View From a Height

Human Rights Watch likes to style itself as a fearless watchdog, especially where Israel is concerned:

In a statement issued before the report's release, the human rights organization said there was no basis to the Israeli claim that civilian casualties resulted from Hezbollah guerrillas using civilians as shields. Israel has said it attacked civilian areas because Hezbollah set up rocket launchers in villages and towns.

HRW notes that Hezbollah didn't wear uniforms, fired from next-door to UN positions, and fired weapons from on top of apartment buildings, but somehow falls short of condemning these as violations of the laws of war. (I will merely note that, as a result of these violations, by law, Hezbollah forfeits all rights under the Geneva Conventions.)

Then, this:

The full report was being released Thursday at a news conference in Jerusalem. Human Rights Watch had to cancel a similar news conference in Beirut last month because of threats of Hezbollah protests. That report accused Hezbollah of firing rockets indiscriminately at civilian areas in Israel.

Apparently, the irony escapes HRW.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 7:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Downtown Denver experienced an anti-Israel rally this past Saturday - out of respect for the Jewish Sabbath, no doubt. We'll get into the more bizarre aspects of the rally - and the Post's coverage of it - in another post, but for the moment, consider this, from the Denver Post's coverage:

Religious leaders helped organize the march. Mixed messages ranging from steadfast nonviolence to support for Hezbollah "show the diversity" of a new organization called the Front Range Coalition for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, said Imam Ibrahim Kazerooni, a leader of interfaith efforts at St. John's Cathedral.

If I were capable any longer of being astonished at what gets said at these things, I'd be astonished. This is so jaw-droppingly incoherent and dishonest that one wonder just what on earth the church fathers have been smoking, that they allow this man to stay on the payroll as leader of an office dedicated to "interfaith understanding."

Diversity? Yes, the crowd ran the gamut all the way from the genocidal to the merely anti-Semitic. Evidently he's been reading the CU student handbook as a dictionary. I hadn't realized that tolerance for, indeed applause for, Ahmedinejad's willing executioners was included in the definition of "interfaith efforts."

I've thoroughly chronicled the antics of this mild-mannered mullah on this blog, and while I've been pretty hard on some pretty bad behavior, I've resisted characterizing the man's beliefs. One measures the content of one's words carefully, and I would never want to give someone an excuse to give up and go over to the dark side, or say something that I'd be embarassed by years later.

No more. There are ways of handling this sort of miscreancy. A well-organized rally would have had marshals controlling the message a little bit. The quote to the paper would have been about how his "movement" had no place for the sort of hatred that Nasrallah represents, blah blah blah. But Kazerooni couldn't even bring himself to say that.

Kazerooni knows what Hezbollah and Nasrallah are. He knows perfectly well that Nasrallh, too, has said he's looking forward to the ingathering of the Jewish exiles, all the easier to kill them. He's also a professional at PR, so he knows how to stay on message when he wants to. And in this case, the message was, "we'll take all comers, even if they're experimenting with Zyklon B in their back yards."

He's not anti-war, he's just on the other side.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 8:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Andrew Stuttaford over at The Corner quotes an article in the Financial Times (the voice of the European establishment) by one Mamoun Fandy:

The US and the rest of the world should take into account the concerns of moderate states and moderate elements within Muslim societies – or else Washington’s desire to create a “new” Middle East may bring to the fore a very old one. To avoid this, the US and Europe have no option but to tip the balance in favour of moderate governments. One way would be to convene an international conference similar to the one in Madrid in 1991 after the first Gulf war to address the root of the problem, namely to solve the issue of Palestine and get the world behind the idea of the two-state solution. Only then can the world deny the Islamists their ultimate rallying cry, take the Middle East from the hands of the Islamist movements and put it back in the world of nation states.

Mamoun Fandy is either irretrievably naïve or cynically manipulative. I don’t know anything about him, so I can’t say which.

But by all means, yes, let’s repeat Madrid, which led to Oslo, which has been such a resounding success.

How on God’s green earth is “Palestine” the root problem related to Hezbollah? This is a group that teamed up with Syria to manufacture the Shebaa Farms issue so they had an excuse to keep killing Jews.

Israel keeps offering a two-state solution. The Palestinians keep choosing war. They have now voted in a government who are Islamists. Why would Hamas willingly deny themselves their rallying cry? And why is Holocaust denial radical and dangerous from Iran, but acceptable and “moderate” from Abbas? (That was his PhD thesis – that only a few hundred thousand Jews were killed.)

We can debate drawing the line here or there or the sanctity of the pre-1967-borders-but-not-the-pre-1948-borders from now until Doomsday (or August 22, whichever comes first), but none of that is the point. The conference could decide that the permanent, defensible borders of Israel were the city limits of Tel Aviv and it wouldn’t make any difference.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Lee Smith on the Daily Standard site ("Invincible?"):

It's useful to keep in mind that the experts who keep telling us that Hezbollah is such an integral part of Lebanon and Lebanese politics have a vested ideological interest in saying so. Never mind the fact that in the last month somewhere between 150,000 to 250,000 Shiites have found refuge in Syria; or that many of the Shiite regions in the South and the Bekaa valley and parts of the Daheyh from which they came have been demolished; or that hundreds of Hezbollah fighters and political officials have been killed.

Or that the group's charismatic leader will likely be bunkered for the rest of his life. The group's capacity to provide its much-vaunted social services is also greatly diminished and many other local political actors will be looking to take revenge for the destruction of Lebanon not just on Hezbollah, but the Shia community itself. And so the possibility that Hezbollah might very well be on its last legs does not seem to register with the Hezbollah experts who insist that the party of God is a permanent part of Lebanon's social fabric.

Israel can do this job; in fact, only Israel can do this job. It was true four weeks ago, and it's true now.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Honestly, I don't see any good options here aside from depopulating the place. (No, that's not really an option.)

The Lebanese Army has almost certainly been compromised by Hezbollah infiltration. Even assuming that's a minor inconvenience, this isn't exactly the Third ID we're talking about (from today's WSJ):

But Lebanese commanders such as Maj. Gen. Achraf Rifi, who leads the nation's police force, believe the task could prove difficult. Lebanon's military is poorly equipped and fragmented along ethnic and religious lines. Its police force has 20,000 members, but fewer than half have guns or ammunition. Some of the weapons they use are World War II-era rifles.

An international force would seem to be the worst alternative of all, as it would almost inevitably morph into a Hezbollah Protection Force. It will be composed of countries with virtually no stake in Israel's safety, but a great investment and sense of mission in a continued "cease-fire." It will become a coalition, hostage to its slowest, least-aggressive members.

Since it will derive its legitimacy from its broadness, countries that are less interested in diarming Hezbollah than in sticking their fingers into the pie will be able to prevent any effective action merely by threatening to pull out. (There is no symmetry here. One could see Australia, for instance, getting disgusted with inaction and withdrawing, only to be condemned and ignored because it didn't know how to play well with others.)

At this point, the force becomes passive, and assumes a defensive posture. The goal of its individual soldiers becomes to survive, and the most immediate threat to its survival comes not from Israel, but from Hezbollah. ("Nice little tent you got there; shame if anything happened to it.") Count on Hezbollah to establish that fact quickly and decisively by breaking whatever cease-fire agreement gets passed.

In fact, military necessity dictates that this is true. Expecting troops speaking different languages, with no history of joint operations, to conduct offensive operations on foreign and hostile ground is expecting too much. Expecting them to be willing to take the casualties necessary to learn how to do this under fire leads back to the same political conclusion.

Israel would be left with no real options to reverse such a failure. If the Lebanese Army were to fail to control and disarm the Hezbos, Israel could hold it responsible for its failure, militarily if necessary. Such an option doesn't exist with a UN-sponsored force.

Israel itself really doesn't want a repeat of its 1982-2000 occupation of the place. That occupation was justifiable for the same reason this one would be, which earned Israel not one bit of sympathy or support. Eventually, the will to continue in Lebanon collapsed from within.

In this case, Israel is already noisily looking for a way out of Lebanon, and it hasn't even occupied the place yet. It's going to be a long, hard, slog to persuade the world that it's willing to stay there as long as is necessary to be able to leave on its own terms.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Israel is winning this war. If it weren't the Arab League wouldn't be pressing for the UN to require Israel to hand southern Lebanon back to the rocket launchers. Syria - which has ben spoiling for a fight with Israel for days now - wouldn't be stalking out Arab League meetings. The Israeli cabinet wouldn't be confident enough to formalize occupation up to the Litani. (Their failure to attack Bekaa decisively is another matter.)

Even if one accepts that Israel has largely implemented Resolution 1559, and even if one accepts that the Lebanese army is capable of patrolling the southern half of its country, post-war actions that don't thoroughly humiliate Hezbollah will only leave it around to rebuild.

It is critical that any Israeli withdrawal occur after the Lebanese government has evicted Hezbollah from its premises in the cabinet, just as Israel has evicted it from its base of operations.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Driving through northern Colorado and Utah yesterday, we had the radio - and thus the hourly news - on the whole time. Not a single word about the Reuters photoshopping scandal. Not on ABC, CNN, or CBS.

Imagine that.

In spite of Rathergate, Jason Blair, and countless other fiskings of the MSM by the blogosphere, the MSM continue to believe that if they don't report it, it isn't news. And that whatever they do, whatever they do isn't news.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been given an assignment by a friend of mine in Israel. She's near Jerusalem, out of the line of fire - so far. She sent me the following email:

I'm finished being depressed (though that may well return periodically--ten killed today in one Katyusha strike)--now I'm mad.

It looks like we are losing the PR war even though we are doing good work on the ground. I'm not talking about the pictures of Lebanese dead and refugees ad nauseum; I'm talking about the fact that Nasrallah is weaving a narrative of victory, even as he is taking it on the chin. Being a democracy, we criticize ourselves endlessly and keep wondering whether we're doing the right thing, etc. etc.

In a war against terror, the narrative is important, because this is not going to be a knock-down, cry-uncle situation even if we win. Hizbullah is not a sovereign state (although it functions as a state-within-a-state and a powerful military organization in Lebanon) so it will never have to concede defeat and/or sign any formal declaration of defeat. They can *always* claim to have won, even if we manage to assassinate Nasrallah (halevai...). So we have to change the narrative--*not* because we're losing, but because we're winning and to defeat terrorists we have to be seen by the world--particularly the Arab world--to be winning.

So your assignment is to change the narrative in your corner of the blog world (blogosphere?), and ask others who think as you do to do the same. Believe me, this is almost as important as what the soldiers are doing in the field. It may be even *more* important in the long run.

Honestly, I don't think I can do much better than this. We're winning this war on the ground. We need to let the world know that fact.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For a while, I've noticed that Britain has abandoned its usual Arabist line during this war. It even joined an effort by Poland, the Czechs, Germany, and Denmark, to water down an EU cease-fire call.

Now, with Olmert again pushing post-bellum "convergence," I wonder if maybe the cost of that support has been the West Bank. It wouldn't be the first time. Blair supported the Iraw War, but there was a tacit understanding that afterwards, the "Palestinian Problem" would be dealt with.

We all know what rational people believe the long-term map should look like, give or take a few cities here and there. But the Palestinians, having repeatedly rejected that map in favor of war, are clearly not rational, and clearly not defeated. Rewarding this behavior is only going to produce more of it, and if we're not learning that lesson now, we'll never learn it.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Israeli PM Ehud Olmert is in the process of blowing every major advantage that Israel had going into this war.

It started the war with a sense of urgency, thinking it had less time than it did. Now, it runs the risk of running out of time, having lately assumed it had more time than it did. Despite diplomatic successes by the Bush administration - the latest being the decision by the UK, Denmark, the Czechs, Poland, and Germany(!) to water down an EU call for a cease-fire to near-meaninglessnes. Nevertheless,

It started the war with an overhwelming advantage in men and materiel. Having used them in dribs and drabs, it has allowed Hezbollah to engage piecemeal, rather than face an irresistable onslaught. Even while keeping a strategic reserve, Israel could have put 70,000 men on the ground, while sealing off Hezbollah's retreat and confronting them from all sides. Instead, Olmert has confined himself primarily to probing frontal assaults, allowing the enemy to redirect its men to the threat of the moment.

It started the war with almost unparallelled unanimity, now it risks destructive political infighting. An generally gloomy email from a friend of mine in Israel cited the unity, or "achdut," as the one bright spot worth mentioning. Olmert has now shattered that by attaching an unpopular and divisive (not to mention strategically suicidal) "convergence" plan as a war aim for a popular and necessary war. Some reservists from the territories are now threatening not to fight, if the purpose of the war is to make politifcal room for Olmert to declare victory and give away their homes.

All of these failures of leadership - and it is a massive failure of leadership - are magnified by Israel's need for at least tacit support from parts of the rest of the world for its efforts. If the US (for instance) concludes that Israel's war aims are muddy, tha Israel isn't seriously pursuing victory, or that it's falling prey to internal battles, it may well change the cost-benefit calculus of the war.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 9:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Syria reportedly put its forces on high alert last night, on the pretext that Israel was going to attack Syria. At the time, my first thought was that Assad was going to manufacture an incident, claim he was attacked, and then move into the Bekaa. It's also possible that he thought the Israeli operation in Bekaa was more extensive than it was, and was planning to respond.

Or...

Perhaps he was put up to it by Iran, as an act of brinksmanship. Syria must know that it's no match for Israel. Its surface-to-air batteries could be taken out quickly, and in any event, wouldn't help over Lebanon. The last time the Syrian Air Force took on the Israelis, they lost 82-0. Really. 82-0. Their tanks are old, have to stop to fire, have limited range, poor armor, and lousy instrumentation. This isn't 1973, and it's not his father's armored cavalry.

The Syrian military would be truly humiliated, and Assad's regime would probably not survive the failure. Surely Syria wouldn't just sacrifice itself?

Probably not, but Iran might be willing to sacrifice them. And they might be willing to pretend to sacrifice Syria, if it played on European fears of a wider war. The UN Security Council meets tomorrow, and I'm sure at least some of the members will bring this up.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 8:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)