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Anne Applebaum and the ‘Delugist’ narrative on Tunisia

There is a powerful constellation of forces in the Middle East that wants to see Tunisia’s current popular uprising fail. This constellation includes: (1) All the other U.S.-supported autocrats in the Arab world, now terrified that Pres. Ben Ali’s hasty departure from the country his family has looted for so long may foretell their own; (2) The U.S. securocracy, which for years now has relied heavily on inserting military “advisers”, “trainers”, etc into the highest levels of all these autocracies to help it pursue some of the most repressive portions of the so-called “Global War on Terror”; and (3) The Israeli establishment, which sees the rule of autocrats in Egypt, Jordan, etc as essential to the continued repression of pro-Palestinian activities in and by these countries.
Last week, we saw so many amazing scenes of the unarmed, intentionally nonviolent Tunisian demonstrators taking to the streets of Tunisia’s cities… and they succeeded in forcing Ben Ali’s departure.
How could the various portions of the region’s anti-democratic constellation respond?
Mainly, they rushed to invoke (and also, perhaps, to help activate) an “Apres lui le deluge” kind of narrative designed to warn the citizens of other Arab countries that: (1) The downfall/departure of Ben Ali would lead only to chaos, instability, and social strife inside Tunisia, and (2) Therefore, the regimes of all the other US-supported countries where a Tunisian-style mass uprising might threaten should immediately be strengthened in their capacities to withstand any repeat of a similar uprising– including by being able to “point” to the Tunisian example as one of strife and chaos, rather than democracy and enhanced national unity, emerging from an autocrat’s overthrow.
The kind of example that Tunisia provides to other countries in the region has broad, regionwide implications…. and the framing of the narrative about Tunisia has already begun.
Exhibit A: This op-ed in today’s WaPo by rightwing columnist Anne Applebaum. (Only occasionally do the WaPo editors remind readers that Applebaum has been married for some years to the rightwing Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski.)
Here is Applebaum, rewriting the (still so fresh!) history of the Tunisian uprising:

Violent street demonstrations, followed by the toppling of a dictator, are an exhilarating way to bring democracy to an authoritarian society. They are not, however, the best way to bring democracy to an authoritarian society.

Violent street demonstrations??? What on earth is she talking about?
With this one little phrase she sullies the magnificent achievement of the hundreds of thousands of Tunisians who turned out on the streets last Thursday and Friday, still uncertain whether their unarmed bodies would be confronted with the bullets that the regime’s “security” forces had been so happy to rain down onto numerous other unarmed demonstrations around the country since mid-December.
And she stains the memory of the 60-100 demonstrators killed by the (U.S.-backed, U.S.-trained) “security” forces around the country in that time.
Since Ben Ali’s departure from the country on Friday, yes, there has been some violence and looting. Much of it (as the NYT and Al-Jaz, among others, have reported) was apparently committed by “security” men still loyal to the deposed dictator, and/or various members of different “security” forces duking it out on the streets after the collapse of the central authority.
Applebaum also tries to shrug off the degree of responsibility that Washington had for keeping Ben Ali in power– and still has, today, for the behavior and misbehavior of the country’s military and other “security” forces.
She blithely writes: “Americans don’t matter much in Tunisia, where France, the former colonial power and largest investor, has indulged and supported Ben Ali for decades, both materially and ideologically.”
But Ben Ali himself, who came to politics in the 1980s after a long career in the military, received his advanced training at the Senior Intelligence School (in Maryland, USA) and the School for Anti-Aircraft Field Artillery (Texas, USA), after doing his earlier training in France. And last year, the U.S.’s reported military aid to Tunisia was $16.9 million (p. 46 of this PDF.) People who know more than I do about the country say that while the U.S. is the main backer of the military, France has played an important role in supporting the country’s police.
The bottom line here: The U.S. is deeply implicated in both the behavior of the previous Ben Ali regime and the behavior of the “security” forces today.
… My main motive in writing this short post about Tunisia is to warn about the “Apre lui le deluge” narrative about Tunis that is already being heavily pushed by numerous parties very interested in preventing popular empowerment and the spread of real democratic rule in the Arab countries of the Middle East.
It remains true that the decades of (only thinly veiled) autocracy in Tunisia have left a legacy in the country where there are no robust, well-organized political parties of any coloring, that are currently able to exercise and project clear leadership around a unified program, negotiate with other parties in a clear and coherent manner, and– most importantly of all– to defend the country’s popular movement(s) from the plotting and schismatic interventions of various agents provocateurs who may be supported by who knows what forces from outside the country?
The sad fact is that anyone who tried to organize such a party or popular movement throughout the past decades has been subjected to torture, other forms of grave repression, or exiling. Just read the numerous reports that Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have published on the country throughout the past 20 years!
So the popular movement in Tunisia– let us please not infantilize it by giving it a western-style brand-name like the “Jasmine Revolution”!– faces some big challenges.
Al-Jazeera has good coverage. I was watching this short report in English from James Baize, which showed ordinary citizens acting in an orderly, calm, and nonviolent way as they stood in long lines to buy bread, or at makeshift neighborhood watch points. To me, that was good news.
There is something of an infant political process emerging… But yet, the attempts of other media to paint what’s happening in Tunisia as a “deluge” of violence and chaos still continue.
It’s far too early to say yet the real political change the country’s 10 million people need can all happen within the framework of the country’s existing (but long-ignored by Ben Ali) constitution, which mandates the holding of elections within, I think, the next six weeks– or whether some broader form of consultative and constitution-revision process will be needed.
Those calling for early elections may well be jumping the gun, since Ben Ali’s own party is the only one that has an intact nationwide infrastructure at this point and thus has a quite unfair advantage over all others… Also, in a time of rapid political change, elections can be very divisive, rather than fostering a sense of national unity and helping to build nationwide endorsement of agreed rules for the nonviolent, respectful interaction of differing political forces in the democratic system going forward.
So let’s look carefully and supportively at the political activities of all the now-emerging popular political forces in Tunisia. But let’s look, too, at the way the developments there get portrayed or misportrayed by ideologues elsewhere.

Open thread, MIC, Tunisia, etc

I am in North Carolina for much of the weekend, presenting at this conference on the military-industrial complex.
Amazing yesterday, driving down here, to hear so many great news reports on the car radio about the unraveling of one small corner of the complex, in Tunisia. There may yet be bloody attempts at a counter-revolution there, of course. But the “big guns” of the MIC are all pretty much well tied up elsewhere and the credibility of the U.S. imperial venture in the region has been in tatters for a long time…
So anyway, this space is for comments. I’ll even try to turn the “pre-moderation” switch off. But I rely on you all to stick to the discourse guidelines. Otherwise, it’ll be instant IP banning for any violators.

Tunis: Curtains for Ben Ali?

Just looking at this coverage from Al-Jaz of the day’s massive and nonviolent protests in the Tunisian capital, Tunis.
As Trotsky so elegantly described in his “History of the Russian Revolution”, when the Cossacks start fraternizing with the protesters this signals the imminent end of the regime.
In today’s Tunisia, the “Cossacks” are the special armed police/gendarmerie tasked with guarding central government institutions. To see the protesters reaching out and high-fiving with the sparse numbers of police who remain, and embracing them, indicates to me that Pres. Ben Ali better rush to implement the Plan B he no doubt has hidden away somewhere: The helicopter ride to a French warship, perhaps, along with his family, and then speedy onward flight to some lovely, family-owned property on the Riviera…
And what of Tunisian politics? Bill the spouse was there for a short visit just last month, and knows a lot more about North African politics than I do. He applauded the dignity and discipline of the demonstrators on today’s newsfeeds, noted their numbers, and said he thinks the country’s people are really ready for a better and more equitably governed future…
It will be interesting to see which other citizenries elsewhere in the region become most inspired by the Tunisian example…

Lebanon, what next?

Anthony Shadid had a piece on Lebanon in the NYT today, with this lede:

With Hezbollah’s toppling of the Lebanese government, the militant Shiite Muslim movement entered what may prove to be one of the most dangerous chapters in a 30-year history that has made it reviled in the West and popular in the Arab world: At the moment seemingly of its greatest power, the path facing it could unveil its most glaring weaknesses…

Shadid’s reasoning was that if Hizbullah undertakes a repeat of the action it undertook in May 2008 when, amidst inter-communal clashes between Shiites and Sunnis in Beirut, its militiamen moved in and within a couple of hours disarmed the large “bodyguard” forces that Saad Hariri and several of his allies had assembled– then such an action “could further tarnish its reputation here, making it look more and more like a sectarian militia than the resistance movement to Israel it considers itself.”
For all of Shadid’s alarmist analysis, however, he provided no evidence that Hizbullah is about to do this! Why not? Because there is none… Not least, because Hizbullah already exercises all the control it needs over the streets and neighborhoods of western and southern Beirut.
And, it is also important to note, Saad Hariri and his political allies have remained perfectly able to continue their political activities throughout the country, even after losing their proto-militia forces back then in 2008.
Just today, indeed Hariri returned to Beirut from his very lengthy tour around many foreign countries, to try to deal with the current political crisis. If he felt that his life would be endangered by returning, do you think he would have done so? I doubt it. He does not have the reputation of being a terrifically courageous man.
In Shadid’s piece, he quotes the Crisis Group’s Rob Malley as saying of Hizbullah:

I disagree with my friend Rob. I don’t see the present situation as one that carries any great risks for Hizbullah. Ever since 1991-92, when the organization’s leadership decided to enter Lebanon’s parliamentary political system, Hizbullah has played within that system in a way that has been extremely smart and also nearly always cautious. Interestingly, its entry into the political system back then coincided exactly with the elevation of the then-very youthful Hassan Nasrallah to the top tole in the organization’s leadership.
In every national election since 1992, Hizbullah has both had election victories of its own people, and helped organize the victories of a far greater number of political allies, who come from all the religious sects that form the basis of the countries very convoluted electoral system. In several governments formed since 1992, Hizbullah has also had its own ministers in the government. The participation of Hizbullah ministers in the government formed in 2008 was far from unprecedented.
So why do I disagree with Rob Malley’s assessment that the present situation faces Hizbullah with great risks? Firstly, because Hizbullah and its many political allies don’t actually have to do anything more at this point, beyond having pulled their 11 people out of the government. The Saad Hariri government has fallen. In his capacity as acting PM, Hariri cannot take any of the “big” political decisions that a still-extant non-caretaker PM could take (with the support of his government.) He is in Beirut. He is probably still in the lovely office in the downtown “Serail” where I met him when I was co-leading the CNI trip to Lebanon in November 2009. But he is now powerless in everything that matters. Hizbullah has him exactly where they want him.
Secondly, the overwhelming evidence from Hizbullah’s political actions inside Lebanon up to now has been that they don’t seek to exercise direct political power at this point. May that day come sometime? That is another question. But for now, they really do seem more eager to continue operating within Lebanon’s political system, but not at the head of it, than to overtly take it over.
So in the present situation, how can Lebanon get along without a government, you may ask?
Easily! Lebanon’s people have gotten along without an effective central government throughout many periods since they gained political independence in 1943. Lebanon (like Afghanistan) is a mountainous country, to whose mountains successive waves of different population groups have come, over the centuries, often seeking a safe refuge from religious- or ethnic-minority status elsewhere. By and large (I hate to get too cultural-essentialist, but here goes…) the mountain people– a group that in Lebanon notably does not include the Sunnis, who are nearly all urban and coastal– are hardy, self-sufficient types who don’t see much use for central government and work actively to keep it weak. And when it is weak, their various mountain communities and coastal enclaves have nearly always been able to continue keeping their economies, livelihoods, and trading links going– all the more easily, in the view of many of them, when there is no central government to trammel them.
That is a snapshot of Lebanon and (on a much larger scale) Afghanistan. It notably is not the case in Iraq, or Egypt, or other countries built on great river systems where over the course of now millennia, central government has played a vital role both in regulating and maintaining the water systems and in providing security for the overwhelmingly riverine and flatland (and therefore, fairly vulnerable) populations.
So now, Hizbullah and its allies have pulled out of the government in Beirut. This will not in itself provoke a serious socioeconomic or constitutional crisis. Yes, there has been a long-simmering economic crisis for many low-income Lebanese… and this can be expected to continue. But the existence or non-existence of a government makes no difference to these hard-pressed families. In many parts of Lebanon, anyway, Hizbullah and its allies are the main forces providing social services and development aid, an effort that has strengthened its political hand for the past two decades now, and can be expected to continue.
Hizbullah’s “Al-Manar” media empire reported yesterday that the organization and its allies “will name a personality with a history of national resistance to head the new government.” According to a longstanding tradition in Lebanon– one which under the Taef Agreement of 1989 was supposed to be phased out pretty rapidly thereafter, but still has not been– the country’s PM is supposed to be a Sunni. Hizbullah could easily find a Sunni personality to name for PM if they wanted. I’m not sure they’ll be in a hurry to do so. They do, as I noted, have Saad Hariri almost exactly where they want him.
Also, I certainly don’t rule out that the possibility that after further negotiations, Hariri might come back in as the next prime minister, too, and this time with a form of “backing” from Hizbullah in which his political dependence on them would have been even more clearly spelled out.
But Hizbullah need not hurry. This government “crisis” could easily carry on for 12 or 24 months, just as it did during the long period before the Doha Agreement of May 2008– and this time, without Hizbullah supporters having to go through the discomfort of sitting in chilly tents in the downtown area for all those months.
From this point of view, I think I would revise just a little bit the assessment I penned here on January 12, when I said,

My sense from afar is that Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and his friends and backers in Tehran are sending a fairly blunt message to the west… that regime change is indeed a game that more than one side can play.

I do still think they are sending a message. But it is not particularly blunt. It is more a tweak, a little nudge (as I had also written, later in that same blog post), than a blunt message…
Hizbullah probably undertook Wednesday’s pullout of government ministers in part with a view to the issue of the overwhelmingly western-backed “Special Tribunal for Lebanon”, the role of which I explored here a little, yesterday. But the latest news today from the STL’s seat in the distant Netherlands is still that, even though prosecutor Daniel Bellemare is expected to lodge the latest round of indictments with the pre-trial judge “imminently”, it will take that judge “about six to 10 weeks” before he reaches his decision on whether to confirm the indictment and issue arrest warrants, and if so, whether to issue these warrants “under seal” or by naming suspects publicly…
Like Bellemare, that judge is also, by the way, not Lebanese, though the STL is supposed to be a “joint” Lebanese-UN institution.
So the STL issue keeps on simmering away– there in The Hague. But if there is only a “caretaker” government in Beirut when any indictments are issued, then it will not be in any position to collaborate with the court in executing its arrest warrants– as did happen back in 2006-07, when there was a government in power in Beirut, and a very pro-western government at that. (Those earlier indictments later collapsed under the weight of a lack of probative evidence, and the arrestees were released.)
So I still think, as I wrote on Wednesday, that Nasrallah and his local and Iranian allies probably decided on their “tweak” against Hariri in Beirut with much more than just the STL issue in mind. The five significant indicators of the U.S.’s regionwide weakness in the Middle East that I identified there are certainly important in the strategic planning of players within both Tehran and Beirut. (Beirut, remember, has always been something of a hub, bellwether, watchpost, and observation tower for developments in the wider region. Hizbullah’s links to Tehran are no more “extraordinary” in this regard than the ties of Hariri, pere et fils, to Saudi Arabia, or in various eras the ties of many Maronites to France or Israel, those of many Sunnis to Egypt or Syria, or whatever.)
The five indicators were, in brief, developments in Tunisia, Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. If you go to Al-Manar’s homepage (offered in Arabic, English, Spanish, and French) you can certainly see how closely they are following all these developments…
But my bottom line for today here is that Hizbullah’s action on Wednesday neither forces Lebanon into a deep and unmanageable constitutional crisis, nor confronts Hizbullah itself with the kind of “very tough” choices that Rob Malley describes. It was one more move, perhaps a significant one, in a political campaign that for Hizbullah’s ever-wily and smart strategists has a time-line measured in decades, not weeks or months.

The STL and the myth of judicial virginity

The myth propagated by supporters of the various “international” criminal tribunals established since 1992 has been that somehow a judicial proceeding could rise completely above the sordid field of politics and follow its own complete integrity. I used to subscribe to that myth. But in 2000-01, as I started to investigate more closely the work of the two ad-hoc tribunals created by the UN during the mid-1990s, it became clear that “international” criminal tribunals can never, ever, be separated either from the politics of the countries whose developments they probe (and whose politics are inevitably affected by the work of the tribunals themselves)– or, from the politics of the “international” constellation of governments that establish, fund, and provide continued support for these tribunals’ work.
My 2006 book Amnesty After Atrocity? provided copious evidence of this, with regard to the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. But it is not only the ICTR whose work is irredeemably politicized. So has been the work of all “international” tribunals running from the Ur-example in Nuremberg through to today’s “International Criminal Court.” As longtime JWN readers know, I’ve written a lot about this issue, both here and (earlier) on the now nearly-defunct “Transitional Justice Forum” blog. Check over there for, in particular the field reports of the reporting trip I made to northern Uganda in 2006, to assess the very harmful effects that the work of the ICC was having on peacemaking there.
And then, there was the travesty of the (heavily U.S.-supported) Saddam Hussein trial…
Plus, the fact that the government leaders in Washington responsible for launching the completely unjustified invasion of Iraq in 2003, and therefore also all the deaths and violence that ensued from that invasion and occupation, were easily able to evade ever being held to account for that act of aggression (an act that was, at Nuremberg, certainly prosecutable– and prosecuted.) This, while the U.S. has also stood quite aside from all entreaties that it join the ICC– though over recent years it has given extensive logistic and financial support to some, but not all, of the ICC’s investigations and prosecutions… when this suited Washington’s own, inevitably political, purpose.
The neutrality of these judicial bodies before an “impartial” international law? That is nowhere to be seen.
… And then, there is the Special Tribunal for Lebanon,a body that has been irrevocably “politicized” and “political” ever since its establishment in 2006-07. It is a joint project of both the U.N. Security Council and the Government of Lebanon, established at a time when the U.S. still held important sway over both bodies.
Now, Hillary Clinton and her people are busy talking about the need to allow the STL to continue doing its allegedly quite “impartial” work. The STL has been the focus of considerable controversy and swirling allegations and counter-allegations over its years in existence, and I confess I have not followed these with enough diligence to be able to make clearcut judgments regarding them.
What I can say with a high degree of confidence, based on my own work on this issue of international tribunals over the past decade is that no criminal court, within a country or at the global level, can ever have its work divorced from politics. Criminal prosecutions at a national level involve the state using the laws that already exist within the country to bring a prosecution against a defendant, who may upon being found guilty be subjected to serious sanction by the state– even, in the U.S. and elsewhere, the death penalty.
At the national level, too, the head of state or government always has the power to give clemency or pardon to convicted criminals (as in the case of Elliott Abrams in the U.S.), and leaders often use these powers with the goal of fostering national unity, or other worthwhile political goals.
And at the global level? Where is the agreed-upon, duly legislated, and equality-respecting legal basis for the work of international prosecutors? Where is the opportunity for global political leaders to issue pardons or enact clemency? Where, in short, is the supra-“judicial” legal-political infrastructure that can assure the impartiality as well as general social utility of the work of prosecutors and judges?
It doesn’t exist. In a world marked by striking political inequalities– especially between countries that have P-5 status on the Security Council, and those that don’t; and between countries that have at least submitted themselves to the judgments of the ICC, and those that haven’t– the “impartiality” of international criminal courts is a myth.
I wish it weren’t so. I wish we had the kind of global system in which all national leaders and other significant political actors could be held equally accountable for their actions. But we don’t. Rights activists from around the world who have put so much energy into fighting for the establishment and support of the existing international courts really also need to examine closely the effects that these courts have had on the lives, livelihoods, and wellbeing of the millions of citizens of the countries that have been their targets. In Amnesty After Atrocity? I looked at the effects on the citizenries of Rwanda, South Africa, and Mozambique of the widely differing approaches those three countries adopted to the issue of seeking “accountability” for past war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The two countries that decided against using criminal courts to deal with perpetrators of atrocities during the episodes of severe violence that all of them had suffered were the ones that came out with their social cohesion, political purpose, and the rights situation of their citizenries the best assured.
It is not only in Lebanon that a crucial “trade-off” exists between the work of (an inevitably “political” and backward-looking) international tribunal and the prospects for peace and people’s wellbeing going forward. Look at some of my own past work on this issue. Look at what the Obama administration is now actively considering doing in the context of Sudan, for goodness sake! Today, White House officials including “Ms. Anti-Genocide” herself, Samantha Power, are openly talking about the possibility of easing up the pressure that Pres. Omar Hassan al-Bashir has been subjected to from the ICC, in exchange for his cooperation with implementing the results of the South Sudan referendum.
It surely should not be that only in Lebanon does Washington pursue the chimera of the “impartiality” of a tribunal with strong international dimensions at the expense of the wellbeing of the target country’s citizenry.
Accountability for Rafiq Hariri’s killing? One day, let’s hope, the facts will all emerge. But this highly politicized judicial process centered in The Hague looks unlikely to be able credibly to uncover them. And if it does issue indictments, what then? STL prosecutor Daniel Bellemare and whose army will arrest those indicted? What of the Lebanese government’s supposedly co-equal role in managing this whole “criminal justice” project?
The next time Sec. Clinton or a State Department spokesman starts talking about the need to preserve the “impartiality” of this court, the STL, they should be asked about some of these very important questions…

Lebanon’s government crisis and the regional tides

Lots of people have been scrambling to ask what lies behind the decision of Lebanon’s Hizbullah-led opposition bloc to pull their 10-plus-1 ministers out of the Doha-launched unity government… And there are no clear answers from anywhere yet.
My sense from afar is that Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and his friends and backers in Tehran are sending a fairly blunt message to the west (whose leaders often like to describe themselves as the “international community”) that regime change is indeed a game that more than one side can play.
Let’s look at the position of the pro-U.S. forces in the Middle East today:

Saudi Arabia is particularly germane to the situation in Lebanon, since it was the Saudi-Syrian entente of early 2008 that allowed Lebanon to recover from the prolonged political crisis that preceded that date.
Interesting that the resigning opposition MP’s in Lebanon made a point of saying that the pro-Hariri bloc ad foiled the wishes of both the Syrians and the Saudis, and that the Hizbullah media reported it that way too.
Where is Saudi King Abdullah? He has had several serious medical procedures recently. Who has (?former) PM Saad Hariri been listening to as he has made his decisions of recent weeks?
… If Nasrallah and his friends in Tehran (especially Supreme Leader Khamenei) indeed think the time has come to give the western house of cards in the Middle East a little nudge in Beirut to see what happens, the fallout from this could well end up extending far beyond Lebanon’s tiny confines.
Well, I have been planning a short visit to Beirut next month, anyway. It should be an interesting time to be there.

‘Military-industrial complex’ conference: NC, Jan. 14-16

My friend Chuck Fager from Quaker House in Fayetteville, NC, and other peace movement friends have put together a terrific conference for next week, to mark the 50th anniversary of the great farewell speech in which Pres. Dwight Eisenhower warned Americans of the dangers of a “military-industrial complex” taking over too many of the affairs of our government…
The conference is at Guilford College in Greensborough, NC.
I’ll be speaking on Saturday afternoon– just in that time-slot right after lunch when everyone will be nodding off… H’mm… Let me think of ways to keep my presentation lively and engaging. My topic is “The MIC and the Middle East.”
Come if you can!

H. Shue on advanced militaries targeting civilian infrastructure

The Oxford philosopher and ethicist Henry Shue has just published an extremely important piece of analysis (PDF here, pp. 2-7) that unpacks the timely issue of why it is that first-world militaries that have well-stocked arsenals of Precision-Guided Munitions (PGMs, also known as ‘smart bombs’) are also among those agitating hardest to loosen up the constraints that the laws of war have placed on bombing civilian targets.
This matter has, of course, great relevance both to the practice of the U.S. and the Israeli militaries during their wars of recent years, and to the current Israeli campaigns against what that government calls “lawfare”, that is, the attempt made by many in the international community (but not the U.S. government) to hold Israel to the same standards of international law, including the laws of war, as everyone else.
Shue lays out the basic conundrum he is investigating in these terms:

Continue reading “H. Shue on advanced militaries targeting civilian infrastructure”

Israel security official in 2007, ‘Sooner or later we’ll have to deal with Hamas’

The Norwegian daily Aftenposten has been posting a lot of new Wikileaks material. In there is this cable from 26 July, 2007– just a few weeks after the elected Hamas leaders of Gaza rebuffed a U.S.-backed coup attempt led by Fateh strongman Mohamed Dahlan. It’s a record by a U.S. diplo in Tel Aviv of a meeting that GWB aide Fran Fragos Townsend had with Israeli National Security Council officials on July 12.
The main Israeli interlocutor was Brigadier General Danny Arditi, a counterterrorism advisor to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. In the cable:

would have to deal with Hamas.

In the meantime, however, Arditi and Townsend were in agreement that they wanted to continue the long, slow strangling of Gaza that had continued since Hamas’s electoral victory in January 2006– and that continues to this day.
The reporting diplomat also wrote:

NSC officials admitted that the GOI does not yet have a coherent policy.

IDF (IOF) lies about Bil’in tear-gas killing

Careful Israeli reporter and eye-witness Noam Sheizaf skilfully deconstructs all the lies the IDF/IOF told about last Saturday’s death from poison gas of Jawaher Abu Rahmeh of the West bank town of Bil’in.
As with the IOF’s killing of eight unarmed Turkish citizens and one unarmed Turkish-American when Israeli naval commandos stormed the Mavi Marmara in international waters last May, once again the Israeli military feels obliged to slander the dead and claim that 36-year-old Ms. Abu Rahmeh was not in fact a victim of Israeli state violence. In a briefing given exclusively to a handful of rightwing Israeli bloggers, the head of Israel’s “Central Command” tried to claim she probably died of cancer. Heck, he even brought up the “possibility” that she had been the victim of an honor killing by members of her own family…
Big thanks to Noam and all the other eye-witnesses and investigators who have pieced together and published the true facts about this killing.