JABbering Stooge

I’ve been a bit remiss in discussing the powderkeg in the Middle East. I have decided to break my silence on this issue, and let the chips fall where they may.

Allow me to start by making myself exceedingly clear: I believe that Israel has a right to exist. I also believe that as a sovereign nation, Israel has a right to defend itself from all enemies. I believe that terrorist organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda are very dangerous and need to be destroyed. On the other hand, I reject strongly the notion that a) all Muslims are terrorists b) that Israel’s defense requires a "Last Answer to the Muslim Dilemma" and c) criticism of Israel’s government makes one anti-Semitic.

With those ground rules understood (though they may need constant repetition to get through to the more slow-witted of my readers), here are my thoughts on the current situation. First, the tragedy of this whole situation was that Lebanon was finally starting to emerge as a shining example of a moderate Muslim democracy after years of Syrian domination. Certainly, the Lebanese have no love for Syria because of this. Yet at the same time, there was significant support for Hezbollah - to the point that even if the Lebanese army could possibly engage Hezbollah with any hope of success (which they couldn’t), to do so would’ve invited a civil war, something that Israel most definitely does NOT need. Israel squandered a perfect opportunity to win the hearts and minds of the Lebanese people - all they had to do was a psy-ops campain suggesting that supporting Hezbollah was playing into Syria’s hands - if they wanted to be truly free of Syrian control, they must reject Hezbollah. But by bombing the crap out of every square inch of Lebanon, they have hardened the hearts of the Lebanese against them, given aid and comfort to Hezbollah, and effectively weakened their security.

Yet, somehow, I’m an anti-Semite for daring to question Israel’s foriegn policy.

Then there’s the matter of American conservatives banging the eliminationist drumbeat against their favorite scapegoat. It’s gotten so bad, that even FAUX "News" military analyst Col. David Hunt has taken to calling for the deaths of all Muslims. Worse, it appears that Israel’s top leadership has watched the self-destruction of their American allies, and decided it looked like a good idea. This can only serve to lead them into the same sort of quagmire we find ourselves in with Iraq. In case you harbored delusions that Israelis were somehow immune to eliminationist rhetoric and actions, allow me to disabuse you of those notions.

• Retired Israeli army colonel Gal Luft declares that the intent of Israel’s bombing campaign is to "create a rift between the Lebanese population and Hezbollah supporters." In the words of MJ at LGF Watch, this amounts to "[holding] 3.8 million Lebanese to ransom" - hardly the most productive thing Israel can do, as explained above.

• And then there is the statement by Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon: "All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah." Think about that for a moment. In the mind of the Israeli Justice Minister, Stragglers = Terrorists. Either the Justice Minister is woefully unaware of the utter incompetence of the Bush administration, even after the object lesson of Hurricane Katrina, or he is being nakedly eliminationist - even towards ostensible allies.

• Speaking of naked eliminationism, the Yesha Rabbinical Council has announced that "there is no such term as ‘innocents’ of the enemy."

• The eliminationist sentiment is also starting to trickle down to the general populace. Around the same time that the Yesha Rabbinical Council proclaimed all Muslims to be legitimate targets, a gang of thugs began assaulting Israeli Arabs in Acre. If Michelle MalKKKin knew about this, this would be her response:
  

• If that weren’t enough, Israel’s government has taken perpetual fear-mongering to a whole new level by deliberately leaving pockets of Hezbollah rockets intact.

• And in case you still believe that allies mean anything to the Israeli government, it is now official policy that U.N. engineers will be considered targets if they dare repair any damage in Lebanon.

Fortunately, not all Israelis are hateful bigots. Some IAF pilots have started to deliberately miss their targets under the assumption that the intelligence has been cooked to deliberately target civilians.

And yet, from the incident in Qana to the Reuters photoshop scandal, righties would have us believe that everything Israel does is 100,000% moral. Michelle MalKKKin, Atlas’ Juggs, Charles “Check Out My” Johnson and the rest are the Baghdad Bob of the wingnut bleghosphere. They want to force us to believe that there are no tanks in Baghdad bombs falling on the innocent Christians in Beirut and that every single IAF strike only hits Hezbollah members (or U.N. observers, which causes an hour-long round of penis-stroking among Reich-wingers). Incidentally, using the right’s “One photo was faked, therefore all alleged atrocities against Muslims have been faked” logic, because Holocaust denier David Irving proved that the smoke above crematorium had been airbrushed in, the Holocaust never happened.

Yet somehow, I’m the Nazi.

Oh, crap. It’s been more than one sentence since I condemned Islamic terrorists. I’d better do it again to make the fascists happy. I believe that Israel has a right to exist. I also believe that as a sovereign nation, Israel has a right to defend itself from all enemies. I believe that terrorist organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda are very dangerous and need to be destroyed. On the other hand, I reject strongly the notion that a) all Muslims are terrorists b) that Israel’s defense requires a "Last Answer to the Muslim Dilemma" and c) criticism of Israel’s government makes one anti-Semitic.

If anything, the eliminationist rhetoric from the right in regard to the Israel-Lebanon conflict resembles something out of Camp Chaos’ "Napster BAD!" Flash animation.

As you’re watching the video, imagine Ann Coulter, Michelle MalKKKin, Atlas’ Juggs, James Lileks, Michael Savage, Catherine Seipp, Sean Hannity or Neal Boortz in the role of James Hetfield, and Alan Dershowitz, Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, John Podhoretz, Dennis Prager, Richard Cohen, Max "Das" Boot or Marty Peretz in the role of Lars Ulrich, only instead of the original dialogue, they’re reading the following script:

–FADE IN–

"Lars Ulrich": Like, good afternoon. My name is, you know, like, Lars Ulrich from the GOP. I worked for years to get to where I am today! Years and years of "winning" elections and writing for the Washington Times! Me and my buddy, like, James Hetfield here, have shed blood, sweat and motherfucking beer to get where we are today!

"James Hetfield": BEER GOOD!!

"Lars Ulrich": And now we’re fucking wealthy beyond, you know, like, belief. I mean, like, the other day it was, like, obvious to me how much money we have ‘cause our congressman, you know, like, motherfucking Tom DeLay did his very first favor for his buddy Jack, and the fucking dude came through with, you know, like, a crew of naked Philipino sex slaves who work in sweatshops – all free, just because he’s from the GOP, you know! That’s fucking rich, man! So where was I? Oh yeah, all you post-pubescent boys who’ve bought, like, our books and our T-shirts, and our conspiracy theory videos, and…and…

"James Hetfield": T-SHIRTS GOOD!!!

"Lars Ulrich": Yeah! T-shirts! You loyal voters who, like, bang your heads at our Freedom Concerts and pay, like, $100 for a ticket, $27.95 for, like, a book, like, $18.99 for a liberal-bashing T-shirt and, like, $700 for a genuine Republican M-16, you’re all fucking awesome! And we’ll never forget you! You fucking made us rich! You fucking made us popular! You got us onto the cover of, you know, like, Time magazine – I worship you! You, the conservative voter!

"James Hetfield": BEER GOOD!!

"Lars Ulrich": Unless you refuse to blindly believe that every single thing Israel’s government does is 100,000,000,000% moral! Then you’re going to motherfucking Gitmo! We’ll call you motherfucking anti-Semitic! You’ll be some dirty, smelly, towel-head jihadi’s buttery cornhole! Who do you think you are?! I mean, just because you, like, are American citizens, you think you can criticize anything Likud and Kadima do?! War crimes that they spent upwards of, you know, like, 240 artillery shells and 48,000 bullets committing! I mean, Ariel Sharon fell into a coma for you! He let his brain fucking burst into a bloody mess for you people!

"James Hetfield": ANEURYSM BAD!!! ANEURYSM BAD!!!

"Lars Ulrich": Our team of lawyers and researchers have your names, and we’re gonna hunt you down like the bigoted Osama-fellating grab-asses you are!

"James Hetfield": GRAB-ASSES BAD!!!!

"Lars Ulrich": So, to conclude, rock on, GOP voters! We’ll see you on tour this summer! And you anti-Semitic America-haters, we’ll see you in Gitmo getting waterboarded!

–FADE OUT–

"James Hetfield" (Off-camera): ISRAEL GOOD! MUSLIMS BAD!!!

(Incidentally, I view the RIAA’s 1999 lawsuit against Napster in much the same vein as the current Israel-Lebanon conflict: collective punishment of ALL peer-to-peer network users, most of whom had legitimate Fair Use intentions for the files being shared, for the crimes of the music pirates.)