Posted on 04/10/2002 3:08:08 PM PDT by white trash redneck
The awful price of restraint
"You are surrounded... Those staying in the city will be regarded as terrorists and bandits. They will be destroyed by artillery and air force. There will be no more talks. Everyone who fails to leave the city will be destroyed. It's up to you to choose. The countdown is already on."
Thus did the Russian Army advertise its siege of Grozny in December 1999, in leaflets that rained down from above just before the shells started falling. A few years before that, a Serb army did much the same in the Bosnian town of Srebenica - without the leaflets. Ditto for the Iraqi chemical attack at Halabja in 1988 and the Syrian bulldozing of Hama in 1982.
The "siege" that has everyone's attention today is, of course, Israel's. From Brussels to Rome to Jakarta to Washington to the headquarters of the UN, world leaders are calling on Israel to "withdraw immediately" from Palestinian towns and cities. As of this writing, the European Union is contemplating economic sanctions against Israel, even as European anti-Semitic incidents reach levels not seen since the 1940s. An editorial cartoon in the London Times has Ariel Sharon in a dance with death: the caption reads, "Mr. Sharon will do what has to be done!" And a caricature in Spain's El Mundo depicts Sharon as a wolf, his large incisor teeth tearing into a Palestinian keffiyeh.
Given all this, the proverbial man from Mars - or rather, the average viewer of CNN - might well conclude that what's going on in the West Bank is as bad, perhaps worse, than what happened in Grozny, Srebenica, Halabja, and Hama. He might also conclude that Sharon is every bit as bloody-minded as Vladimir Putin, Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, and Hafez Assad.
But then comes the news that at least 20 IDF soldiers have been killed during street-fighting operations in Jenin. This is strange. A military power like Israel has no real need to send its troops into dangerous Palestinian back alleys when it can easily flatten whole neighborhoods with long-range artillery and 500lb. bombs. That is how Putin did it - and George W. Bush likes what he sees in the Russian's soul. That is also how Assad would have done it - and French President Jacques Chirac walked a mile in the Syrian dictator's funeral cortege.
Of course we do not know the whole story. The foreign news media, which in the past had unfettered access to scenes of fighting, now bray that the IDF has erected closed military zones. Who knows what might be going on? And yet this same crew was equally voluble in its criticism of Israel when an Italian cameraman was killed and a Boston Globe reporter shot in the heat of battle.
At some point, the respective presidents of CNN, the BBC, AFP, RAI, and other leading news outlets might consider adopting a common position as to whether they want the government of Israel to keep journalists safe from harm or put them in harm's way. Either way, they should not complain of the consequences.
At some point, too, Western journalists might begin to ask some very basic questions regarding Palestinian tactics.
If, for example, the IDF is guilty of inflicting collateral damage on Palestinian civilians, why don't the Tanzim, Fatah, al-Aqsa Brigades, and other paramilitary units stop using their own civilians as human shields when they fire on IDF troops?
If, for example, the Palestinian Authority is concerned about the welfare of the priests, nuns, and other civilians held hostage in the Church of the Nativity, why have its fighters holed up there? And why won't they release the civilians, or come out themselves?
If, for example, the Red Crescent has trouble getting its ambulances across IDF lines, why did it allow at least one of its ambulances to ferry a suicide-bomber's explosive belt? If, for example, Palestinians do not want their mosques attacked, why do they allow those mosques to be used as weapons depots, as they did in Ramallah?
There may be exculpatory answers to these questions. Yet one must take a very elevated view of the Palestinians to avoid drawing the likeliest conclusion: that Palestinian fighters are using civilians, churches, mosques, and ambulances - that is, everything that's holy, or nearly so - to avoid a fight they themselves have picked. And like a woman who repeatedly slaps her husband only to cry foul when he raises his fists, they are counting on Israel's reluctance to bring the full weight of its military might to bear against them as they continue to draw Israeli blood, one deadly slap at a time.
In 1970, Jordan's King Hussein savagely put down a Palestinian uprising and was acclaimed the world over. In Lebanon not long ago, a protest by Palestinian refugees against the government was savagely put down. Nobody noticed. Yet when Israel acts - in self-defense, after six consecutive days of suicide attacks, with a degree of restraint and openness not exactly common among "besiegers" - the world convulses. The sad irony here is that, were Israel a crueler state, the world might criticize it less.
I don't see anything wrong with what the Russians did in Grozny.
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BATTLE AT DEIR YASSIN
Approximately 100 members of the two Jewish splinter groups carried out the assault. Menachem Begin stated that a small open truck fitted with a loudspeaker was driven to the entrance of the village before the attack and broadcast a warning to civilians to evacuate the area, which many did. The warning was probably never issued, however, because the truck with the loudspeaker rolled into a ditch before it could broadcast its warning.
Contrary to revisionist histories that the town was filled with peaceful innocents, residents opened fire on the attackers. The battle was ferocious and took several hours. The Irgun suffered 41 casualties, including four dead. Though Arabs and Israelis still dispute the total, The New York Times reported at the time that more than 200 Arabs were killed and 40 more held captive.
The Jewish attackers left open an escape corridor from the village and more than 200 residents left unharmed. After the remaining Arabs feigned surrender and then fired on the Jewish troops, some Jews killed Arab soldiers and civilians indiscriminately. Arab men disguised as women were found among the bodies.
The killings of civilians along with combatants, combined with the relatively large number of dead, provoked the Jewish Agency to express its "horror and disgust." It also sent a letter expressing the Agency's shock and disapproval to Transjordan's King Abdullah.
Nevertheless, the Arabs began to refer to the battle as a "massacre." The Arab Higher Committee hoped exaggerated reports about a bloodbath at Deir Yassin would shock the population of the Arab countries into bringing pressure on their governments to intervene in Palestine. Instead, the immediate impact was to stimulate a new Arab exodus from Palestine.
The Palestinians knew, despite their rhetoric to the contrary, that the Jews were not trying to annihilate them; otherwise, they would not have been allowed to evacuate Tiberias, Haifa, or any of the other towns captured by the Jews. Moreover, the Palestinians could find sanctuary in nearby states. The Jews, however, had no place to run had they wanted to. They were willing to fight to the death for their country. It came to that for many, because the Arabs were interested in annihilating the Jews.
Campaign? What campaign?
If you listen to the media now, not in ten years, you could not be faulted if you believed that Israel reacted to the (singular)"Passover bombing".
And I am sure you are noticing that Israel has no friends in this world. Not one. And that Colin Powell is taking on all the characteristics of Neville Chamberlain.
It will be identical to the media treatment of non-existent "massacres" in Kosovo (where are the mass graves in Kosovo? Who has seen them?) Prior to Clinton, the press -- even the extreme left-wing New York Times -- was reasonably unbiased in its reporting on Kosovo, labeling the KLA, accurately, as terrorists. Now, after a mere 8 years of Clinton, Muslims worldwide are "freedom fighters", and become "martyrs" under the most benign of circumstances, while those opposing them are the "oppressors".
When considering the various evils that have crept into Western culture during the past 40 years, or so, one has to look no further than the propaganda of the mainstream media (in the U.S. and in Europe) to understand how we have strayed so far from the truth.
Man, that's cold!
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