There is increasing
evidence that Israel instigated a disastrous war
on Lebanon largely at the behest of the United
States. The administration of President George W
Bush was set on crippling Hezbollah, the radical
Shi'ite political movement that maintains a
sizable block of seats in the Lebanese parliament.
Taking advantage of the country's
democratic opening after the forced departure of
Syrian troops last year, Hezbollah defied US
efforts to democratize the region on Washington's
terms. The populist party's unwillingness to
disarm its militia as required by
United
Nations resolution - and the inability of the
pro-Western Lebanese government to force it to do
so - apparently led the Bush administration to
push Israel to take military action.
In
his May 23 summit with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert,
Bush offered full US support for Israel to attack
Lebanon as soon as possible. Seymour Hersh, in the
August 21 New Yorker, quotes a Pentagon consultant
on the Bush administration's long-standing desire
to strike "a preemptive blow against Hezbollah".
The consultant said, "It was our intent to have
Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else
doing it."
Israel was a willing partner.
Although numerous Israeli press reports indicate
that some Israeli officials, including top
military officials, are furious at Bush for
pushing Olmert into war, the Israeli government
had been planning the attack since 2004. According
to a July 21 article in the San Francisco
Chronicle, Israel had briefed US officials with
details of the plans, including PowerPoint
presentations, in what the newspaper described as
"revealing detail". Political-science professor
Gerald Steinberg of Bar-Ilan University told the
Chronicle, "Of all of Israel's wars since 1948,
this was the one for which Israel was most
prepared. In a sense, the preparation began in May
2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal."
Despite these preparations, the Bush
administration and congressional leaders of both
main US parties tried to present the devastating
attacks, which took as many as 800 civilian lives,
as a spontaneous reaction to Hezbollah's
provocative July 12 attack on an Israeli border
post and its seizure of two soldiers.
Some
reports have indicated that Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld was less sanguine than Vice
President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice or Bush about the proposed
Israeli military offensive. Rumsfeld apparently
believed that Israel should focus less on bombing
and more on ground operations, despite the
dramatically higher Israeli casualties that would
result. Still, Hersh quotes a former senior
intelligence official as saying that Rumsfeld was
"delighted that Israel is our stalking horse".
The recent announcement of a shaky
ceasefire may represent only a minor speed bump in
US plans. After all, the attack on Hezbollah was
only the first stage of what the Bush
administration apparently hopes will be a joint
redrawing of the Middle East map. On to
Iran and Syria? On July 30, the Jerusalem
Post reported that Bush pushed Israel to expand
the war beyond Lebanon and attack Syria. Israeli
officials apparently found the idea "nuts".
This idea was not exactly secret. In
support of the Israeli offensive, the office of
the White House press secretary released a list of
talking points that included reference to a Los
Angeles Times op-ed by Max Boot, senior fellow for
national-security studies at the Council on
Foreign Relations. The article, "It's time to let
the Israelis take off the gloves", urges an
Israeli attack against Syria. "Israel needs to hit
the Assad regime. Hard," argued Boot, referring to
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. "If it does, it
will be doing Washington's dirty work."
Iran, too, was in the administration's
sights. The Israeli attack on Lebanon, according
to Hersh, was to "serve as a prelude to a
potential American preemptive attack to destroy
Iran's nuclear installations". But first, the Bush
administration needed to get rid of Hezbollah's
capacity to retaliate against Israel in the event
of a US strike on Iran, which apparently prompted
Hezbollah's buildup of Iranian-supplied missiles
in the first place.
Starting this spring,
according to Hersh, the White House ordered top
planners from the US Air Force to consult with
their Israeli counterparts on a war plan against
Iran that incorporated an Israeli preemptive
strike against Hezbollah. Lieutenant-General Dan
Halutz, the chief of staff of the Israeli military
and principal architect of the war on Lebanon,
worked with US officials on contingency planning
for an air war with Iran.
The Bush
administration's larger goal apparently has been
to form an alliance of pro-Western Sunni Arab
dictatorships - primarily Egypt, Saudi Arabia and
Jordan - against a growing Shi'ite militancy
exemplified by Hezbollah and Iran and, to a lesser
extent, post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. Though these
Sunni regimes initially spoke out against
Hezbollah's provocative capture of the two Israeli
soldiers that prompted the Israeli attacks,
popular opposition within these countries to the
ferocity of the Israeli assault led them to rally
solidly against the US-backed war on Lebanon.
In Israel's interest? In the
years prior to Israel's July 12 bombing of
Lebanese cities, Hezbollah had become less and
less of a threat. It had not killed any Israeli
civilians for more than a decade (with the
exception of one accidental fatality in 2003
caused by an anti-aircraft missile fired at an
Israeli plane that had violated Lebanese
airspace). Investigations by the US Congressional
Research Service, the State Department and
independent think-tanks failed to identify any
major act of terrorism by Hezbollah for more than
a dozen years.
Prior to the attack,
Hezbollah's militia had dwindled to about 1,000
men under arms - this number tripled after July 12
when reserves were called up - and a national
dialogue was going on between Hezbollah and the
government of pro-Western Prime Minister Fuad
Siniora regarding disarmament. The majority of
Lebanese opposed Hezbollah, both its reactionary
fundamentalist social agenda as well as its
insistence on maintaining an armed presence
independent of the country's elected government.
Thanks to the US-backed Israeli attacks on
Lebanon's civilian infrastructure, however,
support for Hezbollah, according to polls, has
grown to more than 80%, even within the Sunni
Muslim and Christian communities.
Even
Richard Armitage, a leading hawk and deputy
secretary of state under Bush during his first
term, noted, "The only thing that the bombing has
achieved so far is to unite the population against
the Israelis."
Despite US encouragement
that Israel continue the war, Israel's right-wing
prime minister has come under increasing criticism
at home, with polls from the newspaper Ha'aretz
indicating that only 39% of Israelis would support
the planned expansion of the ground offensive.
Meretz Party knesset (parliament) member
Ran Cohen, writing in the Jerusalem Post, called
earlier moves to expand the ground offensive "a
wretched decision". Yariv Oppenheimer, general
director of Peace Now, which had earlier muted its
criticism of the attacks on Lebanon, noted, "The
war has spiraled out of control and the government
is ignoring the political options available."
Not only have a growing number of Israelis
acknowledged that the war has been a disaster for
Israel, there is growing recognition of US
responsibility for getting them into that mess. A
July 23 article in Ha'aretz about an anti-war
demonstration in Tel Aviv noted that "this was a
distinctly anti-American protest" that included
"chants of 'We will not die and kill in the
service of the United States,' and slogans
condemning President George W Bush."
Members of the US Congress who have
unconditionally backed Israel's attacks on Lebanon
have responded to constituent outrage by claiming
they were simply defending Israel's legitimate
interests. In supporting the Bush administration,
however, they have defended policies that
cynically use Israel to advance the
administration's militarist agenda.
Who's anti-Semitic? One of the
more unsettling aspects of the broad support in
Washington for the use of Israel as a US proxy in
the Middle East is how closely it corresponds to
historic anti-Semitism. In past centuries, the
ruling elite of European countries would, in
return for granting limited religious and cultural
autonomy, establish certain individuals in the
Jewish community as the visible agents of the
oppressive social order, such as tax collectors
and moneylenders. When the population
threatened to rise up against the ruling elite,
the rulers could then blame the Jews, channeling
the wrath of an exploited people against
convenient scapegoats. The resulting pogroms and
waves of repression took place throughout the
Jewish diaspora.
Zionists hoped to break
this cycle by creating a Jewish nation-state where
Jews would no longer be dependent on the ruling
elite of a given country. The tragic irony is
that, through the use of Israel to wage proxy war
to promote US hegemony in the region, this cycle
is being perpetuated on a global scale.
This latest round of US-inspired Israeli
violence has led to a dangerous upsurge in
anti-Semitism in the Middle East and throughout
the world. In the United States, many critics are
blaming "the Zionist lobby" for US support for
Israel's attacks on Lebanon rather than the Bush
administration and its bipartisan congressional
allies who encouraged Israel to wage war on
Lebanon in the first place.
Unfortunately,
most anti-war protests in major US cities have
targeted the Israeli consulates rather than US
government buildings. By contrast, during the
1980s, protests against the US-backed violence in
El Salvador rarely targeted Salvadoran consulates,
but instead more appropriately took place outside
US federal offices and arms depots, recognizing
that the violence would not be taking place
without US weapons and support.
Israel is
no banana republic. Even those like Hersh who
recognize the key role of the Bush administration
in goading Israel to attack Lebanon emphasize that
rightist elements within Israel had their own
reasons, independent of Washington, to pursue the
conflict.
Still, given Israel's enormous
military, economic and political dependence on the
US, this latest war on Lebanon could not have
taken place without a green light from Washington.
Then-US president Jimmy Carter, for example, was
able to put a halt to Israel's 1978 invasion of
Lebanon within days and force the Israeli army to
withdraw from the south bank of the Litani River
to a narrow strip just north of the Israeli
border.
By contrast, the Bush
administration and an overwhelming bipartisan
majority of Congress clearly believed it was in
the United States' interest for Israel to pursue
Washington's "dirty work" for an indefinite
period, regardless of its negative implications
for Israel's legitimate security interests.
Domestic political implications
Given the lack of success of the Israeli
military campaign, US planners are likely having
second thoughts about the ease with which a US-led
bombing campaign could achieve victory over Iran.
However, the propensity of the Bush
administration to ignore historical lessons should
not be underestimated. A former senior
intelligence official told Hersh, "There is no way
that Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right
conclusion about this. When the smoke clears,
they'll say it was a success, and they'll draw
reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran."
Indeed, on August 14, Bush declared that Israel
had achieved "victory" in its fight against
Hezbollah.
The outspoken support of
congressional Democrats for Bush's policies and
Israel's war on Lebanon portends similar support
should the US ignore history and common sense and
attack Iran anyway. Both the Senate and House, in
backing administration policy, claimed that,
contrary to the broad consensus of international
opinion, Israel's military actions were consistent
with international law and the UN Charter.
By this logic, if Israel's wanton
destruction of a small democratic country's
civilian infrastructure because of a minor border
incident instigated by members of a 3,000-man
militia of a minority party is a legitimate act of
self-defense, surely a similar US attack against
Iran - a much larger country with a sizable armed
force whose hardline government might be
developing nuclear weapons - could also be seen as
a legitimate act of self-defense.
Ironically, political action committees
sponsored by liberal groups such as MoveOn.org,
Peace Action and Act for Change continue to
support the election or re-election of US
congressional candidates who have voiced support
for Washington's proxy war against Lebanon,
despite massive Israeli violations of
international humanitarian law. They see it as
serving as a trial run for a US war against Iran.
And, unfortunately, on the other extreme, some of
the more outspoken elements that have opposed
America's proxy war against Lebanon frankly do not
have Israel's best interest in mind.
As a
result, without a dramatic increase in protests by
those who see Washington's cynical use of Israel
as bad for virtually everyone, there is little
chance this dangerous and immoral policy can be
reversed.
Stephen Zunes is
Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy In Focus
Project. He is a professor of politics and the
author of Tinderbox: US Middle East Policy
and Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage
Press, 2003).
