It is hard to read a computer monitor and to write on one just a day after undergoing a cataract operation but some things cannot be left unsaid or postponed for a few days. And so I find myself compelled to respond to a piece written by Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the United States and to some fantastic reveries expressed only recently in many of the Israeli media. Oren's piece was published in the American Wall Street Journal on August 12, 2011; it is titled: “The lessons of the Second Lebanon War” and has the subtitle: “Israel cannot allow a future Palestinian state to become a terrorist stronghold, as Lebanon has become under Hezbollah domination.”
It is no secret that Michael Oren fancies himself as a historian, therefore it should come as no surprise that he would want to give his piece the aura of a historical account of the events as he sees them. Thus, after taking one paragraph to say how bad things look now at the Lebanon-Israel border, he begins the second paragraph with this sentence: “The roots of that conflict ran deep.” But expecting to see a historical account that goes back to the illegal immigration of Jews into Palestine, you are disappointed but not surprised to see that the second sentence of the second paragraph goes like this: “Responding to attacks … Israel invaded the country...” Thus, we are told that Israel responded to attacks but we are not told what these attacks were responding to.
This approach to telling history being in keeping with the Judeo-Israeli habit of starting every account of a historical event at a point that is most advantages to the Israeli side while ignoring all that came before it, you shrug it off and keep on reading the piece. Well, you don't actually read what follows; you try to read the two dozen words that make up the next sentence as they hit you in the eyes like two dozen bullets fired from a machine gun. Just look at the following words and be amazed at the arrogance of a born to remain ignorant individual. Expressing what Israel wanted to do to Lebanon, Michael Oren says this: “It sought to free the country from terror and Syrian occupation, and to support the emergence of a pro-Western democratic government committed to peace.”
So here you have it, dear reader, because our venerated historian could not tell what attacks Israel was responding to, he now hints that maybe Israel had something else in mind; maybe it wanted to free the country from a Syrian occupation, he says, even though Syria was invited into the country by Lebanon itself, an invitation that was submitted to and approved by the Arab League. But whatever Israel's goals were at the time, Oren admits that the Jewish nation failed to achieve them. But why is that? Aha! Here he goes back to the old Jewish narrative of blaming everything bad that happens to the world on the Christians. He puts it this way: “...the massacre of Palestinians by Christian militiamen in Beirut generate international pressure on Israel to withdraw its forces. They remained … along the border for the next 18 years, before withdrawing [thus] the First Lebanon War … ended.”
Although the Christian militiamen did not exist before Israel invaded Lebanon, he omits to say who they were or who commanded them. Although he says that one of the reasons Israel invaded Lebanon was to end terror, he does not call terror the massacre of the Palestinians which he should have whether the killers were Christians or otherwise. Although he calls the presence of the Syrians in Lebanon an occupation, he does not call occupation the more than 18 years that the Israelis remained in Lebanon. But take heart, dear reader, because what counts is the intent. You get it, my friend, it all depends on the intent. You see, the Israelis and the Jews have such good intent that whatever they do, they do it out of their saintliness. Whatever their enemies of the day do, they do it out of their evilness. You get it, my friend, it's all in the intent.
So you ask what was the intent of the Israelis according to the great historian Michael Oren. As if you needed to ask. Here it is: “[Israel] sought to free [Lebanon] ... and to support the emergence of a pro-Western democratic government committed to peace.” You see how saintly this is? How much more saintly can a country get? Instead of pressuring Israel to withdraw right after the massacre of the Palestinians by the Christian Militiamen, why did the world not get down on its knees and beg the Israelis to take all of Lebanon; to annex it, that is. Would this not have been the saintly thing to do? But then again, the world is not Jewish therefore it could not have been as saintly as this.
Now look how sneaky a self-designated historian can get. Knowing that he is writing for an audience that is made up mostly of Americans, he tries to cement in their minds the idea of an Israeli and a Jewish population that is saintly by associating the Jews and the Israelis with the Americans. This is what he says: “The presence of Israeli troops in Lebanon did not create Hezbollah, no more than the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia created al Qaeda.” What he neglects to say is that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait without being invited and that the Kuwaitis together with the Arab League invited the Americans to do what was necessary to liberate Kuwait. Some Arab countries participated with America in the military effort and when the job was completed which it was after a few months, everybody went home. By contrast, the Israelis went into Lebanon uninvited supposedly to chase away the Syrians who were invited into Lebanon by the Lebanese and the Arab League. And the Israelis stayed there until their ass got kicked by a Hezbollah that did not exist before the invasion of Lebanon. But then again, when it comes to recounting history, you can always count on the Jews to turn things upside down.
And you can count on them to do something else. You can count on them to blame someone innocent for a situation that they alone have created. Here is what our historian goes on to say: “Rather, Hezbollah sprang from the resentment of Lebanon's long-oppressed Shiite population, and the bounteous backing of Iran.” And this, my friend, is a mistake that no historian worth his salt should ever make. First, the fact is that the sectarian civil war that took place in Lebanon happened between the Christians who were on one side against the Muslims (Shiites and Sunnis) who were on the other side, not between Shiites and Sunnis. Second, when Hezbollah was formed, Iran was flat on its face beaten to a pulp by an Iraqi army that was financed by the neighboring Arab states, armed by the NATO allies and counseled by the Americans. Neither the Lebanese Sunnis nor the Iranians had anything to do with it; the Israeli occupation and nothing else created Hezbollah.
The rest of the article is unfocused even where it repeats the old Judeo-Israeli propaganda. For this reason, it will not be worth responding to the points it tries to make. But in case you wonder what these points were supposed to be, they can be summed up like this: We, the Jews and the Israelis are perfect. Yes, on the surface it looks like a massacre of unarmed civilians happened under our watch. Yes, it looks like our ass got kicked by Hezbollah and that we were forced to withdraw. Yes, it looks like Hezbollah now has a strong presence in Lebanese politics. Yes, it looks like Hezbollah is better armed than ever before. But we have learned a great lesson not from the mistakes we are incapable of making; we have learned a lesson by becoming more conscious of the great evil that our enemies represent. And we promise you that we shall not fall into this trap ever again. Just watch us.
This is what Michael Oren has said. What were the Israeli-Jewish media saying in the meantime? Well, for a while at least, they stopped saying that the Israelis are teaching the Americans how to make drones and that they are rescuing their big conglomerates from a sure slide into bankruptcy and the eventual oblivion. Instead, the Israeli propaganda machine has shifted its attention to the next rising superpower which is China. They say they are going to teach the Chinese how to make airplanes not by doing the teaching in a conventional sense as they do with the Americans, for example, but by treating the Chinese like the Chinese are supposed to be treated. How is that you ask? Like coolies, that's how.
You see, the coolies are Chinese slaves. They were the ones that built the North American railroads more than a century ago. Israel now wants to revive this old tradition not by importing Chinese slaves into Israel but by taking what they call Israeli know-how to China and using the Chinese coolies locally to make Israeli airplanes. And the bright among the Chinese will have to learn what they can by watching their Israeli masters. Never mind that the Israeli know-how as it is known to Jews is called the Israeli know-nothing by everyone else, they are going into China on the assumption that the Chinese do not know what is going on.
It is completely beyond me why the Almighty chose for these people to suffer by their own stupidity.