Israel is bolstering extremists by antagonising moderates

UNDER international law, reprisal actions are supposed to be commensurate with the provocation.

Israel’s response to the kidnapping of her two soldiers has been totally disproportionate. Yet the international community is standing idly by in a kind of stunned silence.

Hezbollah started the latest conflict by kidnapping the Israeli soldiers. The Israelis have a right to defend their territory and their citizens but in response to the kidnapping of those two soldiers, they have killed more than 600 Lebanese civilians, many of whom were in the act of merely fleeing the fighting. Israeli action has also killed four UN peacekeepers.

The Lebanese government could not have stopped Hezbollah without provoking civil strife, and it seems Israel is determined to teach the Lebanese a lesson. The overreaction is likely to further destabilise the region for a long time.

In the past, the United States could have been expected to call for restraint, but now it seems intent on ensuring Israel has a free hand, regardless of the extent of the overreaction. The Americans justified Israel’s reaction to the kidnapping of the soldiers but they blocked the mere condemnation of Israel’s killing of the UN peacekeepers.

Fifty years ago this autumn the Israelis launched a war against Egypt at the secret behest of the British and the French, who used the conflict as a pretext to seize the Suez Canal, supposedly to keep the warring sides apart. It was, essentially, Britain’s last imperial adventure.

The British had not yet realised they were only a second-rate power and the days of empire were over. They had not bothered to inform the Americans, and the Eisenhower administration (within days of a presidential election) retaliated swiftly by starting a run on the English pound. Faced with the collapse of their finances, the British promptly capitulated in the Middle East.

Thereafter, the British and French empires were quickly dismantled, but they were replaced by two new forms of imperialism — American and Soviet.

The French had already withdrawn from Indochina where there were supposed to be free elections in Vietnam in 1956, but those were blocked by the United States, because — as President Eisenhower later explained — the Communist Ho Chi Minh was likely to win at least 80% of the vote.

The Americans took a strong stand against the British and French in 1956, but they said very little about Israel’s outrageous behaviour towards Egypt. Of course, this was within a week of the presidential election and they were not about to antagonise the Jewish lobby in New York. Anyway, the Yanks seemed to have a simplistic view of the whole Palestine question.

In the heat of the United Nations debate in 1948 surrounding the decision to create a Jewish state, the US ambassador to the UN, Warren Austin, famously said he could not understand why the Arabs and Jews could not “settle this problem in a true Christian spirit”.

In 1956, the people of Hungary had just risen, before the British and French invaded Suez. With the international spotlight conveniently on the Middle East, the Russians went back into Hungary, and the iron curtain remained in place for more than 30 more years.

What has been happening in recent weeks is an outrage but maybe the lack of international indignation is a reflection of the attitude towards Islamic extremism.

There is little doubt the Palestinians have been mistreated but that has been nothing like the extent to which the Jews were persecuted in Europe in the run up to and during World War II. Yet that does not give Israel the right to persecute others, any more than it justifies the Islamic extremists targeting anybody they choose.

They have been prepared to target anybody. There were people from all over the world, including some from Ireland, in the Twin Towers when they were attacked. But that was just the biggest outrage in a series of outrages which go back to the murder of Bobby Kennedy by a Palestinian extremist in 1968.

And Islamic extremists have not just targeted people in the US. In 1972 they tried to disrupt the Munich Olympics by taking Israeli hostages, which led to a massacre.

In the past few years Islamic extremists have also been responsible for outrages in Bali, London, Madrid and, most recently, the train massacre in Mumbai, India. There probably was never a better chance for Israel to enlist international support but the UN has been virtually ignored.

The international response to what the Israelis have been doing may be muted but their actions have also been generating sympathy for the Islamic militants. The Israelis are not just trying to hit Hezbollah; they are killing innocent civilians, and they are doing it at a rate of some 10:1 for every Israeli killed. Does anyone believe one Israeli life is worth more than 10 Lebanese?

Let’s face it, the Israelis have been behaving worse than the Black and Tans behaved in this country, and we know how long the memory of their misbehaviour poisoned the minds of Irish people.

What Israel has been doing is bolstering the Islamic extremists by antagonising moderate muslims and reinforcing their loathing of Israel and the United States, which has been frustrating any criticism of Israel.

IN the circumstances, the Americans have been endorsing the outrageous humanitarian consequences of what has been happening.

They seem ready to justify anything in the context of 9/11. They are never going to let anyone forget it but they conveniently forget that they inflicted an even worse 9/11 on the people of Chile, which had been the most stable democracy in Latin America. The CIA organised the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile on September 11, 1973. This was followed by the US-sponsored butchery of the Pinochet regime.

Of course, as a people, we have no right to complain about others not being willing to forgive and forget past outrages. We never forgave the British for our 9/11, when Cromwell slaughtered around 3,500 men, women and children in Drogheda on September 11, 1649.

This week we had the appalling spectacle of US president George W Bush lecturing people about democracy.

His country waged a 10-year war to pervert the democratic will of the people of Vietnam, and it undermined the democracy of Chile. Moreover, he did not seem to care much about the democratic will of the American people in Florida in 2000. His talk of democracy is as hypocritical as his earlier statement about engaging in “a crusade” was stupid.

In the midst of his latest remarks, Bush ominously referred to Iran, which should prompt people to ask if the Americans do not have another agenda in backing the Israelis. Could the whole thing be a US rerun of the Anglo-French tactics of 1956? It might be a part of a much bigger scheme to drag Iran into the conflict to provide a pretext for having Israel take out the nuclear facilities in that country.

Remember, Bush comes from the party of Barry Goldwater, the darling of the American conservatives. In 1964 when Goldwater was running for president against Lyndon Johnson, he suggested the Americans should bomb Chinese nuclear facilities in a preemptive strike. If the Chinese then wanted war, he would have been content that the US could use nuclear weapons without fear of Chinese nuclear retaliation.

Of course, even the Yanks realised that was lunacy, and Goldwater was trounced. But the world will underestimate George W Bush at its peril.