>--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>>Call me over-sensitive, but there's something creepy about the
>>phrase "Israel disease." The U.S. has shown no reticence about
>>brutality - why nominate it as a particularly Israeli affliction?
>>
>>Doug
>
>Especially since Israel probably got half these counter-insurgency
>ideas from us decades ago. Some of these games go way back.
What you two object to -- the idea that the US government has already resorted to do in Iraq what the state of Israel has been doing -- is not so much Brad's own take as the headline and main argument of the top front-page article in the _New York Times_ today.
I don't know if you have today's _New York Times_ in front of you, but if you had the National Edition of it in your hands, you would see one visually arresting layout. In the top middle of the front page, two large photographs by Ashley Gilbertson/Aurora: a photograph of American soldiers on guard along a razor-wire fence that was put up around the Iraqi village of Abu Hishma; below it, a close-up of a young Iraqi man (his handsome face out of focus) holding up (next to his face) for the camera the US-issued identification card (in focus) that he must carry to go in and out of the village.
Next to the photographs, the headline:
Tough New Tactics by U.S. Tighten Grip on Iraq Towns
--------------- Barriers, Detentions and Razings Begin to Echo Israel's Anti-Guerrilla Methods
The body of the 1,622-word article explicitly discusses US-Israeli comparisons or cooperations -- the words Israel and Israeli are mentioned fifteen times:
* "The response they chose is beginning to echo the Israeli counterinsurgency campaign in the occupied territories."
* "The practice of destroying buildings where Iraqi insurgents are suspected of planning or mounting attacks has been used for decades by Israeli soldiers in Gaza and the West Bank."
* "The Israeli Army has also imprisoned the relatives of suspected terrorists, in the hopes of pressing the suspects to surrender."
* "The Israeli military has also cordoned off villages and towns thought to be hotbeds of guerrilla activity, in an effort to control the flow of people moving in and out."
* "American officials say they are not purposefully mimicking Israeli tactics, but they acknowledge that they have studied closely the Israeli experience in urban fighting."
* "Ahead of the war, Israeli defense experts briefed American commanders on their experience in guerrilla and urban warfare."
* "The Americans say there are no Israeli military advisers helping the Americans in Iraq."
* "Writing in the July issue of Army magazine, an American brigadier general said American officers had recently traveled to Israel to hear about lessons learned from recent fighting there."
* "'Experience continues to teach us many lessons, and we continue to evaluate and address those lessons, embedding and incorporating them appropriately into our concepts, doctrine and training,' Brig. Gen. Michael A. Vane wrote. 'For example, we recently traveled to Israel to glean lessons learned from their counterterrorist operations in urban areas.' General Vane is deputy chief of staff for doctrine concepts and strategy, at the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command."
* "'We've considerably pushed back the numbers of engagements against coalition forces,' he said. 'We've been hitting back pretty hard. We've forced them to slow down the pace of their operations.' In that way, the new American approach seems to share the successes of the Israeli military, at least in the short term; Israeli officers contend that their strategy regularly stops catastrophes like suicide bombings from taking place."
* "'If you do nothing, they will just get stronger,' said Martin van Creveld, professor of military history and strategy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He briefed American marines on Israeli tactics in urban warfare in September."
* "The bombing of the house, about a mile outside the barbed wire, is another tactic that echoes those of the Israeli Army. In Iraq, the Americans have bulldozed, bombed or otherwise rendered useless a number of buildings which they determined were harboring guerrillas."
* "American officers acknowledge that they have destroyed buildings around Tikrit. In a recent news conference, General Sanchez explained the strategy but ignored a question about parallels to the Israeli experience."
A front-page article that subtly criticizes tactical parallels between the US and Israeli occupations like this one by Dexter Filkins is the best that you can hope for from the _New York Times_.
The problem for the US government is the difference between the US and Israeli political premises and objective realities:
(A) Political Premises
(A1) US-Iraq: We Liberated the Long-Suffering Iraqi People from the Iraqi Tyrant, We Are Bringing Democracy to Them -- Most of Them (Except A Few Thugs and Terrorists) Love Us, and They Want Us to Stay Here and Help Them
(A2) Israel-the Occupied Territories: Arabs Hate Us, They Always Hated US, They Want to Push US into the Sea, We Are Just Trying to Protect Ourselves from Them
(B) Objective Realities
(B1) US-Iraq: It's difficult if not impossible to re-introduce conscription, so there is a severe military manpower shortage; Iraq is awash in conventional weapons and full of young men who are trained to use conventional weapons or improvise sophisticated explosive devices; the US occupation of Iraq is not settler-colonialist, so most of the targets of Iraqi attacks (oil pipelines, power lines, US and coalition soldiers and officials, US military subcontractors, UN officials, Iraqi collaborators, all other collaborators, etc.) are high-profile ones -- therefore, even when the attacks violate laws of warfare, they still make for a clear, coherent, and powerful political message ("Get Out of Iraq -- Do Not Cooperate with the US Government").
(B2) Israel-the Occupied Territories: the draft defines the Jewish-Israeli citizenship (Palestinian "citizens" of Israel are excused from the draft) -- refusers and conscientious objectors have made an outstanding symbolic contribution to resistance to the occupation, but their number has yet to make a material dent in Israel's military capacity; Palestinian militants do not have as good access to conventional weapons, and they are not as well trained as former Iraqi soldiers turned resistance fighters; the politics of Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation has become more fractious than ever, so Palestinian fighters, divided into competing factions, have not been able to devise and stick to the military strategy and tactics that concentrate on high-profile symbolic targets (Israeli officials, IDF soldiers, armed settlers, etc.) that can send a clear, coherent, and powerful political message -- far from it, a number of targets of Palestinian attacks (ordinary civilians inside the Green Line) make it easier for the state of Israel to present itself as the sole protector of Israelis and demonize all forms of Palestinian resistance.
In short, the US can't get away with what Israel has been getting away with. -- Yoshie
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