The Calculated Madness

One year ago Israel decided to inflict collective punishment on the Lebanese people. The Israeli war machine, entirely provided and financed by the Americans, proceeded in a cynically calculated offensive bombing the hell out of Lebanon, destroying its infrastructure and killing more than a thousand people in Lebanon itself, and hundreds in Palestine, overwhelmingly civilians.

We all remember the terrible pictures coming from the little village of Qana, where more than fifty children with their parents and families perished in a single Israeli offensive.

The Israeli government at the time claimed that it was acting “in self defence” (sic). They justified their action by the fact that Hezbollah fighters “abducted” TWO of their IDF fighters (IDF for Israeli “DEFENSE” Force as it is laughingly called).

Notwithstanding the international outrage, the Israeli allies –US-UK- refused to call for a ceasefire allowing the butchery to continue.

Hundreds of Arab and Israeli deaths later, Tel-Aviv agreed to back off not before pouring hundreds of thousands (some say millions) of cluster bomblets in the south of Lebanon: bombs which were intended to kill and maim as many victims as possible, regardless of the fact that they might be non-fighters, children, women or elderly. A clear War Crime for which almost no official in the west lifted a finger.

I just fail to understand: why people keep wondering why Arabs and Muslims are getting radicalized? If you keep smoking two boxes of cigarettes a day, you don’t wonder why you are getting a cancer! If you keep driving fast like a fool, you are not surprised if one day you get an accident! If you keep playing with the fire, you’re not surprised if one day you’re burned…

I can’t anymore stomach those stuffy officials who always talk with a dignified composure even when the situation is outrageously unjust, those so-called “experts” with their flowery language who often lecture us on the “realities” of the Middle East. You don’t need to be an expert to empathise with the Palestinian or the Lebanese or the Iraqi people. You don’t need to be an expert to distinguish the oppressor from the victim in that situation.

In the case of Israel, their behaviour shows a clear pattern or methodology that has been followed scrupulously since it’s creation in 1948: Israel has always acted in a way to make maximum damage around it. To make its enemies think that they don’t care for the consequences… in a way… that they are CRAZY. But this is a calculated madness: The Brinkmanship Tactic, which according The American Heritage Dictionary means:

"the technique or practice of manoeuvring a dangerous situation to the limits of tolerance or safety in order to secure the greatest advantage, esp. by creating diplomatic crises."

One year after the Lebanon massive War Crime, the Middle East is arguably in a worse situation. Whilst the Civil War continues its deadly toll in Iraq, Lebanon has been in perpetual internal crises with numerous political killings and a dangerous street tension. Israel has probably realized one of its oldest dreams in dividing the Palestinians, playing one faction against the other while continuing building settlements, expropriating Arabs living inside its borders and imposing military regime on those it occupies.

The Hatred-making machine, which is a combination of occupation, exploitation and oppression, has systematically created more and more despair everywhere. Desperate people, do desperate things. Desperate people loose hope, loose their humanity and end up loosing reason. Nothing could justify killing or even threatening civilians: Violence and Hatred are pathological states. But the best way to treat a disease is to understand its physiopathology (its mechanism.) Hatred leads to despair, to desperate actions, to violence, to reactions to that violence, to hatred and the vicious circle goes on and on.

Indeed, efforts should be made to prevent all forms of violence against civilians; but if that is applied exclusively, it will mean only “symptomatic treatment”: which is long, costly and inefficient as long as it is not accompanied by the “etiologic treatment” ( dealing with the root causes).

Root causes are: occupation, killing of civilians, abduction or assassination of political representatives (so-called ‘Targeted Assassinations’), demolition of houses, expropriations, destruction of farm lands, olive and palm trees, building the Apartheid Wall, Racism towards non-Jewish minorities, building and expansion of settlements, contempt for “International Law”, Check-Points and daily humiliations, siege and embargo, “Transfer”, expulsions, lies upon lies…and the list goes on and on and on…