- ----- Original Message -----
From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
>Are you for bombing Israel?
>Seth
- -There is less than no chance that the US will ever treat Israel the way it - -treated Yugoslavia, so your talk about supporting a US war against Israel is - -totally idle. That bet will never be called. jks
>Very true-- but I didn't ask the question and I don't
normally
>discuss Israeli policies in those terms. Seth did.
I was just
>noting the parallels between the situations as far as
numbers killed--
>numbers which were termed relatively minor in Kosovo
but horrific
>in the case of the Palestinians. I think they are
horrific in both
>and yes, the difference in Kosovo was that US policy
was willing to
>act against Milosovic's regime but not against
Sharon's.
>But because the US would not act against Sharon's is
no reason
>not to support US action against Milosevic's regime.
That is the
>pragmatic view to get half a loaf of justice. And
support the
>principle against Israel to demand as much justice as
we can pressure
>the US to push for.
To provide context for Nathan's perspective, it should be noted that the Israeli right wing was supposedly quite perturbed by the NATO bombing of Serbia. Meanwhile, Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery has written that he thought that NATO's actions were a fantastic precedent. See Avnery's articles at http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/article55.html, http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/article56.html, and http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/article57.html.
That said, I personally still don't agree with Nathan.
I think the main issue here is whether a real genocide was taking place against the Kosovar Albanians. If so, my own views might change. But while I am by no means an expert on Kosovo, from what I know, this is simply not the case. There were all kinds of claims from the US and British government -- 500,000 missing, 100,000 dead, mass graves, etc. But in retrospect these were all lies, and very probably knowing lies.
Instead, Kosovo seems to have been quite similar to the situation now in Israel/Palestine. So I think the real question for Nathan is not whether he thinks Israel should be bombed if it begins mass executions of Palestinians, but whether he believes Israel should be bombed right now. The real parallel to Kosovo would be this:
X There would already be international observers in the West Bank and Gaza. X The New York Times would report that "Mr. Sharon has shown himself at least as reasonable as the Palestinians about a political settlement for Palestine," just as the Times reported this about Milosevic and the Kosovar Albanians. X The US would demand at a peace conference that 28,000 NATO troops be stationed in the West Bank and Gaza, with the right to go anywhere in Israel, acting solely on their own authority with no Israeli input. A US official would reportedly say, "We intentionally set the bar too high for the Israelis to comply. They need some bombing, and that's what they are going to get." X The Israeli Knesset would reject the US demand for NATO troops, but pass a resolution stating that Israel is "ready, immediately after the signing of the political settlement about self management of Palestine... to consider the dimensions and character of the international presence in Palestine, intended for the implementation of such a settlement." The NY Times reports that this means a call for UN forces.
(For more detail, see this excellent FAIR article: http://www.fair.org/extra/9907/kosovo-diplomacy.html)
My opinion is that such Israeli flexibility would be an extremely positive development -- and that if NATO started bombing Israel on the day after the Knesset passed such a resolution, as it did Serbia the day after the Serbian parliament passed an analogous resolution, it would be a war crime. But if I understand Nathan's position, he would support such bombing of Israel.
But I'm putting words in his mouth. What is your actual belief, Nathan?
Also, this is neither here nor there, but if it somehow came to it, would anyone seriously support the bombing of Israel, a country with perhaps 200 nuclear weapons? If so, you're braver than I am.
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