This is the UK

"One in seven people believe it is acceptable in some circumstances for a man to hit his wife or girlfriend if she is dressed in “sexy or revealing clothes in public”, according to the findings of a survey released today. A similar number believed that it was all right for a man to slap his wife or girlfriend if she is “nagging or constantly moaning at him”. The findings of the poll, conducted for the Home Office, also disclosed about a quarter of people believe that wearing sexy or revealing clothing should lead to a woman being held partly responsible for being raped or sexually assaulted."" (thanks Marcy)

Meet a new expert on Lebanon: Meet Hariri Money

"NOW: Tell me about this trip to Lebanon.
Totten: Well it was really interesting and different than any other trip I’ve made here. All my other trips I paid for myself and stayed in cheap hotels. And I set up all my own appointments. But this time I got a business-class ticket, all my hotel fees are paid for, and I get better appointments made for me. Not to mention I got to meet the prime minister, Saad Hariri, Walid Jumblatt…everything has been taken care of." (thanks Christian)

Laughing

"Also on this press junket was the by now utterly alzheimer-stricken Christopher Hitchens, who gave a lecture at the AUB last week where he managed to call feudal landlord and predictable weathervane Walid Jumblatt a ‘true revolutionary’ - the collective Lebanese audience nearly died laughing…"

My article on Barenboim

This is a translation of my Al-Akhbar article (and my post here) on Barenboim letter in French.

An-Nahar's racism: hate journalism

All of An-Nahar's coverage is tinged--at least--with high dosages of racism against the Palestinian and Syrian peoples. Look at this report on "a clash" between Lebanese goons and Syrian workers. All the injured are Syrians. And they even justify the attack on the Syrian workers. This is hate journalism. (thanks Mark)

Saudi war option

Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud Al-Faysal, today threatened that his peace offer to Israel may not last "forever." Wow. That is worrisome. He threatened to unleash the Saudi religious police, with their stones, whips, and swords against Israel. That (plus the Lebanese Air Force of two planes) may alter the Middle East strategic balance once and for all.

Turkish sweets

Oh, forgot to mention that I also dreamt of that traditional Turkish sweet shop in Taksim in Istanbul. What is it called? I love that place.

...off to UK

...off to UK. I will speak at Oxford on Wednesday, at Manchester on Thursday, and at SOAS on Friday. Back on Sunday. I have posted earlier my schedule and info at Oxford and SOAS but don't have the info on Manchester.

Obama surge

"Afghan civilians will bear the brunt of an escalation in the Afghan war this year as thousands more U.S. troops deploy unless more is done by NATO forces and Taliban militants to protect them, a top Red Cross official said Monday. Civilian casualties in Afghanistan are "significantly higher" today than a year ago, and an intensification of the conflict this year could mean that consequences for many more Afghans will be "dire in the extreme," said Pierre Krahenbuhl, the director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross."

Lebanon's slow food trail

Comrade Rami sent me a copy of From `Akkar to `Amel: Lebanon's Slow Food Trail by Rami Zurayk, Sami Abdul Rahman, and photographed by Tanya Traboulsi. It is a tribute to small producers in Lebanon and the food that they make. It is delicious but made me hungry and eager for food that I can't find here in the US. Next time, comrade Rami, send me the book with all the food featured in it, otherwise deal with my wrath.

Hariri Tribunal

I promised my readers that I will be supplying you with fresh, up-to-date coverage of the Hariri tribunal. I will even continue these updates while on the road in UK this week. Today's update: blah, blah, blah, and blah. And more blah. Stay tuned for more updates tomorrow and I may provide flashes with breaking news.

Kidnappings

"The Palestinian Political detainees Society issued a report on Monday stating that the Israeli military have kidnapped 292 Palestinians during the month of February."

Compensation

"Kuwait said on Monday it has received a total of 13.3bn in compensation from Iraq for the 1990 invasion and occupation of the emirate by Saddam Hussein's forces." I am calculating how much we need to charge Israel for its historic occupation of Palestine but I don't mind postponing the accounting until after the liberation. (thanks FT)

Angry Arabs

""The play is called Twelve Angry Lebanese, but in fact we are five to six million angry Lebanese, or maybe 350 million angry Arabs," says Yousuf Chankar, who has already served 18 years of a life sentence for murder." (thanks Nessrine)

Hitchens' theory on Israeli racism

So according to the Bush AND Obama supporter, Christopher Hitchens, the reason for the rise of Israeli racism is that many of the immigrants are Russians and not "authentically" Jewish. (thanks Sarah)

Registered in Notebooks

"According to the most recent figures from the International Committee for the Red Cross and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, the conflict destroyed more than 2,800 homes completely, and 1,900 partially, leaving tens of thousands of people homeless. In addition to that, many symbols of government were damaged, from the parliament building to ministries to police stations. None of those figures include losses to private businesses."

Tariq Aziz

I had a dream about Tariq Aziz. I hate it how his family asserts his innocence when this guy has been an enthusiastic propagandist and polemicist of the Ba`th since the 1960s. Of course, An-Nahar and other Lebanonese newspaper take up his case for sectarian reasons.

Terrorist lentils

""When have lentil bombs been going off lately? Is someone going to kill you with a piece of macaroni?" asked Congressman Brian Laird. It was only after Senator John Kerry, the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, raised the issue with Defence Minister Ehud Barak after their trip last month that Israel allowed the pasta in. Macaroni was considered a luxury item, not a humanitarian necessity, they were told. The total number of products blacklisted by Israel remains a mystery for UN officials and the relief agencies which face long delays in bringing in supplies. For security reasons such items as cement and steel rods are banned as they could be used by Hamas to build bunkers or the rockets used to target Israeli civilians. Hearing aids have been banned in case the mercury in their batteries could be used to produce chemical weapons."

Proud to Serve

"IDF Human Resources Chief Maj. Gen. Avi Zamir estimates that close to one quarter of those who claim to lead a religious lifestyle in order to obtain exemption from serving in the IDF do not indeed lead a religious lifestyle, making their use of such a declaration illegal."

AIPAC

"Since the agreement was signed in 1985, US trade with Israel shifted from surplus to a cumulative $71 billion deficit (adjusted for inflation). The 2008 $7.8 billion deficit with Israel was equivalent to 126,000 US manufacturing related jobs. It is the only bilateral FTA producing multi-billion dollar losses to the US every year for the last decade but total losses are still unknown. According to IRmep director Grant F. Smith the agreement was the beginning of a chain reaction of intellectual property theft documented by industry associations and US counterintelligence agencies: "US corporations were betrayed by the leaks of their intellectual property during treaty negotiations in 1984. US pharmaceutical, defense and other industries continue to lose billions in revenue to Israeli copy-cat merchandise. We are only beginning to fully understand the larger impact of AIPAC and the Israeli government's ongoing acquisition of classified US information."" (thanks Dina)

Fears

Many Americans who study the Middle East often complain about Arab suspicions of Americans who study the region. Those stories merely add to those suspicions. "Turbi's fears were echoed by other Muslims throughout Southern California last week. Some say a climate of suspicion toward them, fueled by 9/11 and underscored by the latest disclosures of FBI surveillance, is inhibiting their freedoms of speech and faith." (thanks Olivia)

Mubarak rule

"For many Egyptians, the sinking of the overcrowded and unseaworthy ferry has come to symbolize the corruption and cronyism that mingles between the government of President Hosni Mubarak and well-connected businessmen."

Faith-based

Neda Bolourchi sent me this comment about the article yesterday about faith-based initiatives (I cite with her permission): "As'ad, I just wanted to write to you regarding the above link you included from the NYTimes. I don't know how much you know about the funding of faith based groups but what is entirely missing from the piece is a discussion (or in this instance a mention of the law). I don't know how anyone who "specializes" in secularism could not or would not mention the fact that the funding of faith based initiatives and groups under Bush was upheld by the Supreme Court (5-4) (there was technically a three way split but the end result was 5-4 from the "conservative" judges) in 2006 (at the end of the term..kinda like presidential pardons). Thus, while a bad decision by Clinton, enlarged beyond recognition by Bush, and now perpetuated by Obama (who at least reversed the Mexico Convention) exists, people should also know that those who sued did not have standing (see for how the case pretty easily got tossed before getting into the merits of the matter [well, ok, obviously, standing is an issue but not the heart]) exists there's no reason for it to be. I could go into how to reverse it but point being that people should actually know the truth and not the nonsense from the NYT: The nation's highest court ruled that taxpayers may not mount legal challenges against the government over funding to religious organizations unless Congress has specifically authorized the programs that provide the money. Citizens may not sue over purely discretionary actions of the President and his administration paid for out of general administrative funds, the court determined. That meant taxpayers had no right to sue the White House faith-based office over its conferences or other activities; lacking congressional support, the Bush Administration’s Faith-Based and Community Initiative had been advanced largely by executive orders issued by the President rather than legislative action.Before this case, courts did not make a distinction between executive or legislative responsibility for a government action when deciding whether citizens could mount a legal challenge against it based on church-state separation grounds. After the Hein decision, that distinction influenced the kind and number of lawsuits brought, and increased the tendency of defense attorneys to question plaintiffs’ standing before arguments about alleged constitutional violations were ever heard. () Not only should people be outraged at their tax-payer dollars going to faith based initiatives and organizations (which already get tax breaks) in violation of the constitution but in terms of legal ramifications, the decision has been reverbating ever since (beginning in the same week), cases and inquiries [in courts as well as agencies and departments] started getting tossed (or dismissed) as a a result. In general, while the idea of that article was good, the execution was horrible. The situation is much worse than Jacoby either knows, cares to know, or cares to let on. As usual, another person in a major outlet not knowing anything."

King Khkhkhusayn

"Peres left him so frustrated that in the end, "he worked behind his back in favor of Netanyahu" during the 1996 elections, was delighted at his victory, and "pressed other Arab leaders to give him the benefit of the doubt," as Ashton writes."

Obama Iraq Strategy

"This strategy is grounded in a clear and achievable goal shared by the Iraqi people and the American people: an Iraq that is sovereign, stable, and self-reliant." So basically the strategy is to take Iraq back to Saddam's era. So North Korea (sovereign, stable and self-reliant) is the ideal model for Iraq now.

The rich are suffering: are you crying?

"Now that Harvard is expecting a roughly $11 billion endowment decline over the current academic year—30% of the total—the university is in such a financial squeeze that it has frozen faculty salaries and offered early retirement to 1,600 employees. Princeton is even more addicted to its endowment, which provides about 45% of its operating budget. Princeton Provost Christopher Eisgruber warned in February: "We are beginning to live in the 'new normal' and we should not expect to go back to how we operated in the last 10 years.""

Zionist sensitivity?

Don't you like it when Zionists (to cover or distract from their crimes against humans) feign sensitivity to animals? Very cute indeed. (thanks Olivia)

Critique of Waddah Shararah

Warning: this is too delicious. Comrade Raed offers a critique of the writings of Waddah Shararah. (thanks Raed)

A folksy bigot

Paul Harvey died. He was seen by millions in the US as a cute and folksy racist, sexist, and bigot.

Violation of secularism

"NEARLY everyone now takes for granted the wisdom, constitutionality and inevitability of some form of federal financing for community social services run by religious groups. Who anymore can imagine that the United States managed to exist for over 200 years without the government providing any direct aid to faith and its works? It is truly dismaying that amid all the discussion about President Obama’s version of faith-based community initiatives, there has been such a widespread reluctance to question the basic assumption that government can spend money on religiously based enterprises without violating the First Amendment. The debate has instead focused on whether proselytizing or religious hiring discrimination should be permitted when church groups take public money. This shows how easy it is to institutionalize a bad idea based on unexamined assumptions about service to a greater good. In 1996, President Bill Clinton started down the slippery slope toward a constitutionally questionable form of faith-based aid when he signed a welfare reform bill that included a “charitable choice” provision allowing religious groups to compete for grants. Under President George W. Bush, a separate White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives was established — a significant expansion of “charitable choice.” Mr. Bush, who instituted his faith-based program through executive orders rather than trying to get a bill establishing the office through Congress, quickly put the money to political use.The administration provided large grants for projects favored by the Christian right, like Charles Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministries and Teen Challenge, a drug rehabilitation program that openly pushed religious conversion (even using the phrase “completed Jews” to describe teenage converts from Judaism) as a way of overcoming addiction. John J. DiIulio Jr., the first director of Mr. Bush’s faith-based office, resigned after only eight months and later complained about the politicization of the program. Throughout Mr. Bush’s second term, the Democratic Party’s “religious left” maintained that the party needed to shed its secular image to attract more religious voters. As far as these Democrats were concerned, the only problem with faith-based programs was that most of the money was going to religious and political conservatives."

The White Man Lectures to Iraqi "women" and "pussies"

The American White Man lectures to Iraqi police. (thanks Joelle)

American "liberation": Worse than Saddam

"Mr. Ricks predicted that W.’s snake-bit war may yet swallow up Mr. Obama, that America will be in Iraq for many years to come, and that in the end, we will be the losers. What emerges will be an Iraq that “is not a democracy, not an American ally, and run by a strongman, probably tougher, smarter and more adept than Saddam Hussein” and who is, ironically, “an even worse guy,” Ricks told Keith Olbermann."

My talk at SOAS next Friday

My talk at SOAS at the University of London on the US media and the Israeli war on Gaza:
Friday 6th March
6pm, SOAS, KLT

Dubai miracle..my potato

"THREE property industry high-flyers, including the senior agent of a company part-owned by James Packer, are among 13 Australians under arrest in Dubai as its supposed property miracle has succumbed to the global financial crisis." (thanks Saeed)

Iraqi Refugees

"As human rights organizations call for aid and resettlement for millions of Iraqi refugees, some who are exasperated by America's refugee system are going home or attempting to return to other countries in the Middle East. They feel abandoned by federal policies that offer limited and brief financial support and leave many refugees living in poverty." (thanks Rania)

Death squads and terrorist gangs--unto the nations

"The Israeli military's policy of targeted killings has been described from the inside for the first time. In an interview with The Independent on Sunday, and in his testimony to an ex-soldiers' organisation, Breaking the Silence, a former member of an assassination squad has told of his role in a botched ambush that killed two Palestinian bystanders, as well as the two militants targeted." (thanks Ellis)

Hariri tribunal

I promised my readers regular and frequent updates about the Hariri tribunal. Today, there are new developments: blah blah blah, and blah. More tomorrow. Stay tuned.

My talks at SOAS and Manchester University

I posted yesterday the info on my talk at Oxford. And ONCE my hosts in UK supplies me with info on my talks at SOAS and Manchester, I shall post them here NOW.

"Relatively" Democratic Afghanistan, as NYT would say

"President Hamid Karzai decreed Saturday that presidential elections be moved forward to April or May, just weeks after they were set for August, in what appears to be an attempt to avert constitutional challenges to his legitimacy."

relatively democratic and relatively theocratic and relatively terroristic

The New York Times defines Iraqi government of war criminals, militia goons, and religious nuts: "relatively democratic Iraq".

The real Rafiq Hariri

We have somebody new writing on Lebanon in the New York Times: "Mr. Hariri had been a leading opponent of Syria’s political control over his country." Let me explain a few things to Marlise. Rafiq Hariri was installed in 1992 by Syrian intelligence service, and he bribed his way to that prime ministership. Hariri lasted for 10 years as a tool of Syrian intelligence, and he never ONCE criticized the Syrian government or its policies EVER in his lifetime. After his death, Rafiq Hariri--truth be told (or as they say in Egypt الحق يتقال")--became a courageous critic of the Syrian government AFTER HIS DEATH. After his death, Rafiq Hariri becamse a champion of the opposition to Syria and he continues to issue courageous press releases from his grave.

War criminals you like

"Now facing a trial at The Hague that could send him to prison for life, Stanisic has called in a marker with his American allies. In an exceedingly rare move, the CIA has submitted a classified document to the court that lists Stanisic's contributions and attests to his helpful role. The document remains sealed, but its contents were described by sources to The Times." (thanks Laleh)

The little king from a little dynasty

"Ashton describes Hussein's brush with LSD (Linda Christian, described as a "fading starlet" from Hollywood, brought it to one of the king's parties; the king needed medical treatment afterward), as well as how the king chose which day to attack the Palestinian rebels, in what would become Black September of 1970, based on the advice of his sister-in-law's fortune teller in London." (thanks Robin)

The American Left and the Middle East: the lousy Example of the Nation magazine

Here, the Nation magazine continues in its Zionist apologia and provides praise for Grossman merely because he does not question Israeli decisions to engage in crimes, massacres, occupation, and wars of aggression. His son (a member of a terrorist army who probably killed--like other Israeli terrorist soldiers kill--a countless number of Palestinian and Arab civilians--is that not a specialty of that Israeli army?) received more attention and mention in the American press than all the hundreds of Palestinian children who were killed by Israeli army terrorists in the war on Gaza. "The high cost of concealing what is unpleasant has long preoccupied Grossman, and his willingness to pose questions that discomfit Israel's Jewish majority has led some people to label him a "post-" or "non-Zionist" Israeli (the critic Jacqueline Rose once described him as a "non-Zionist Zionist" in the London Review of Books). Such labels are misplaced. "The basic inspiration for Zionism was a noble idea," Grossman told The Paris Review in 2007. Despite his belief that a writer should hold nothing sacred, Grossman is a patriot who will go only so far in criticizing Israel, as was apparent during the recent war in Gaza. In an editorial in Ha'aretz published a few days after the conflict began, Grossman called for a cease-fire but did not question the decision to launch the attack. Such views inevitably disappoint Israel's more unqualified critics, some of whom treat Grossman as one more apologist for the Jewish state's crimes. He would likely take their disappointment as a compliment. The radical element in Grossman's work lies not in his politics but in his determination to see past the limits of politics: to peel away the labels--"Arab," "Jew," "victim," "terrorist"--that color and distort how Israelis and Palestinians regard each other." The sentence in red bold is the reason why this review appealed to the Nation magazine. (thanks James)

Translation of my "Dance of Death: 'Waltz with Bashir' and Sympathy for the Killer

Phar kindly translated from Arabic my critique of Waltz with Bashir: Dance of Death: 'Waltz with Bashir' and Sympathy for the Killer"

"The film "Waltzing with Bashir" is being shown in some cities here in America. I didn't want to see it on the big screen so I didn't have to hear the "oohs and ahhs" of the sympathetic liberal crowd of—for example—Berkeley. More importantly, I didn't want to pay one penny to an Israeli company. I have to say, after I went to see Steven Spielburg's "Munich" with a leftist friend, I no longer saw her, except rarely. When the film ended, I wanted to go very far away from her, toward Anatolia. She tried to persuade me that Mr. Spielburg was a just man, that the film wasn't biased against Arabs like others of its ilk from Hollywood. Do you want me to be happy just because we are depicted as half-human as opposed to animals? Have you read the memoirs of Abu Daoud [leader of the Black September group] before debating me? Is Spielburg aware that the Munich action came not from the [Palestinian] leadership but from the base, whose blood was boiling because of the on-going Israeli attacks on the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon at the time? I spoke quickly, and my voice was raised and tense, and she thought she would calm my nerves. Who told her I wanted to be calmed? At the time of the Munich action, the Lebanese Army was under the shadow of…the Lebanese Army, and some of them got in touch with the Israeli enemy at that time, as Arab investigators have mentioned. Which is to say that some of the army was in the shadow of the enemy. I became angry with my friend, and the film came between us. I didn't want to repeat it this time with anyone. I wanted to keep the anger and vituperation to myself. A friend thankfully came to me with a copy of the film from China (you can seek new films from China—long live piracy!). Some of us still boycott the usurping entity and the film is sponsored by Israeli embassies around the world, as the Guardian newspaper mentions, and it receives support from foundations of the enemy country while Tarek Mitri [Lebanon's Minister of Culture] mocks the boycott.

But, I told my self, watching the film in an American theater would still be less painful than watching it in Beirut with a bunch of 14th of March intellectuals. I imagined them struggling to detect the human side of everything that issues forth from the enemy: these people—these liberals of Wahabiism, you know the type—try to convince Arab public opinion that everything that comes from the Israeli enemy—bombs, missiles, poems, songs, statements, insults, racism, hate—implies to some extent liberalism, humanism and a refined culture. They attempt in various and sundry ways to breathe into the enemy even the hint, the chimera of moderation and justice. These people who make comparisons, welcoming the fascism of the enemy, and say to you that there are alternatives even more extremist than what you see, or that their extremism stems from our extremism, as pronounced by Hazem Saghié (the "intellectual" guide of Saad and Nader Hariri), and repeated by Gisele Khoury (who interrupted Abu Ala` in an angry encounter and informed him that it's not true that America always defends Israel. She "informed" him that Clinton put pressure on Netanyahu and even participated in his ousting). These people hang on the words of Amos Oz in order to convince Arab public opinion of the need for reconciliation with Israel. And when Oz goes silent, or when he speaks approvingly of killing and massacres, they remind you of that incomparable demonstration after the massacres of Sabra & Shatila, omitting the fact that the demonstration occurred for reasons relating solely to the Israeli elections, with no relationship to our victims of the massacres. These people await the stage entry of just one ashamed Israeli opposition figure so they can shout: "Look at Israeli democracy! Wow!"

But, fortunately, I didn't watch the film with these people, nor did I attend the film in Beirut in the presence of a Haaretz correspondent, as the paper recounted. The film, from its intellectual inception, reminds one of that painting of Renoir's titled "The Mosque", which I refer to as "The Bloc" (not to be confused with "The Middle Bloc" that the Maronite patriarch blesses, having been warned about the interference of religion in politics). In Renoir's painting appear vague, indistinct figures, suggesting the muslim gathering for prayer. They are embodied by the ghost of Orientalism, where personal Arab or Muslim individuality is denied. They—the epistemological separation between us and them is a main part of the idea of Orientalism, as Edward Said made clear in the book "Orientalism"—are always human masses, crowded together with no boundaries between them. They call it "The Arab Street." And this collective depiction serves to facilitate strikes against Arab and Muslim masses, as well as their torture, bombing, murder and colonization. There is no individuality for us in Renoir's painting, nor in the film "Waltzing with Bashir." The Arabs (whether victims or casualties or "terrorists") pass through the film, presented as a mass without individuality or personality. They pass across the screen without speaking or appearing individually. They cross into view only fleetingly in order that the viewer won't sense them and so as not to make a relationship between them and the viewer. Compare this to the viewer of the Israeli soldiers who don't appear except as individuals.

The film strives, as always happens in the liberal Zionist media, to introduce, up close, every soldier who appears in the film. You see the soldier as a child, helping his mother in the kitchen, you see him with his sweetheart, you see him sea-sick and vomiting, and there is nothing but for the viewer to lament and sympathize with the suffering Israeli murderer. There is a particular school in the Zionist Left that expresses its displeasure—nay, more—that some of the practices of Israeli wars and various aspects of the occupation are detrimental to "the Israeli spirit" or "the psychology of soldier." In other words, for some of these people—like the thousands who demonstrated after the massacres of Sabra & Shatila—opposition to the slaughter came not out of sympathy with the victims or consciousness of the disaster that befell them, but out of support for the national (and, for some, even religious) fighting élan of the colonialist army. The humanization of the murderer and sympathy for him are both the flip side of the dehumanization of the Palestinian Other, for he is not a complete person in their view. Read Zionist literature from the beginning to find in their representation—if they were there at all—backward peasants or lowly bedouins or nondescript refugees without citizenship, later transformed into "saboteurs" (and this is the same name that the Phalangist "Voice of Lebanon" radio used in the course of the war) in the 1960s, until Zionist propaganda finally settled upon the description "terrorist". The film doesn't deviate from the formula, even with regard to that splendid boy when he fires an RPG launcher in the face of the occupier.

But, the (im)moral standard of the film is evident from the beginning when the narrator suffers from nightmares because he killed some dogs in South Lebanon. And in another scene, an Israeli soldier bemoans the plight of the horses in Beirut's hippodrome, for the animals are more valuable than the Arab according to a racial hierarchy that doesn't differ in its essentials from Nazi hierarchy. There is a liberal American organization—which has been utterly indifferent to the lives of the people of Palestine—that ran a campaign to care for the animals in Gaza. The Arab and the Muslim in the liberal standard of the white man is of a lower rank than the animal. The Western viewer will sympathize with the Israeli soldier because he seemed the most affected by the killing of animals at the hands of the Arabs in the devastation of 1982.

And then there is the most important thing. Why the Zionist focus on the massacre of Sabra & Shatila and not all the other massacres the Israeli aggressor committed in 1982, when it killed close to 20,000 Palestinians and Lebanese, most of whom were civilians? The reason is clear, and it has no connection to the atrocities the Lebanese forces committed among the massacres that fill any history of the Lebanese civil war. Israel wants, in its propaganda focus on Sabra & Shatila to the exclusion of others, to evade—not to assume—responsibility. And this is what Folman means in the propaganda hype for the film when he says, "Israeli soldiers had nothing to do with that massacre," so Israel chose a massacre that was committed at the hands of its allies to remain at a distance from responsibility. Israel (and the film) wants to say that it did not carry out these heinous acts, even though Israel in the 1982 invasion killed many times the number of victims of that despicable massacre. The facile clichés of racial hatred are parroted over and over: that the Arabs kill in defense of "honor" and as a "show of force", as if vengeance were not a quality of Zionism. Bashir Gemayel and his wife who fixed Lebanese meals for Ariel Sharon did not understand that, despite their claim to be "Phoenician", Zionists look at them as Arabs, willy-nilly, no matter how much they pretended and no matter how much Amine Gemayel tried to appear sophisticated. The film passes over the breadth of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, intentionally omitting a number of stubborn facts. The film doesn't want to mention, for instance, that Israel did not dare invade Beirut until after the elite fighters of the powerful Palestinian resistance were evacuated, and after the enemy [Israel] put thousands of women and children in concentration camps. But the film revealed what was hidden: that the soldiers of occupation were afraid of us. The boys in the camp of Ein el-Hilweh in Rashidiyah scared them. It can be said that we fell for the propaganda trick of 1948 to 2006. No one denies (except Wahhabi or Zionist propaganda—and they are allies these days) that the 2006 war put an end for eternity to the largest strategic component in the arsenal of the enemy: the power to intimidate and to sow the illusion of fearlessness on their own side. And if this component wasn't eliminated, then why did the aggression on Gaza develop along the course they did, without a settlement in the enemy's advantage? As the ideological defender of the Israeli soldier says: service in the army became a function of making a living. And for us, the opposite happened: the fighting is no longer done by people who practice it professionally to earn money, but rather by courageous volunteers and adherents to conviction (which appears as religious doctrine these days).

And when you see the film, you should remember that painful time. Watch it in fury. I found myself scrutinizing the drawings of the enemy soldiers' faces and asking myself: did I see one of these when I took refuge in the town of el-Qalila near Tyre in summer 1982? Did one of them stop me at their checkpoint? Did one of these participate in our morning assembly in the plaza of el-Qalila in order to isolate the "terrorists" among us, based on the suggestions of masked informants? And I found myself following the film in anger and rage as it attempted to re-write that era. Why didn't the national movement deal early on with the emergence of the Phalange, which flourished since the 1950s (according to Hebrew sources) under the protection of the state of Israel? Why didn't the Palestinian left and the non-Arafat wing of the Fatah movement deal with Yasser Arafat who did the impossible, to thwart the possibilities for the Lebanese and Palestinian revolution? It was possible to establish an effective resistance in South Lebanon in 1978 after the first invasion. At the time, the Iraqi [Marxist] Hashim Mohsin Ali set out to launch (and name) the Popular Resistance Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from the Occupation and Fascism, and he got in touch with Mohsin Ibrahim and George Hawi, but Arafat (who sponsored both) refused. He preferred to use Lebanon to negotiate the formation of the resistance factions. Thus, Arafat's military appointments, such as Haj Ismail and Abu Zaim, were not without design. He planted corrupt people to thwart the resistance.

It is painful to watch the film for those who can distinguish landmarks and streets and gardens. What are they doing on our land? The film wants you to sympathize with soldiers of the occupation and to forget that the occupiers of Palestine walk and wander in panicked fear on the occupied land of others. It is the occupation repeated and doubled. The film wants us to accept their occupation and feel only the pain of the witness to the murder of Palestinians at the hands of gangs from the Lebanese forces who arose and flourished and grew by a decision from Israel. But this Israeli insistence on separating the army of occupation from the forces of one Israeli man in Lebanon represents an evasion of direct responsibility for the invasion. Watch the film and remember that era and let the politicians of Lebanon run before your eyes. Remember those who collaborated with the occupation in those days. Bashir Gemayal was being threatened by Israeli forces but he was not destined to harvest the fruits of the hostility he fostered. And Samir Ja`ja` (Ga`ga` in Egyptian accent), leader of these gangs who slaughtered in Sabra & Shatila, is today looked to in the subject of Lebanon's defense strategy. As for Solange [Gemayel], who told Sharon and his wife that she wanted them to be her first guest in the presidential palace in Baabda, she brought a hateful quartet alliance to the Lebanese parliament. And one of the leaders of the gangs in the Sabra & Shatila massacres (who, like Ja`ja`, received training and guidance from Israel), Elie Hobeika, transformed by Rafik Hariri and the Syrian regime and their allies into national leaders. And then there is Johnny Abdo, close companion since the early years of Rafiq Hariri, as recounted by Heikal and Abdullah AbuHabib. The smiling Johnny Abdo, who hosted Ariel Sharon in his home, when he was asked if army intelligence was during his time sending car bombs to West Beirut, replied that he would neither confirm nor deny. Hariri wanted to appoint him President, but before he ended up President, he was receiving (as Hassan Sabra recently reported) monthly payments of $350,000 (the builder of the modern state began construction by bribing the President of the Republic of Lebanon). The period of the Israeli invasion didn't erase the memory of anyone who lived through it. Remember its details and preludes. How Lebanon's little Hitler, Bashir Gemayel, made use of Israel to threaten his enemies among the Lebanese. When Bashir Gemayel learned of the order for Israel's aggression—before anyone heard of "Shlomo Argov"—he summoned the [Lebanese state TV] anchor Arafat Hejazi to speak about the threat of "the decision". After the end of filming, Gemayel persisted in loading Hejazi—as he told me later—with vulgar, obscene insults for [Prime Minister] Safik Wazzan, although he was an obedient tool in the hands of Elias Sarkis and Amin Gemayel after him. It is true that a number of militias committed the massacre, but the crimes of the Lebanese Forces were larger than the others 1) because they started the ethnic and sectarian cleansing, 2) they started the practice of killing based on [sectarian] identity, 3) they maintained relations with Israel since the 1950s, 4) they prepared for war and set it ablaze and insisted on its continuation and 5) they attempted to import the model of fascism—a Nazi regime in the land of cedar and oak. But all the ambitious projects were shattered on the rocks of their own factionalism. And the arms of the boys in the Ein el-Hilweh camp started a journey that has not ended. They allowed the extinction of the model of reckless military corruption that Arafat oversaw, and initiated actions of resistance against Israel since its formation.

The film doesn't want to speak of history. It doesn't want to speak of suffering. Even when Zionist liberals touch upon suffering, they mean the suffering of the murderers. The nightmares of occupation soldiers are more important than the suffering of the victims of Sabra & Shatila. The soldiers speak of only their suffering, and don't allow Arab victims to speak about their own suffering. The nightmares of occupation soldiers were more horrible than the killing of children in brutal Israeli bombardment before and after Sabra & Shatila.

The film will win a number of awards. And the director will dialogue with a number of Arab liberals and will probably sign a document with Yasser Abed Rabbo in order to forget the past and enter into peace for Israel. And the prattling elites of the Saudi media will honor the film and consider it the pinnacle of human refinement. The film has been written about in Lebanon as though the events it portrays were takng place somewhere besides Lebanon. No one was in a hurry to say that the militia that committed the massacre in Sabra & Shatila is participating in the government with resistance factions in Lebanon. And unfortunately, there are those who want to convince us that the enemy is merciful and benevolent, and the demand for a return to truce agreement is a (il)logical concession, that Israel is but a gentle lamb in our land. And there is the rushing to judgement about the film and hastening to the opinion that director Folman is a "resistance fighter" who condemns Israel's wars. He did no such thing—on the contrary, he depicted Israeli officers interfering to stop the massacres, as though the invasion of Lebanon that year included but one massacre. Bashir Habib writes in a Hariri publication that the film is a "bold and courageous act". Satia Nur ad-Din was among the few Arab authors who expressed skepticism of the film's propaganda about itself and about the alleged courage of the director.

But Lebanon has closed the book from that era and Israel's enemies in Lebanon proceed to impose a design to establish an entity alligned with the jewish state. Those of us who see the film return in memory to a slogan buried by time after the massacre of Ein el-Rammanah: the slogan "isolation of the Phalange" that was appropriate from its first application, and Kamal Jumblatt was killed because he was convinced—after all—of the benefit of the decisive military option with the Phalanges. But Yasser Arafat and the Syrian regime did not want the military option, and the lack of recourse to the military option that spring postponed the end of the Lebanese civil war and let pass a historical opportunity to establish a secular democratic system (a real one, not the Hariri version more befitting Saudi Arabia) in the heart of the Arab world. If the latter had been achieved, it would have been possible for Lebanon to counter the Israeli aggressions that continued daily since 1948, and Lebanon's borders would have offered much greater resistance.

The Lebanese minister of culture—and he dreams of becoming Hariri's higher censor of the Lebanese media—scoffs at the idea of the boycott of Israel, and said in a statement to foreign press that one can maybe watch the film on the internet. Despite Mitri's knowledge of the existence of the internet—and this is a good thing—the notion of the boycott is a principled notion—perhaps the notion of principleness defies the comprehension abilitities of the Lebanese minister of culture—and an economic one as well. Surely, allowing the film to be presented will accrue financial profits to an Israeli company that will promote—with the minister's knowledge or his ignorance—Zionist standards. In the mud of the electoral battle in Israel, Ehud Barak rebuked his opponent Lieberman for not having killed—as he himself had—Arabs with his own hands. Is Tarek Mitri in need of a lesson in the history of Zionism to understand the reason for Arab public opinion's deep belief in the need for the boycott, at the very least? Or is it that a condition of Lebanon's entry into the World Trade Organization (which preoccupied Rafik Hariri) is the complete renunciation of the boycott?"