rational geekery

So this is what a “big news” day is, eh? This is what media types dream of: huge headlines of death and destruction. They can keep ‘em.

Last night Israel continued to level parts of Beirut, destroying buildings, infrastructure, and killing innocent people. Sometime last week Lebanon was a fairly progressive Mid-East state, albeit with a rather regressive body politic; at least many of the people were getting on with building a life. Now Lebanon is just another front in Israel’s war of regional dominance.

Yes, militants have kidnapped Israeli soldiers, and these men should be released. But the response has been disgusting, counterproductive, ignorant, illegal, and disproportionate.

If Israel wonders why it is viewed as a pariah state by the world’s academia, it must, for the first time in its 50-plus-year history, actually stop and take a fucking look at itself.

I have constantly tried to be even-handed with the Jewish state, often to the chagrin of my readers - no more. They say Israel is the only liberal democracy (in the neoconservative sense of the phrase) in the Mid-East, it is not; it is no better than the secretive, violent, illiberal despotic states it neighbours.

Again, with a heartfelt, and stunningly written account is Anarchistian, here:

I was up until 6 am, and just as I was heading to bed, I began hearing the sounds of Israeli jets. I waited for the strike, a boom, but heard nothing. So I went to bed, and woke up this morning to the news of strikes on Beirut International Airport, an air and sea blockade of Lebanon, definitely not an act of war against the people of Lebanon, definitely not prohibited by international law. International law? What’s that? Oh yeah, that anti-Semitic piece of document, surely a conspiracy against the State of Israel....

[Anarchistian goes on to state Israel's breaches of International law, click here - tyger]

This new, very ugly, very dirty face of Israel will engulf the region in flames. I have been glued in front of my computer and the TV, watching scenes of raids. I must stop watching. It is quite depressing. Children massacred, entire residential buildings leveled. I captured some shots from TV with my digital camera, a man carrying a dead 10-month-old baby in a blanket, headless bodies, a dead little girl being show to the cameras, Qana all over again. Someone said today that Israel’s objective was to hit HezbAllah, and to hit it hard, but if that is Israel’s objective, then it is doing a poor if not miserable job at it. I have been talking to many people across the political spectrum here in Lebanon, and while they do not support HezbAllah’s initial actions, most who were never outspoken critics of Israel have adopted a language of immense hostility and bitterness. It seems Israel has not learned that collective punishment will never push people away from either Hamas or HezbAllah. If it is any indication, it was collective punishment that gave rise to and increased support for Hamas and HezbAllah to begin with. Are we to assume that Israel is that stupid? What are we supposed to conclude from Israel’s continuation in this path? One thing: that the “peace” it claims to want, it wants only through missilies, the disposession of “the other”, the locking up of hostages (civilians, including children) and POW for 30 years, while demanding an immediate release of Israeli POW. Israel is pushing the entire Middle East (including many who advocate signing a peace treaty with Israel) into the arms of its enemies (though if you come to think of it, it seems Israel views the entire Middle East - including its civilian population - as its enemy). And it is doing so on purpose....