Heretics' almanac

More about antisemitism in Norway

The Norwegian media landscape does not do justice to the physical geography it's supposed to serve, and I've often reflected that the marxist-leninist Klassekampen is the only newspaper that takes journalism seriously. Well, this illusion was blown to smithereens this weekend when this rag made a headline out of a supposed "closed company" inviting to a forum "against Islam."

This was in reference to a conference arranged by Hans Rustad, Nina Witoszek and Shabana Rehman to discuss "antisemitism in Norwegian," a topic that should interest everyone in light of the Gaarder spectacle.

The arrangers have received death threats, which (sadly) may not be news for them. Bjørgulv Braanen, the editor, kind of sort of sticks to his guns in saying that "against Islam" is the most apt description he can think of, and that it's closed because participation is by invitation only.

To be sure...

In this weekend's On the Media, the opinion editor of Lebanon's Daily Star (Michael Young) made some interesting points:

• The Arab street may be impressed by Hezbollah's fighting spirit and ability, but they're not at all excited about the war Hezbollah started, for no good reason
• They are mindful that if Israel could cause so much destruction on a bad day, how much worse it would be when they get their act together

In other words, as Young leaves implicit and unsaid (because it should go without saying), Arabs actually have good common sense. Not a surprise to me, but probably to many of the pundits, commentators, etc., who think that Israel got the bloody nose and Hezbollah is ascending in the Arab mind.

The sad death of Angelo Frammartino, by a coward

Angelo Frammartino was an Italian volunteer in Israel, helping to take care of kids in the Old City of Jerusalem. He and a few tourists were approaching Herod's Gate when he was mortally stabbed from behind by a murderer who immediately ran away.

The "occupying power" of Jerusalem, the Shin Bet and municipal police, apprehended the assailant, who, it turns out, is affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Palestinian "NGOs" are staging a vigil in outrage over this death. Because, I'm guessing, the victim wasn't Jewish after all. The perp will be jailed and tried in Israel and will undoubtedly show up on some list of people that these same NGOs claim are "political prisoners."

I'm waiting for Kåre Willoch to explain to Angelo's friends and family that this was an act of understandable desperation and frustration, that while it was deplorable, it is indeed Israel's responsibility. But that, of course, would take moral courage.

It takes a unique kind of cowardice to run up to a tourist from behind, stab him, and then run off. Sort of like hiding among civilians and lobbing poorly aimed rockets and missiles at towns and villages.

Israel's enemies? Yes, they're cowards, all of them.

Who is violating what?

Aftenposten tells its readers that the Israeli commando raid in the Bekaa Valley was the "most serious" breach in the armistice so far. The raid, as far as anyone can tell, was to disrupt a supply of arms to Hezbollah, I'm guessing from Syria.

It seems that Aftenposten's editors haven't actually read the relevant SC resolution, which pretty clearly reads:

– no foreign forces in Lebanon without the consent of its Government;

– no sales or supply of arms and related materiel to Lebanon except as authorized by its Government;

Now, I'm not the least bit surprised that Hezbollah is using this cease-fire as an opportunity to replenish its arms and solidify its tactical positions in Lebanon. If Syria and Iran are sending weapons to Hezbollah, and Hezbollah is accepting them; then Israel is simply enforcing the terms of the cease-fire, not violating it.

Unless you sincerely believe that the cease-fire really means that Israel should stop defending itself.

A picture can tell a thousand lies

Not surprisingly, there is growing consternation if not outrage about the devastation brought about by Israel's bombing of targets inside Lebanon. Without a doubt, there will be demands that Israel compensates the Lebanese for this destruction, estimated by  Al-Fadl Shalaq, head of the Hizballah Fundraising Committee (Lebanese) Council for Development and Reconstruction at $3.6 billion, a figure Reuters, Aftenposten, eagerly lap up.

Images are flying, of the same Beirut neigborhood, and of internally displaced people sleeping in parking garages.

These image should disturb all of us, but I've learned to be deeply suspicious. When Shalag rhetorically asks what would happen if 25% of all French were displaced in the month of August, he's in fact describing reality - I would estimate at least 25% of all French people displace themselves to go on vacation. And before somebody jumps down my throat, yes, I realize that fleeing a war is different from taking a week with the kids on the beach, or in the mountains. But the mere fact that a large portion of a country moves itself all at once is not as radical as one might first assume - and these people had plenty of notice.

By the same token, as horrible as the rubble is in Haret Hreik and Qana, we simply do not have anything approaching an objective consideration of how widespread the damage is. And I haven't seen a lot of pictures of the area around Kiryat Shemona.

And, of course, nobody is writing up headlines about the economic damage done to Israel - which can be measured not just in terms of destruction, but also the opportunity cost of shutting down Northern Israel and mobilizing several divisions of reserve troops.

Who won remains to be seen

There are (at least) three ways to look at the current situation around the Lebanese-Israeli Blue Line:

1. With the Lebanese army and a vastly expanded UNIFIL filling in the void created by the disengagement between Hizballah and Israel, there is a reasonable probability that things will stabilize in the area: Lebanon will get a new lease on its sovereignty, there will be greater alignment for a peace treaty between Israel and Lebanon, and one more front in the Arab-Israeli conflict will go away.
2. Hezbollah has been beaten enough into the ground that Iran and Syria will abandon the Nasrallah surrogacy for the foreseeable future. There may be a low-level conflict between Hezbollah and the Lebanese army, with occasional intervention by Israel on the Lebanese side, but Hezbollah is no longer a major player in regional politics.
3. The radical factions in the Arab world sees Hezbollah as the victor in the war and models further warfare against Israel, the US, and pretty much everyone else on the Hizballah model, which is pretty familiar to what mobsters would do - take over an area, combine bribes, good works, etc., with intimidation and violence, and then attack an enemy using ruthless tactics. In this case, the 2006 war on Hizballah is simply a portend to much worse to come.

The predictions cover all these three, and then some, but I don't think anyone really knows for sure. The dust hasn't settled.

Mona Levin's article that put a period (semicolon) to the Gaarder controversy

The translation approved by Ms. Levin herself:

Another way to look at all this

I still haven't found a coherent explanation of the forces at work in this war we're in. Perhaps I'm too much a student of dialectics, but I can't bring myself to see this purely as a struggle between pure evil and pure good. To be sure, I put the US way (way way) above Al Qaeda and Israel way (way way way) above Hamas and Hizballah; but it would be silly and naive to think that one is blindingly white and the other endlessly black.

Still, I think it's important to develop a theory that has some nuance, that's coherent, and that can be tested against events as they unfold. Whatever the resolution of this war will be, it'll be different from any of us expects. I think it'll be a lot closer to what Western thinkers are hoping for than what Nasrallah (ascending) and Bin Laden (descending) hope for, but nobody will look particularly prescient when it's all said and done.

Meanwhile, in Israel...

If my wife and finances had allowed it, I would have spent the last few weeks in Israel. I'm not sure what I would have done - perhaps shlepping stuff to the north and people to the south. Being a human shield of sorts - if a katyusha rocket landed on me, perhaps Norwegians would have woken up to the fact that a Norwegian citizen - albeit a Jewish one - was a casualty of Hezbollah's attempt at genocide. A morbid fantasy, of course, and I'm still here in an office building in New York.

There are conflicting news about what actually happened in this war. Bush and Debka seem to think that Hizballah lost, and that this is a serious defeat for Iran. The emerging public opinion is that the senior command of the IDF was a huge disappointment, and that the last 48 hours made all the difference, if any.

What will happen next?

I read UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and nodded in agreement through all of it. The issue isn't whether it's a good resolution (which I think it is), but whether there's a way to enforce it.

In fact, several sources now indicate that it's unraveling even before it started, largely because Hizballah (surprise!) isn't cooperating with the Lebanese government, which isn't surprising if you know anything about the way Hizballah doesn't give a flying fuck about the welfare of the Lebanese people or the sovereignty of the state.

So where does this leave Israel? The resolution allows Israel to perform defensive operations as needed. Setting aside the semantic nuances between "offensive" and "defensive" (one could argue that everything Israel has done in Lebanon is defensive) - at what point can Israel say the ceasefire has been rendered inoperable by Hizballah's actions and resume its plans?