Elsewhere today (382)
Aljazeera:
Israel to expand ground offensive
Wednesday 09 August 2006, 17:29 Makka Time, 14:29 GMT
Israel has ordered an expansion of its ground offensive in Lebanon aiming to strike harder at Hezbollah and curb its cross-border rocket attacks.
The decision was announced on Wednesday by the office of the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, after the cabinet voted to send soldiers deeper into Lebanon, possibly as far as the Litani river, up to 20km north of the border.
"The security cabinet approved the recommendations of the defence establishment for the continuation of operations in Lebanon," the statement said.
The defence minister, Amir Peretz, had recommended a deeper thrust into Lebanon despite what media reports said were Olmert's fears of heavy Israeli casualties in such a large-scale operation. Nine ministers approved the decision. Three abstained.
Israel already has about 10,000 troops in southern Lebanon, and it was not immediately clear how many more would be deployed in the widened military campaign. Olmert's office said further details would be released in a separate statement.
Reshuffle
Also on Wednesday, Aljazeera reported that 11 Israeli soldiers were killed by Hezbollah guerrillas.
The Israeli army declined comment on the reports that said the soldiers were killed near the Israel-Lebanon border.
But it had said earlier on Wednesday that 15 soldiers were wounded in overnight clashes, without specifying, on Tuesday or Wednesday.
So far over 70 Israeli soldiers have been killed.
Also on Tuesday, in a surprise step, on Tuesday, the army's chief of staff appointed Major-General Moshe Kaplinsky "to co-ordinate operations in Lebanon".
The move more or less sidelines Major-General Udi Adam, who has been the top commander of the Lebanon front and could come as a blow to the morale of Israeli forces.
Israeli media linked the appointment of Kaplinsky to mounting public criticism of the army's handling of the battle against Hezbollah.
The naming of a fellow general to oversee the campaign was described in a headline in Israel's Maariv daily as "an effective dismissal".
Deadly attacks
Meanwhile Israeli fighter jets continued to hit targets in the north, east and centre of Lebanon before dawn on Wednesday, striking roads, bridges, fuel tankers and homes, police said.
Five children and their mother are believed to have died after an Israeli air strike hit a building in the town of Mashgara in the Bekaa Valley, Aljazeera's correspondent in Lebanon said.
The dead were family members of a Hezbollah politician who was seriously wounded in the attack.
Earlier, at least one person was killed and more than 15 wounded after Israeli bombed a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon.
Lebanese and Palestinian officials said an Israeli gunboat shelled the Ein el-Hilweh camp, but Israeli soldiers said the attack was an air strike.
Many of those injured were children, hospital sources said.
Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5EAED00B-EED3-4A69-BFCE-867138D90E21.htm
allAfrica:
Placards Highlight Issues Ahead of Women's Day March
By Nozipho Dlamini and Zibonele Ntuli
BuaNews (Tshwane) NEWS
August 9, 2006
As hundreds of women and political leaders gathered in Pretoria to re-enact the 1956 Women's Anti-Pass March, placards and chanted slogans revealed a myriad of issues still facing South African women today.
Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, Tshwane Mayor Gwen Ramokgopa and Graca Machel are among the powerful and influential women who were part of proceedings at the soon to be renamed Strijdom Square in the Pretoria city center.
The hundreds women who converged in the square and began marching to the Union Buildings, carried placards reading "Wathint' abafazi, Wathint' imbokodo!" meaning "You strike a woman, you strike a rock" which was coined for the march 50 years ago and has become adopted as the cry of the women's movement in South Africa.
Other placards being carried by the women read "Take care of people with disability" and "Quality health care for women" while the marchers, who had been arriving in the square since early this morning, sang songs calling for an end to violence against women and children.
Such messages will perhaps be the focus of the memorandum to be handed over to Ms Mlambo-Ngcuka at the Union Buildings, who is to pass it on to President Thabo Mbeki on behalf of the nation's women.
As the marchers departed from the square, sections of Church Street were closed off to traffic, while metro police and crowd control kept a watch over the proceedings.
Many women were jostling for space in the march to catch glimpses of veterans in attendance such as Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and photographer Peter Magubane who took pictures at the original march as well as the iconic picture of Hector Pieterson in the 1976 student uprisings.
As part of Women's Month celebrations in August, government has organized various events such as commemorative lectures to commemorate the march undertaken on August 9 by women of all races in 1956.
Today's march has been organized by the Department of Arts and Culture and is to see women walking in the foot steps of 20 000 of their counterparts 50 years ago who delivered a protest petition to the Union Buildings.
The women marched to the Union Buildings in protest against the Urban Areas Act, part of which advocated dehumanising pass laws which required blacks to carry these documents with them at all times in urban areas.
Speaking in an early morning interview ahead of the re-enacted march, Deputy President Mlambo-Ngcuka said women who marched in 1956 raised the political expectations of women in the country.
"Today we stand tall as women and we have so many changes in our society because of those women.
She said the march was symbolic but most importantly there were concrete activities around commemorations such as the launch of the Progressive Women's Movement.
Another concrete effort coming out of the month's events was the decision by Cabinet to rename Strijdom Square after Lillian Ngoyi, who was one of the march participants on this day, half a century ago.
Ma Ngoyi as she was known, was a Pretoria resident and activist and she was also the woman who knocked on the door of the then, Prime Minister JG Strijdom in the hopes of handing over the petition.
Strijdom was not at the Union Buildings on the day to receive the petition and in 1963, the apartheid government went on to instate the requirement that blacks carry pass books in the cities.
However, the foundations for the South African women's movement had already been laid and the fruits of their sacrifice can be seen in the powerful positions held by today's women and the full rights afforded to them.
Copyright © 2006 BuaNews. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
http://allafrica.com/stories/200608090035.html
AlterNet:
The Grave Consequences of Supporting War in Lebanon
By Scott Ritter, AlterNet
Posted on August 9, 2006
With Israel waging an all-out war against the forces of Hezbollah, and the death toll in terms of civilian casualties mounting on a daily basis, the question of a diplomatic resolution to the crisis takes on an urgency that is being felt around the world. Everywhere, it seems, except in Israel and the United States. One should not be fooled by the "false" diplomacy being waged by the United States, fronted by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.
The draft Security Council resolution co-sponsored between the United States and France is but a tragic farce, a smoke screen designed to unilaterally protect Israeli interests at the expense of all others that is so transparent no Arab nation takes it seriously (it has been rejected outright by Lebanon, Syria and Hezbollah).
There are several reasons for this apparent lack of concern on the part of the primary belligerent (Israel) and its No. 1 underwriter (the United States). First and foremost is the fact that the ongoing violence being waged against Hezbollah is not, contrary to popular opinion, a knee-jerk reaction to the attack against Israel by Hezbollah that resulted in several dead Israeli soldiers and two taken prisoner. It is rather part and parcel of a long-planned strike designed not only to neutralize Hezbollah, but also its largest international supporters, namely Syria and Iran. As such, Israel (and by extension, the United States) has certain predesignated goals and objectives that need to be reached, and no cease-fire will be willingly undertaken until they are. These include the military destruction of Hezbollah and its political isolation, along with its major supporter Iran.
But as the global hue and cry over the indiscriminate death and destruction being inflicted on the innocent civilians of Lebanon by the Israeli Defense Force continues to mount, drowning out any legitimate counter Israel may have by citing similar indiscriminate loss of life and property caused by Hezbollah rockets, Israel and its supporters in Washington, D.C., recognize that there is a limit to what the world will be willing to tolerate.
Already Israel and the United States are feeling the brunt of a diplomatic backlash resulting from the horrific devastation rained down on the people of Lebanon as a result of Israel's blind rage and America's misguided support of everything that is done in the name of Israel.
This does not mean that America's support of Israel's legitimate security concerns is bad policy; just the opposite. Supporting Israel's right to exist, and its right to defend itself against those who wish to do it harm, is the soundest possible policy a democracy such as America could embrace. But as a nation built on the belief that all humans are created equal, and that oppression of one party by another represents a tyranny that must be opposed, it is high time that the United States learn to differentiate between what constitutes legitimate Israeli security concerns, and what constitutes regional hegemony, tyranny and oppression.
Knee-jerk reactions aside, there is really no foundation upon which Americans can morally continue to support the Israeli actions in Lebanon. Indeed, many Americans, joined by like-minded people around the world, are increasingly taking a position that opposes the Israeli military assault on Lebanon.
There is a difference between being opposed to Israeli action, and having a viable plan on what to do instead. One of the main problems is the fact that Israel (and its supporters here in the United States) have sagely exploited the lexicon of terror, a politically savvy move in post 9/11 America that makes the formulation of any viable opposition to what the Israelis claim to be a legitimate response in the face of terror virtually impossible.
When evaluating the Israeli position on Hezbollah, we should never forget that it was Hezbollah, alone among the forces in the Arab world, that defeated Israel, compelling the Israeli Defense Force to withdraw from southern Lebanon in May 2000 after a disastrous 18-year occupation. National pride, combined with hegemonic hubris born of out-of-control Zionism, prevents Israel from ever accepting this result or forgiving Hasan Nasrullah or his followers for this "crime."
Israel claims the moral high ground in this current round of conflict, citing the July 12 attack by Hezbollah on an Israeli Army patrol that left eight IDF soldiers dead and two captured. The disproportionality of response aside (Hezbollah fires hundreds of rockets into Israel, and gets thousands of artillery shells and aerial bombs in return; Israel's civilian casualties run in the scores, Lebanon's in the hundreds), Israel's claim as the aggrieved party simply does not withstand the test of history and fact.
Hezbollah is a direct byproduct of the 1982 Israeli invasion and subsequent occupation of Lebanon. In the chaos and anarchy that followed, Israel helped facilitate disunity and dysfunction within Lebanon by promoting the interests of the Lebanese Christian minority over Lebanese Muslims, Sunni and Shi'a alike. Hezbollah as an organization grew from this political morass, representing the legitimate aspirations of the Shi'a Lebanese of southern and eastern Lebanon. Albeit largely funded and supplied by Iran and Syria, Hezbollah is not an international organization, but one distinctly Lebanese. Its function has been to liberate Lebanon from Israeli aggression. To call Hezbollah a terrorist organization is not only a misuse of terminology, but also symptomatic of the larger problem that plagues both Israel and the United States when it comes to dealing with the Middle East as a whole.
Israel and the United States have become trapped by the lexicon born of the so-called "Global War on Terror." These two nations have collectively painted in their mind's eye a world of distinct black and white, or good and evil. In doing so, the reality that is the Middle East goes unrecognized, and as such, no viable solution can be found. If Hezbollah were a genuine non-state terror group, one could make an argument that direct military confrontation designed to isolate and destroy that group was viable. But Hezbollah is not a non-state player, but rather a legitimate expression of the legitimate desires of a not-insignificant percentage of the people of Lebanon.
Hezbollah is decidedly anti-Israel, as only a group born from the oppression of Israeli occupation of their homeland could be. This has led to fiery rhetoric on the part of Hezbollah and its supporters, which has been exploited by Israel and the United States to paint Hezbollah as an organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Nothing could be further from the truth. Hezbollah has stated that its goals are the removal of all Israeli forces from Lebanon, the Golan Heights and the return of Palestinian refugees to Palestine. Hezbollah also continues to demand the release of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, some of whom have been imprisoned for nearly 20 years.
It was the prisoner issue that led to the most recent outbreak of violence between Israel and Hezbollah. Following Israel's retreat from southern Lebanon in May 2000, hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners were still held by Israel, which refused to release them. In October 2000, Hezbollah fighters disguised as U.N. soldiers captured three Israeli soldiers, as well as an Israeli reserve officer who was in Beirut on private business. Hassan Nasrullah declared that Hezbollah would exchange the Israelis for the Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. In a deal brokered by the German government, Israel agreed to release 430 prisoners in exchange for the bodies of the three captured Israeli soldiers (they had been killed shortly after their capture) and the Israeli reservist.
However, Hezbollah claims that Israel had agreed to release three specific prisoners -- Samir Kuntar (captured in a raid on an Israeli settlement in which four Israelis died, including a 4-year-old girl), Yahye Skaff (captured in 1978 after an attack on Israel by Fatah guerillas left 35 Israelis dead and over 100 wounded) and Nissim Mousa N'isr (an Israeli-Arab accused of spying on behalf of Hezbollah). Israeli Ariel Sharon apparently reneged on the deal at the last second, prompting Hassan Nasrullah to declare that Hezbollah retained the right to capture Israeli soldiers at any time in order to secure the release of these three prisoners. The July 12 attack by Hezbollah was nothing more than Nasrullah keeping his word.
Contrary to popular opinion, Hezbollah is not an "international terrorist organization." It has not been linked to any acts of terror outside the borders of Lebanon (the current shelling of Israel notwithstanding, Hezbollah claims these are legitimate military actions in response to Israeli "aggression"). The United States and Israel often speak of "Hezbollah terror attacks" outside of Lebanon, but in the end cannot trace these attacks to Hezbollah with anything stronger than circumstance and rhetoric. The reality of Hezbollah is that it is a decidedly nationalistic organization that has gone on record condemning the September 2001 terror attacks against the United States, rejecting Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, as well as any killing of innocent civilians in the name of Islam. If it were not for the Israeli angle, the irony is that Hezbollah actually represents the kind of home-grown political party that the United States should be supporting.
Hezbollah is very much a political reality. It is woven into the daily reality of the lives of Lebanese Shi'a, providing medical and education support to impoverished civilians who otherwise would have to go without. Hezbollah has participated in the legitimate political processes of the Lebanese democracy, winning over a dozen seats in the Lebanese Parliament, and holding several cabinet-level positions. The Lebanese government itself recognizes the unique character of Hezbollah, rejecting any notion that it is an illegitimate militia, but rather a legitimate national resistance movement that will continue to exist until Israel stops meddling in Lebanese affairs.
The United States and Israel continue to quote U.N. Security Council resolution 1559, which calls for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Lebanon, as well as the disarming of Lebanese militias. However, resolution 1559 does not mention Hezbollah by name, and the Lebanese government itself refuses to categorize Hezbollah as an illegal militia, but rather as a legitimate defender of Lebanese interests. As a result, there is a huge disconnect between the United States and Israel on the one hand, and Lebanon and Hezbollah on the other, in regard to the basic foundational element of any diplomatic resolution to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Lebanon. The fact of the matter is, Hezbollah is a reality that neither the United States nor Israel can negotiate away. To attempt to bomb Lebanon into submission as a proxy for its inability to militarily defeat Hezbollah is not only criminal, but counterproductive.
Hezbollah today has the support of nearly 90 percent of the Lebanese population. Hassan Nasrullah has taken on legendary proportions throughout the Arab world, where his and Hezbollah's ongoing stout resistance to Israel's mighty military stands in stark contrast to the impotence of the rest of the Arab world and its leaders.
If anything, the United States should be well-positioned to whisper advice to Israel as to the futility of its current operations in Lebanon. The United States has for more than three years now conducted similar military operations in Iraq, only to find that not only has the vaunted U.S. military been unable to defeat a popular-based resistance, but that the resistance has grown.
Worse, the misguided policies that embrace a unilaterally military solution have destroyed the basic social framework of Iraq, creating a seething morass of anarchy and chaos from which violence erupts that has no center or focus upon which to zero in for a solution. Iraq is very much a dead country, which exists only for the purpose of killing Americans and its own citizens. If Israel were to ponder its folly in Lebanon, it would realize that its actions, if continued, will ultimately result in a similar outcome for the Lebanese -- a society that exists solely for the purpose of killing Israelis and each other. The difference between Iraq and Lebanon is that eventually America will be able to retreat away from the borders of Iraq. Israel will never be able to retreat away from the disaster it is creating in Lebanon today.
Of course, all of this is basic common sense for anyone who takes the time to study the facts. The problem is the predisposition of the respective publics in Israel and the United States to buy into an ideology based upon semantics that is divorced from reality. Once anything or anyone is labeled "terrorist," the game is pretty much up in so far as forming public opinion is concerned, which means, as an extension, any hope of changing governmental policy is likewise doomed. The actions of the Israeli Parliament and the U.S. Congress prove this point.
Their respective unanimity in supporting the daily murder of Lebanese, while casting the blame for the violence solely on the shoulders of Hezbollah and its supporters in Syria and Iran, are not only reflective of bad policy, but also bad thinking brought on by the inability and unwillingness of the people of Israel and the United States to think critically on any issue involving Israel. The U.S. media is particularly at fault in this regard (it is ironic that the Israeli media, and by extension the Israeli people, have been much more critical of the Lebanese operation than have their counterparts in the United States).
So long as the American media collectively continues to masquerade as journalists, when in fact it serves as little more than the propagandistic arm of the U.S. and Israeli governments, the American people will continue to wallow in their collective ignorance of the world they live in, unable to discern solutions to problems because they are for the most part unable to define the problem itself. This is a very serious matter, one with huge potential consequences.
Take, in closing, the manner in which Israel and the United States have painted Hezbollah's military underwriters in Iran and Syria. If Hezbollah resistance continues (as it seems likely to do), the United States and Israel have stated that Syria and Iran become, by extension, legitimate military targets.
This discussion is offered without any thought or recognition of the "other side of the coin," namely the mindset in much of the Arab and Muslim world that if Iran and Syria are targeted for providing military support for Hezbollah, then the No. 1 underwriter for the ongoing Israeli slaughter of Lebanese, the United States, likewise becomes a legitimate military target.
Every citizen in the United States should take a minute while they sit back and enjoy the relative peace of summer and reflect on what that would mean, and if it is really the direction they want the United States to be drifting at the moment. Just don't ask the mainstream American media to assist with any reflective analysis. It is too busy promoting a larger war.
Scott Ritter served as chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 until his resignation in 1998. He is the author of, most recently, "Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the U.N. and Overthrow Saddam Hussein" (Nation Books, 2005).
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/40033/
Antiwar.com:
The End of Illusions
by Jonathan Cook
August 8, 2006
If there were any remaining illusions about the purpose of Israel's war against Lebanon, the draft United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a "cessation of major hostilities" published over the weekend should finally dispel them. This entirely one-sided document was drafted, noted the Hebrew-language media, with close Israeli involvement. The top adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert talked through the resolution with the U.S. and French teams, while the Israeli Foreign Ministry had its man alongside John Bolton at the UN building in New York.
The only thing preventing Israeli officials from jumping up and down with glee, according to Aluf Benn of the daily Ha'aretz newspaper, was the fear that "demonstrated Israeli enthusiasm for the draft could influence support among Security Council members, who could demand a change in wording that may adversely affect Israel." So no celebration parties till the resolution is passed.
Instead, in a cynical ploy familiar from previous negotiating processes, Israel submitted to the U.S. a list of requests for amendments to the resolution. When Israel agrees to forgo these amendments, it will, of course, be able to take credit for its flexibility and desire to compromise; Lebanon and Hezbollah, on the other hand, will be cast as villains, rejecting international peacemaking efforts.
The reason for Israel's barely concealed pleasure is that Hezbollah now faces an international diplomatic and public relations assault in place of the unsuccessful Israeli military one. Israel and the United States are trying to set a series of traps for Hezbollah – and Lebanon too – that will justify Israel's reoccupation of south Lebanon, the further ethnic cleansing of the country, and a widening of the war to include Iran, and possibly Syria.
The clues were not hard to decode. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice characterized the aim of the resolution as clarifying who is acting in good faith. "We're going to know who really did want to stop the violence and who didn't," she said. Or, in other words, we are going to be able to blame Hezbollah for the hostilities, because we have offered them terms of surrender we know they will never agree to.
The main sticking point for Hezbollah is to be found in the resolution's requirement that it must stop fighting and begin a process of disarmament at a time when Israeli forces are still occupying Lebanese territory and when there may be a lengthy, if not interminable, wait for their replacement by international peacekeepers. Not only that, but the resolution allows Israel to continue its military operations for defensive purposes: Hezbollah only has to look to Gaza or the West Bank to see what Israel is likely to consider falling under the rubric of "defensive."
Hezbollah has been stockpiling weapons since Israel's withdrawal in May 2000 precisely to create a "balance of deterrence," to make Israel more cautious about sating its demonstrated appetite for occupying its neighbors' lands, particularly when the neighbor is a small country like Lebanon without a proper army and divided into many sectarian groups, some of which, for a price, may be willing to collaborate with Israel.
This time, however, as Israeli troops struggle back toward the Litani River and their initial goal of creating a "buffer zone" similar to the one they held on to for nearly two decades, the Lebanese are rallying behind Hezbollah, convinced that the Shi'ite militia is their only protection against Western machinations for a "new Middle East."
Israel and Washington, however, may hope that, given time, they can break that national solidarity by provoking a civil war in Lebanon to deplete local energies, similar to Israel's attempts at engineering feuds between Hamas and Fatah in the occupied Palestinian territories. Certainly, it is difficult to make sense otherwise of Israel's bombing for the first time of Christian neighborhoods in Beirut and what looks like the intended ethnic cleansing of Sunni Muslims from Sidon, which was leafleted by Israeli war planes over the weekend.
In the U.S.-Israeli view, a nation of refugees living in an open-air prison cut off from the outside world and deprived of food and aid – a more ambitious version of the Gaza model – may eventually be persuaded to take their wrath out on their Shi'ite defenders.
Hezbollah understands that the proposal to bring in a force of international peacekeepers is another trap. Either the foreign troops will never arrive, because on these Israeli-imposed terms there can be no cease-fire, or, if they do arrive, they will quickly become a proxy occupation army. Israel will have its new South Lebanon Army, supplied direct this time from the UN and subsidized by the West. If Hezbollah fights, it will be killing foreign peacekeepers, not Israeli soldiers.
But Israel knows the international force is almost certainly a non-starter, which seems to be the main reason it has now, belatedly, become so enthusiastic about it. Senior Israeli government officials were saying as much in the Hebrew-language media on Sunday.
Israel's justice minister, the increasingly hawkish Haim Ramon, summed up the view from Tel Aviv:
"Even if it is passed, it is doubtful that Hezbollah will honor the resolution and halt its fire. Therefore we have to continue fighting, continue hitting anyone we can hit in Hezbollah, and I assume that as long as that goes on, Israel's standing, diplomatically and militarily, will improve."
Israel hopes it will be able to keep hitting Hezbollah harder – at less cost to its troops and civilians, and with improved diplomatic standing – because in the next phase, after the resolution is passed, the Shi'ite militia will find that one arm has been tied, figuratively speaking, behind its back.
Not only will Washington and Israel blame Hezbollah for refusing to agree to the cease-fire, but they will seek to use any retaliation against Israeli "defensive" aggression – including, presumably, further invasion – as a pretext for widening the war and dragging in the real target of their belligerence: Iran.
This subterfuge was voiced over the weekend by Israel's ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, who told the BBC that if Hezbollah fired at Tel Aviv – which it has threatened to do if Israel continues attacking Beirut – this would be tantamount to an "act of war" that could only have been ordered by Iran. In other words, at some point soon Israel may stop blaming Hezbollah and turn its fire – defensively, of course – on Iran.
This linkage is being carefully prepared by Olmert. On Monday, according to the Hebrew-language press, he told some 50 government spokespeople what message to deliver to the foreign media: "Our enemy is not Hezbollah, but Iran, which employs Hezbollah as its agent." According to Ha'aretz, he urged the spokespeople "not to be ashamed to express emotion and appeal to feelings."
So in the coming days, in the wake of this U.S.-Israeli concoction of an impossible peace, we are going to be hearing a lot more nonsense from Israel and the White House about Iran's role in supposedly initiating and expanding this war, its desire to "wipe Israel off the map," and the nuclear weapons it is developing so that it can achieve its aim.
The capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 will be decoupled from Hezbollah's domestic objectives. No one will talk of those soldiers as bargaining chips in the prisoner swap Hezbollah has been demanding; or as an attempt by Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, to deflect U.S.-inspired political pressure on him to disarm his militia and leave Lebanon defenseless to Israel's long-planned invasion; or as a populist show of solidarity by Hezbollah with the oppressed Palestinians of Gaza.
Those real causes of hostilities will be ignored as more, mostly Lebanese, civilians die, and Israel and the U.S. expand the theater of war. Instead, we will hear much of the rockets that are still landing in northern Israel and how they have been supplied by Iran. The fact that Hezbollah attacks followed rather than precipitated Israel's massive bombardment of Lebanon will be forgotten. Rockets fired by Hezbollah to stop Israeli aggression against Lebanon will be retold as an Iranian-inspired war to destroy the Jewish state. The nuclear-armed Goliath of Israel will, once again, be transformed into a plucky little David. Or at least such is the Israeli and American scenario.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cook.php?articleid=9498
Arab News:
Logic of Israel’s War on Civilians
Ramzy Baroud, Aljazeera.net English.
Wednesday, 9, August, 2006 (15, Rajab, 1427)
A Sky News newscaster, interviewing British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett on Sunday, July 30, demanded an answer to this paraphrased question: If indeed Israel had precise intelligence that a Hezbollah operative was present in the village of Qana, in South Lebanon, how could it possibly fail to realize that the area was also crowded with civilians? The question was prompted by Beckett’s insistence that while Israeli attacks that victimize uncountable civilians — like that in Qana which killed scores, mostly children — were “appalling”, they resulted from tactical errors, and were never deliberate. In fact, she referred to the “apparent deliberate targeting” — as described by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan — of the UN peacekeepers compound in South Lebanon and the killing of four unarmed observers, as a “mistake.”
In effect, Israel is hardly accused — at least in the Western narrative of the Middle East crisis, as exemplified in media coverage and political discourse — of deliberately targeting civilians, even among those who are daring enough to describe Israel’s response to Hezbollah’s “provocation” — the capturing of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 — as “disproportionate.”
Israel often acknowledges — with “regret” — the high civilian tolls of its war; sometimes it goes as far as apologizing for such unintended “mistakes.” The Israeli government however is adamant that it will continue to carry out such attacks; that it’s those who “hide among the civilian population” which deserve the blame, not Israel; that neither Hezbollah nor Palestinian resistance groups seem to care much for the life of Israeli civilians, while Israel does care for Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. In fact, and ironically, according to various Israeli politicians and media pundits, one of Israel’s objectives is to liberate its neighbors from the suffocating grip of terrorists.
An objective journalist is expected to highlight both narratives, without pointing out the fallacies of one or the other. Such “objectivity” has served Israel well, since facts on the ground are hardly consistent with its claims.
For example, out of nearly 4,000 Palestinians killed during the Second Palestinian Uprising — in the last 5 years — the overwhelming majority have been civilians, many of them children. Such figures are also mirrored in much of the damage inflicted by Israel’s military machine against Palestinians in the occupied territories: the great majority of the wounded, the destroyed infrastructure, the confiscated land, the razed orchards, the bulldozed homes, etc, have been overwhelmingly civilian.
July 26, was hardly a diversion from that norm, as 29 Palestinian civilians, many of whom were children as young as a few months old, were killed in northern Gaza, all in the span of 24 hours.
As of today, including the Qana onslaught, the number of Lebanese civilians confirmed dead has crossed the 900 mark; more than one third of them children, according to the UN count. Likewise, the infrastructure — destroyed not only in Hezbollah’s strongholds in the south but across Lebanon — were built primarily for the benefit of the civilian population.
The handy excuse that Hezbollah and Hamas fighters launch their rockets at Israel from civilian areas, no longer suffices. There is yet to be one shred of evidence, one video or bit of satellite footage — at least in the ongoing war in Lebanon — that confirms such an allegation. In fact, it seems imprudent for Hezbollah’s fighters to expose their operations to Israel’s informers, while they can safely fire from the numerous orchards dotting the south region and quickly redeploy elsewhere.
Concurrently, the “unintended mistakes” theory, promulgated by Israel’s apologists — read the Bush administration, among others — is utterly inconsistent with claims promoted by Israel and its apologists that Jewish state has the “most moral army in the world”, and that Israel uses the most advanced war technology to avoid harming civilians. These allegations cannot all be accurate, all at once. If Israel is indeed very “moral”, then why does its army continue to repeat the same “unintended mistakes”, over and over again, for decades? Is it possible that the killing and wounding of tens of thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians as a result of those “unintended mistakes” didn’t induce the very moral army to reexamine its tactics and adopt a decisive change in military policy? Wouldn’t that be the “moral” thing to do? (Note that the small village of Qana was bombed by the Israeli air force in 1996, as civilians were seeking shelter in a UN compound, killing over 100 people, including many children and UN peacekeepers.)
The second claim, that Israel strives to obtain high-tech (American) weapon technology to minimize civilian casualties, is also fraudulent. Once again, the numbers indicate the precise antithesis; denoting that either the “fifth strongest army in the world” is so horribly inept, that most of its military strikes result in blunders, or that the killing of civilians is in reality part and parcel of Israel’s military strategy. This latter assertion, in my opinion, is the true objective. But why?
Israeli officials may parrot to the media that Hezbollah (like Hamas) is an outsider force that holds no legal legitimacy, and that its true strength arises from its terrorist links to Iran and Syria. Conversely, Israeli conduct on the ground gives evidence to a different conviction: punishing the true party — ordinary Lebanese — that provide Hezbollah with the needed support to sustain such costly military confrontations with Israel, or ordinary Palestinians who elected Hamas to power.
Both Hezbollah and Hamas are homegrown; there should be little contention over this. But they cannot be scrutinized divorced from their immediate surroundings: Hezbollah emerged as a result of Israel’s frequent bloodbaths in Lebanon and its members are comprised primarily of victims of Israel’s past wars, while Hamas sprung from Palestinian refugee camps in the occupied territories and has been sustained with the support of the poorest segments of the population. Whatever strategic alliance they hold outside — Iran, Syria or whomever else that is willing to acknowledge their right to fight Israel — is out of a desperate need for a safe haven, financial assistance and a political platform. Israel knows well that “destroying” Hezbollah and Hamas is a losing battle — they’ve tired this time and again, and have failed with each attempt. What is needed now is a concerted effort to deprive the leadership of these movements with the popular support that placed Hamas at the helm of the Palestinian political equation and elected Hezbollah to the Lebanese Parliament.
The Israeli tactics, however, are reaping a conflicting outcome, as both Hezbollah and Hamas are emerging more powerful than ever before, widely viewed as the only defenders of Lebanon and Palestine, as conventional Arab governments have finally declared, and without reservation, their military impotence and political bankruptcy. Regardless of its media utterances, Israel has committed yet another colossal strategic error, comparable in magnitude and consequence to the American debacle in Iraq. Indeed, both governments are fighting two impossible wars, where civilians are killed with extraordinary “precision.”
Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=76069&d=9&m=8&y=2006
Clarín:
Israel extenderá la ofensiva en el sur del Líbano
Lo aprobó el Gobierno de Olmert, aunque sin dar una fecha precisa. Las operaciones podrian durar aún "más de 30 días", reveló el ministro de Comercio israelí. En tanto, el premier libanés advirtió que no hay avances para una decisión del Consejo de Seguridad, donde Francia y Estados Unidos mantienen divergencias.
Clarín.com, 09.08.2006
El Gabinete de Seguridad de Israel aprobó hoy los planes militares de lanzar una ofensiva de gran escala contra los milicianos de Hezbollah en Líbano, informó el ministro de Industria y Comercio, Eli Ishai.
El ministro, que dio a conocer la noticia a la radio pública israelí, reveló que la fecha de aplicación del plan tendrá que ser fijada por el primer ministro, Ehud Olmert, y el titular de Defensa, Amir Peretz.
"Consideramos que proseguirá (aún) 30 días", declaró a la radio pública Ishai al término de una reunión del gabinete de seguridad en la que participó en su calidad de vice primer ministro israelí.
Sin embargo, precisó que la operación del ejército israelí en el sur de Líbano, que empezó el 12 de julio, podría durar incluso más.
"Creo que es muy difícil hacer una evaluación y no es exacto, en mi opinión, estimarla en menos de 30 días. Temo que podría durar mucho más", aseguró.
Según una fuente anónima que participó en la reunión del gabinete, para los participantes del encuentro quedó claro que el plan implica riesgos considerables: además de la crítica internacional, que podría acusar a Jerusalén de sabotear los esfuerzos diplomáticos, Israel podría sufrir entre 100 y 200 nuevas bajas militares.
Mientras tanto, aunque todavía sigue abierta la posibilidad de una salida diplomática para lograr un alto el fuego en la frontera entre Israel y el Líbano, esa opción parece haber sufrido cuanto menos una nueva demora al estancarse los diálogos en el seno del Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU y crecer el impulso en el gobierno de Jerusalén para ampliar la ofensiva en el territorio libanés.
El primer ministro del Líbano, Fouad Siniora, advirtió que "hasta ahora" no hay avances en los diálogos para redactar una nueva versión del proyecto de resolución franco-estadounidense en el Consejo de Seguridad. El premier recibió hoy al subsecretario de Estado norteamericano David Welch, quien realizó otra sorpresiva visita a Beirut.
Según fuentes diplomáticas, las discusiones entre Estados Unidos y Francia en la ONU están prácticamente estancadas y ello podría demorar hasta mañana la votación de una resolución en demanda de un alto el fuego.
Francia propuso incluir en el texto la exigencia de los países árabes de que el cese de hostilidades se acompañe de una retirada militar israelí, pero Estados Unidos lo rechaza porque teme que se genere un vacío en el sur de Líbano sin la presencia de una gran fuerza multinacional.
Aunque ambos países recibieron con beneplácito la propuesta del Líbano de desplegar 15.000 soldados cuando Israel se retire, el gobierno de Bush teme que esos soldados y la fuerza la multinacional no puedan mantener a raya a Hezbollah y evitar una nueva escalada de violencia.
Copyright 1996-2006 Clarín.com - All rights reserved
http://www.clarin.com/diario/2006/08/09/um/m-01249138.htm
Guardian:
Israel to widen ground offensive
David Fickling, James Sturcke and agencies
Wednesday August 9, 2006
Lebanon is facing an expanded ground invasion that could last more than a month after Israel's security cabinet today backed plans put forward by the defence minister, Amir Peretz.
Nine out of 12 members of the security cabinet backed the proposals, which would see Israeli troops pushing as far inside Lebanon as the Litani River, 18 miles (29 kilometres) north of the border, in an offensive expected to last for 30 days.
After the meeting, security cabinet member Eli Yishai told the Ha'aretz newspaper that the 30-day plan was a low estimate. "I think it is wrong to make this assessment. I think it will take a lot longer," he was quoted as saying.
The plan has been the subject of an intense political battle within the Israeli government for over a week and the vote in support of it throws doubt on attempts to agree a resolution on ending the conflict at the UN.
On Monday, the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, proposed sending 15,000 Lebanese troops to the border area to accompany a UN peacekeeping force, an offer that was welcomed by Washington and other western powers but which received a lukewarm response from Israel.
The expansion of the ground war, which can start immediately now that Israel's security cabinet has passed the proposal, may lead to accusations that Israel is attempting to sabotage diplomatic efforts in order to push its military objectives as far as possible.
Today's vote came shortly after the head of Israel's military northern command, Major General Udi Adam, was replaced by the deputy chief of staff, Major General Moshe Kaplinsky, after complaints from commentators that Gen Adam was too slow and cautious in his campaign tactics.
Mr Peretz and the armed forces have lobbied heavily for an expanded invasion but the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, initially expressed doubts about the proposals, concerned that they would not be enough to stop long-range Hizbullah rocket attacks and would further embroil Israeli ground troops in a dangerous and difficult war.
An Israeli security official told cabinet members the offensive could mean 100 to 200 more military casualties.
Ha'aretz reported that the Israeli armed forces are aiming for a two-week ground operation that would conquer the entire area south of the Litani River and a few areas north of it, covering the region from which most Hizbullah rockets are launched.
French and US diplomats at the UN in New York are still battling to save a draft resolution aimed at ending the crisis, although Mr Siniora said earlier today that he does not expect any progress in the next 48 hours.
Jacques Chirac, the French president, called on the US to speed up its response to Arab nations' demands for changes to the UN resolution.
Caught between US and Arab allies and keen to rescue the diplomatic effort, Mr Chirac said giving up the push for an immediate Middle East ceasefire would be the "most immoral" response.
He interrupted his holiday in southern France to attend a meeting with cabinet ministers.
Washington and France appear to be at odds over how to respond to Lebanese and Arab calls for an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon.
In other developments today:
·Israel's military struck Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp, killing at least two people and wounding five, officials said.
·In the Bekaa Valley, in eastern Lebanon, five people were killed and two feared dead after an Israeli raid on a two-story building in Mashghara.
·Israeli warplanes again dropped leaflets over the southern port city of Tyre and for the first time over central Beirut, criticising the Hizbullah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.
·The death toll from an Israeli air strike on a Shia neighbourhood in south Beirut on Monday has risen to at least 41, with 61 wounded, Lebanese security officials said.
·Hizbullah guerrillas and Israeli troops fought fierce overnight battles in south Lebanon, causing about 15 Israeli casualties, the army said. Al-Jazeera reported that 11 Israeli soldiers were killed in heavy fighting.
·Hizbullah guerrillas fired 132 rockets at Israeli towns - raising the total since the start of the conflict to 3,333.
The current crisis started on July 12 after Hizbullah guerrillas kidnapped two Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese border.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1840598,00.html
Guardian:
Israel isolates Tyre with threat to bomb all traffic
No exemptions for humanitarian convoys says military
Jonathan Steele in Tyre and Conal Urquhart in Metulla
Wednesday August 9, 2006
Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets over Tyre yesterday morning, warning people not to use vehicles south of the Litani river, heightening the city's sense of isolation.
All roads north and south of the port city have been cut by bombing in the last few days and Israeli authorities have refused permission for any ships to dock.
The travel ban had no time limit and mentioned no exceptions, even for ambulances and humanitarian convoys. Addressed to "Lebanese civilians south of the Litani River", it said: "Read this carefully and follow its instructions. The Israeli Defence Forces will escalate their operations and will strike with force against terrorist elements who are using you as human shields and firing rockets from inside your homes against Israel..." All vehicles would be bombed the letter said. It was signed "State of Israel".
The warning had an immediate effect. The city's streets virtually emptied yesterday. Most shops were shuttered, and there were few pedestrians on the pavements along the main roads. Only in the alleys of the medieval quarter was there an occasional group of people on chairs outside their front doors.
"I don't have any food for customers," said Abu Ali, a cafe owner. "My wife and children have gone to Beirut. No one's sleeping. They're constantly planning what to do if anything happens". He hinted that if the Israelis entered the town, he would fight them. "I'm a civilian who's ready for anything, day or night," he said. Asked if he had a gun, he repeated his comment.
Standing by his sandwich shop, Houssam Nasser said: "We normally get supplies of bread and meat every day. Now they've stopped. I'll keep my shop open but won't have anything to sell." But he was not planning to leave in spite of the siege.
At the police station, a detective said staff had not been able to move. The government had ordered all police to stay on their jobs, even if they sent their families away, but with the travel ban they could not work properly. "I don't how long this will last. It's the Israelis who decide," he said.
Local and international humanitarian organisations tried to get exemption from the travel ban by applying to the Israeli authorities for permission to go out on urgent missions. Yusuf Khairalla, Tyre's civil defence supervisor, said the city was isolated. "This is the first time this has happened," he said.
His team was denied permission to travel to Maroub, about 10 miles outside the city, to rescue five people from under the rubble of a bombed house.
At the clinic staffed by Médecins sans Frontières Dr Martial Ledecq, a surgeon, was sterilising equipment brought in from Beirut on Monday. The boxes had to be carried along a footbridge across the Litani river by volunteers because Israel destroyed the causeway on Sunday night, cutting Tyre off from road traffic.
"If there is fighting in town, we will be ready for operations. You will have noticed that the main hospitals are all on the eastern edge of town. We are the only one in the centre", Dr Ledecq said.
Jakob Kellenberger, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, was forced to walk across the footbridge on a visit to Tyre yesterday. Access for civilians was his major concern, he said, a point he would emphasise during meetings in Israel today.
With southern Lebanon now a virtual prison, the most fortunate people are the region's official prisoners. "We evacuated all 80 of them from Tibnin prison a week ago. They are safe now in Beirut," said a detective at the police station.
Israeli jets hit targets all over Lebanon yesterday and at least four Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting in two incidents near the Lebanese-Israeli border, where Hizbullah fighters remain entrenched.
Israeli soldiers said Hizbullah fighters were using classic guerrilla techniques to evade them and then hit them in the rear with anti-tank weapons. One soldier was killed in Bint Jbeil and three others killed in the coastal village of Labbouna.
Israel continued to shell and bomb the valleys near its border while it moved more armour from the south of Israel to the north. Aircraft bombed a village near Sidon which was burying 15 of its residents that were killed in airstrikes earlier in the week. The missile hit a building a few minutes after the funeral procession had passed causing panic but no injuries to the mourners. Lebanese officials said that 14 people were killed in the attack. Police in Beirut said they discovered a further 14 bodies in buildings bombed on Monday.
A spokeswoman for the Israeli army said its jets had bombed 99 targets in Lebanon yesterday while more than 165 rockets had landed in Israel which caused minor injuries. Many of the Hizbullah rockets landed in open fields creating bush fires all over the north of Israel. Both sides of the border were covered by cloud that merged with the rising smoke.
Two Israeli tanks returning to Israel from Lebanon ran into a minefield yesterday. It was not clear if the mines had been laid by Israel or Hizbullah. One tank was damaged and sappers had to create an escape route for it using explosives.
Casualties
Lebanon yesterday
Hizbullah: 5 killed
Civilians: 25 killed
To date
Hizbullah: 95 killed (IDF claim >400)
Civilians: 998 killed
Israel yesterday
Military: 3 killed
Wounded: 7
To date
Military: 63 killed
Civilians: 35 killed
All figures revised daily and based on Lebanon and Israel government estimates
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1840140,00.html
Guardian:
Israeli force can stop the rockets, but for how long?
The disproportionate response has increased Arab hatred, alienated the world, and brought criticism from many Jews
David Goldberg
Wednesday August 9, 2006
In one of the tractates of the Talmud - that vast repository of rabbinic law and lore - there is a discussion about the difference between killing in self-defence and murder. A man came before the eminent Babylonian sage Raba and said that he had been ordered by the governor of his town to kill a third party in order to save his own life. Was he permitted to do so? No, ruled Raba, the principle that if someone intends to kill then you kill him first only applies if thereby the life of the intended victim is spared. Otherwise, "Say not that your blood is redder than his; perhaps his blood is redder than yours." Even in extreme circumstances we should comply with certain rules of moral conduct that enable societies to function and sovereign states to maintain relations with each other.
War, too, has its own rules of limitation and restraint, enshrined in just-war theory, the Geneva conventions and international law. Prominent among them is the doctrine of proportionality: that the response to aggression should be commensurate with the act.
It would be true to say that Israel has always taken a robust attitude towards reprisals. Zionist policy from pre-state days was to respond to Arab attacks with double force, as a deterrent. David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister, was the supreme exponent of this approach. Yet, interestingly, shortly after Israel's stunning victory in the six day war he counselled returning almost all of the captured territories because, in his view, after such a comprehensive thrashing the defeated Arab nations would leave Israel in peace for at least a decade. Moshe Dayan was dispatched to his desert kibbutz to tell the old man to pipe down. Piecemeal colonisation of the West Bank followed, in retaliation for Arab refusal to recognise or negotiate with Israel, which is why almost 40 years on there are 250,000 Jewish settlers on Palestinian land and no resolution in sight to the claims of Palestinian statehood.
The present eruption in Lebanon is the latest in a long list of major wars, smaller campaigns, two intifadas, terrorist attacks, suicide bombings and targeted assassinations that have bedevilled the region since 1967. Both peoples have been corrupted by the situation. Neither can claim moral superiority.
It is reasonable to infer from newspaper coverage and television evidence that Israel has been noticeably disproportionate in its response to the abduction of two soldiers and the killing of eight others in a Hizbullah ambush three weeks ago. Asymmetric warfare, as it is currently fashionable to call the contest between regular armies and guerrilla forces, inevitably results in asymmetric casualties, at least 10 times higher in Lebanon than in Israel.
The government of Israel has the legal sanction to protect its citizens and forcibly remove Hizbullah's rockets from southern Lebanon, along with the danger posed by 2,000-3,000 guerrillas. However, it should be borne in mind that - intolerable though it is for a large section of the population to be forced into bomb shelters and some of them killed - Hizbullah's arsenal of Katyushas, rifles, machine guns, grenades and mortars represents a negligible military threat to the survival of Israel. This is not a total war between two countries that involves both armed forces and civilians, making Israel's response to Hizbullah rockets analogous to the American response against Japan after Pearl Harbor or Britain's against Germany, as some of Israel's defenders have grotesquely tried to claim.
Whether Hizbullah is indeed the fanatical spearhead of a Shia arc of extremism bent on the liquidation of Israel followed by world domination, or whether the prospect of Muslim unity among its opposed factions is a chimera, is something for strategic analysts to argue over. What is certain is that governments must respond to events in the present, even while getting their foreign-policy thinktanks to anticipate the shape of future alliances. In replying as forcefully and misguidedly as it has done to provocation from Lebanon, Israel might not even achieve a rocket-free zone in the north.
But given that the Palestinian problem is no nearer solution and that by creating a wilderness in Lebanon and calling it peace Israel has recruited thousands of new martyrs to the Hizbullah cause, military and diplomatic planners are going to have to ask themselves how long the respite will last. Was Israel's disproportionate response worth the cost of strengthening Arab hatred, alienating world opinion yet again and, last but not least, inviting criticism from a growing number of diaspora Jews who wish for Israel to live in security but find it increasingly difficult to condone what is being done by the Jewish state in their name? As the late Richard Crossman said, a policy of pragmatism is never justified - especially if it is unsuccessful.
· Rabbi Dr David J Goldberg is emeritus rabbi of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London, and author of The Divided Self: Israel and the Jewish Psyche Today.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1840128,00.html
il manifesto:
La paura dell'altro
ROSSANA ROSSANDA
Condivido la collera di Angelo d'Orsi verso chi accusa di antisemitismo ogni critica alle scelte del governo israeliano. Non succede nei confronti di nessun altro paese. Non era neanche mai successo prima degli anni '70. Né l'accusa ci viene da parte di chi ha sofferto di persona delle leggi razziali e delle deportazioni, se è scampato ai campi di sterminio. Penso che ci sia voluta la guerra dei sei giorni e un vero e proprio cambio generazionale, più ancora che qualche scivolata dell'estrema sinistra degli anni '70, nello scordare la tragica percezione di sé da parte degli ebrei; sono episodi che si contano sulle dita d'una mano. Mentre non è accettabile il sospetto che alcuni nuovi esponenti della comunità ebraica gettano di continuo su ogni parola detta dalla sinistra che non approva né l'occupazione dei territori, né l'unilateralismo dei ritiri e dei muri, né la guerra al Libano, mentre aprono con entusiasmo le porte agli eredi della destra, fascisti inclusi.
D'Orsi ha ragione anche nell'infastidirsi del silenzio con il quale lasciamo passare queste accuse, come se avessimo da vergognarci di qualcosa, noi, i soli che si sono battuti assieme agli ebrei. Se il movimento operaio e comunista è stato alle origini antisionista lo è stato per motivi opposti alla discriminazione, perché riteneva ogni questione nazionale secondaria rispetto al battere il capitale. Ma così pensavano anche Rosa Luxemburg e ai suoi amici tedeschi, i molti ebrei del Bund polacco, quelli che facevano parte del gruppo dirigente leninista e perfino staliniano fino al dopoguerra. Antisionismo e antisemitismo non sono stati affatto la stessa cosa. Quanto all'Italia, se le leggi razziali passarono senza vere proteste degli antifascisti, era perché non si potevano esprimere. L'antifascismo poi unificò tutti; la mia generazione è venuta su, se mai, con la ripugnanza a distinguere fra religioni ed etnie, la rivalutazione delle differenze le è estranea, il che le viene, se mai, rimproverato. Ha colpito quelli come me il bisogno di tornare alle proprie radici dopo la sconfitta del 1968, che era stato forse approssimativamente universalista. Accresciuto in molti giovani dalla percezione di essere sopravvissuti al destino dei loro genitori o nonni . Per chi andava in cerca delle radici c'era nell'ebraismo un grande «in più», la scoperta d'una tradizione sapienziale che dette a molti una nuova dimensione del vivere.
Risalgo negli anni perché se l'accusa di antisemitismo è tutto sommato stupida, mi sembra oggi tessuta in una vicenda assai più grande e sofferente che non siano gli strepiti d'un Giuliano Ferrara. C'è nella coscienza di Israele il senso d'un eterno essere in pericolo cui non sa rispondere che con la forza delle armi, la guerra preventiva e la protezione degli Stati Uniti, compiendo un errore fatale verso i paesi che la circondano. Angelo d'Orsi parla della lettera d'una giovane libanese, io ho sotto gli occhi quasi con le stesse parole nell'email d'una giovane e a me assai cara israeliana, e tutte e due hanno paura l'una del paese dell'altra. Sono giovani, nate là, e poco sanno di come si sia arrivati a questa ultima tragedia. La libanese ha sperimentato la crudele invasione israeliana, e poi l'occupazione siriana ed è terrorizzata dall'offensiva di Israele condotta fuori di ogni regola di guerra, con un'enormità di distruzioni e vittime civili, che viene detta contro gli Hezbollah e colpisce lei fra i libanesi, e non viene fermata da nessuno.
La israeliana ha alle spalle secoli di negazioni e sofferenze, arrivate fino alla Shoah, ha imparato a scuola che gli arabi che circondano il suo paese non ne hanno mai accettato l'esistenza, dall'Iran con Israele confina ed è infinitamente più grande, Ahmadjnejad contiua a ripeterglielo, alcuni suoi amici sono morti per l'attacco dei kamikaze palestinesi e lei ha contato nell'ultimo mese i missili di Hezbollah. Nessuna delle due donne riesce a figurarsi l'altra. Sono terrorizzate. Lo stesso pensano in Israele gli amici di Peace Now e uomini che ammiriamo come Yehoshua, Grossmann e perfino Amos Oz: pensano che «stavolta la guerra è giusta» - anche se gli pare che come «ammonimento al popolo libanese basti». Intanto quella del 1967 era finita in sei giorni, mentre adesso gli Hezbollah tengono testa da oltre tre settimane a uno degli eserciti più preparati del mondo. Va a spiegare la spirale degli avvenimenti e il meccanismo delle rappresaglie all'una e all'altra. Va a far capire alla mia giovane amica israeliana che Israele occupa la Palestina da quasi quaranta anni e ha fatto dei giovani di quel popolo, il più colto e laico del Medioriente, che non sono mai stati un giorno liberi, seguaci di un fondamentalismo che ne esprime la collera. Va a farle capire che anche l'arabismo è ormai vittima di un fondamentalismo che apparteneva solo a minuscoli gruppi, prima che la politica del suo paese in Palestina, e poi quella americana in Afganistan e poi l'invasione dell'Afganistan e poi dell'Iraq lo moltiplicasse, così come l'attuale guerra moltiplicherà gli Hezbollah. Va a farle capire che questi prima del 1982 non esistevano. Né i kamikaze durante la prima Intifada. Va a persuaderla che l'accettazione da parte israeliana di uno stato palestinese avrebbe da decenni staccato la spina che avvelena il Medio Oriente, e fatto dimenticare che Israele vi è stato installato a forza dalle potenze occidentali per garantire in qualche modo gli ebrei da una nuova Shoah di cui noi, l'Europa, eravamo soli colpevoli. Installato in un mondo che della Shoah nulla era tenuto a sapere e tanto meno di una terra promessa qualche migliaio di anni fa a sconosciuti da un Dio sconosciuto. E dalla quale venivano cacciati coloro che per duemila anni vi avevano lavorato. Va a farle capire oggi che la giovane Israele doveva vincere la diffidenza dei vicini, o almeno dopo la guerra dei sei giorni stare a quelle risoluzioni dell'Onu che adesso invoca contro i libanesi.
Qualche settimana fa Luciana Castellina scriveva su queste colonne: Io ho paura per Israele. Io non ho paura per la sua esistenza, noi tutti la difenderemmo a ogni costo. Ho paura delle sofferenze che Israele impone e si impone in una spirale di errori. Mi fa impressione il colono che dice rassegnato: «Ebbene, se Israele deve vivere grazie alla spada, viva con la spada», ma mi riempie di collera Claude Lanzmann, quello del film sulla Shoah, che protesta su Le Monde perché Israele è stata accusata di esagerare in Libano. Come, Israele non esagera, non può esagerare, il sangue fatto versare agli ebrei non sarà mai abbastanza compensato da altro sangue - gli ebrei sono stati colpiti in modo che il loro paese ha tutti i diritti e nessun dovere verso gli altri. Sono parole dementi come quelle del presidente iraniano, il reciproco l'una dell'altra. Ma il premier Olmert le sta praticando. E come Sharon non si accorge non solo dell'odio che si tira addosso, ma dell'errore strategico che fa. Rabin è stato ammazzato e dimenticato.
Di questa sciagurata spirale l'agitazione di parte della comunità ebraica italiana è un frammento derisorio. Ma è vero - ha ragione d'Orsi - che dovremmo smettere di stare in silenzio perché la matassa è complicata e ancora recente la perdita di innocenza del nostro paese. La posta in gioco è troppo alta, il pericolo troppo bruciante, il ricatto troppo stupido. Bisogna dirlo alto e forte che il governo di Israele sbaglia. Che si deve fermare. Che l'amministrazione americana è il suo più pericoloso alleato e consigliere. Che la comunità internazionale è stata finora troppo corriva. E che se c'è una discontinuità che urge per il centrosinistra al governo è questa. Se ne faccia carico.
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/08-Agosto-2006/art14.html
Jeune Afrique: Kabila en tête de la présidentielle
en RDC, selon des résultats partiels
RD CONGO - 8 août 2006 – AFP
Le chef de l'Etat sortant de République démocratique du Congo (RDC), Joseph Kabila, était en tête de la présidentielle du 30 juillet, selon des premiers résultats partiels diffusés mardi par des bureaux locaux de la commission électorale.
Les Congolais étaient appelés le 30 juillet à choisir leur président et leurs députés, lors des premiers scrutins libres et démocratiques en plus de quarante ans dans l'ex-Zaïre, pays marqué par plusieurs décennies de gestion catastrophique et de conflits.
Neuf jours après ces scrutins historiques, de tout premiers résultats ont été affichés mardi dans au moins sept des 62 centres chargés de la compilation des bulletins des quelque 50.000 bureaux de vote répartis dans le pays.
Selon ces données, compilées par l'AFP, M. Kabila arrivait en tête avec 68,2% des suffrages exprimés, devant son principal concurrent, le vice-président Jean-Pierre Bemba, qui en obtient 11,6%.
Aucun taux de participation n'était encore disponible mardi, mais les sept centres pour lesquels l'AFP a obtenu des résultats englobent environ 3,5% des quelque 25 millions d'électeurs inscrits.
Quatre des centres se situent dans l'est de la RDC, réputé favorable à M. Kabila, et les trois autres dans l'ouest, où M. Bemba est populaire.
Enfin, les quatre centres de l'est représentent les deux-tiers des inscrits des sept centres pour lesquels les résultats étaient disponibles.
Mardi, la mission d'observation de l'Union européenne (UE) pour les élections a déploré "certaines défaillances" dans le processus de récolte et de compilation des résultats.
"A N'djili et Limete (quartiers de Kinshasa), des documents électoraux ont été brûlés", rapporte l'UE, exigeant une enquête à laquelle "les observateurs nationaux et internationaux devront être associés" et déplorant par ailleurs les difficultés d'accès "de nombreux observateurs et témoins de partis politiques" aux bureaux chargés de compiler les résultats des élections.
Pour l'Union européenne, "la chaîne de suivi se voit dépourvue de certains garde-fous garants de sa transparence".
Dans les jours à venir, la diffusion des résultats devraient continuer, sachant que la Commission électorale indépendante (CEI) doit en faire l'annonce globale au plus tard le 20 août et que la Cour suprême de justice (CSJ) a jusqu'au 31 août pour les proclamer, en cas de contentieux.
Un second tour sera organisé le 29 octobre si aucun des 32 candidats en lice n'a obtenu la majorité absolue des suffrages au premier tour.
L'annonce des résultats est très lente en raison notamment des problèmes d'acheminement des procès-verbaux vers les centres de compilation. La CEI dispose cependant depuis quelques jours de quatre hélicoptères prêtés par l'Angola pour accélérer le processus.
Les premiers résultats de la présidentielle, qui donnent M. Kabila en tête, "ne sont pas une surprise", a estimé à l'AFP un spécialiste de la région, sous couvert d'anonymat.
Le président sortant a fait des scores écrasants dans l'est, où il a obtenu 89,6% des suffrages exprimés dans les quatre centres de compilation des provinces du Nord-Kivu, du Katanga et du Maniema, pour lesquels les résultats étaient disponibles. En revanche dans l'ouest, il n'obtient que 16%, contre 37,8% à M. Bemba.
"Le Nord-Kivu et le Katanga sont des régions où on pouvait s'attendre à ce que Kabila soit populaire", a estimé un observateur sous couvert d'anonymat.
Aucun résultat n'était encore disponible mardi pour Kinshasa, qui représente près de 12% des inscrits, ni dans la province de l'Equateur (ouest, 10% des inscrits), fief de M. Bemba, chef du Mouvement de libération du Congo (MLC, ex-rébellion).
© Jeuneafrique.com 2006
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_depeche.asp?
art_cle=AFP10216kabilsleitr0
Mail & Guardian:
Memories of the great march
Sophia Williams-De Bruyn
08 August 2006
Helen Joseph and Sophia Williams lead the women’s march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria. (Photograph: Jurgen Schadeberg)
In 1956, on the day of the big march I ranked among South Africa’s fortunate: I was lucky enough to be free to be able to march to the Union Buildings, the centre of the apartheid domination.
I was also one of the four women chosen to lead the march. Lillian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa and I took the thousands of protests to the Nationalist prime minister, JG Strijdom, and dumped them on his desk.
Strijdom, however, was afraid of us - he ran away.
This was 50 years ago and the memories of that day are still clear and fresh in my mind. I never thought, but only hoped, that one day women of this country will be free. As the African idiom goes: “You free a woman, you free a nation.”
There were 20 000 of us there that day, but what history does not record is the thousands who were stopped by the police and told to go back, full buses that were turned around and many women who were man-handled and thrown in jail for the day to ensure their non-appearance at the Union Buildings.
The women sat on the lush, immaculately manicured lawns, some with their babies beside them. Others had their babies on their backs carrying their meagre lunches, depending on no one but themselves.
When word went around in the Union Buildings that there was this huge invasion of black women, taking over the grounds, Afrikaner male clerks and administrators and a lesser number of white female employees flocked out of the doors and began to perch themselves on the window sills and the balconies.
From our view it appeared that every nook and cranny was occupied.
This was the first time ever in the rule of the apartheid government that black people, worst of all women, ever sat foot and walked on their “holy grail”, the forbidden soil - the Union Buildings. I still wonder to this day what went through their minds.
Those 20 000 women proudly, with dignity, graciously and in a disciplined manner marched up the steps of the Union Buildings.
There was no jostling or pushing one another to get to the front. We four leaders walked together down the middle path that the women had left open.
When we came to the end of the free way and turned, the women fell in behind us, following us up all the way and across the terraces. There was an almost eerie silence.
The multitude of women was truly magnificent, some with babies on their backs, Indian women in their colourful saris, and rural women and others in their traditional garments, displaying myriad colours.
And then, of course, there were black, green and gold uniforms, the colours of the African National Congress.
We observed half an hour of silence in which one could have heard a pin drop, after singing Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.
Standing with Helen, Lillian and Rahima, with thousands of petitions about to be dispatched to Strijdom’s office, I realised we had really entered the belly of the dragon.
And then the hour arrived that we had to slay our dragon, namely deliver our demands to the prime minister. First Lillian addressed the women, and then we four marched in a dignified manner to Strijdom’s office.
But when we arrived at his office and knocked, we were only met by a female employee and a male clerk. We were told that Strijdom was not there. We partly handed over, partly dumped, the petitions in his office.
A significant factor that united us in the march was that, with few exceptions, the women were drawn from the poorest of the poor.
They had very little consciousness of their entitlement to anything such as justice, equality, freedom and a share in the resources of the land. Their state of oppression was so severe that they almost had no concept of their self-worth.
It was in that respect alone that August 9 was a cataclysmic event, for it burst through all the barriers of race and patriarchy that smothered the hearts, souls and intellects of those women and set them free in one great song.
After Lillian told the women that the prime minister had run away, the women instantly and spontaneously broke into singing the famous song that would become the women’s struggle anthem, Wathinta Abafazi Wathinta Imbokodo, which means You Have Struck a Rock, You have Struck a Woman.
This song was never pre-composed or even rehearsed, but it embodied the strength of the women.
After the singing, the march ended. As graciously and with the same dignity they displayed when they marched up the steps, the women walked back down.
As much as they were angry and disappointed, they contained their anger.
Not a single woman trashed the immaculate grounds of the Union Building, not because they were afraid of going to prison but because of respect.
They had respect for themselves, respect for their fellow women and comrades and, lastly, respect for their leaders. Vandalising the Union Building would have been disrespectful to the cause.
Now 50 years on, looking at the faces and complexions in our national Parliament, the provincial legislatures and other sectors of our society, it surely does not need a rocket scientist to see that the long journey our women have travelled was the right one.
As women we survived the injustices and indignities of racism. We emerged phoenix-like from the ashes, stronger, better, more matured.
Sophia Williams-De Bruyn is a veteran of the 1956 women’s march and the deputy speaker of the Gauteng legislature
All material copyright Mail&Guardian.
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?
articleid=280150&area=/insight/insight__national/#
Página/12:
La Liga Arabe enfrió el plan de paz
EN CONTRASTE CON LA IDEA VIGENTE, PIDE UN ALTO EL FUEGO INMEDIATO Y EL RETIRO ISRAELI
Mientras los diplomáticos daban vueltas, los combates continuaron entre Israel y Hezbolá, causando la muerte de al menos seis civiles en Beirut. Las lecciones militares de Gaza sirven para el frente libanés. Lo que dicen los diarios en la Franja.
Miércoles, 09 de Agosto de 2006
El frente diplomático se empantanó ayer una vez más mientras continúan los enfrentamientos y ataques en el Líbano. Una delegación de la Liga Arabe presentó ayer al Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU una serie de propuestas para poner fin al conflicto entre Israel y Hezbolá, que pusieron en dificultades el proyecto de resolución franco-estadounidense que parecía cerca de ser adoptado. En tanto, Israel calificó de “interesante” la propuesta del despliegue de 15.000 soldados libaneses en el sur del país árabe, aunque el primer ministro Ehud Olmert dijo que debían analizar la propuesta para ver “si era aplicable”. Esto no significa que Israel suavice su posición. Ayer también lanzó una amenaza: todo vehículo que se dirija hacia el sur del río Litani será bombardeado “bajo la sospecha de transportar misiles y armas para los terroristas”.
La misión de la Liga Arabe, que participó ayer en un debate público sobre el Líbano, trasladó al Consejo las propuestas de Beirut, que consisten en la adopción de un alto el fuego inmediato y el despliegue de 15.000 soldados libaneses en cuanto Israel retire sus tropas. Además, el Líbano quiere que la resolución haga referencia a la región de las Granjas de Shebaa, ocupada actualmente por Israel. “Las sugerencias libanesas han cambiado el contexto de las discusiones en Nueva York”, admitió un portavoz del Ministerio de Exteriores francés. En contraste con los pedidos de la Liga Arabe, la propuesta franco-estadounidense no exige explícitamente la retirada de las tropas israelíes para detener la lucha que se desarrolla desde el 12 de julio pasado, pide un alto el fuego –pero no “inmediato”– y prevé el despliegue de una fuerza internacional en el sur del país.
A diferencia de Estados Unidos, que expresó simplemente su disposición a escuchar las propuestas de la delegación árabe, Francia se mostró abierta a tenerlas en cuenta. “Me gustaría que las discusiones que tienen lugar en Nueva York tuvieran en cuenta este nuevo elemento esencial para asegurar la adopción de una resolución”, dijo el canciller francés, Philippe Douste Blazy, en un comunicado, refiriéndose a la oferta de Beirut de desplegar sus soldados en el sur. Israel también dio muestras de acuerdo, pero actuó con prudencia. “La propuesta libanesa es un paso interesante”, dijo el premier Olmert ayer, aunque afirmó que deberán analizarla minuciosamente para ver en qué medida es aplicable en tiempo razonable. “Nos interesa la oferta de Beirut”, coincidió Tony Snow, el portavoz de la Casa Blanca, pero agregó que aun así consideran que “las fuerzas armadas libanesas necesitarán ayuda de una fuerza internacional”.
Dadas las diferencias entre las delegaciones en el Consejo de Seguridad, Rusia –que fue el país más tajante a la hora de valorar el estado de la propuesta de Washington y París al calificarla de “inutilizable”, después de que fuera rechazada por Beirut– pidió la adopción de urgencia de una resolución exigiendo sólo un alto el fuego humanitario. “Si persisten las diferencias sobre la actual resolución, la ONU debería aprobar inmediatamente una resolución más corta sobre un alto el fuego humanitario, como paso intermedio”, indicó el viceministro de Relaciones Exteriores, Andrei Denisov.
Mientras el alto el fuego no llega, las batallas siguen su rumbo. Con unos 10.000 efectivos del ejército regular y miles de reservistas, Israel opera en la actualidad en una franja de 6 a 8 kilómetros, desde la frontera internacional. En un nuevo día de violencia, tres soldados israelíes y 25 milicianos de Hezbolá murieron ayer en combates en localidades del sur libanés. Uno de los soldados y los 25 milicianos de Hezbolá murieron cerca de Bint Jebel, un bastión de Hezbolá que Israel intenta controlar desde hace semanas, mientras que los otros dos militares fallecieron en la localidad fronteriza de Labuna.
No sólo las batallas prosiguen, sino que incluso podrían incrementarse. El gabinete de seguridad israelí se reunirá hoy para discutir el plan presentado el lunes por los altos mandos militares israelíes al primer ministro Olmert y al ministro de Defensa Amir Peretz, que prevé el avance de decenas de miles de soldados israelíes hasta el río Litani, entre 20 y 30 kilómetros dentro de Líbano.
Además, Israel volvió a bombardear ayer el territorio libanés, matando al menos a seis civiles que participaban de los funerales de otras personas muertas el lunes en un ataque aéreo al sur de la ciudad de Sidón. Pero no fue todo. La fuerza aérea israelí lanzó volantes sobre la ciudad de Tiro advirtiendo que cualquier vehículo, “sin importar su naturaleza”, que se mueva en dirección sur hacia el río Litani será bombardeado “bajo la sospecha de transportar misiles y armas para los terroristas”. Hezbolá, por su parte, lanzó al menos 115 cohetes contra el norte de Israel, pero sin causar víctimas.
En tanto, siguen los enfrentamientos de Israel no son sólo contra Hezbolá, sino también entre los propios generales. La designación del general Moshé Kaplinsky al frente de la Comandancia del Norte provocó peleas entre los militares, ya que esto supone el desplazamiento del general Udi Adam de la dirigencia de la contienda en el Líbano. “Yo no lo veo como un despido, pero si el Estado Mayor cree que debe haber un oficial superior por lo que pueda ocurrir en los próximos días puedo aceptarlo”, dijo el general Adam. Sin embargo, el corresponsal militar del Canal 1 israelí aseguró que el Estado Mayor no está satisfecho con Adam, y por ello, para evitar su despido en medio de la guerra, se ha decidido adjuntarle un superior.
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Página/12:
Una calle llamada muerte
Por Robert Fisk*
Desde el distrito de Shiyah de Beirut
Miércoles, 09 de Agosto de 2006
Había excavadoras que volcaban toneladas de escombros y una nube de polvo de un kilómetro y medio de altura sobrevolaba los destruidos barrios bajos de los suburbios al sur de Beirut. Un hombre vestido con una remera gris –un taxista de Brooklyn– estaba parado, al borde de las lágrimas, mirando lo que muy bien podía ser la tumba de su abuelo y sus tíos. La mitad del hogar familiar había desaparecido y todo el bloque de departamentos al lado había quedado aplastado unas pocas horas antes por los dos misiles que explotaron en la calle Asaad al Assad.
¿Qué se le dice a un hombre que está esperando que saquen más cadáveres de abajo de los escombros? Mohamed al Husseini había venido desde Nueva York con su mujer y su hijo –que estaban a salvo en el centro de Beirut– porque quería ver a su familia. “Mire lo que han hecho los israelíes”, dijo, sin quitar los ojos de los pisos de los departamentos. “No sé qué hacer. Podría volver con mi mujer y mi hijo, pero el resto de la familia está aquí. Antes vivían en el sur y sobrevivieron ahí. Luego vinieron a Beirut y murieron aquí.”
¿Y aquellos del edificio de al lado? Por lo menos 17 civiles murieron, muchos de ellos niños, cuando los misiles derribaron su casa justo después de las 7 y media el lunes a la noche. Casi todos los ocupantes de este edificio eran miembros de la familia Rmeiti y también provenían del peligroso sur del Líbano, y quince de los muertos eran del mismo pueblo. Pedazos de paredes colgaban todavía sobre las ruinas, en uno había un corazón pintado con la palabra “Brasil”, en apoyo al equipo de la Copa Mundial de fútbol, en una edad de la inocencia.
Era una escena que provocaba furia. Un “guardián” de Hezbolá me pidió mi tarjeta de prensa y perdió interés cuando la leyó. Pero el mismo hombre agarró a un joven libanés por su camisa, lo arrastró por el cuello y lo entregó a un grupo de individuos altos y fornidos, que lo metieron en un automóvil. Ahora todos buscan espías, hombres y mujeres que son conocidos por “pintar” los edificios de departamentos en Beirut para que la tecnología misilística de Israel impacte en sus blancos.
Pero una sombría y triste reunión en el Hospital Monte Líbano sugirió que la casa no había sido “marcada” por alguien. Encontré a Ali Rmeiti, un empleado del aeropuerto de Beirut, lleno de heridas sangrantes, su rostro crispado, incrédulo. “Estaba en el balcón con mi mujer Huda y nuestros tres hijos, debe haber sido después de las siete y media. No escuché nada, nada. No me di cuenta de lo que sucedió. Todo estaba negro. Luego llegó la segunda explosión y volamos todos a la calle junto con el balcón.”
Huda Rmeiti está acostada con más heridas que su marido. Y tengo que preguntarle tranquilamente cuántos de sus hijos estaban en el balcón, porque sé –y ellos no– que tres de los cuatro niños murieron cuando el balcón del primer piso se estrelló contra la calle. ¿Y por qué fue impactado el edificio? Los israelíes han masacrado a cientos de libaneses civiles, atacando convoyes de refugiados a quienes ellos mismos les dijeron que abandonaran sus casas. Pero Saadieh, la cuñada de Ali Rmeiti, sabe una versión similar a la de otros dos sobrevivientes. Antes que explotaran los misiles, un avión no tripulado voló sobre el distrito de Shiyah haciendo un reconocimiento. De pronto alguien que iba por la calle Assad al Assad en una motocicleta disparó hacia el cielo con un rifle frente a la casa de Rmeiti.
Un idiota probablemente. No se pueden destruir aviones no tripulados, como lo sabe cualquier miembro de Hezbolá. Pero poco después, los dos misiles se estrellaron en los hogares de los inocentes. Quedan dos lecciones morales: no les dispare a aviones no tripulados. Y no crea por un instante que a los israelíes les importará disparar misiles a un hogar cuando su pequeño juguete detecte un hombre con un arma.
* De The Independent de Gran Bretaña. Especial para Página/12.
Traducción: Celita Doyhambéhère.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/subnotas/71157-23117-2006-08-09.html
Página/12:
Los chicos pintados de verde
COMO VIVEN LOS SOLDADOS ISRAELIES EN EL FRENTE
Por Juan Miguel Muñoz*
Desde Metula, Miércoles, 09 de Agosto de 2006
Uno a uno suben al autobús a las puertas de Metula. Son casi niños y sus rostros pintados de verde muestran tensión. A alguno se le escapa una risa nerviosa. Impresiona tener la certeza de que van a traspasar la Barrera Buena, nombre de la última cerca metálica que separa Israel del Líbano.
Al otro lado, en las aldeas de Kefar Kila, Taibeh y Markaba, esperan los guerrilleros de Hezbolá en la más completa oscuridad. Desde Metula, en el extremo norte de Galilea, sólo se ven luces en los pueblos cristianos libaneses. En los musulmanes, tras los bombardeos de la aviación hebrea, el apagón es total.
Hacia esa boca de lobo se encaminó hace unos días Yair, que a sus 19 años ha tenido la experiencia más traumática de su vida. No tanto para Avi Usana, de 28 años, un profesional que ha luchado en los territorios ocupados palestinos y en el Líbano antes de que se retiraran las tropas en mayo de 2000, y que ahora combate en Taibeh. Tampoco para el aleccionado capitán Edan, casado a sus 26 años, y que manda a 60 hombres. Usana y Edan hablan de su experiencia con un oficial atento a la conversación.
En un detalle coinciden los tres: los milicianos chiítas son excelentes luchadores. Y en menor medida en las sensaciones que se viven en el campo de batalla: una gama que abarca desde el temor hasta el pánico. Todos han tenido ante sus ojos o mirillas telescópicas a los combatientes de Hezbolá. “Casi siempre les ganamos. Si nosotros sufrimos cuatro bajas, ellos tendrán treinta o cuarenta. Cuando ven los tanques Merkava huyen –dice Edan–. Cuando estás ahí dentro y ves los cohetes Katyusha que vuelan hacia Israel –agrega– te das cuenta de por qué estamos haciendo esto, de por qué estamos entre los terroristas e Israel”. Es el discurso oficial. El de los militares que no pueden mostrar síntomas de debilidad. Los hay, y muchos, que abandonan el frente con el pavor calado hasta el tuétano.
Se mezclan sensaciones encontradas. Los soldados de a pie no pueden sacarse de la cabeza el padecimiento de sus camaradas en el frente, al tiempo que hacen muecas de indiferencia cuando se les pregunta si desean volver al frente. Mientras, esperan órdenes para la próxima incursión.
* De El País de Madrid. Especial para Página/12.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/subnotas/71157-23116-2006-08-09.html
Página/12: Hamas busca mejorar su arsenal
para igualar la performance de Hezbolá
Por Sergio Rotbart
Desde Tel-Aviv, Miércoles, 09 de Agosto de 2006
De acuerdo con testimonios de soldados que combaten en el frente libanés no hay ninguna semejanza entre la actual guerra y el accionar del ejército en Gaza y Cisjordania. “Las incursiones en los territorios palestinos entrenan a las unidades a detener a algún jefe de una célula terrorista adentro de una casa, no a combatir en un poblado repleto de milicianos del Hezbolá armados con misiles antitanques”, explica un oficial perteneciente a la sección de instrucción del ejército. Con algunas variantes, la frase que se escucha reiteradamente de soldados combatientes que regresan al territorio israelí es que “el Hezbolá no es Los Mártires de Al Aqsa” (el brazo armado del Hamas)”. A diferencia de los proyectiles RPG que palestinos disparan contra tanques israelíes en Gaza, cuyo daño es relativamente superficial, los Sagger y los Metis que Hezbolá emplea en el Líbano provocan un efecto mucho más mortal.
Desde el secuestro del soldado Gilad Shalit, el efecto disuasivo que Israel intenta conseguir en Gaza no parece ser eficiente. Alrededor de 163 palestinos murieron en el mes de julio a causa de ataques perpetrados por el ejército israelí. Según el último informe de B’Tselem, el Centro de Información por los Derechos Humanos en los Territorios Ocupados, 78 de ellos eran civiles desarmados que no participaron en combate alguno contra las fuerzas israelíes. Y, sin embargo, no han cesado los intentos de atacar a poblados israelíes con cohetes Qassam o de enfrentar al ejército mediante proyectiles RPG. Es más, inspirados por el ejemplo de Hezbolá, los grupos armados intentarán conseguir armas más sofisticadas. La tentación de intensificar la amenaza contra Israel fue incluso motivo de una caricatura publicada días atrás por el diario Al Quds, que se edita en Jerusalén oriental, en la que se ve un misil que vuela por sobre el muro de separación construido por Israel en el límite con Cisjordania, acompañada por la frase: “No lo tomaron en cuenta”.
Hassan Nasralá, el líder del Hezbolá, se ha convertido en el nuevo héroe del público palestino, como lo fue Saddam Hussein en 1991. “Ahora somos todos chiítas”, declaró el locutor en una transmisión radial de Gaza. Los diarios publican caricaturas que ridiculizan a los líderes árabes, presentados como impotentes y corruptos, contrastándolos con la glorificación de Nasralá. Los dirigentes israelíes aparecen ahora, más que antes, como agentes extranjeros que luchan al servicio de los intereses norteamericanos, que golpean al cliente (Hezbolá) con la intención de infligir daño al patrón iraní. Los medios palestinos también destacan la noticia de que abogados marroquíes demandan juzgar por crímenes de guerra a Amir Peretz, el ministro de Defensa israelí que cuenta con pasaporte del país norafricano. Y lo acusan de aprovechar el hecho de que la atención internacional está centrada en el Líbano con el objetivo de sembrar la muerte y la destrucción masivas en Gaza.
Para Alina Korn, del Departamento de Criminología de la Universidad de Bar-Ilan, el uso masivo de la fuerza militar no genera el presunto efecto disuasivo que sus estrategas dicen perseguir. Por el contrario, provoca “la escalada de la violencia y la militarización del conflicto, ya que los actos de represalia colectiva por parte de Israel aseguran la continuidad de los ataques terroristas, nuevos actos de venganza a la venganza precedente y nuevas violaciones de los límites en las próximas acciones”.
La lógica de la guerra en el Líbano es bastante similar. “Entraremos a cada lugar que querramos”, dijo la semana pasada Dan Halutz, el comandante en jefe del ejército israelí, cuando explicó la irrupción de un grupo comando al hospital de Balbek, que se hallaba vacío. El efecto buscado, según Halutz, fue “transmitirle” al Hezbolá que la continuidad de los ataques contra Israel tiene un alto precio. De hecho, el resultado obtenido fue el contrario: los lanzamientos de cohetes se intensificaron, así como los daños y las muertes por ellos provocados. Y, en la escena libanesa, el entendimiento que muchos ciudadanos mostraron hacia la motivación israelí al comienzo de la guerra se ha transformado en sufrimiento, humillación y odio profundos.
Para Zeev Sternhal, profesor de ciencias políticas de la Universidad de Jerusalén, lo que no mata fortalece. “La incapacidad de una potencia para poner fin a una guerra de guerrillas, cuyos antecedentes se remontan a Napoleón en España, pasando por los franceses en Argelia, los norteamericanos en Vietnam y ahora en Irak, se expresa en los intentos frustrados de un ejército bien organizado y equipado con tecnología avanzada para eliminar fuerzas irregulares”, señaló. Los milicianos saben adaptarse al medio, están mezclados con la población civil y le prestan ayuda material, social y religiosa, aclara Sternhal. Y agrega: “Durante el combate la organización está interesada en que toda la población sufra bajas. Cuando todos son víctimas, el odio se dirige contra la potencia enemiga”. Con respecto a la actual guerra que Israel libra en el Líbano, el académico es tajante: “El bombardeo de poblados, centrales eléctricas, puentes y carreteras es un acto de estupidez, que juega a favor del Hezbolá y sirve a sus objetivos estratégicos, dado que crea la identificación entre los combatientes y los ciudadanos pasivos”.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/subnotas/71157-23115-2006-08-09.html
Página/12: Difunden una carta de Castro a Evo
para calmar la ansiedad en Cuba
Además de la carta, el vice cubano, Carlos Lage, tranquilizó a varios mandatarios latinoamericanos sobre la salud de Castro.
Miércoles, 09 de Agosto de 2006
Después de más de una semana de silencio, el gobierno cubano difundió una carta de Fidel Castro dirigida a su par boliviano, Evo Morales, para felicitarlo por el 181º aniversario de la independencia de su país. Además, desde Colombia, el vicepresidente Carlos Lage se reunió con varios mandatarios latinoamericanos y les aseguró que el veterano dirigente cubano se estaba recuperando sin problemas. Desde la isla, el líder sandinista y candidato presidencial nicaragüense, Daniel Ortega, dijo a la prensa que su amigo “estaba activo”. En las calles, las demostraciones de apoyo a Fidel y al régimen continuaron, en medio de un clima de tranquilidad. Rituales religiosos, actos en las fábricas y manifestaciones organizadas por el partido. Todos coincidieron en un solo mensaje: la pronta recuperación de Fidel.
La hija de Ernesto Che Guevara, Aleida Guevara, se mostró contenta por todos los mensajes alentadores sobre la salud del compañero de armas de su padre. Aseguró que debe tomarse todo el tiempo necesario para recuperarse, ya que todo está tranquilo en la isla y “nada va a cambiar”. Algo similar le dijo Lage a los presidentes que participaron de la toma de mando de Alvaro Uribe, el lunes, en Bogotá. En reuniones con la chilena Michelle Bachelet, el paraguayo Nicanor Duarte, el ecuatoriano Alfredo Palacio y el mandatario de República Dominicana, Leonel Fernández, el vicepresidente cubano los tranquilizó sobre el estado de Fidel y se limitó a afirmar que “avanza de manera positiva en su recuperación”. Distinta fue la situación con el presidente costarricense, Oscar Arias, que el lunes había adelantado que le pediría a Fidel que aprovechara esta histórica coyuntura para realizar algunas reformas, orientadas a ampliar las libertades civiles –especialmente la de opinión y circulación–. Lage se negó públicamente a transmitir este mensaje al veterano dirigente cubano y Arias contestó cancelando la reunión pactada para ayer.
Las expectativas, que habían surgido entre los opositores moderados de la isla desde el traspaso de mando parecieron desaparecer ayer. Irónicamente, algunos sectores disidentes repetían las mismas palabras que durante toda la semana pasada utilizaron los funcionarios del gobierno.
“No creo en ningún cambio, de momento no”, aseguró uno de los dirigentes de la organización opositora Todos Unidos, Vladimir Roca. La médica Hilda Molina, que desde hace una década pide viajar a la Argentina para reunirse con su hijo y sus nietos, coincidió sobre la continuidad del régimen y del gobierno. “Es el mismo gobierno. Creo que no hay ninguna transición, sencillamente Fidel Castro está enfermo y delegó sus funciones en la segunda persona del país”, señaló Molina, que en los últimos años causó algunos roces entre el gobierno argentino y el cubano.
El pesimismo no llegó a Estados Unidos. Washington decidió intensificar las transmisiones de televisión de la emisora TV Martí, con sede en Miami. Desde hace dos años, este canal transmite su emisión a la isla a través de un avión de carga Hércules C-130 de la Fuerza Aérea. Según el diario anticastrista Miami Herald, parte del presupuesto millonario aprobado por el Congreso estadounidense para “ayudar a la transición en Cuba” estará destinado a sumar un nuevo avión para aumentar las transmisiones de una a seis tardes por semana.
Pero los planes del otro lado de la costa poco parecen estar repercutiendo en la isla, que sigue dominada por el silencio y la calma.
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Página/12:
Esa noche
Por Sandra Russo
Miércoles, 09 de Agosto de 2006
Estuve en Cuba varias veces, y si tuviera que elegir un país para vivir, sería otro. Digo esto para dejar constancia de mi identidad pequeñoburguesa, y para admitir de entrada que, siendo periodista y dedicándome a la escritura, no podría, en Cuba, decir todo lo que se me ocurriera, ni apelar al cinismo que tanto nos reconforta paliativamente a los desencantados, ni sonar corrosiva. Es decir que lo digo con plena conciencia de que llevo adherida a la mente la noción de libertad capitalista y que no tengo pensado renunciar a ella porque sé que no puedo, porque eso, creo, está más allá de mi voluntad.
Pero me inquieta que la mala salud de Fidel Castro y la delegación del mando en su hermano Raúl haya estallado como un simple debate entre qué es democracia y qué no. Como si no hubiera otra vara, otra ventana para mirar algunos acontecimientos y, sobre todo, algunos procesos históricos. Como si lleváramos incrustado en el cerebro un democratómetro según el cual todo aquello que no responde a la fórmula de la democracia representativa quede automáticamente impugnado. Que la democracia está llena de fallas, pero es el mejor sistema conocido, lo sé, lo sostengo. Pero eso no equivale a perder de vista que el pato más feo puede ser un cisne.
La primera vez que fui a la isla lo hice acompañada por un grupo de periodistas varones y bastante más influyentes que yo, que andaba por los veintipocos, y recibí alborozada aquella invitación del Instituto Cubano de Turismo. Fueron dos semanas de convivencia, entre otros, con tipos entrañables como Ariel Delgado y Enrique Sdrech, recorriendo lugares que iban mucho más allá de Varadero o los destinos conocidos. En el grupo había un periodista del diario de Bahía Blanca, La Nueva Provincia, que, según confesó ya en el avión, iba a constatar que Cuba era una farsa de equidad y justicia.
Mientras estábamos allí, se celebró el 25º aniversario de la creación de los Comités de Defensa de la Revolución (CDR), organizados manzana por manzana en todo el país. Los mismos que están activándose ahora en ese mismo sentido, después de décadas de funcionar como organizaciones de base para que cada embarazada llegue a tiempo al hospital o para que cada niño sea vacunado. A último momento pedimos asistir a uno de los miles y miles de festejos. Nos fue destinada una manzana en los suburbios de La Habana. Nos perdimos en el camino. Llegamos más de una hora tarde. Los vecinos nos estaban esperando. Había carteles que rezaban: “Bienvenidos hermanos argentinos”, y muchísimos regalos para nosotros, que los niños habían alcanzado a hacer en las pocas horas libres que tuvieron.
Nos sentamos a una de las mesas en la calle y comenzamos a disfrutar de las risas de los hombres y mujeres que se nos acercaban y que nos hablaban de Mirtha Legrand y del Che. Además de los regalos, los niños habían tenido tiempo de aprenderse de memoria algunas estrofas del Martín Fierro. Y las recitaban con ese tono que nunca le escuché a ningún niño argentino. Los argentinos no tenemos training para la mística. Nos dan pudor algunas emociones. Esos pioneros cascaban sus gargantas con esos versos y recitaban a voz en cuello las mismas palabras que a nosotros nos habían fastidiado en el colegio. Esa fue una ráfaga de comprensión que me asaltó justo en ese momento. Esos niños, que también recitaron a José Martí, a quien amaban, nos homenajeaban con algo que suponían que nosotros amábamos. Pero nosotros no amábamos el Martín Fierro. ¿Qué amábamos nosotros?
No puedo poner esto en palabras con mucha exactitud. Pero esa noche, en esa tierra sembrada de bombitas de luz de pocos voltios, entre esas casas pobres de paredes descascaradas y de pintura vieja, entre esa gente dadivosa que nos tocaba los hombros y nos ofrecía su comida, yo viví algo que no había vivido antes ni volví a vivir después. Cuba entera es un país cuya población desconoce situaciones límite que para la mayoría de nuestras poblaciones son frecuentes. No pueden salir del país, como la doctora Hilda Molina, pero están liberados del dolor de un hijo que se muere por falta de comida o de atención médica, del dolor de un desalojo inminente, del dolor del analfabetismo, del dolor del desempleo. ¿No son ésas acaso otras formas de la libertad?
Cuando llegó el momento de hablarles, de tomar el micrófono y agradecerles semejante demostración de cariño hacia un grupo de perfectos desconocidos, nosotros elegimos al periodista de La Nueva Provincia para que fuera el vocero del grupo. Estábamos seguros de que esa ráfaga también a él lo había traspasado. Y el hombre, a paso lento, subió a la tarima, tomó el micrófono y comenzó a hablar, pero no pudo seguir. Un llanto lento se le trabó en el cuello, porque la ideología es una cosa, pero otra cosa es la verdad.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
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The Independent: What do you say to a man
whose family is buried under the rubble?
Robert Fisk
Published: 09 August 2006
There were bulldozers turning over the tons of rubble, a cloud of dust and smoke a mile high over the smashed slums of Beirut's southern suburbs and a tall man in a grey T-shirt - a Brooklyn taxi driver, no less - standing on the verge of tears, staring at what may well be the grave of his grandfather, his uncle and aunt. Half the family home had been torn away and the entire block of civilian apartments next door had been smashed to the ground a few hours earlier by the two missiles that exploded in Asaad al-Assad Street.
What do you say to a man whose family is buried under the rubble? The last corpse had been a man whose face appeared etched in dust before the muck was removed and he turned out to be paper-thin - so perfectly had the falling concrete crushed him. Mohamed al-Husseini had left New York for a holiday with his young wife and infant child - they were safe in the centre of Beirut - because he wanted to see his family home and talk to the relatives he grew up with.
"Just look what the Israelis have done," he said, not taking his eyes off the floors of the apartments, now scarcely an inch between them. "I am confused. You know? I don't know what to do. I could go back to my wife and kid but the rest of my family is in there. They used to live in the south and they survived there. Then they come to Beirut and die here."
Mohamed al-Husseini's grandfather, Mohamed Yassin, is - let us not say "was" yet - 75. His uncle is Hussein Yassin, his aunt is called Hila. By last night, nothing had been found of them. And of those in the building next door?
At least 17 civilians were killed, many of them children. A 12-year-old boy called Hussein Ahmed Mohsen lay dead in the mortuary of the Mount Lebanon Hospital, along with a woman who died just after being rescued when the missiles collapsed her home just after 7.30 on Monday night. Almost all the occupants of this doomed building were members of the Rmeiti family - again, they were from the dangerous south - and 15 of the dead were from the same village.
It was a scene to provoke fury. One Hizbollah "watcher" demanded my press card and lost interest when he read it. But a Lebanese youth in a yellow shirt at the scene was grabbed by the same man, hauled away by his collar and handed over to a clutch of beefy, tall individuals who forced him into a car. Everyone now searches for spies, for the men - and women - who are reputed to "paint" the apartment blocks of Beirut for Israel's missile technology to lock on to their targets.
A sad, grim meeting in the same Mount Lebanon Hospital suggested that the house had not been "fingered" by anyone. I found Ali Rmeiti, an employee at Beirut airport, covered in bloody wounds, his face distorted, shaking his head in disbelief. "I was on the balcony with my wife, Huda, and three of our children ... I heard nothing - nothing. I didn't realise what happened. It was black. Then came the second blast and we were all blown into the street with the balcony."
Huda Rmeiti is lying next to her husband on a drip-feed, covered with even more bloody wounds than Ali. I know - and they do not - that three of their four children were killed.
And why was the building struck? The Israelis have slaughtered hundreds of civilians, attacking convoys of refugees they themselves ordered to leave. But Saadieh, Ali Rmeiti's sister-in-law, has a story which matches those of two other survivors. Before the missiles exploded, she said, an Israeli drone flew over the Shiyyah district, a pilotless reconnaissance aircraft which sends live pictures back to Tel Aviv. "Um Kamel", as the Lebanese call them, whined around for a time and then, without warning, someone drove down Assaad al-Assad street on a motorcycle and fired into the sky with a rifle opposite the Rmeiti home.
Then he left, some youth who wanted to prove his foolish manhood. You can't destroy drones with a rifle, as any Hizbollah member knows. But not long afterwards, the two missiles came streaking down on the homes of the innocent.
Perhaps there are two moral lessons from this, one obvious, the other familiar. Don't shoot at drones. And don't believe for a moment the Israelis will care about firing missiles into your home when their little toy spots a man with a gun.
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1217826.ece
The Independent:
Israel's promise of humanitarian corridors is exposed as a sham
Robert Fisk
Published: 09 August 2006
So much for Ehud Olmert's "humanitarian corridors". Two weeks after the Israeli Prime Minister's comforting assertion - which no one in Lebanon believed - the Israeli air force has blown up the last bridge across the Litani river, in effect ending all humanitarian convoys between Beirut and southern Lebanon. Requests from humanitarian organisations for clearance from the Israelis are now being refused. Even the Red Cross admits there is now, in effect, a blockade on a vast area along the Lebanese border where thousands of civilians are still cowering in their homes.
David Shearer, the UN's humanitarian co-ordinator in Lebanon, has pleaded with the Israelis to end their attacks against the country's infrastructure and end all activities which threaten the transport of humanitarian aid to the displaced. But convoys since have been cancelled or forced to make long detours across the country and along the edge of the Lebanese-Syrian border. Truck drivers are frightened to risk their lives under Israeli air attack. I myself was on a Red Cross field trip from Qlaya to Jezzine when, close to the village of Arab Selim, an Israeli jet dropped a bomb on the road 80 metres in front of us. On the Litani river, north of Tyre, the main road bridge had been blasted away but the Lebanese army had constructed a temporary bridge over the water to the west. Now that, too, has been ripped to pieces by Israeli bombs.
Mr Shearer warned of a "serious humanitarian crisis" if convoys were not allowed to move south. A Red Cross spokesman, Richard Huguenin, said his organisation had been denied permission by the Israelis to move humanitarian aid to the border. Without guarantees of safe passage, the organisation cannot leave Tyre for dozens of villages whose inhabitants are trapped. "At night, we ask for permission and in the morning we get either a red light or a green light, and for the past 48 hours it has been red," he said.
A Greek ship carrying Red Cross supplies was supposed to have docked in Tyre on Monday, but was refused permission to land and diverted to Sidon, north of the Litani. The French are still bringing boatloads of supplies into Beirut, accompanied - wisely, it has to be said - by a French warship equipped with anti-aircraft missiles.
So are Mr Olmert's non-existent "humanitarian corridors" to be created by force? Or will they have to wait until the civilians of southern Lebanon are starving?
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1217827.ece
The Nation:
The Smoking Volcano
by JOHN ROSS
[posted online on August 8, 2006]
Mexico City
As Andrés Manuel López Obrador's demands for a vote-by-vote recount in the tarnished July 2 presidential election here was being rejected by Mexico's top electoral tribunal (known as "the TRIFE") last Saturday, thousands of his supporters huddled around hand-held radios in the forty-seven encampments they have set up on crowded Mexico City streets, listening intently to the proceedings. Others gathered in the great Zocalo plaza or were posted outside the TRIFE headquarters in the south of the city. Everywhere, their mood was as dark as the incessant downpours that have drilled down on the makeshift camps for days. Some sobbed, others beat on the bars of the TRIFE gate in frustration. "If there is no solution, there will be a revolution!" shouted 73-year-old farmer Ponciano Aguirre from Puebla state as the seven-judge panel pronounced its reasons for rejection on the big screen that had been hung in the Zocalo.
"Voto por Voto!" had been the battle cry of this amazing month-long civil resistance of los de abajo--those from down below--and now the seven justices had wrecked their slender hopes. The tribunal is the court of last resort, and there is no appeal.
The election, which the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) awarded to the conservative Felipe Calderón by a razor-thin 243,000 votes out of nearly 42 million cast, featured two highly dubious computer counts, manipulation of manual vote tallies and their transmission to the IFE, which also badly bungled the announcement of the results. In their case for a vote-by-vote recount, López Obrador's legal team submitted evidence of miscounts in 73,000 of the nation's 130,000 casillas, or polling stations in addition to charges of pre-election inequities by the IFE that favored Calderón and his National Action Party (PAN), and the unconstitutional interference of President Vicente Fox, a member of the PAN, in the electoral process. In turning down López Obrador's petition, the judges cited a technical failure by his Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) to file individual complaints in each challenged polling place.
Nonetheless, the TRIFE softened the blow by ordering a partial vote-by-vote recount in nearly 12,000 casillas (9.7 percent of the total vote). The recount begins August 9 and lasts through August 13 under the strict supervision of electoral judges. The votes will be tabulated by IFE technicians, raising doubts about the legitimacy of the new tally. Most of the recounts will be in states that heavily favored Calderón, who could see his lead shrivel to nothing if the process favors his opponent. With 4 million votes hanging in the balance, López Obrador has to pick up twenty votes (or Calderón has to lose twenty) in each of the contested casillas to tie the race. Moreover, if the recount demonstrates that fraud was afoot in the July 2 balloting, the TRIFE could order a wider recount--or even declare the election annulled.
The TRIFE's decision to open some ballot boxes is a stinging blow to the IFE's integrity. Under fire since July 2, the Federal Electoral Institute, backed by a leading business federation, has been airing prime-time spots in which actors impersonating citizens object indignantly to the suggestion that the presidential election was anything but pristine.
López Obrador, known to his supporters as AMLO, quickly rejected the tribunal's "10 percent solution," demanding "100 percent democracy!" The fact that the judges refused to open all of the ballot boxes "is proof that we have won!" he thundered to his supporters on a rain-soaked Zocalo on the night of the decision. The judicial twists and turns frustrate AMLO people, who are increasingly tuning out the legal niceties. Mexico's judiciary, as López Obrador points out in nightly "informative assemblies" with his supporters, has rarely decided in favor of the nation's poor--as los de abajo can readily attest. "Airport! Airport!" they kept chanting at a massive rally held the morning after the TRIFE decision, urging a shutdown of Mexico City's busy international airport, now ringed by hundreds of federal police in anticipation of demonstrations. Last week, López Obrador's supporters shut down the stock market, and other targets nominated at Sunday's big meeting included the National Palace, the Congress and the nation's petroleum-drilling platforms. There was a call for a general strike. One woman yelled out that everyone should just get naked à la Spencer Tunick, a uniquely Mexican form of protest.
López Obrador walks a tightrope between defiance and keeping a lid on his steamed-up constituents. He often quotes Gandhi at his rallies (the movie bio is shown in the encampments) and urges the militants to keep "a hot heart and a cool head." Nonviolent trainings are in the works, and hundreds of musicians have volunteered their services to soothe the savage breast--but when one band struck up a rolla just after the TRIFE decision was delivered, the furious crowd in the Zocalo told the musicos to just shut up.
How long López Obrador can contain the people's fury is the crucial question in this high-stakes drama that is certain to build through September 6, when the TRIFE must either confirm a winner or annul the election.
Indeed, on the morning the judges decided against a total recount, as if it were echoing the mood of AMLO's people, Popocatepetl, the smoking volcano south of the capital whose eruptions traditionally presage dark days for this distant neighbor nation, exhaled seven great gasps of fiery rock and ash for the first time in several years.
Copyright © 2006 The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060814/ross
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