifa, Sábado, 22 de Julio de 2006
Israel movilizó ayer a 3000 reservistas mientras se preparaba para una invasión terrestre a gran escala del sur del Líbano, después de aceptar que su objetivo de “inutilizar” a Hezbolá no se había logrado con sólo masivos ataques aéreos y operaciones terrestres de grupos comando. Israel está tratando de establecer una zona “estéril” de 1,5 kilómetro en el lado libanés de su frontera del norte, frente a lo que el ejército reconoce ha sido una efectiva y bien preparada resistencia de las fuerzas de Hezbolá, que le costó la vida a seis tropas terrestres de elite israelíes en las últimas 48 horas.
Después de un período de relativa calma en cuanto a ataques de misiles, dos personas fueron malheridas por un Katyusha que impactó en una oficina de correos cerrada en el centro de Haifa, uno de los 10 que fueron lanzados hacia la ciudad durante el día y subrayaron la capacidad de Hezbolá para atacar bien al norte de Israel, a pesar de nueve días de bombardeos y bloqueo en el Líbano.
Las tropas reservistas –que probablemente se usen en Cisjordania para liberar a más unidades de combate para llevarlas a la frontera del Líbano– fueron reclutadas mientras los aviones israelíes lanzaban panfletos sobre el sur del Líbano advirtiendo a los civiles que abandonaran los pueblos fronterizos y se dirigieran a áreas al norte del río Litani, a unos 20 kilómetros de la frontera. El área al sur del río normalmente está habitada por unas 300.000 personas, la mayoría de chiítas musulmanes.
En lo que podría resultar la única oportunidad diplomática para evitar otra escalada militar, se espera la llegada el fin de semana a la región de la secretaria de Estado de Estados Unidos, Condoleezza Rica, para mantener conversaciones. Un importante funcionario de las Fuerzas de Defensa de Israel (FDI), el brigadier general Alon Friedman, del comando del Norte, dijo a AFP que las tropas que ya están en la frontera son una punta de lanza que permitiría, si fuera necesario, una operación terrestre a “gran escala”. Los funcionarios israelíes insisten en que es necesaria una gran debilidad de Hezbolá como precondición para lograr un acuerdo de cese del fuego. Para eso, es necesario que pueda cumplirse el compromiso internacional de desarmarlo –expresado en las resoluciones del Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU– para ser implementado por el ejército libanés o una nueva fuerza multinacional. El brigadier Ido Yehushtan, jefe de política y planeamiento del FDI, dijo aquí ayer que el objetivo de Israel era “inutilizar significativamente” las capacidades militares de Hezbolá, pero dijo que cumplir con la tarea “llevaría tiempo” y que Hezbolá había estado preparándose para establecer bunkers ocultos y túneles durante seis años. “No será cuestión de días”, añadió.
Un importante funcionario israelí explicó que el objetivo de inutilizar la capacidad de Hezbolá incluye una zona de frontera de 1,5 kilómetros de ancho, donde las bases de Hezbolá, los árboles y las rocas serán derribados. No dijo si las casas serían destruidas o si los residentes civiles podrían regresar una vez que la zona de exclusión estuviera demarcada, pero dijo que sólo el personal del ejército libanés –si es que es desplazado– o una posible fuerza multinacional tendrían permiso para portar armas.
Acá se celebraron los funerales de tres de los cuatro soldados de FDI que murieron –y otros cinco fueron heridos– en batallas terrestres el jueves en la frontera libanesa, al norte de Moshav Avimim –donde dos soldados también murieron el miércoles–, mientras el ejército buscaba bases de Hezbolá y armas ocultas. El ejército dijo que Hezbolá también había sufrido pérdidas y un piloto de la fuerza aérea israelí fue muerto en medio de un choque entre dos helicópteros Apache al norte de la ciudad israelí de Kyriat Shimona.
Un oficial israelí dijo que los soldados que habían muerto habían formado parte de una operación terrestre limitada en que las unidades de combate normalmente inutilizan minas terrestres antes de demoler las bases enemigas. Pero Hezbolá había entrado al área en masa para evitar que el ejército alcanzara sus posiciones. Indicando que Hezbolá parecía estar protegiendo un blanco importante, el oficial añadió: “Estas posiciones estaban mucho más fortificadas de lo que esperábamos. Hay que darles crédito: son buenos combatientes. Esto es un asunto serio”.
El centro de la ciudad de Haifa estaba tenso ayer, mientras las sirenas sonaron durante el día y la policía y los rescatistas comenzaron la tarea de sacar los vidrios rotos y los escombros de las explosiones que dañaron un rincón del edificio de correos, cerrado como muchos otros negocios en la ciudad a causa de los ataques de cohetes. La explosión amputó la pierna a una mujer. El alcalde de Haifa, Yona Yahav, dijo a los periodistas que creía que Hezbolá había provocado un período de calma para que los residentes salieran. “Pero siguieron nuestros consejos y se quedaron en los refugios”, añadió.
Mientras que crece en la derecha el clamor por una invasión terrestre al Líbano, los políticos laboristas con antecedentes en Inteligencia, como Ami Ayalon, ex jefe de Shin Bet, y Danny Atom, ex jefe del Mossad, han salido públicamente en contra de la idea. Los funcionarios israelíes reconocen que una invasión terrestre –si sucede– puede requerir un avance inicial hasta el río Litani, si no más lejos, inevitablemente evocando comparaciones con la guerra del Líbano de 1982, que eventualmente se convirtió en la más impopular de la historia de Israel. Pero ellos insisten con que Israel no quiere reocupar el Líbano. Un funcionario dijo: “Cuando se termine la operación, no quedará ni un soldado en el Líbano, se los puedo asegurar”.
El más importante columnista israelí, Ari Shavit, escribió en el diario liberal Haaretz el jueves que como el poder aéreo no había logrado inutilizar a Hezbolá, Israel pronto tendría que elegir si recurrir a una invasión terrestre a gran escala o a una solución diplomática.
* De The Independent de Gran Bretaña. Especial para Página/12. Traducción: Celita Doyhambéhère.
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http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-70318-2006-07-22.html
Página/12:
La sed inhumana
Por Sandra Russo
Sábado, 22 de Julio de 2006
“¿Qué harías vos si secuestran a tu hijo? ¿Te alcanzaría con matarlos? No, no te alcanzaría. Querrías ver cómo les arrancan los dientes, uno por uno. Querrías ver cómo sufren.” Darío dijo esto esta semana, hablando con Radio Mitre, desde Israel. Darío fue miembro del ejército israelí y ahora defiende sus ideas de esta manera. Su testimonio despertó una airada respuesta de oyentes que, judíos y no judíos, advirtieron que un botón de la camisa de Darío estaba abierto, y por él entrevieron el corazón mismo del odio.
La ONU vuelve a esforzarse en sus gestos de mimo, vuelve a intentar erigirse como el árbitro que no es, mientras Estados Unidos baja lenta, cínicamente el pulgar, y considera que aún no es tiempo de detener los bombardeos en el Líbano. Allí, en Oriente Medio, encuentra hoy el mundo esa dosis de muerte que parece necesitar como un vampiro, pero ya no es muerte a secas lo que pide. Si la sed contemporánea se limitara a la muerte, la tiene servida en millones de casos anónimos y de una injusticia pavorosa, borroneada por las estadísticas. Lo que aflora en estos días es, cada vez más precisa, más descarnada, la necesidad de odio. El odio como combustible de las acciones humanas.
Ya lo decía Darío, hablando en un castellano fluido pero teñido por vientos extraños, cuando describía con una exactitud inaudita sus sentimientos: la muerte del enemigo no alcanza, ya no alcanza. Ha sobrevenido la sed de sufrimiento ajeno, el deseo de aniquilación completa, la fantasía de eliminar de la faz de la tierra todo vestigio del otro, pero acompañado por la visión de su padecimiento. Hay que presenciar el sufrimiento, hay que ser testigo de la propia capacidad de depredación. Como si hubiesen rociado el mundo desde un helicóptero con una toxina increíble, esa sed se reproduce más allá de lo que abarcan las secciones de los diarios. Esa sed se sale de los diarios. Recala en las calles. Anida en los dedos que, sin temblor, sin piedad, rozan gatillos en la oscuridad. En la Argentina, mientras emerge una vez más el debate de la inseguridad y vuelven a chocar las estadísticas con la sensación de indefensión que siempre y tradicionalmente tira a todo el mundo medio metro para atrás, lo cierto es que a lo que se le teme ahora es a la crueldad. Y eso es un borde. Lo estamos pisando.
Quedarse quieto al ser asaltado, ofrendar sin chistar lo requerido, ejercer el más completo autocontrol, antes garantizaba, al menos, la vaga certeza de que el asalto era una especie de peaje indeseable que se pagaba por vivir en una sociedad atrozmente inequitativa. Pero las cosas han cambiado. El paco o lo que fuere, quizás el hartazgo o la desazón previa que lleva al paco, han convertido a muchos lúmpenes en monos con navajas que afilan ante la mirada de sus presas. ¿Quieren mi dinero, mis ahorros, quieren mis electrodomésticos, mis dólares, mi tarjeta Banelco, las joyas de mi abuela, quieren que les dé todo lo que tengo, o no? Y si no es eso lo que quieren, ¿qué es? Ese es el borde que pisamos: estaremos en otro lugar, en otra dimensión si lo que quieren no es lo que tengo, sino lo que soy.
Si quieren verme sufrir.
En ese otro lugar hay otra lógica, pariente lejana de la lógica que verbalizaba Darío desde Israel y que ya se había insinuado en la invasión a Irak. ¿Qué tiene que ver Irak con Villa Crespo? Quizá nada, por cierto, quizá nada. Pero quizá... ¿por qué un asalto supone miedo al sadismo? ¿Por qué al temor del arma se le ha sumado, subrepticiamente, el temor al odio, al deseo de sufrimiento ajeno? ¿Es necesario aclarar que estamos ante una clase completamente diferente de temor?
Hay momentos históricos –los argentinos los conocemos bien: la dictadura militar fue un extenso momento de esa clase– en los que por alguna razón indescifrable brota esa sed. Son momentos en los que hay sadismoexplícito. En los que se apodera de algunos. De muchos, una tremenda necesidad de liberar aquello que la salud mental y cualquier grado de civilización conocido tiene por fundamento reprimir. En esos momentos históricos, cualquier lógica es desmadrada, incluso la de la guerra. Son momentos en los que la esencia misma de la condición humana es puesta en duda, y lo monstruoso sobreviene como una base de arcilla mal cosida.
“Ama a tu prójimo como a ti mismo”, recomiendan las religiones. En Amor líquido, el sociólogo Zygmunt Bauman descompone la frase, ya descompuesta en las mentes de millones de contemporáneos. Bauman retoma a Freud, quien se había preguntado: “¿Qué sentido tiene un precepto enunciado de manera tan solemne si su cumplimiento no puede ser recomendado como algo razonable?”. Y se contestaba: “Es un mandamiento que en realidad está justificado por el hecho de que no hay nada que contrarreste tan intensamente la naturaleza humana original”.
Bauman agrega: amar al prójimo supone un salto a la fe, a cualquier fe. Es, en definitiva, el acta de nacimiento de la humanidad. “Y también representa el aciago paso del instinto de supervivencia hacia la moralidad”. Pero “...como a ti mismo”, dice Bauman, es un final de frase que de ninguna manera puede subestimarse u obviarse, porque es el centro mismo, el fundamento que hace que ese precepto no sea una estupidez y sí una cláusula básica del contrato entre el individuo humano y su especie. El amor a sí mismo es pura supervivencia, y es imprescindible, entonces, generar las condiciones para que cada uno se ame a sí mismo lo suficiente como para poder tolerar al otro. Es necesario generar vidas lo suficientemente humanas como para que la bestia que llevamos en el fondo no ruja ni muerda.
Acaso la pregunta adecuada, hoy, sería aquella que nos interrogue sobre las bestias que hemos dejado sueltas, esas que no se aman a sí mismas y en consecuencia tampoco aman a nadie.
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http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-70312-2006-07-22.html
The Nation:
Nasrallah's Game
by ADAM SHATZ
[posted online on July 20, 2006]
In January 2004 Sheik Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, presided over a major prisoner exchange with Israel, in which the Lebanese guerrilla movement and political party secured the release of more than 400 Arab prisoners in return for the bodies of three Israeli soldiers and an Israeli businessman and alleged spy, Elhanan Tannenbaum, whom Hezbollah had kidnapped. Moments before the exchange was sealed, Ariel Sharon withheld three Lebanese detainees, one of whom, Samir Kuntar, had killed a family of three in the Israeli town of Nahariya in 1979. Nasrallah, having failed to release Kuntar and the two other men, declared that Hezbollah would "reserve the right" to capture Israeli soldiers until the men were freed.
On July 12 Nasrallah launched the most daring assault of his tenure as Hezbollah's leader: the capture of two Israeli soldiers in a raid that left eight other Israeli soldiers dead. He called the attack "Operation Truthful Promise."
Nasrallah is not a man who minces words. Still, questions linger as to the timing and location of Operation Truthful Promise, which detonated Israel's most ruthless assault on Lebanon since the 1982 invasion. Although Hezbollah's operation was apparently planned five months in advance, it occurred amid the Israeli siege in Gaza, which followed the capture of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian guerrillas and was inevitably interpreted as a gesture of solidarity with the Gazans, particularly the Hamas leadership, dozens of whose members were recently abducted by Israel. What is more, Hezbollah did not strike in the occupied Shebaa Farms, a sliver of land in the Golan Heights, as it usually does, but inside Israel, a violation of international law that Israel-despite its own numerous violations of Lebanese territorial sovereignty-could invoke as a casus belli. In other words, Hezbollah undertook an audacious act of brinksmanship that was bound, if not designed, to escalate tensions with Israel.
It is, of course, possible that Nasrallah regards the Jewish state as a paper tiger, and did not expect it to seize upon Hezbollah's raid as a pretext to pulverize his movement and to scrap the "rules of the game" that have governed the low-intensity conflict that Hezbollah and Israel have waged along the border since the latter's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000. But this is to underestimate Nasrallah, a shrewd, calculating man who, as a careful reader of history, is fully aware of how Israel has responded in the past to cross-border attacks. Indeed, when I spoke to him at his (now leveled) headquarters in Beirut in October 2003, Nasrallah-sitting near a photograph of his son Hadi, who was killed in a clash with Israeli soldiers in 1997-seemed in no mood to ignite a war that would bring Israeli troops back to Lebanon. "When you get something by paying such a precious price, you are more keen on safeguarding it," he told me. "We will not accept anyone coming and squandering it. We are the sons of this soil, the sons of this country. We have no other place to go."
If Nasrallah knew that Operation Truthful Promise might provide the Israelis with an excuse to invade Lebanon, something that could-and, briefly, did-make Hezbollah the target of Lebanese rage (even, evidently, among some of his Shiite followers), what does he hope to achieve and what is his endgame? Why risk the future of his movement, which has a significant bloc in Lebanon's Parliament, a seat in the Cabinet and a vast network of social services and enterprises (the party is Lebanon's second-largest employer)? The devastation of Lebanon, and of Hezbollah strongholds formerly occupied by Israel, would seem a rather high price to pay for a few prisoners, particularly if Hezbollah ends up sharing the blame for the destruction of the country's tourism industry, the oxygen of its economy.
Nasrallah's objectives most likely lie elsewhere. Since the 2000 Israeli withdrawal ("the first Arab victory in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict," as Nasrallah often notes), Hezbollah has faced mounting pressure, from the West but also at home, to lay down its arms and become a purely political organization-a fate the party dreads, since it prides itself on being a vanguard of Islamic resistance to American and Israeli ambitions in the Middle East. This pressure dramatically intensified with UN Security Council resolution 1559 (2004), which called for the disbanding of all Lebanese militias, and with the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon last year. By conducting a raid that was likely to provoke a brutal Israeli reprisal, Nasrallah may have gambled that the fury of the Lebanese would soon turn from Hezbollah to the Jewish state, thereby providing a justification for "the national resistance" as Lebanon's only deterrent against Israel. So far, Israel (with the full support of the Bush Administration) has played right into his hands, inflicting more than 300 casualties, nearly all of them civilians, and pounding the civilian infrastructure, eliciting sympathy for Hezbollah even among some Lebanese Christians. By striking at Israel's Army during its most destructive campaign in Palestine since 2002's "Operation Defensive Shield," Nasrallah must have known that he would earn praise throughout the Muslim world for coming to the aid of Palestinians abandoned by the region's authoritarian governments, a number of which have pointedly chastised Nasrallah's "adventurism." And by bloodying Israel's nose, Hezbollah could once again bolster its aura in the wider Arab world as a redoubtable "resistance" force, a model it seeks to promote regionally, especially in Palestine, where Nasrallah is a folk hero, and in Iraq, where Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the radical Shiite Mahdi Army, has proclaimed himself a follower of Hezbollah and has threatened to renew attacks against US forces in solidarity with the Lebanese.
Operation Truthful Promise was also, in part, a service rendered to Hezbollah's patrons in Damascus and Tehran, whether or not Bashar al-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were consulted beforehand. The Syrian President warned former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, in their last meeting before Hariri's assassination, that if he pushed for Syria's withdrawal Assad would "break" Lebanon. With Hezbollah's raid, Assad may have found a way to get Israel to break Lebanon for him-a wish that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz were more than happy to fulfill. Damascus may be facing renewed threats, but Assad can now bask in Nasrallah's glow without directly engaging the Israeli military, which, as he knows, is divided on whether to depose him (since the only realistic alternative to the secular Baath regime is the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood); Lebanese anger has been redirected from Syria back to Israel; Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora looks on helplessly as the Israelis strafe his country; and the West has been warned that Lebanon will remain fractured, volatile and incapable of controlling its borders unless Syria's interests (particularly in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights) are taken into account. President Ahmadinejad, for his part, can thank Nasrallah for diverting attention from the controversy over Iran's nuclear program, and for burnishing the Islamic republic's reputation as a staunch defender of Palestinian rights-and, not least, of Muslim Jerusalem-in a region whose other (largely Sunni Arab) governments have compromised with the enemy. And the spectacular display of Hezbollah's Iranian-made weaponry, which have reached further into Israel than even the Israelis feared, and of the group's sophistication in deploying them, have reminded Israel and the United States of the "surprises" (Nasrallah's word) in store in the event of an attack on Iran.
Nasrallah is under no illusions that his small guerrilla movement can defeat the Israeli Army. But he can lose militarily and still score a political victory, particularly if the Israelis continue visiting suffering on Lebanon, whose government, as they well know, is powerless to control Hezbollah. Nasrallah, whom the Israelis attempted to assassinate on July 19 with a twenty-three-ton bomb attack on an alleged Hezbollah bunker, is doubtless aware that he may share the fate of his predecessor, Abbas Musawi, who was killed in an Israeli helicopter gunship attack in 1992. But Hezbollah outlived Musawi and grew exponentially, thanks in part to its followers' passion for martyrdom. To some, Nasrallah's raid may look like a death wish. But it is almost impossible to defeat someone who has no fear of death.
Copyright © 2006 The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060731/nasrallah_game
ZNet | Mideast
'Israel is holding a whole population hostage'
by Gilbert Achcar and Alan Maass; Socialist Worker Online;
July 21, 2006
Q. THE U.S. media place the blame for Israel's attack on Hezbollah, for "starting" the violence? Is that how you view the situation?
Achcar. WHATEVER ONE thinks about Hezbollah or the operation mounted by Hezbollah-and I do have my own reservations about its appropriateness with regard to its foreseeable consequences-this cannot by any logic justify what Israel is doing.
The killing of the seven Israeli soldiers and the kidnapping of two soldiers was an act of war, and Lebanon and Israel are two countries that are still at war.
Israel regularly encroaches on Lebanon's sovereignty: it has attacked the country innumerable times, especially after 1967 (the first Israeli devastating attack on Beirut's airport took place in 1968); it invaded a small piece of Lebanese territory in 1967 (the Shebaa farms), a big chunk of southern Lebanon in 1978, half of Lebanon in 1982; it then occupied a big part of the country until 1985, its southern part until 2000, and it still holds the stretch of Lebanese territory that it seized in 1967.
Since 2000, there has been an ongoing low-intensity war between Hezbollah and Israel: cross-border skirmishes, covert Israeli action in Lebanon, including assassination of Hezbollah leaders, etc.
But what Israel is carrying out now in Lebanon is massive retaliation against a whole population. It is holding a whole population and country hostage and trying to impose its conditions.
This brutality is most cowardly, because whatever military means Hezbollah-or the whole of the Lebanese state, for that matter-possess are dwarfed by the military power of the state of Israel.
This isn't some kind of an equal fight, despite the fact that Hezbollah is retaliating with some rockets. One of the world's mightiest military powers is committing a naked aggression against one of the weakest states in the Middle East, and murdering scores of people.
They have already killed over 200 people in less than one week, and the number keeps growing day after day. The overwhelming majority, more than 90 percent, of Israel's victims are uninvolved civilians. They are neither fighters, nor even militants; just ordinary civilians, families and a considerable number of children appallingly torn to pieces by Israeli bombs.
Israel is destroying the infrastructure of the country. It is also destroying the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people. Lebanon is a country where the summer season is very important to thousands and thousands of people-the large proportion of the population that get seasonal jobs in the tourism sector and depend on these earnings for their living for the whole year. And now these people are being fired by the tens of thousands because everybody understands that there won't be any "summer season" in Lebanon.
If you take all this into consideration and compare it to whatever border operation Hezbollah executed, it is absolutely clear that this has become just a pretext-seized on by Israel, backed by the United States and other countries, to try to impose what they have been attempting to force since 2004.
That year, they had the UN Security Council adopt a resolution calling not only for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, but also for the disarmament of armed groups in the country-meaning, above all, Hezbollah, and secondarily, the Palestinians in their refugee camps.
THE DOUBLE standard of Western media presentations of the situation and the hypocrisy of Israel's statements are so glaring that they constitute by themselves a moral aggression-for example, the capture of one soldier by the Palestinians becomes Israel's justification for a murderous and destructive assault on Gaza, while Israel holds close to 10,000 Palestinian prisoners in its jails, most of whom are civilians abducted by Israel in the territory that it occupies since 1967 in total violation of international law.
We know this double standard well. Noam Chomsky has made it one of his specialties for so many years to denounce the permanent double standards and hypocrisy in the imperial countries and in their media. We are now witnessing an appalling new case of that same double standard.
And the fact is that if this hypocrisy can go unnoticed for an average audience in Western countries, you can be sure that in the overwhelming majority of Third World countries-and, of course, in Muslim countries, and, even more so, in Arab countries-the double standard is conspicuously and outrageously obvious.
That's why people don't give any credit to the utterances of Western leaders-to the Bush administration's talk about democracy and other lies.
Instead, what we are seeing right now is that the hatred toward not only Israel but the United States, and all the other Western countries backing Israel and allying with the United States, is reaching heights which are far beyond what existed before September 11, 2001.
In other words, the United States and the state of Israel are preparing for the rest of the world, including their own populations, nightmarish events, compared to which 9/11, I'm afraid, will be only a foretaste.
People in the West, especially in the United States, have to become aware of the hypocrisy of their government, and of this total lack of justice and even humanitarian commiseration in dealing with the Arab populations of the Middle East.
They have to become aware of the fact that, for very good reason, the Arab and Muslim peoples are coming to perceive that they are considered as sub-human beings, and that their lives have no value in the eyes of Israel, the United States and their allies.
Therefore, they become receptive to the kind of discourse that comes from the likes of Osama bin Laden-that if our civilian lives have no value to them, then their civilian lives should have no value to us. So we are reaching a completely infernal situation because of the criminal reactionary policies of the U.S. administration and the Israeli government.
Q. WHAT ARE Israel's goals in carrying out this assault?
Achcar. STRATEGICALLY SPEAKING, both Israel and the United States consider their main enemy in the Middle East to be not bin Laden or al-Qaeda-these are only minor nuisances in their eyes, if conveniently useful nuisances-but Iran.
There is what they call the Shiite axis or crescent, which has its source in Iran, and goes through the pro-Iranian Shiite forces in Iraq, through the Syrian government, which is allied to Iran, and reaches Hezbollah in Lebanon.
This is why they consider Hezbollah a very important enemy-because with their kind of conception of the world, they see everything through their obsession with what they consider to be their main enemy state. At the time of the Cold War, they used to see everything worldwide in terms of a confrontation with the former Soviet Union. Now, they see everything in the Middle East in terms of a confrontation with Iran.
Besides that, Israel has its own specific reasons for wanting to get rid of Hezbollah, as the organization that played the major role in forcing Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, in 2000. This is an organization that is permanently defying Israel by its very existence, its very presence.
Ever since Israel left Lebanon, there's been a determination to take revenge on Hezbollah, and we're now witnessing Israel in the midst of carrying this out, using the pretext of the border clashes.
Q. THE U.S. government denounces Hezbollah as a band of terrorists. What is the actual role that it plays in Lebanon?
Achcar. THROUGHOUT THE years, Lebanese politics have had a communal dynamic, so you have some kind of identification of communities with this or that political organization. Hezbollah managed to become the main force in the Shiite community, which is the largest minority in Lebanon, where no religious community constitutes a majority.
Hezbollah came to play this role for a variety of reasons. The major one is the role that Hezbollah played in liberating southern Lebanon, where the Shiite community is concentrated, from the Israeli invasion.
But there are other factors. Generally speaking, the rise of Hezbollah's influence fits into a framework that we've seen at the regional level for the last 30 years, where the failure of the left and the bankruptcy of nationalist leaderships create a void in the leadership of the mass movement that has been filled by organizations of an Islamic fundamentalist character.
This was very much propelled by the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The shock wave of the revolution was tremendous in the area-especially, of course, among the Shiites, since Iran is a Shiite country.
The birth of Hezbollah was the result of the conjunction of this shock wave with the conditions created by the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It was born after the invasion, and its rise was associated with its success in the fight against the occupation.
Another factor is the way that Hezbollah managed to build its social base. Hezbollah was very much backed by Iran from its founding. Tehran trains and funds Hezbollah, and the organization has made clever use of the funds that it gets. It organizes several kinds of social services and a social network, which helps huge numbers of Shiite families.
It also managed to translate the clout built through the resistance in political terms, when it entered the elections. Hezbollah has an important fraction in the Lebanese parliament and there are even Hezbollah ministers in the Lebanese government.
So it's not a "terrorist" organization, as Washington's and Israel's terrorist governments call it. It is a mass party fully involved in the legal political life in Lebanon.
No one in Lebanon, except for a tiny minority of ultra reactionaries, considers what Hezbollah does in confronting Israel to be "terrorism." The Lebanese government itself considers it as national resistance.
Q. CAN YOU talk about how Israel's assault on Lebanon is connected to the intensified war on Palestinians since Hamas won control of the Palestinian Authority?
Achcar. THERE ARE several connections. To be sure, there are connections of a kind that fit into Washington's conspiracy theory.
Hamas and Hezbollah are both organizations in the same regional alliance. Part of Hamas's leadership live in exile in Syria, and it has very good relations with Iran. Tehran backs Hamas: when the new Palestinian government was elected, and there was a boycott organized by the Western powers and Israel, Iran was the first country to pledge support for the Palestinians to compensate for that boycott.
The other connection is the result of how Israel's onslaught on Gaza has been so traumatizing for the whole region.
Whatever the original motivation for Hezbollah's operation that captured the Israelis-I'm saying this, because Hezbollah's chief Hassan Nasrallah said that it had been months in the planning-when it took place, it was seen across the whole Middle East as a legitimate and necessary gesture of solidarity with the people of Gaza who are being crushed by Israel. That's why there was a lot of sympathy for it.
Like in Lebanon now, Israel used the pretext of the abduction of one of its soldiers in Gaza to hold the whole population hostage and begin a frenzy of destruction and murder that falls into the canons of state mass terrorism of the worst sort known in history.
Q. HOW DOES the war on Lebanon fit with the other wars that the U.S. and Israel are carrying out in the Middle East?
Achcar. FOR ISRAEL and the U.S., the main enemy, as I said, is the whole alliance, with Iran as the most central part of the alliance. The main target is the Iranian regime, which they want to get rid of, in one way or another.
The Syrian regime is more of a secondary enemy. I don't believe that there is a real drive toward overthrowing that regime. Israeli officials explain that they don't wish to see a new Iraq unfolding at their border, because they know that if the Syrian regime were to collapse, that's what you would get: a chaotic situation that could very much threaten the security of Israel.
Of course, they would like to get the Syrian government to break with Iran. And they want to compel Tehran, too, to abide by their rules. But because they don't have any confidence in the Iranian regime, they wish that they could overthrow it in one way or another. That's their basic goal: what they call in Washingtonese "regime change."
With the prevailing replica of the Cold War imperialist mentality, Hezbollah is presented as a mere agency of Iran. Now, to be sure, it's no secret to anyone that Hezbollah is closely linked to both Damascus and Tehran. And Hezbollah would have been foolish to undertake its July 12 attack without some degree of coordination with its backers.
So what? Unlike those of the Afghan mujahadeen, when they were fighting against the Soviet occupation of their country, the weapons Hezbollah is using are, of course, not U.S.-made or U.S.-provided!
It is absolutely normal for forces confronted with much more powerful enemies to try to find external sources of support. Hezbollah has to get the means from somewhere to be able to resist.
Or does Washington believe that it is entitled to intervene wherever it wants by the sole right of its "manifest destiny"-for instance, backing today the so-called People's Mujahedin of Iran in its cross-border attacks against Iran from U.S.-occupied Iraq, after having backed yesterday the far more significant contras against Nicaragua's government-while Iran has no right to support its correligionists in Lebanon or Palestine. This chutzpah is only exceeded by U.S. complaints against Iranian interference in Iraq, a country under U.S. occupation!
The fact that Hezbollah has links to Syria and Iran doesn't mean in the least that it is not waging a legitimate national resistance struggle-in the same way that the fact that the Vietnamese were backed by this or that Communist country didn't mean in the least that they were not fighting for the liberation of their country.
GILBERT ACHCAR grew up in Lebanon, before moving to France, where he teaches political science at the University of Paris-VIII. Among his most recent works are Eastern Cauldron (2004) and The Clash of Barbarisms (2d ed. 2006); a book of his dialogues with Noam Chomsky on the Middle East, Perilous Power, is forthcoming from Paradigm Publishers. He talked to Socialist Worker's ALAN MAASS.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=10619
ZNet | Mideast
Letting Lebanon Burn
by MERIP Editors; Middle East Report Online;
July 21, 2006
Israel is raining destruction upon Lebanon in a purely defensive operation, according to the White House and most of Congress. Even some CNN anchors, habituated to mechanical reporting of "Middle East violence," sound slightly incredulous. With over 300 Lebanese dead and easily 500,000 displaced, with the Beirut airport, bridges and power plants disabled, the enormous assault is more than a "disproportionate response" to Hizballah's July 12 seizure of two soldiers and killing of three others on Israeli soil. It is more than the "excessive use of force" that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan decries. The aerial assault dwarfs the damage done by Hizballah's rocket attacks on Israeli towns. Entire villages in south Lebanon lie in ruins, unknown numbers of their inhabitants buried in the rubble and tens of others incinerated in their vehicles by Israeli missiles as they attempted to escape northward. As it awaits the promised "humanitarian corridor," Lebanon remains almost entirely cut off from the outside world by air, sea and land. As of July 20, thousands of Israeli troops have moved across the UN-demarcated Blue Line. Yet virtually the entire American political class actively resists international calls for an immediate ceasefire, preferring to wait for an Israeli victory.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert set the tone immediately after Hizballah struck, branding the cross-border raid as "an act of war" whose consequences would be "very, very, very painful." Moreover, Israel would hold the Lebanese government and the Lebanese nation as a whole responsible. Israel's determination to inflict pain upon Lebanon was fanned on the fourth day of Israeli bombardment when Hizballah Secretary-General Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah likewise declared "open warfare," and the Shiite movement's militia stepped up rocket fire that has taken 15 Israeli civilian lives. Though the Katyushas and larger projectiles are much deadlier than the Qassams of Hamas, Israel faces no existential threat from the rockets on either front. It is in Lebanon, to paraphrase Israeli army chief of staff Gen. Dan Halutz, where the clock has been turned back 20 years.
The American broadcast media nevertheless labor to fashion symmetry where there is none. There is balanced treatment of the casualties on both sides. The Israelis forced into bomb shelters are juxtaposed with the Lebanese politely warned to flee their homes. For competing renditions of the day's bloodletting, CNN's avuncular Larry King turns first to nonchalantly windblown Israeli spokeswoman Miri Eisen and then to a program director from Hizballah's al-Manar satellite channel, Ibrahim al-Musawi, who always seems to have one eye on the sky. The rock-star reporters who parachuted in to cover the story dispense dollops of confusion. CNN's Anderson Cooper in Cyprus explained that, since Hamas members are Sunni and Hizballah members Shi'i, they are "historic rivals." MSNBC's Tucker Carlson, sans bowtie to convey the seriousness of the occasion, wondered if Hizballah had rocketed Nazareth because its residents are all Christian, ignoring the images on the screen behind him from the attack victims' funeral at a mosque.
The likes of Carlson can perhaps be forgiven for grasping at clash-of-civilizations straws. The White House's immediate fingering of Iran and Syria as the masterminds of Hizballah's self-described "adventure" substituted phantoms and bogeymen for real political causes. Israel was similarly quick to espy an "axis of Islamic terror" stretching to Damascus and Tehran. Former Speaker of the House and would-be presidential candidate Newt Gingrich went officialdom one better, declaring on NBC's Meet the Press that the US and its allies are in "World War III." A steady stream of Congressmen goes before the cameras to aver that Tehran and Damascus are pulling the strings.
No evidence, beyond leaked Israeli intelligence of secret meetings between Nasrallah and his alleged Syrian and Iranian puppeteers, has been presented for the thesis of broader conspiracy, let alone for the core proposition that Hizballah snatched the Israeli soldiers on orders from Bashar al-Asad and/or Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. (Who else sees the hand of Iran, by the way? Saddam Hussein, admonishing Syria from his Baghdad jail cell not to "deepen its coalition with Iran, because Iranians have bad intentions toward all Arabs and they hope to do away with them.") The fact that Hizballah's arsenal includes missiles of Iranian and Syrian provenance is also adduced as proof. By this same logic, of course, Washington must be ordering every sortie of Israeli F-16s over Beirut and every demolition of Palestinian homes by Caterpillar bulldozers.
Hizballah is not shy about acknowledging its external patrons, who presumably assented to its operation. But the timing of the militia's cross-border raid, as Israel was punishing all of Gaza for the capture of one soldier, suggests another motivation rooted in regional politics - namely, that Hizballah aimed to impress the Arab public as capable champions of the Palestinians, in contrast to the impotent grumbling of the US-allied Arab regimes. Surely, as well, Saudi and Egyptian criticisms of Hizballah stem more from the popularity of Nasrallah among their own (all or mostly Sunni) populations than from a genuine fear of a "Shiite crescent."
The scholars who know Hizballah best say the movement is more Lebanese and nationalist now than any time in its history. Even before the departure of Syrian troops in the spring of 2005, Hizballah was increasingly speaking with nationalist rhetoric. While their political opponents staged what they call the Independence Uprising, Hizballah-mobilized demonstrators "thanked" the Syrians for their services, rather than demanding that they stay, and waved Lebanese flags alongside the party's yellow banners. Hizballah has been pressing the issue of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails, along with Lebanon's claim to the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms along the Syrian-Lebanese border, for some time. The Lebanese government backs both of these causes.
But it is odd, to say the least, to hold the Lebanese government responsible for Hizballah's initial cross-border operation. To the contrary, the evidence suggests that the Islamist party acted unilaterally, despite having representatives in the cabinet and in Parliament. This circumstance suggests that the raid should be interpreted as Hizballah muscle flexing on the domestic stage to ward off pressure to relinquish its arms to the Lebanese army, as per the requirements of UN Security Council Resolution 1559. Perhaps, having exchanged prisoners with Israel as recently as 2004, the movement miscalculated how Israel would react, and now they are getting more than they bargained for. Certainly, Lebanon is.
Whichever combination of these factors accounts for Hizballah's action, the real question is what Israel hopes to accomplish by bombing the whole of Lebanon in reprisal. The strategy behind the assault, apart from blind retribution, is difficult to fathom. Even though Israeli jets buzzed Asad's presidential palace after Hamas captured an Israeli soldier, and even though evidence of Syrian influence over Hamas is far wispier than its ties to Hizballah, Israel seems disinclined to draw Damascus into the fighting. "We're not a gang that shoots in every direction," an Israeli officer told Ha'aretz. Nor, despite bellicose talk of "root causes" and rumors of Iranian Revolutionary Guards firing from Hizballah launching pads, does Israel or the US appear prepared to do more than trade insults with Tehran. There is a risk of catastrophic escalation, but it is reasonable to hope it is not planned.
Rather, the stated objective (beyond the recovery of the captive soldiers) is the implementation of a UN resolution, an instrument of international diplomacy for which Israeli spokespeople have developed a touching new fondness. If the Lebanese government will not disarm Hizballah, then Israel will. If the Lebanese will not "exercise their sovereignty," as Eisen demanded on CNN, then Israel will appropriate that sovereignty and exercise it in Lebanon's stead. Perhaps because the US has its own history of invading Middle Eastern countries to "enforce UN resolutions," the American media seem to regard Israel's case as entirely sensible. One wonders how the media would have treated similar external intervention to impose UN Security Council Resolution 425, which called for Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 1978, and, of course, was not honored until 2000, under the pesky fire of Hizballah.
But that is what-if history. Back in the present, says the tough-talking Israeli ambassador in Washington, David Ayalon: "We'll have to go for the kill - Hizballah neutralization." Thus far, independent assessments of "operational success" are bleak. On July 20, the Times of London quoted "a senior British official" as saying: "Our concern is that Israeli military action is not having the desired effect.... We are concerned that continued military operations by Israel will cause further damage to infrastructure and loss of civilian life which the damage to Hizballah will not justify." The well-connected military affairs columnist for Ha'aretz, Ze'ev Schiff, penned a similarly pessimistic appraisal.
Hence the large-scale Israeli ground incursion that commenced on July 20. While Halutz told the troops that the incursion could last for "an extended period of time," Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz has stressed that it will not lead to permanent reoccupation of south Lebanon. Indeed, from the Israeli government's perspective, one benefit of Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, like its pullout from Gaza in August 2005, is the latitude to deploy the full force of bombs and tanks unavailable as long as Israel was the occupying power. The architect of Gaza disengagement, former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, came to appreciate this logic despite having vehemently denounced the peril to Israel's "deterrence capability" when the Labor government brought troops home from Lebanon. Whether the ground incursion will "degrade" Hizballah's fighting effectiveness or strengthen their argument that Lebanon needs their independent militia for its own national defense remains to be seen. It seems that Israeli strategists are making up the military objectives as they go along, with one eye on the degree of "operational success" and another eye on what Washington will let its tank commanders and bombardiers get away with.
Many European chanceries, like Annan, evoking rules-of-war distress at Israel's "excessive use of force," are calling for an immediate ceasefire. These calls were faint indeed amidst a week of air raids and the Group of Eight's toothless tut-tutting about "extremist forces." From Washington came the bright green go-ahead to keep on bombing. Asked how long Israel's campaign could continue, a high-ranking US official told the Washington Post: "There's a natural dynamic to these things. When the military starts, it may be that it has to run its course."
So we arrive at the Bush administration's breathtakingly cavalier stance and, again, the human cost of its decision to use Lebanon's agony to tilt at Iranian and Syrian windmills. On July 15, by several accounts, US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton blocked Security Council discussion of the ceasefire resolution for which Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has pleaded in every available forum. Since then, despite blatant violations of principles of proportionality and growing international alarm about the internally displaced Lebanese, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pledges only to work for a ceasefire "as soon as possible when conditions are conducive to do so." The conditions, of course, grow less "conducive" the longer Washington's green light glares.
Such signals to Israel are not unprecedented, of course, but in this case they are completely and rather shockingly public. The secretary of state has disagreed with the Egyptian foreign minister about the urgency of a ceasefire while standing before the same bank of microphones in Foggy Bottom. Making the Sunday talk show rounds on July 16, Rice again shopped an applause line from her June 2005 American University in Cairo address: "For the last 60 years, American administrations of both stripes - Democratic, Republican - traded what they thought was security and stability and turned a blind eye to the absence of democratic forces, to the absence of pluralism in the region." This policy, she still claims, has been reversed. In reality, with its unabashed approval of Israel's pounding of Lebanon, the Bush administration has reversed 60 years of basing US policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict on the premise - however fictional in practice - that the US seeks peace between the parties. Meanwhile, as Rice dithers over setting a date certain for a Middle East diplomatic mission, the US green light may actually exacerbate the carnage in Lebanon, since Israeli military commanders know that they will have limited time to accomplish their goals.
On July 19, a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Tony Snow if Bush's insistence that Rice not undertake shuttle diplomacy until Israel "defangs" Hizballah made the conflagration in Lebanon a US war as well as an Israeli one. Snow dissembled: "Why would it be our war? I mean, it's not on our territory. This is a war in which the United States - it's not even a war. What you have are hostilities, at this point, between Israel and Hizballah. I would not characterize it as a war."
It is a war, an unjustified war. Israel's legal justifications - protecting the sanctity of its borders and enforcing UN resolutions - are disingenuous to the point of being dishonest, after Israel's own years of ignoring the will of the international community and crossing and erasing boundaries with impunity. The US is the only international actor with the power to stop this war, and instead has chosen to encourage the fighting. So the US, too, will be held accountable by history.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=10618
posted by attilav at 22:32
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