Juan Cole Accuses Israel of Trapping Lebanese Civilians. This is Because He Is More or Less a Shameless Liar.
Today's Informed Comment link is brought to you by the letter M, as in mendacity:
So let's get this straight. The Israelis warn the small town Shiites of the south to flee their own homes and go hundreds of miles away (and live on what? in what?). But then they intensely bombing them, making it impossible for them to flee. The Lebanese have awoken to find themselves cockroaches.
I repeat, this is nothing less than an ethnic cleansing of the Shiites of southern Lebanon, an assault on an entire civilian population's way of life. Aside from ecology, it is no different from what Saddam Hussein did to the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, and the Israelis are doing it for exactly the same sorts of reasons that Saddam did.
The economy of downtown Beirut has been murdered by the Israelis.
(1) It's Hezbollah, not Israel, that's forcing Lebanese civilians to stay in their villages as human shields against Israel. In fact, Israel is actively undertaking humanitarian gestures, while Hezbollah sets up roadblocks to prevent people from leaving their houses - which have already been transformed into Hezbollah armories.
(2) If Prof. Cole is honest, he'll take this information (which of course he probably knew, and just failed to pass on to his readers) and apply it consistently - and therefore accuse Hezbollah of risking the ethnic cleansing of Shiites from southern Lebanon.
(3) We're pretty sure that Cole just implied that the Kurds crossed an international border, attacked a Iraqi army envoy, killed and kidnapped soldiers, and then fired thousands of rockets at Iraqi civilians. Because if he didn't, then the phrase "the Israelis are doing it for exactly the same sorts of reasons" would be a bald lie.
(4) How stupid can Cole's moral equivocation between Hezbollah thugs and Israeli soldiers get? Wrap your mind around the phrase "the economy of downtown Beirute has been murdered", and consider that it's a heavy-handed and kind of pathetic attempt to link what Hezbollah did to Israeli soldiers to what Israel did to buildings.
So let's get this straight. The Israelis warn the small town Shiites of the south to flee their own homes and go hundreds of miles away (and live on what? in what?). But then they intensely bombing them, making it impossible for them to flee. The Lebanese have awoken to find themselves cockroaches.
I repeat, this is nothing less than an ethnic cleansing of the Shiites of southern Lebanon, an assault on an entire civilian population's way of life. Aside from ecology, it is no different from what Saddam Hussein did to the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, and the Israelis are doing it for exactly the same sorts of reasons that Saddam did.
The economy of downtown Beirut has been murdered by the Israelis.
(1) It's Hezbollah, not Israel, that's forcing Lebanese civilians to stay in their villages as human shields against Israel. In fact, Israel is actively undertaking humanitarian gestures, while Hezbollah sets up roadblocks to prevent people from leaving their houses - which have already been transformed into Hezbollah armories.
(2) If Prof. Cole is honest, he'll take this information (which of course he probably knew, and just failed to pass on to his readers) and apply it consistently - and therefore accuse Hezbollah of risking the ethnic cleansing of Shiites from southern Lebanon.
(3) We're pretty sure that Cole just implied that the Kurds crossed an international border, attacked a Iraqi army envoy, killed and kidnapped soldiers, and then fired thousands of rockets at Iraqi civilians. Because if he didn't, then the phrase "the Israelis are doing it for exactly the same sorts of reasons" would be a bald lie.
(4) How stupid can Cole's moral equivocation between Hezbollah thugs and Israeli soldiers get? Wrap your mind around the phrase "the economy of downtown Beirute has been murdered", and consider that it's a heavy-handed and kind of pathetic attempt to link what Hezbollah did to Israeli soldiers to what Israel did to buildings.
