[lbo-talk] Israeli Übermenschen

[Carl Remick]

[A disquisition on disproportionality.  BTW, it was interesting to see the 
BBC give top coverage two days ago to the UN's criticism of Israeli for 
using cluster bombs.  That criticism has gotten little coverage in the US 
media.]

September 1, 2006

Israel: Beyond Good and Evil?
Ehud Olmert's Nietzschean foreign policy

By Justin Raimondo

The viciousness of the Israeli assault on Lebanon is underscored by the 
IDF's use of cluster bombs against civilian targets. As Jan Egeland, who 
heads up humanitarian operations for the United Nations, put it:

"What's shocking – and I would say to me completely immoral – is that 90% of 
the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when 
we knew there would be a resolution. Every day people are maimed, wounded, 
and are killed by these ordnance."

As close to a million refugees return to their homes, 100,000 unexploded 
cluster bombs – most of them dropped by the Israelis in the closing hours of 
the war – lie in wait for them and their children. Kids often pick up such 
ordnance because of its resemblance to toys. Such is the sickening legacy of 
the Israeli aggression, which will continue to deal death long after "peace" 
is declared.

The Israelis, for their part, defend their use of cluster bombs. Israeli 
government spokeswoman Miri Eisin philosophized that, while war is 
"regrettable," dropping the widelycondemned ordnance on civilian targets in 
Lebanon was perfectly legal:

"Israel does not break any international laws in the type of armaments it 
uses. Their use conforms with international standards."

Eisin, you'll note, didn't even attempt a moral defense of the IDF's 
murderously cruel tactics: the Israelis long ago ceded the moral high ground 
and retreated behind a veritable Wall of Separation, beyond good and evil. 
The spirit of what might be called their Nietzschean foreign policy was well 
expressed in Israeli UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman's reply to those who 
decried Israel's response to the kidnapping of two soldiers as wildly 
disproportionate: "You're damned right this is disproportionate!"

The ordinary rules of morality don't apply to the IDF: Gillerman and his 
government are explicitly rejecting international moral norms, asserting 
that Israel has the right to commit any atrocity in the name of 
"self-defense." And if their "defense" requires the reduction of Lebanon to 
rubble, then so be it. Such is the creed of the new Israeli Overman.

In normal society, individuals who live by this Nietzschean code of 
anti-ethics are called sociopaths. Most wind up behind bars. Others find 
employment in the variousbranches of government. Gillerman is a proud 
spokesman for this disturbing trend in official Israeli circles – it was he 
who wowed the crowd at the March 6 AIPAC conference when he averred,

"While it may be true – and probably is – that not all Muslims are 
terrorists, it also happens to be true that nearly all terrorists are 
Muslim."

Insert "Jew" in place of "Muslim," and substitute "international bankers" or 
"Ecstasy dealers" for "terrorists," and imagine the resulting furor: the 
speaker would be likened to Hitler and run out of town on a rail. Instead, 
Gillerman's star rose in the American political firmament, so that by summer 
he was gracing the stage alongside Hillary Clinton at a pro-Israel rally in 
New York City:

"Let us finish the job! You know better than anyone else that what we are 
doing is doing your own work: fighting terror…. And to those countries who 
claim we are using disproportionate force, I have only this to say: you're 
damn right we are!"

This braying, swaggering arrogance is the sort of style one usually 
associates with the historic enemies of the Jewish people – jackbooted 
fascists and neo-Nazis, who wear their nihilistic ruthlessness on their 
sleeves alongside their swastika armbands. Here is yet more evidence of my 
thesis that Israeli society, deformed by perpetual war and disfigured by 
state controls, is morphing into a form of fascism, including a mass 
movement with global reach that mimics the historical forms of national 
socialism – minus, of course, the requisite anti-Semitism. The 
national-socialist Sparta of the Middle East, egged on by its radicalized 
American amen corner, is embarked on a campaign of aggression that can only 
end in disaster for all – the United States included.

The reality, in spite of Gillerman's contention that the Israelis are 
(somehow) fighting our fight, is that the Americans will be drawn into any 
war sparked by another proudly disproportionate strike by the IDF. We'll 
have to finish what they start. This is the one overriding principle of our 
policy, the mad "America last, Israel first" paradigm that distorts the 
rational pursuit of U.S. interests in the region. The IDF makes a mess in 
Lebanon – and we are charged with cleaning it up. When the Israelis aren't 
bulldozing the homes of their Palestinian helots, they're using them for 
target practice – and the ire of the Arab-Muslim world is directed at us, 
because those bulldozers and those bullets were paid for by American 
taxpayers, just as those cluster bombs that continue to kill and maim 
Lebanese civilians were made in – and paid for by – the U.S.

Amnesty International is urging the Israelis to provide maps of areas where 
cluster bombs were dropped, in an effort to clean up the deadly debris left 
behind by the invaders, but the Israelis, proud of their ruthlessness, are 
unlikely to assent. After all, can't you just hear Gillerman braying his 
defiance at those who "claim" that the IDF's dropping such deadly ordnance 
means Lebanese children are dying: You're damned right they are! ...

<http://antiwar.com/justin/>

Carl