It seems to me that assassinating one’s opponents is– like torture– a slippery slope. Maybe the first few times you do it, you’re still a bit hesitant. But do it scores or hundreds of times, and it might become a habit. Heck, you might even start bragging about it in public.
It strikes me that has already happened in Israel. Here, today, we have Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer openly calling for the killing of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah: “We should wait for the right opportunity and not leave him alive.”
I met Ben-Eliezer once, briefly, in the lobby of the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv. He struck me even then as fairly thuggish. He strikes me even more that way now. He is one of the”grand old men” of the Israeli Labor Party, and was Sharon’s Defense Minister in the early years of this decade.
And of course, when he calls for assassinating leaders of neighboring communities, this is not just rhetoric. It may well have an effect on Israeli policy– especially since he has been a close advisor to neophyte Defense Minister Amir Peretz. Also, Israel has already assassinated Nasrallah’s predecessor, Abbas Musawi; Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Abdul-Aziz Rantisi, and many other Hamas political figures– as well as considerably more than 100 suspected organizers of violent acts in Gaza and the West Bank.
(Of course, none of those individuals intentionally assassinated was ever given a “day in court”; no-one has ever been shown the “evidence” that brought about their killing. Also, numerous bystanders have also been killed in these lethal operations.)
How easy it has become for Israeli politicians to now speak openly about intentionally pursuing a policy of killing and destruction!
Here in the United States, the Bush administration has undertaken, certainly, a number of deliberate “targeted killings” (assassinations), along the Israeli model. But there is no open public incitement from powerful members of the government for this. Why, even George Bush says of Osama Bin Laden only that he wants him “Dead or Alive”. (And that is bad enough.) And Saddam Hussein, for all the considerable evidence against him, ended up in a courtroom.
I find it extremely disturbing in general that my tax dollars fund so much violence, escalation, killing, and oppression around the world. But somehow, the idea that a high-level recipient of US aid money can go around openly inciting lethal violence in the way that Ben-Eliezer is doing seems even worse than most things the Israelis do.
Killing anyone is wrong. Period. Where did Ben-Eliezer get the idea that it’s okay to carry on like this? Time, surely, for our leaders here in the US to call a halt to such incitement.
16 thoughts on “Thuggish Israeli minister calls for killing Nasrallah”
Comments are closed.
Of course you are correct to decry such thuggery, but don’t expect any US politicians to rise to your support. They all know that would mean their own political “assassination.”
Sadly and depressingly, this is the kind of world we now live in.
Israeli killing Arabs in Gaza every day, they killing Palestinians and Arabs this common words coming from the mouth of its leaders no surprise these calls and words similar to Bin Groin and other in Israeli commandeers and leaders also those fanatics religious leaders also calling to kill Arabs no wounder her.
Killing, Eliminating, Buldozering, Wiping from the Map etc… etc its Israeli style no wounder here.
Any one asked or call for banning Israeli in any international community?
Any one call to condemning Israeli actions?
This for years ME have this policies by Israeli why you wounder now if they call for Nasrrllah?
You killed Arafat, you got Hamas…Remember?
Us support Israeli there is no one case US have done any thing against Israeli so what you talking about here. For more that 50 years US support this regimes now you accusing them what different this time?
Nobody questions that Osama is a legitimate target nowadays, maybe Nasrallah is ascending to the same league in terrorist profile and bloody hands.
BTW, speaking of the Israelo-Lebanese war epilogue, we had a formal bet with Upharsin on this board, and with Israel’s complete withdrawal today the jury is in and it is time to make settlement arrangements for the debt. Upharsin? Are you there?
Helena, I recall that a few weeks ago someone very high up in the Israeli government declared that it was their intention to kill Hasan Nasrullah. It looked to me at the time like an official statement. It struck me at the time just how stupid it was to make such a declaration, not to mention how much stupider it would be to carry it out – as if they had not already caused themselves enough troubles.
And I really do think you give the Bush administration far, far to much credit in the discretion department. They certainly made plenty of very well publicized attempts to kill Saddam Hussein, wreaking enormous death and destruction, killing tens of Iraqi civilians (including one entire Christian family in Mansur), and leaving him quite alive in the process. In fact, didn’t they declared him dead a few times only to embarrassed by a new tape a few days or weeks later? They also made numerous attempts on other “high value targets”. How many times did they claim to have killed “`Ali chimyawi”, for example? Assuming those were genuine attempts to assassinate people, and not fake attempts undertaken strictly for internal PR purposes, it appears they preferred to kill those criminals rather than to put them on trial. And lets not forget about all of L. Paul (Jerry) “Bantam Rooster” Bremer’s boasting that he was going to “capture or kill” Muqtada Sadr.
CNN: Secretary of State Colin Powell mentioned that an executive order that was put into place in 1976 on President Ford’s watch that forbids assassinations is under review. If that is lifted, and if the United States and its allies can specifically target Osama bin Laden, who the president says is the prime suspect, how will that change the efforts in the months to come?
KISSINGER: Not much. We’re not good at this. If this assassination order was interpreted that we couldn’t bomb a building in which Osama is located, then it will free us for that sort of attack, but hiring assassins that go after individuals is not something Americans are very good at. I support whatever Secretary Powell proposed, and altogether, I’m impressed by the decisiveness of the administration. So I don’t think that will be the key element. The key element will be: one, whether we can generate a consensus; secondly, whether we will keep going after our initial, hopefully, success, because this is going to be a long effort as the president has said.
http://www.eclipse.net/~tgardnet/kiss/kisskill.html
They also made numerous attempts on other “high value targets”.
I remember the official Army-Storyteller who during the invasion gave daily press conferences announcing another smart-bomb attack on a residential building in Baghdad in which whole families were obliterated that the attack was justified, because Saddam was supposed to be there at that particular moment (he wasn’t), and therefore the the building was a legitimate “leadership target”. Lea-der-ship Tar-get. Who needs Orwell?
Corrected message! (forgot some words):
They also made numerous attempts on other “high value targets”.
I remember the official Army-Storyteller who during the invasion gave daily press conferences announcing another smart-bomb attack on a residential building in Baghdad in which whole families were obliterated and saying that the attack was justified, because Saddam was supposed to be there at that particular moment (he wasn’t), and therefore the the building was a legitimate “leadership target”. Lea-der-ship Tar-get. Who needs Orwell?
“Separate and unequal education systems were a central part of the apartheid regime’s strategy to limit black children to a life in the mines, factories and fields. The disparities in Israel’s education system are not nearly so great and the intent not so malign, but the gap is wide. The Israeli education ministry does not reveal its budget for each of the two systems, but 14 years ago a government report concluded that nearly twice as much money was allocated to each Jewish pupil as to each Arab child.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1703245,00.html
I wounder if the Israeli early childhood telling or accepting the killing of Arab….
Helena did you or any friend who my visited Israel can tell us more about Early Childhood Education and what really teach Israelis about the Arabs?
I wish Helena in here last visit she may have a chance to tell us some info about this.
Its might this have link to all sort of killing call from different Israeli leaders for many years …
A petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
Salah, your focus on the need for broadly humanistic, anti-racist education is relevant and very constructive. Today I was reading this speech on the subject, given by a very inspiring Israeli woman called Nurit Peled-Elhanan. Her daughter Smadar was killed by a Palestinian suicide/homicide bomber in 1997– but she and her two other sons are very committed members of the peace movement.
She says there: The western world today is infected with fear of Islam and of the muslim womb. Great France of liberte egalite and fraternite is scared of little head-scarved girls, Jewish Israel calls in public speeches and schoolbooks the Arab citizens of Israel a demographic nightmare and the enemy from within. As for the Palestinians refugees living under occupation, they are defined in Israeli History schoolbooks as a ‘problem to be solved”. Not long ago the Jews were a problem to be solved.
Read more of what she says there.
Your broader question about the nature of the Israeli education system: In this sphere as in the delivery of just about all other human services, the Israeli system delivers extremely inferior services to Palestinian Israelis, compared with what it gives to Jewish Israelis. Human Rights Watch had a good study of this issue in 2001: here.
One of the main features of Israel’s state education system is its atomizing structure. It is evidently good that indigenous, native Arabic-speakers have an Arabic-language-focused curriculum (though they also have to qualify in Hebrew and English.) But within that, there are “Arab Muslim”, “Arab Christian” and “Arab Druze” streams. A Druze friend said to me, “What the heck is ‘Druze’ mathematics? Why can’t they let us all learn together?” The atomization is even worse within the Jewish parts of the system, however. There are numerous different “Jewish” school systems: besically secular, religious, national-religious, ultra-orthodox, etc. A small number of these schools do work hard to follow a broad humanistic curriculum that promotes human equality. But most of them are more or less Judeo-centric and arabophobic. The comparison with the apartheid school system is generally quite apt.
What interests me as much, though, is the (non-)reaction of “liberals” in the US and elsewhere to statements like the one Ben Eliezer made… MK Effi Eitam recently made some horribly inciteful statements calling for ethnic cleansing, and there were a few peeps of protest from some in the west. But when Ben Eliezer openly calls for an assassination like this, no-one in the west seems to react at all. Is it because he is from the so-called “left”? I don’t know.
Helena,
Thanks so much for that.
I must admit in our societies (Arabs/Islamic) there is some steps should be taken seriously about other religions and humankinds, specially those “religious Madrasah” (As David like this) they should be more focus on peace and human life and other things.
But there aren’t as far as Iraq education system concerns things promotes the hatred toward specific “Jews” or others. The problem here Helena we all should to understand there is a serious mix between Israel / Zionist and Jews as religion in Arab world.
The problem the Arab/Muslim seeing daily killing occupation of their land and high human suffering while the West accusing Arab/Muslims of promoting hatred and anti-Semitism but what they watching and getting real things is inhuman by Israelis and the supporters like US and other.
For the kids in Palestine in Iraq now, how we can promotes and convince them to believe in peace while they seeing the crimes of Israelis or others also in the other side some Israelis suffer from those suicide inside Israel and so on so forth, we need ways to stop this circle and really think deeply to promotes peace then, whatever how far and how strong our massages for peace to live together as soon there are killing on the ground on both sides its more active and louder than our voices.
Thanks Helena
Hey, how about your own leaders calls for killing terrorists Salah? Stop playing the victims, your re the source of most crimes.
Check out this one:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/10/01/iraq.main/index.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Iraq’s national security adviser Sunday issued a warning to the new leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, telling Abu Ayyub al-Masri that Iraqi troops are close to getting him “either as a corpse or tied up to face justice soon.”
David,
your re the source of most crimes.
What crimes and what the source you talking about David?
I am happy to tell me if I had any crimes in my life?
Tell us, come forward, don’t through your anger on me David.
So, Helena, what exactly was the nature of your “brief meeting” in a hotel lobby that led you to determine that he is a thug? Did you speak with him, or did you just observe that he is thuggish? Just imagine what kind of reaction you would have to such a reckless statement had someone here made it, say, about having seen Edward Said throwing rocks across the border.
Just to make things clear, Fuad Ben-Eliezer is not a “grand old man” of the Labour Party. He is actually a relative newcomer who came to the ranks of the party alon with Ezer Weizman and the merger of the small Yahad party. Amir Peretz, for example, has been a member of the party longer than has Fuad .
Also, your little essay on the Israeli education system is interesting, but not quite accurate. There are only two streams in the Jewish Israeli public school system – state secular and state religious. The orthodox – and yes there is even a small “humanistic” system – are essentially private school systems, just like in most other modern, democratic societies. And, I would suggest that what makes Druze education different from Muslim or Christian has to do with learning about their own culture and customs (that’s called “ethnic diversity” in the US and is very much advocated by many – especially in California), not about math or physics.
JES, thanks for the clarifications re BE and the Israeli education system. The orthodox, ultra-orthodox (and the small humanistic one) do all get a substantial proportion of their costs covered thru state funding mechanisms, however, don’t they? Plus, a lot of education-enhancing extras like after-school programs, preschools, etc…
For what it’s worth, I met Ben Eliezer when I was sitting talking with Zeev Schiff in the lobby of the Dan Hotel in ’98. Zeev saw BE and called him over saying something like “You two ought to meet.” He stayed and chatted for a short while. I had that same sensation I had the one time interviewed Sharon (’89?), of an older guy used to operating in the often bullying manner of someone exercizing high military command, and with the physical bulk to back that up. Luckily, however, with BE there was not (as with Sharon) the extremely distasteful sense of a thinly-veiled sexual come-on. (Oriana Fallaci fell for it from Sharon, I think.)
Helena wrote :
“But when Ben Eliezer openly calls for an assassination like this, no-one in the west seems to react at all. Is it because he is from the so-called “left”? I don’t know.”
I think that there is no reaction because it’s what we expect to hear from Israeli these days. We have got accustomed to their ways, so this doesn’t make the news anymore, although we still think that it is profoundly injust.
To some extent, it may also be the result of the way the right use language : once you have constantly stigmatized a movement and its leader as a “dehumanized” terrorist, calling for its death only seems “natural”. In someway, even if you aren’t agreeing with the ideology/propaganda of the mainstream media, in the end, it put your brain to sleep. The propagandist effect of language spring out from day after day of repetition. In the end it permeates in our brain. It is difficult to resist to that kind of subtly biased messages.