Posted on 02/26/2003 5:35:54 AM PST by conservativecorner
Editor's Note: This article by Steven Plaut first appeared in FrontPageMagazine. It is an excellent explantion for much of the anti-American, anti-Israel, and anti-Sharon sentiment in the current anti-war movement. It's a bit long, but good.
It is not well understood overseas to what a great extent Israel's Left was radicalized by Israel's ''Peace for Galilee'' invasion of Lebanon in 1982-83. This radicalization was very similar to the way that the American Left was radicalized by the War in Vietnam. Just as the American Left emerged from its ''campaign'' against that war as little more than a movement of anti-Americanism, now ever-so-evident in the pro-Saddam marchers against ''War for Oil'' on US campuses today, so the Israeli Left emerged from the Lebanese War as little more than a movement of anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism, and increasingly even of anti-Semitism.
This is important to understand for lots of reasons. It explains most of what transpired in Israel over the past decade. And it even explains such things as the sudden determination of Belgium and perhaps some others to indict Ariel Sharon as a ''war criminal.'' The Western media has long regarded Sharon as a war criminal and mass murderer. But in reality, Sharon's only ''war crime'' was to upset the newly radicalized Israeli Left in the early 1980s and their amen choruses abroad. We thought it behooves us to refresh some poor memories about what exactly Sharon's ''war crime'' really was.
Before 1982, most of the Israeli Left was a patriotic Zionist Left, strongly pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian, wanting nothing to do with the PLO, strongly pro-defense, and parts of it were even strongly supportive of building settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. The Israeli Left differed from the Israeli Right only on secondary aspects of these matters, mainly on its insistence that Israel must remain ''contingently pro-peace,'' that is, willing to discuss hypothetical partial withdrawal from the ''occupied territories'' on the off-chance that the Arabs might some day hypothetically be willing to pursue peace, but militant and obstinate as long as the Arabs were unwilling. Even the ''Peace Now'' protest movement back then was not pro-PLO nor pro-capitulation to the Arabs, and it did not call for a PLO-led Palestinian state, although no doubt some of its members did support this.
The PLO had long turned Lebanon into an inter-Arab killing field, and all those do-gooders and bleeding hearts today pretending to be outraged by the Sabra and Shatilla massacres have long forgotten the tens of thousands of people butchered in the Lebanese civil wars, in which the PLO was detonator and played a leading role. The PLO had also turned Lebanon into a launch pad and rocket base for attacking Israel, all this under Syrian auspices. Syria was the puppet master behind the scenes, perpetuating the Lebanese butchering and civil war to allow itself to take over most of Lebanon in salami tactics. Among the many atrocities launched by the PLO and its sister affiliates against Israel were the massacres of children at Avivim in 1970 and at Maalot in 1974.
On June 3, 1982, Palestinians from the Abu Nidal group tried to murder Israeli diplomat Shlomo Argov. He was badly injured, but recovered and went on to become an Oslo Leftist. But the Likud government of Prime Minister Menahem Begin used this as causus belli, as a basis for invading Lebanon and clearing out the Palestinian terrorists. To do so, he had established ties with some of the Christian militia forces fighting the PLO in Lebanon, and particularly the Falange, a militia led by Pierre Gemayal, brother to Lebanese President Bashir Gemayal. Because of their links to the Gemayals, the Falange was as close as one could find in those days to a legitimate governing force in Lebanon.
While the Gemayals and their fighters pretty much sat back, Israeli troops drove the terrorists out of southern Lebanon (and later set up their own Southern Lebanese Army, manned by Christians and Shi'ites in southern Lebanon allied to Israel, and patrolling Israel's security zone there). When Israel first invaded southern Lebanon, polls showed that 92% of the Israeli public, including Israeli Arabs in the count, supported the invasion. The proportion of the Israeli press OPPOSING the campaign was close to the same 92%. The Israeli media were already under the near-totalitarian domination of leftist extremists.
Quickly it became clear that Prime Minister Begin and his Defense Minister Sharon did not intend to stop at the 40 km. marker they had originally announced as their target. They continued up to the perimeters of Beirut and then conquered parts of the city. They had Arafat surrounded, but due to the usual US interference, they allowed Arafat and his terrorocracy to evacuate for Tunis on US ships. There Arafat sat and rotted until Shimon Peres and the Israeli Left rescued the PLO from oblivion and invited it back into Israeli territories to resume murdering Jews.
While originally support for the campaign in Israel was almost unanimous, it started to waver due to high Israeli casualties. Israel was fighting in built-up areas, and rather than pulverize these areas into smithereens with artillery to save Israeli lives, something that would have caused Lebanese civilian casualties, Begin and Sharon tried to reduce the bad press by taking these areas in house-to-house fighting. This pre-Oslo niceness cost Israel hundreds of soldiers. It also did not buy any good will for long. If there is any ''war crime'' for which Begin and Sharon should have been prosecuted, allowing so many Israeli troops to die for good press was it.
On Sept 14, 1982, the Lebanese President was assassinated in a bomb explosion, probably planted by the PLO. His brother Amin was elected in his place. Two days later, the Lebanese Felange troops entered Sabra and Shatilla, passing Israeli troops and checkpoints along the way. The camps were thought to contain 2000 fully-armed PLO terrorists. Israeli troops were not inside the camps. All those Monday Morning Wiseacres who now think the massacres were clearly foreseeable did not foresee what would happen. They also ignore the fact that as the personal militia of the Lebanese President, Israeli troops did not have a legitimate basis to block the movements of the Felange in their own country.
What happened next is pretty well know. The enraged Felange militia men went on a revenge killing spree. The exact number of Palestinians killed is unknown: probably around 400, although the anti-Israel propagandists put it at 700-800 or more. It was still peanuts compared with the numbers murdered in the Lebanese civil wars by the PLO and the Moslem and Christian militias there. It was also tiny compared with the numbers of Belgian Jews murdered when the Belgian authorities collaborated with the German Nazis, those same Belgians now selectively judging the leaders of the world for their 'war crimes'.
The killing though shocked Israelis and galvanized the Israel-bashing street urchins around the world. It also was the trigger for a campaign by the Israeli Left to delegitimize and demonize the Likud, Ariel Sharon, and indirectly their entire country.
The Israeli Left was out in force in 1982, with banners screaming that Begin and Sharon were murderers and war criminals. These were the very same leftists who just a few years later would denounce Israel's anti-Oslo Right as collectively guilty of killing Prime MinisterYitzhak Rabin because of ''incitement'' and because ''words kill.'' Nanoseconds after the Israeli Left proclaimed Sharon and Begin as war criminals, the anti-Semites of the world took their cues from them. It was also the precursor for the Solidarity-with-Saddam street protests in 1991 and then again now.
The Sabra and Shatilla massacres were murders of Palestinian Arabs by Christian Lebanese Arabs. Not a single victim was killed by an Israeli or a Jew. The very most that Sharon can be legitimately accused of in all of this is possible foolishness, of not having the prescience to see what the Felange would due if it entered the camp. Foolishness is not a 'war crime' and it is not ''genocide.'' If it were, President Bush should be in the dock for not foreseeing September 11 and perhaps President Roosevelt could have been prosecuted for lacking the foresight to prevent Pearl Harbor. If it were, most of Europe should be prosecuted for what went on in Rwanda.
The very same Israeli leftists who insist that Sharon is a murderer because he did not have such prescience, ALSO did not have such prescience. Not a single leftist, not a single Israeli journalist, and not a single Belgian warned that as a result of the assassination of Gemayal, the Felange would massacre Palestinians. All these people insist Sharon should have known better, but none of them knew better.
Even if we were to concede that Sharon SHOULD have known better, that would make him guilty of poor judgement, not a murderer. It might mean he could be impeached for being a fool, but not prosecuted for the massacres. The very same Belgians now seeking to indict Sharon have NEVER SOUGHT TO INDICTE THE LEBANESE FELANGE LEADERS, the very people who really DID order the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla. Nor did they ever get around to prosecuting most of the Belgians who collaborated with the Nazis, nor the Belgians who supervised the massacres in the Congo. So what does that tell you about the ethically high-minded Belgians?
The Israeli Left was radicalized because 400 or so Palestinians were murdered by a Lebanese Christian militia, as one incident in over a decade of civil war and atrocities. The Left was radicalized because over 700 Israeli troops were killed in the fighting, a large number for a country as small as Israel. The same Israeli Left then morphed into an anti-Israeli defeatist collaborationist extremist movement that implemented the Oslo ''peace process,'' which has resulted in 1200 murdered Israelis, most of them civilians, many of them children.
After the Sabra and Shatilla events, the Israeli Left organized large street protests demanding Israel withdraw from Lebanon and condemning Begin and Sharon. In the most famous of these, Israel's media simply invented that famous 400,000 number (for the size of the protest rally) and it became unchallenged myth, this to describe the 60,000 or so protesters who can be held physically in the Tel Aviv Square in which the protest was held.
Meanwhile US marines entered Beirut to separate the militias, and a large group of them (241) were murdered by the Hizbollah, then a barely-known terror group. The USS Missouri then shelled the Hizbollah areas, this by the same US that would later insist Israel must never target terrorists nor shell areas from which shells and rockets were being fired at Israelis.
Israel's Left did not rest. It demanded that Israel set up its own Commission of Inquiry. The Likud acquiesced. The whole idea was to prove to the world how moral Israel really is, where it examines itself in the highest, most ethical manner and holds itself to the highest moral standards.
The Kahan Commission sought to pass highly-demanding judgements, where it might disqualify people for office even if they engaged in no crimes but simply exercised poor judgement. It was thought this would cleanse Israel's name, by fingering those who might have prevented the incidents had they been wiser.
In reality, the establishment of the Kahan Commission of Inquiry did nothing of the sort. The only significant consequence of its investigations was to allow the Israeli Left to demonize the Likud and indirectly all of Israel. That Commission played Monday Morning Umpire and stated that Sharon should have known what the Felange would do. But not a single member of that Commission had foreseen what the Felange would do. The Commission did state clearly that the Felange was responsible for the killings in Sabra and Shatilla, not Sharon, not the Likud, not Israel. It definitively did NOT say Sharon had a hand in the Sabra and Shatilla massacre, but that is something long ago erased from the world's memory. The world has never cared about facts in the report or in the true events.
As in every other case where Israel tries to display its niceness and ethical superiority, it ends up being demonized and delegitimized. The Israeli Left misused the report of the Kahan Commission to delegitimize the Likud and demonize Sharon. The commission's recommendations were used by the US State Department to declare Sharon persona non grata. And of course the Eurotrash utilized it to demonize Sharon and declare him a genocidal war criminal. The kangaroo show trial the Belgians now want to run is one of the direct results of the Kahan Commission. The jihad by Israel's own Left against Sharon has produced an internationalization of its own anti-Israelism and its McCarthyism.
The same Israeli Left that later imposed Oslo on the country, which so far has produced the murders of 1200 Israelis, has always misused the events at Sabra and Shatilla for partisan purposes to delegitimize Sharon. Their posturing has been exploited by every anti-Semite in the world.
The pro-Saddam Left in the US and in Europe has long been little more than a fifth column, composed of people who despise their own countries. The Israeli Leftists have followed in their footsteps, has even led the campaign to indict their own Prime Minister for manufactured ''war crimes,'' all this with horrendous results for their country.
They would turn our leaders over for war crimes also.
This is a good analysis why things are the way they are in Israel.
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