General Martin Luther Agwai, commander of the African Union Mission in Sudan, gave an interview to the BBC’s Orla Guerin a week or so ago.
… what has got the Khartoum government hot and bothered a week later?
… his choice of military heroes included Ariel Sharon
Wonderful! The man who got a mere slap on his wrist for the Sabra and Shatila massacres.
SudaneseThinker
SudaneseThinker
{ 77 comments… read them below or add one }
Regardless of what his image in Arab states may be, Sharon’s fuck-up in Sabra and Shatila was not taking the possibility of the Phalanges being massacring monsters into consideration. It was a failure on his part, but he *didn’t* orchestrate the massacre, as is so often said to demonize the man in Arab states.
In terms of military strategy, Sharon is (or was) a genius. He’s somewhat of a failure when it doesn’t have to do with merely battle strategy, though, but that’s a different matter.
Sabra and Shatila, by the way, was a decisive part in destroying Sharon’s image fully back in the day. He would have remained in the shadows to this day if not… for conspiracy theories spread against him. It was his libel lawsuit against Time Magazine where he managed to restore his name. The demonization that saved him, really. Sharon can thank Arab propaganda for his political career.
What RK said.
And Sharon was a military genius of historic proportions - it is not in vain that he is an obligatory subject in any respectable military academy.
Erm, how can he be a genius if he was (partially) responsible for Shatila and Sabra?
“Sharon can thank Arab propaganda for his political career.”
Hmmm… Interesting observation Roman.
“Sharon can thank Arab propaganda for his political career”
That is an understatement…not just the propaganda…but the wave of terror of the 2nd Intifada.
My family in Israel was filled with liberals/Leftists. My wife used to march with Peace Now. I was a Leftist myself and HATED Sharon.
By the time that second intifada was going full strength…I would have voted for Sharon…and all those former Lefties did as well…
The Palestinian street ushered Sharon into office and made his career. They also completely alienated a huge section of Israeli and worldwide Jews in general that had formerly been supportive of much of their cause.
I used to despise Sharon and Natanyahu…now I think they were too soft
“Erm, how can he be a genius if he was (partially) responsible for Shatila and Sabra?”
Well, genius is not a moral rank.
Anyway, he wasn’t responsible for Sabra and Shatila at all. A Lebanese Phalangist was, and he turned out to hold Syrian allegiances later. (What a surprise.)
Sharon’s involvement was about the Israeli custom of trying to protect even Israel’s enemies. Sharon FAILED to protect Israel’s enemies from a third party.
Maybe Israel needs lower standards.
Anyway, the entire Sabra and Shatila thing always looks like this for:
1. An Arab orders an attack on Arab civilians.
2. The Arab is later found to be loyal to Syria.
3. Sharon happened to the be the Jew most closely associated with the event.
4. Hence Sharon is to blame for the event.
By blaming Sharon, the Arabs have made it perfectly clear that their fight was for blaming Jews, not protecting innocent Palestinian civilians. And, unfortunately, this is what many on the Israeli left have learned, hence Sharon’s become more popular in the end.
Drima, Sharon was a *military* genius. Ask him to beat back three advancing divisions, and he’ll have them cut off from each other, surrounded, and wondering just what happened to all their supply lines.
Ask him to make sense of the political and ethnic mess that was Lebanon during the Civil War, and write up a policy and strategy while taking it fully into consideration, and you won’t get too far. Sharon was a damn fine tactician and short-term strategist. It’s when it came to predicting and countering what wasn’t directly related to a field of war, or what was too long-term, that he messed-up.
In short, Drima, he had a military mindset. He was a genius when it came to military matters. He simply wasn’t built for the next level up - to whit, the policies that decide on *what* the military should do, rather than the *how*.
Howie, the Second Intifada boosted Sharon’s voting bloc, but it was the “butcher” propaganda that gave him a chance of having a recent political career in the first place. The libel trial cleared up much of his bad image in the eyes of the Israeli public. Until the trial, he didn’t have a chance, and would have passed into the pages of history if not for it.
The Palestinians have successfully manipulated a huge part of world opinion…
They chose terror and war in the 1920’s and cried when we fought back.
They chose war instead of settlement in 1948 and cried when we fought back.
They chose terror…and cried when we fought back.
They blew a settlement chance in 1967 and cried when we fought back.
They have chosen a path of terror and rejectionism…not only against Israel, but against any among their own people that realized “hey, this ain’t working, let’s try something different” and then cried when there was no progress.
They got Gaza back…and increased terrorist activity and have tried to turn Gaza into a little Taliban state in return for a chance at freedom.
And they cry and blame everybody but their own sorry selves.
They have utterly lost my sympathy. They have picked the path the fighting and then whining. Change direction and there is hope…keep making the same stupid mistake for another 100 years? If so…take the consequences. Enough.
Andrew has a point here, Drima. Those truly responsible for the massacre (the people who did it) were severly downplayed, with yet more “Sinister Zionist Conspiracies” added into the mix.
I lived in Israel at the time of Sabra and Shatila…It also should be noted that about 100,00 people hit the streets to protest it…
When was the last time 100,000 Palestinians hit the streets to protest the murder of Jews?
How about like 3 even?
RK -
I disagree with you regarding Sharon’s long-term political acumen. He simply wasn’t a brilliant politician - he started out as a crappy one and improved tremendously with experience, becoming somewhat above mediocre towards the end. Had he had 10 more years, I’d say he would have been a good politician.
When juxtaposed with his military genius, however, his political achievements seem pathetic.
Nonetheless, I believe that his final long-term strategy was brilliant. I am talking about unilateral disengagement and the creation of a de-facto Palestinian state. Pity his followers didn’t have the balls to continue his work.
And, by the way, he was often hated by his men because he put them under great risk. I have a friend who commanded a tank in the rush to Suez… but even he eventually forgave Sharon the loss of his mates.
Scanned through, interesting… will get back later to this discussion. Gotta run for class.
Raccoon, perhaps he improved during the last decade, but I think my analysis fits the bill for the rest of his life.
“Nonetheless, I believe that his final long-term strategy was brilliant. I am talking about unilateral disengagement and the creation of a de-facto Palestinian state.”
Yes. That was probably the most evil plan ever concocted by a military strategist.
Disengage unilaterally, and show the world how the opressed kill each other once nobody oversees them any more. It was brilliant, especially since it relied so much on what the most cynical of right-wingers thought about Palestinian Arabs.
From the point of view of an Israeli right-winger, the plan was risky. How easily could the left have been right and the Arabs in Gaza could have demonstrated that it was only the occupation that caued their poverty and their children’s extremism. Gaza could have become a rick country while getting water and electricity from Israel for free (with no practical or politically possible way for Israel to withdraw this free assistance).
Instead Sharon managed to anger the settlers (good!), to save money by making a military presence in the Gaza strip unecessary (good), to present to the world the difference between a territory occupied by Israel and a territory left to itself, and to take the wind out of the sails of the left.
For Israel, it would have been good to withdraw elsewhere as well, but the Arab death toll would have gone up again. You cannot leave the Arab population on the territories to their elected butchers. We need another evil plan.
Sharon’s plan was too evil.
people who actually carried out the massacres in sabra and shatilla were LFers (lebanese forces) under the command of hobeika … sharon’s only possible complicity was a lack of action to stop the LFers …
hobeika later served as a minister in the lebanese government until his assassination a few years ago ….
another interesting detail is that the same camps were later put under siege and invaded by amal under the leadership of guess who ??? the current speaker of the lebanese parliament nabil berri ..
sabra was completely overrun while the surviving palis fled to shatilla that was largely destroyed …during the siege of the camps amal was blocking all access to the palis until they ran out of all food supplies and medicaments and requested from the clerics permission to eat corpses …
there were also numerous massacres of the palis carried out by different lebanese factions .. the same amal led by berri massacred dozens of patients in sabra’s hospital after taking over the camp …
general aoun and his forces are responsible for their share of massacres in camps they took over during the war …
given that hobeika was a minister in later lebanese governments, jeajea is a minister right now, berri is a speaker of the current parliament and aoun is aiming at the office of president, i would propose that we pretend that no sabra and shatilla ever happened … by the way , i was always curious if the word hypocrisy exists in arabic … can you enlighten me on this, drima ???
German Wikipedia also mentions that Hobeika fled to Damaskus in 1986 an came back an official supporters of Syria:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobeika
(English Wikipedia is less detailed.)
Also, in 1999 a former body guard of Hobeika’s published a book, apparently, in which he accuses Hobeika of being involved in the assassination of Lebanese president-elect Bashir Gemayel and states that the Sabra massacre was concocted by Hobeika and Hafiz al-Assad to make Israel look bad (they apparently helt the Arab street in such low regard that they figured that they must only commit some form of mass murder somewhere and some Jew would be blamed and that would be enough).
So what we have here is a pro-Syrian militia-man murdering Palestinian Arabs. And the world reacted in the usual way: “Which Jew can we blame?”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre
Read the “Media and public reactions” chapter!
Wow!
Howie on October 1st, 2007 3:28 pm
“Sharon can thank Arab propaganda for his political career”
That is an understatement…not just the propaganda…but the wave of terror of the 2nd Intifada.
My family in Israel was filled with liberals/Leftists. My wife used to march with Peace Now. I was a Leftist myself and HATED Sharon.
By the time that second intifada was going full strength…I would have voted for Sharon…and all those former Lefties did as well…
by the way howie .. the same story here
“by the way howie .. the same story here”
And along the same lines here
so what were you doing in the good old days of oslo, raccoon ??
:D
regarding this sabra and shatila thing the most hilarious episode that comes to my mind is when the international court dispatched a team to question hobeika who at the time was serving in the lebanese government .. good that at least it was not him who started this mess .. i just imagine how he applies to the international court saying something in the sense: i blame ariel sharon for not stopping me from massacring innocent and defenseless palestinians
:D
never mind that nabih berri’s forces killed thousands more palestinians than hobeika while his artillery flattened both sabra and shatila
:D
while i am very familiar with the arabs double standards sometimes even i find them going completely overboard with their shit … and sabra and shatila is just the case
Since Black September when the PLO moved to Lebanon from Jordan, the suddenly-empowered Palestinians started seeking retribution against their Lebanese hosts. After 20+ years of harassment of Palestinians by the infamous Lebanese Deuxieme Bureau (mukhabarat) there was enough bad blood between the refugees and the ruling establishment of their host country to guarantee bloodshed for many years. The power-hungry PLO leveraged that ill-will and helped turn once sympathetic Lebanese against the Palestinians.
And the blood flowed..
The PLO, aided by the Lebanese Leftist-Sunni Murabitoon, murdered Maronites (especially civilians at Damour and other locales). The Maronites from both the Kataeb and other smaller groups did their share of killing as well, especially in Tel El Zaatar, where they murdered civilians in cold blood (With Syria’s Help).
Sabra and Shatila was just another massacre, Arabs killing Arabs. 1000+ bodies among tens of thousands. The only difference was that Sharon facilitated the massacre by completely surrounding the camp and cutting off the escape routes. Women and Children who tried to flee were blocked by IDF men who followed instructions to keep them penned in like cattle.
Did Sharon orchestrate the massacre? I don’t think us average folk will ever know. A lot tends to go on behind the scenes at levels way above the average bystander.
In any case, Hobeika and his men were on a vengeful killing spree and this was a golden opportunity where they got to shoot fish in the barrel.
They certainly weren’t waiting for Sharon to encourage them.
The PLO, aided by the Lebanese Leftist-Sunni Murabitoon, murdered Maronites (especially civilians at Damour and other locales). The Maronites from both the Kataeb and other smaller groups did their share of killing as well, especially in Tel El Zaatar, where they murdered civilians in cold blood (With Syria’s Help).
i remember by the way reading on lebanese blogs how a few years the would be president michel aoun was boasting about his role in devising the brilliant military plan that crashed the resistance in tel el zaatar
Nb,
Don’t forget when Arafat sent weapons to Aoun to fight the syrians.
And now, Aoun is busy nibbling on Assad’s and Nassrallah’s dingleberries.
sigh… the Missile East.. How I do not miss it.
Nizo - just wait for Missile Eastern countries to start collapsing… double the excitement, triple the bloodshed, pentuple the general madness! At least you gotta admit it’s never boring over here
NB - in the good old days of Olso, I was a Meretz boy like the kibbutznik I am. And then I slowly woke up
The IDF fired flares over the camps at night as the Phalangists requested before entering the camps, and there’s some serious evidence that radio chatter between the Phalangists over what they were doing to the civilians was overheard by IDF officers without being acted on properly. About keeping people in I don’t know much, but it makes sense, sadly.
It was a major fuck-up. The Phalangists should have never been allowed in, or at least not alone. Had Israel bothered to follow Lebanese politics properly, the massacre could have been expected (the chain of events was fairly simple), but Israel never did understand Lebanon properly.
Ignorance, arrogance, and rashness. In a way, those were the watchwords of Israel in Lebanon. De-facto, at least. How the hell did we think up trying to try and sign a peace agreement in the middle of a civil war, for example…
RK said…
It was a major fuck-up. The Phalangists should have never been allowed in, or at least not alone. Had Israel bothered to follow Lebanese politics properly, the massacre could have been expected (the chain of events was fairly simple), but Israel never did understand Lebanon properly.
i think it’s impossible to understand lebanon properly … at least i gave up on trying to understand who is who there .. though i would agree that sharon could figure out what was going to happen given their previous record of massacring palis adnd each other …
the thing is that when you meet lebanese christians they usually make a very strong impression on you because they are french speakers and very cultured .. for sure it should be true about their elites … it’s only after prolonged interaction with them that you notice that deep inside they are middle easterners like anybody else …
“t was a major fuck-up. The Phalangists should have never been allowed in, or at least not alone. Had Israel bothered to follow Lebanese politics properly, the massacre could have been expected (the chain of events was fairly simple), but Israel never did understand Lebanon properly.”
Sharon has learned from it. By the time he was prime minister and the disengagement he knew that Arabs, if given nothing else to do, will kill each other.
It’s weird and sad but that must have been what Sharon saw,
dunno if it’s still of interest to anybody but i found this in wikipedia about the damour massacre and it may actually explain sabra and shatila and hobeika’s role in this
Most of the inhabitants managed to flee during the assault, but a number stayed behind as the Palestinian forces seized control of the town. The attackers destroyed the buildings in the seaside village systematically and then took revenge on the remaining Christian inhabitants. The Christian cemetery was destroyed, coffins dug up, the dead robbed, vaults opened, and bodies and skeletons thrown across the graveyard. The church was burnt and an outside wall was covered with a mural of Fatah guerrillas holding AK47 rifles. A portrait of Yasser Arafat was placed at one end. Other sources claim that the church was used as a repair garage for PLO vehicles, and also as a range for shooting-practice with targets painted on the eastern wall of the nave.
Twenty Phalangist militiamen were executed and then civilians were lined up against a wall and sprayed with machine-gun fire. An unknown number of women were raped, babies shot at close range, and bodies were mutilated and dismembered. None of the remaining inhabitants survived.[2] Estimates of the civilian dead range from 25–30[3] to 582[4] with the most reliable figure probably being around 330. Among the killed were family members of Elie Hobeika, and his fiancé.
Even nazi commanders was military genious. It does not mean that one supports them. The way it see it at least…
However i will never utter my support for them. Same with Ariel Sharon.
Ahmad, you seem to be mixing up sides here.
A “Nazi commander” is a member national-socialist military or similar institution, like the Syrian army.
“Ariel Sharon” is one of the Jewish commanders who fought them.
The discussion here was about how Ariel Sharon was blamed for a (minor) massacre committed by an Arab who was later found to be on the Syrian side.
There is no reason not to support the victims of Syrian national-socialism and there is certainly no reason to equate them with their enemies.
Good day.
While we are at it…
Ahmad, let me ask you three questions:
1. What should be done to the perpetrators of the massacre in Sabra and Shatilla?
2. What should be done to the perpetrators of the bigger massacres that happened around the same time?
3. What exactly has Ariel Sharon done that makes you dislike him?
i dont think that the point is what should be done to the perpetrators of massacres in sabra and shatila .. more that sabra and shatila are indeed a symbol but not of some particular viciousness of ariel sharon but rather of the extreme violence the arabs practiced towards the palestinians .. both camps were overran at least once .. sabra twice … nabih berri laid siege to them at least three times … i think in terms of the palestinians who died there it’s more than the death toll of the black september in jordan or any other camp in lebanon…
never mind that even if ariel sharon failed to act to stop hobeika, sharon is still not arab .. palestinians are not our brothers as the arabs use to call them .. we are no friends to the arabs .. we have never committed ourselves to some general arab or palestinian cause ….
the arabs should forget the name of ariel sharon and sabra and shatila because as i said - sabra and shatila are a symbol … of arabs brutality, hypocrisy and madness
Nobody,
as long as the Arabs don’t forget (their version of) Sabra and Shatila, it is a hell of a lot easier for us to support Israel.
So let’s thank people like Ahmad al-Safawi, they make Zionism so much easier.
In the mean time, let the Arabs kill as many Arab Palestinians as they like. They will always find a Jew to blame for their actions, with or without Israel.
frankly i dont see myself as zionist .. i am not even sure that i understand what does it mean for people who were born here or lived here long enough .. i am israeli of right wing nationalist views … jewishness also does not interest me so much … i feel affinity only with those jews in the diaspora who support or are interested in israel … otherwise i dont care so much …
as to the palis in lebanon … i bet my money on another civil war there .. and soon … and as usual with palis they will stick to the tradition of always betting on wrong horses … in fact they are doing it already … my bet is that there will be another sabra and shatila there
“and as usual with palis they will stick to the tradition of always betting on wrong horses”
Usually, the Palestinian Arabs are the ones who bet on the wrong horses, start the race, and then blame the Jews.
NB - “frankly i dont see myself as zionist .. i am not even sure that i understand what does it mean for people who were born here or lived here long enough”
Simple, bro. A Zionist is someone who believes that the Jewish people have the right for self-determination. preferably in our historic homeland. What’s not to understand?
And as for Lebanon… their shit got so complicated lately I can’t tell head from toes. March 14 and March 8 have very quickly entered the swamp of shady political dealing and multi-sided backstabbing; the effect of the Lebanese victory in Narh el-Bared seems to have worn off already; Syrian meddling continues unabated, there are at least 3 states-within-a-state (Hizballah, Palestinians and the Druze - latter in their mountain fortresses)… I can’t tell what’ll happen there tomorrow. Maybe they’ll become a state and kick the Syrian/Iranian proxies out. Maybe they’ll have another civil war. Maybe they’ll fracture into small fiefdoms.
And as for another Sabra and Shatila - duh. They’ll have another Dresden soon enough.
They have another dresden already
Ahmad has a point. Being accessory to murder, which Ariel Sharon was (at the least) in S&C, is bad enough. And he was directly involved in other atrocities in ‘48 and beyond, in his old Unit 101 days.
It is nonetheless intellectually dishonest, as others have pointed out, to regard these particular massacres, or the Israeli involvement thereof, as the sole or defining atrocity of the Lebanese civil war. Such obfuscation is part of a discourse in which the Palestinians are nothing but a moral prop to hit the Jews/Israelis with. And with ‘defenders’ such as Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Baathists of Iraqi and Syrian extraction, various fractal Trotskyte grupuscles and assorted wankers, not to mention their own cleptocrats and lunatics-in-charge, what chance do the Palestinians have?
as a brazilian you may have a point, bruno, though i should check it … but as an arab, ahmad have none … if only because even if sharon was an accessory as you claim he was an accessory for the arabs to kill the palis .. never mind that long after sharon departed from lebanon, the arabs continued invading the camps, laying siege to them, starving their residents and massacring them … and even if a few hundreds palestinians that hobeika did in sabra and shatila were a tragedy for the palis they plainly had a much worse tragedy later when between a few thousands to ten thousands of them died during the war of the camps in the same camps …
you are also wrong if you think that the same nabih berri for example can now enter no arab country without being immediately detained and sent to the international court .. just the opposite is true which shows that the arabs don’t necessarily see massacring palestinians by thousands as a war crime, so what they want from ariel sharon ???
your another and much bigger mistake is that you think that we are a sort of a humanitarian agency in the region … surprise surprise but we are not … we are not running charity services for the arabs, be they palestinian refugees in lebanon or sudanese refugees in egypt… and sharon’s mission in lebanon had a very different objective, it was not about trying his best in preventing arabs from massacring each other
“And he was directly involved in other atrocities in ‘48 and beyond”
Are they also of the Shatilla type or did Sharon actually do something?
Israel must be the most trusted country in the middle east, according to Arab opinion.
Examples:
Arabs have full faith in Israel’s willingness and ability to protect Arabs from slaughtering each other. In fact, Arabs get upset and scream bloody murder when Israel fails to do so.
Hizbullah hide among civilians and children, assuming that this would somehow stop Israel from shooting back. And they scream bloody murder when Israel shoots back anyway.
Palestinian Arab refugees want nothing more than move to and live in Israel and certainly not among their Arab brethren in other countries.
I love Israel.
NB (and Andrew), Israel has long been held to a higher moral standard than its enemies, often by these very enemies. But frankly, so what? The standards by which HA or Hamas judge themselves are so abysmally low their denunciations border on the comical; but from that it doesn’t follow that Israel is blameless. One could argue Israel can’t afford to be like Sweden, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t want to become a Jewish Syria either. As things stand, it is far from being either.
IIRC, Sharon stands accused (by reputable sources, in the West and in Israel) of leading raids behind (then, ‘48) enemy lines, in the West Bank, in which his soldiers killed unarmed civilians and exploded houses with the inhabitants still inside.
In S&C, the IDF had the camps surrounded, and had Hobeika’s men trucked in to clear the camps. Given the previous history of tit-for-tat atrocities between Maronites and Palestinians (rootcausism enthusiasts might want to exonerate Hobie at this point), it should have been obvious that a massacre was going to happen. To me this is evidence that the Sharon and the IDF facilitated (by either mendacity or incompetence) the crime, rather than just failed to prevent it. Again, the main responsibility for the massacres lie with Hibeika et al., soon to be followed in the same vein and place by Joumblatt, Berri and Assad. But even if Sharon’s crimes pale in comparison to these luminaries of Arab pride, they can’t be defined out of existence and shouldn’t be ignored.
Sharon’s crime was pride and near-sightedness. Criminal negligence, in short. Yes, his negligence made the massacres easier, but ‘facilitated’ implies that he had actively and knowingly supported a bloodbath.
In S&C, the IDF had the camps surrounded, and had Hobeika’s men trucked in to clear the camps. Given the previous history of tit-for-tat atrocities between Maronites and Palestinians (rootcausism enthusiasts might want to exonerate Hobie at this point), it should have been obvious that a massacre was going to happen.
it may be obvious to you, but it’s not obvious as such … hobeika’s task was to clear the camps from the militants, not to start slaughtering people en mass …presumably nobody expected them to knock politely at doors asking “anybody’s here?”, but nobody wanted them to start piling corpses by dozens on the streets …
IIRC, Sharon stands accused (by reputable sources, in the West and in Israel) of leading raids behind (then, ‘48) enemy lines, in the West Bank, in which his soldiers killed unarmed civilians and exploded houses with the inhabitants still inside.
the war of 1948 happened 60 years ago under very different circumstances … it was a civil war as far as the palestinians were concerned .. the palestinian population was predominantly armed and whole villages were taking part in fighting .. they were not fighting as a regular army …in such a situation talking about civilians is impossible .. you can as well say that it was jewish armies fighting palestinian civilians … but it’s enough to have a look at iraq or lebanon to get the idea what such civilians can mean in military terms …
In S&C, the IDF had the camps surrounded, and had Hobeika’s men trucked in to clear the camps. Given the previous history of tit-for-tat atrocities between Maronites and Palestinians (rootcausism enthusiasts might want to exonerate Hobie at this point), it should have been obvious that a massacre was going to happen.
it may be obvious to you, but it’s not obvious as such … hobeika’s task was to clear the camps from the militants, not to start slaughtering people en mass …presumably nobody expected them to knock politely at doors asking “anybody’s here?”, but nobody wanted them to start piling corpses by dozens on the streets …
IIRC, Sharon stands accused (by reputable sources, in the West and in Israel) of leading raids behind (then, ‘48) enemy lines, in the West Bank, in which his soldiers killed unarmed civilians and exploded houses with the inhabitants still inside.
the war of 1948 happened 60 years ago under very different circumstances … it was a civil war as far as the palestinians were concerned .. the palestinian population was predominantly armed and whole villages were taking part in fighting .. they were not fighting as a regular army …in such a situation talking about civilians is impossible .. you can as well say that it was jewish armies fighting palestinian civilians … but it’s enough to have a look at iraq or lebanon to get the idea what such civilians can mean in military terms …
throughout the israeli arab conflict the palestinians displayed a clear preference for targeting israeli civilians as a means to uproot israeli population as a whole .. the same fedayeens used to raid israeli settlements killing everybody to the last person … the retaliatory raids by israeli commandos may look cruel but things should be put into the context of the actual situation … the purpose of these raids was not to promote peace and love across the region but to persuade the arabs to ’stop doing this shit’ …
The 101 Unit, led by Sharon, targeted villages in enemy territory (Egypt-controlled) which the Fedayeen used as bases. The extreme-most operations involved forcing an entire village’s populace out, bringing them to a nearby position overlooking the village, wiring the entire village with explosives, and blowing it sky-high as the former inhabitants watched. These operations could be dubbed collective punishment, intimidation, or whatever. And they were just that. They meant to send a message - don’t mess with us, leave us alone, or you will get hurt. What few realize is that Israel was unable to stop the Fedayeen back then by any other means, that the Fedayeen had managed to enter the country whenever they wanted, and wherever they wanted. The army was crap and just being built, same with the police, and everything else. Kfar Chabad, which near where I live, had its first school class shot, with the kids in it, and list goes on.
Sharon’s last operation in the 101 was a failure. It was one of the abovementioned extreme operations, and the villagers had probably spotted them, and some hid in the cellars. Sharon didn’t check the cellars, cleared away all the villagers he saw to an overlook, and blew up the village. About 60 people died.
Sharon was removed from command of the 101 unit, and it was disbanded. The cost of its existence had become too high.
Well, Andrew, i am sorry that i do not share your blind trust in the israeli government. Look here, my comparison between Nazi Generals and Ariel Sharon was not on their ideology - that would be silly. What i replied to was the discussion about it calling him a military genious.
A man can be a military genious no matter if he is good or bad. It has nothing to do with your ideology or your personal opinion. Where did i mention Sabra and Shatila, and why do you ask me these questions? It has nothing to do with what i said. It is fine by me if you want to discuss this, but do not link it to what i said.
If you want to free Ariel Sharon from responsibility for what happended, then you should not have blind trust in the Israeli government. After the massacre, they send down a famous comission who found Sharon having personal resposibility for the massacre.
The man was a military genious, same with many nazi commandars, whether you like them or not. However i will never talk in this fashion about Nazi’s in Israel, and i will not expect strangers to talk in this fashion about Ariel Sharon in my country. Thats just how i see it.
I understand what you mean, Ahmad, but the perceived image Sharon has in Arab countries was mostly built on propaganda and lies. His actions are not comparable to the actions of certain Nazi generals, specifically those of the SS, to bring the worst example, so I don’t see why he should be treated and thought of as if he were one. As for Nazi Germany’s generals in general, I for one view the Desert Fox (Rommel) as a military genius worthy of respect, both as a military general and as a man who was known for his dislike of Nazi ideology and actions. I don’t see why I should mark all German generals in WWII as Nazis. They weren’t.
In fact, the German military high ranks were rife with anti-Nazi sentiments, with numerous Army plots to overthrow the Nazi regime existing since 1938, with the July 20th Plot being the largest such attempt, with the plan being to assassinate Hitler and use reserve forces to arrest the remaining Nazi leadership and disband the SS, which the German Army as a whole had hated since the SS was created.
My apologies for overusing the word ‘with’. :$
I finally had time to go through all the comments.
So *generally* according to what everyone here is saying, at worst Sharon let the massacre happen and at best he had no idea it was going to happen.
Well, personally I find it troubling that he’s almost being made to look as if completely innocent.
I mean come on, even an Israeli commission found him and a few others guilty of blunders and held them responsible.
Drima, Sharon was found guilty of negligence. Of not doing his job to the best of his ability, and as a result a massacre that could have been prevented under his command, wasn’t. Instead, the negligence was so great that IDF forces there ended up inadvertently assisting mass-murderers, because they thought the Phalanges were there for a simple military operation. They shot flares, gave the Phalanges free access, kept the perimiter of the camps secure and closed… It was a *big* blunder.
But, at the same time, this is all it was. It does not make Ariel Sharon a mass-murderer, or The Butcher. All it makes him, is a short-sighted and rash fool when it came to anything other than standard warfare. In this, he is no different than countless other generals in history.
Sharon is innocent of the massacre, and yet he bears partial responsibility for it. He had a duty and responsibility to not let such events take place, and it was in this that he had failed. This is his guilt.
So Sharon was guilty of negligence, not for committing it.
Hence we agree he was partially responsible.
Case closed. Yaaay!
Indeed. And this, you will agree, is hardly what one might call a good reason to despise anyone who admires him. Demonization and dehumanization serve no good purpose.
So Sharon was guilty of negligence, not for committing it.
Hence we agree he was partially responsible.
Case closed.
case reopened … if sharon was partially responsible of negligence, what’s about people who committed actual massacres in sabra and shatia? christian phalangists, shiite amal, syrians ???
these people were not partially responsible , they are fully responsible …
not that i mind or keep track of all the massacres that the arabs committed against the arabs, but if arabs want justice lets try berri first .. berri is readily available as a speaker of the lebanese parliament .. the man occasionally travels to other arab countries where the arabs can always get their hands on him .. berri killed by far more people in sabra and shatila than the same hobeika …
but frankly and lets admit it: NO ONE CARES ABOUT PALIS .. the whole point of sabra and shatila is exploited by the arab propaganda just to accuse israel/sharon of involvement in atrocities, carried out by the arabs anyway …
there is only one reason why the arabs are so excited about sabra/shatila and this is because sharon might have been involved … as to hundreds of palis massacred by hobeika, and to thousands more slaughtered by berri and others since then, nobody gives a shit about them .. that’s why in the eyes of the arabs, berri and hobeika are no criminals.. nobody goes to try them.. nobody even mentions them .. palestinian lives are cheap in the eyes of the arabs .. though in this particular case i can see their point …
Nobody has a point, Drima, in that Arabs seem to give other Arabs a free pass in these matters. For true justice, one must seek the true mass-murderers.
And if one doesn’t want justice, then one should forget about Sharon. Sharon is nothing when compared to the Phalanges, or Amal, or any other group in the Lebanese civil war.
lets make a deal
when the arabs admit their responsibility for sabra/shatila, when they admit their failure to persecute the responsible having appointed them instead as ministers in the lebanese government, then we will admit sharon’s responsibility for shooting flares over the camp on that particular, and one of many occasions, when the arabs raided the camps .. fair enough i think
as to now, it’s a pointless debate since the only country in the region that actually persecutes and punishes people for killing or mistreating palestinians is israel … it’s a soccer game with only one side having a gate …
If the points are addressed to me, then spare the energy because I fully understand and comprehend them.
This post was mainly about Sharon (whom previously I had thought was the one who actually committed the real massacre), and I appreciate your perspectives on him and the massacres.
Lebanon and Palestine aside, Iraq by itself at the moment is a testament to how we react when Arabs kill other Arabs.
I was making a general point, myself, as I understand that it would really be unfair to treat you as some kind of representative of the ills in Arab society, Drima.
Roman Kalik on October 11th, 2007 9:41 am
I was making a general point, myself, as I understand that it would really be unfair to treat you as some kind of representative of the ills in Arab society, Drima.
shit .. just when i was thinking that i have finally found somebody to represent all the ills of arab society and be held responsible for
Roman, you should focus less on the details
hehe… i hate when i am wrong. The point is even the cruel of the cruel can be a military genious.
I will, however, not utter sympathy for Ariel Sharon, the Israeli commussion found him personally responsible, and that is enough for me. Personally, i have hard to see why a man with the whole Israeli intelligense agency in his back could make such a mistake, not knowing about the Phalange terrorists… That is, however, just my toughts.
Regarding Amal and the Phalange: What makes you think that we do not oppose these criminals? Of course, some Shi’ites supports Amal and some christians support Phalange. As an arab sunni traditionalist and more important, a rational human being, i oppose both, and i have never met an arab who utters support for these two. Now, we are talking about Ariel Sharon, so guys, you should not expect me to talk about the Phalange or the Amal now.
But if Drima some day blogs about the Amal and the Iranian support for various groups, then wait and see… I bet i’ll be more harsh in my critic than Andrew Brehm lol
I did get your argument, Ahmad, it’s the pesky details and current application that bother me.
As a general statement, it works just fine.
As for Sharon having the entire Israeli intelligence community behind him, I find that overall our intelligence community is grossly overrated. Capable, often very capable, yet very much prone to crippling itself by means of internal bickering. The Israeli intelligence community was aware that the Yom Kippur War was going to occur, it even knew the timing. What happened? Some asshole with a high rank thought he knew better, and classified the intel as Inconsequential.
Quality of intel? I remember reading, in one of those many books built on declassified documents that I find in my hands, how a couple of Israeli intelligence agents were trying to locate a missing Amal member to trade info about him for info on Ron Arad. They turned to (if memory serves) a Druze commander, with whom they were in good relations until that time. He said he knew where the Amal man was, and that he was dead.
The Israelis wanted confirmation. The Druze commander vehemently refused. The Israelis pressed him on the matter.
So he told them that the Amal member was buried in a mass grave with 300 other people. After which the two shocked Israeli agents listened to that commander’s justifications on “how we do this”, on how Israelis should not lecture them on their affairs, and so on…
Ahmad, not only do I not doubt that Israeli intel did not put two and two together on Hobeika’s intentions, I doubt they were even close to understanding Lebanon at the time. Arrogance can blind people easily, and there is no surer way of remaining ignorant than believing that one understands everything.
As for Amal and the Phalanges, it’s the way Sharon is treated compared to the way they are. Sharon is quite obviously judged by different standards, much in the same way that Hafez Assad was never truly criticized for Hama, or Hussein for more crimes than I could easily recount.
For Arabs, Sharon is a villian. He overshadowed those who were the true criminals simply due to his country of origin. Hafez Assad’s and Saddam Hussein’s bloodbaths had more casualties than anything even remotely related to Sharon, and yet Sharon is the one who is the Butcher.
Yes, the Investigating Commitee found that Sharon bore personal responsibility, but it was only partial responsibility.
I have no doubt that you would be a harsh critic of any Iranian ally, Ahmad (though Amal was never one, it’s a Syrian ally. Hezb is the Iranian servant, and Amal and Hezb once fought over jus this matter of foreign control), but ask yourself this: are you willing to criticize an Arabist group in the same manner, should it deserve it?
I do not know if i am wrong, but i have very high esteem of the Israeli Intelligence Agency. I mean, even my brother who has never been to Lebanon but is very interrested in policy, knew that the Phalange were war criminals before the massacre occured. I still doubt that a man like Ariel Sharon was’nt informed, but still it is just my personal doubt, and not something i will elevate to fact.
And my critic is not only for the servants of the Iranians. I am a more staunch opponent and more harsh in my critique against Amal than i am against Hizbollah.
And i am not critical just like that. But lets say an Arabist group (Arabist means orientalist lol) commited the excact same stuff as Amal - YES! I will oppose them in the same manner.
And mate, please don’t think that we are not aware of the Assads and their crimes and Saddam and their crimes. Your observation is true, however wrong, because you as an israeli native, might hear more about out criticism against Israel than against our fellow “arabs”. I personally find that the secular Iraqi community is more harsh against Saddam and the “Milishiyat” than against Israel. Of course, there is exceptions, but this is generally true i think…
Regarding us egyptians, dont mind about us
Years of war has altered our rationality. I have never actually sat and talk with Israelis (except fat and wealthy israeli tourists in Sharm hehe), but i guess that many Israeli shares the same view about us - that we somehow are enemies.
Ahmad al-Safawi on October 15th, 2007 2:07 pm
I do not know if i am wrong, but i have very high esteem of the Israeli Intelligence Agency. I mean, even my brother who has never been to Lebanon but is very interrested in policy, knew that the Phalange were war criminals before the massacre occured.
you miss the point completely with that one .. the phalangists were no more criminals than the rest of the lebanese .. you somehow got excited by the fact that the amal are shiites and phalangas were christians which is understandable given that you are sunni … but your sectarian preferences apart, in fact there was not so much difference between the lebanese at that time .. all sides committed atrocities including druz and sunnis … expecting each and every lebanese sect to visit sabra and shatila to massacre palestinians is quite a lot to ask for …
but no worry … others did not get to sabra and shatila but they have their equivalents in other episodes of lebanon’s civil war …
neither lebanon’s civil war was necessarily more bloody and cruel than the current sunni shia war in iraq, darfur and possibly even the actions of the egyptian army during the civil war in yemen …
the syrian occupation of lebanon was no less brutal given that within a decade it transformed the lebanese sunnis from staunchest pan arabists into lebanese nationalists …
during the civil war in algeria which ended barely more than a decade ago and which was 100% a sunni sunni war, whole villages were massacred without one single bullet shot, just by slitting throats …
properly speaking sharon’s mistake was not that he failed to see that the phalangists were criminals but that he failed to see that despite their being christians they are still arabs and they fight their wars just like the arabs did in each and every one of the wars they had in the last 100 years …
Make that “Arab nationalist” rather than “Arabist” then. Israel has good intelligence in terms of quality, and we had high-ranking agents in both the Egyptian and Syrian governments at the very least, but this evaporates when it comes to Lebanon. Lebanon is alien. Lebanon is tribal politics that have jumped all the way to Italian city-state politics without any of the social maturity that they should have gotten in between.
In short, Lebanon is a bloody mess. We only got real intel after we had actual people in the field during the first Lebanon war (I don’t think that Lebanon was deemed as important as Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan etc).
As for Egypt, there is no anti-Egyptian hostility to speak of in Israel. There is, though, the understanding that the opposite is not true, that the agreement we signed was with the regime and not with the people of Egypt. Anti-Israeli rhetoric is still very powerful in Egypt, and just recently the Israeli movie “The Band’s Visit”, which was about an Egyptian band visiting Israel, was banned in Egypt for fear that may signify normalization.
We do not view you as enemies, man. At most, we’d like to forget that you even exist (we can get quite isolationist here), but we also understand that Egyptians view us as enemies, and that we can do little to change that.
Nobody is correct in saying that all Lebanese groups during the Civil War were war criminals. The failure, in part, was in pridicting that they would choose to be war criminals in that particular case.
By the way, regarding Saddam, most Iraqis may have hated the man, but he was very nearly worshipped outside of Iraq by secular Arabs. He was a hero for many Arabs, man, and he was a mass-murderer of Stalinist proportions.
the things should be simply put into historical perspective … the mess in lebanon started after the palestinians relocated there following the events of the black september when the tanks of the hashemite king crashed the PLO’s state within a state in jordan … in fact during the black september palestinian militants used to cross the border giving themselves away to the Israeli army .. says something about what was going on the other side of the border …
given the christian domination of lebanon at that time i assume that they agreed to host the palis out of solidarity with the palestinian cause … i dont know exactly what the palis were doing in lebanon but when the israeli army entered lebanon the shiites in the south met them with rice and flowers as liberators .. the shit with hezbollah started later …and by that time the christians too have plainly lost patience with the palestinians …
at the time of the civil war the sunnis indeed tried to fight on the palestinian side until their militia al murabitoun was crashed by the alliance of the druz from the PSP and Amal …
but this is not to say that the palis in lebanon are now enjoying great friendship with the lebanese sunnis … at the time bashir gemayel has failed to convince the sunnis that lebanon should come first and that enslaving your country to the pan arabist and palestinian agendas is bad both for your health and for the country …
but what bashir failed to achieve regarding the sunnis, the syrian army did in just a few years .. it was enough to read many lebanese blogs during nahr el bared to get the idea: if another civil war brokes out today the lebanese sunnis will do another sabra and shatila to the palis without any remorse …
Nobody:
I have no secterian preferences, and i do not need to proove that. I am sorry, but i do not like to discuss if i am no more but a secterian arab in your eyes. You should judge me on what i say - not on your weird imagination of the Arab world.
All were criminals? Why? Because of their actions? We can talk for hours about Israeli Massacres, which you deem “propaganda”, and i can do the same with much of what you will bring up in such a debate. To save the two of us from that, i will ignore this part, unless you admit that the Israeli army commited war crimes too. If not, then let it be like this. I am not interrested in such a discussion.
I never claimed that sunni arabs cannot be wicked, criminals or terrorists, what a ridicolous observation! Honestly, i oppose many, including the “sunni” Hizb-ut-Tahreer. Now in this case, we were talking specific about Ariel Sharon where Roman mentioned Amal and the Phalange. I told him what i thought of them, not what i thought on every single arab in the world.
Now, the point was: Were it possible that the Israeli Intelligence Agency did not know of the Phalange and their intentions? You say: “Yes, they thought they were good because they were christians”. If the Israeli Intelligence Agency operated in such a childfashion, then trust me, Israel would’nt exist today!
I do not deny that there is a possibility that the Israeli Intelligence Agency did’nt know. I just doubt it. There is a big difference between these two.
Roman:
Yes, Roman. Even through me and my family is staunch supporters of the Egyptian revolution and Arab nationalism, i would not refrain from condemning the actionds of people who share my ideology, should they deserve it. I would rather share my house with a respecting zionist tax-paying gentleman than with a criminal arab nationalist.
but as far as i’ve understood it, the Phalange was an Israeli ally during the war. It is hard for me to believe it, but still: I do not elevate this to facts. It aint facts. It is just what i think.
Okay, i am sorry if i am unfamiliar with Israeli society. And yes, it is true that you did not sign peace with the people of Egypt - you did sign peace in the sense that we do not see you as our enemies in terms of war, but not in the sense that we neutralise our relationship. Anwar el Sadat & Mobarak never had the same catch in our hearts as Nasser.
I think there is something you can do about it. Keep going on vacations to Sharm el Sheikh and dont let the terrorists frighten you. Keep visiting us. In this way we will slowly leave our image of the typical Israeli as a blood-thirsty devil, and instead realize that we have to oppurtinity to change things. It was though a meeting with a decent israeli man - and through information and maturity - on a vacation that i began to adopt a new policy regarding Israel and Israelis. Besides that i agree that “we have the Ball” - it is OUR duty to change our opinion against Israel. Not yours.
well, ahmad .. you started with this .. not us ..
Regarding Amal and the Phalange: What makes you think that we do not oppose these criminals? Of course, some Shi’ites supports Amal and some christians support Phalange. As an arab sunni traditionalist and more important, a rational human being, i oppose both, and i have never met an arab who utters support for these two.
as to israeli massacres you can talk about this too … but there will be very little to talk about since even if some some atrocities have been committed they are not on the scale practiced by arabs … it’s not for nothing that the greatest atrocity the arabs tried so obstinately to attribute to israel was carried out first of all by the arabs themselves …
jews also dont have death theatrics so characteristic of arab atrocities .. isolated episodes known from the war of 1948 include mostly putting people to the wall .. but you won’t find there tying people to cars and dragging them through streets, disemboweling pregnant women and other pearls of lebanese civil war … or catching people and drilling through their bodies until they die, the hallmark of the current war in iraq …
Ahmad, the crimes of all Lebanese groups is something the vast majority of Lebanese understand quite freely today. This why they talk about it so rarely, and why one sect accepts the mass-murdering leader of another. They all had blood on their hands, each and every sect had a leader that had massacred whole villages. The Civil War there ended when they finally realized that it would simply never stop if they continued…
And yes, Israelis commited war crimes. I can say with some degree of certainty, though, that the IDF does its best to avoid both war crimes and civilian casualties in general. They don’t hammer in the whole “you’re first and foremost a human being”, Purity of Arms, stuff for nothing.
Did the IDF commit war crimes over the years? Yes. Is the Israeli army perfect? No.
But, Ahmad, no wrong action of the IDF could compare to the sheer brutal madness of the Lebanese Civil War. Or Hama. Or Saddam having a temper tantrum.
By the way, the Phalanges were but a temporary ally. The Civil War alliances shifted so often… In the end, it was mostly a Free For All, with the largely Shi’a SLA being the only loyal ally Israel had in Lebanon.
Nobody:
Please read:
Regarding Amal and the Phalange: What makes you think that we do not oppose these criminals? Of course, some Shi’ites supports Amal and some christians support Phalange. As an arab sunni traditionalist [b]and more important, a rational human being, i oppose both[/b], and i have never met an arab who utters support for these two.
-
That i am a arab sunni traditionalist (traditionalist means not salafist) means that i am religiously opposed to Amal and Phalange, and that i am a rational human being means that i oppose them for their actions - same with every other group that approach their methods.
Yes, Nobody, this is what i mean. You would deny many of these massacres. I can do the same in the exact same fashion that you do. Why enter such a debate then? Did the thought ever approached you that some of what you know might be propaganda too? Or do you think that in a conflict, there is a good, non-arab part (Israel) and a decieving, arab opponent? Do you really think that there is no propaganda against the opponents of Israel, that propaganda is something solely attributed to arabs? Lets think like grown-ups here.
As i see it, you turn the Middle-East conflict into Arab vs. Jew. The children of Ismael (3alayhi as-salam) and Ishaq (3alayhi as-salam) against each other. It is not. It is some arab and muslim countries against Israel - not Arab vs. Jew. You wrote and i quote:
“jews also dont have death theatrics so characteristic of arab atrocities”
Such charecteristics are always attributed to individuals - not to whole people. And generally, this is not limited to arabs. Afghan (arian afghan!) mojahedin commited very brutal assasinations of russians in Chechenya, and the (arian as well!) russians commited even more brutal crimes on the Chechen people. Not to speak of the holocaust.
Now, when it has been proven that different kind of peoples can do these horrible acts, what makes you think that jews are free of this - that they are completely free of brutality, and that arabs as people is MORE brutal than jews? The sad fact is that every human being is capable of these acts, independent of his heritage. If he gets “pushed” enough mentally, man is able to do the most horrible crimes. Same is true for jews.
By the way, i doubt that the vast majority of lebanese sunnis were ever staunch arab nationalists.
Roman:
Okay then. I actually always though that Phalange was a permanent ally of Israel, but thank you.
But look: If we assume for a moment that the IDF and for example Hezbollah were equal in brutality - how do you think the jews and the arabs would view this point respectively?
Don’t you think that Arabs would bagatelize Hizbollah’s brutality and focus on the Israel? Don’t you think that israelis would do the same the other way around? With my limited experience with human beings, i think both would.
If you agree, then no wonder we are having this discussion now. And for the record, i do not believe in this “scale” of brutality.
ahmad
one of the new historians, as they are known in israel’s historiography, namely benni morris which used to be an extreme leftist who refused to do military service, has compiled one of the most complete account of jewish atrocities during the war of 1948 … apart from well known cases of mass executions, never mind that the total count of these atrocities is a few hundreds of palestinians, mostly males shot up against the wall, there is one detail in his account that was an absolute shocker for me .,.
it appears that at that period there happened even cases of rape .. morris said he documented 10-12 cases of rape of arab women by israelis … in any other israeli arab war or during the occupation of the west bank/gaza, no cases of rape ever happened … theoretically you are right that all people are capable of any kind of atrocities … practically when one of your friends will be shocked to the point of disbelieve to hear that 10 cases of rape happened in darfur or during any other arab arab or arab somebody else war, i will be very interested to hear about this …
Wow! You guys are still discussing this?
Nobody, there is certainly a lot of propaganda demonizing Israel while brushing Arab crimes underneath the carpet.
Sharon is just one part of it. Okay so I see now that the whole Shatila and Sabra incidents weren’t as simplistic as I thought. The only problem for me would be if Israelis tried to “purify” Sharon of misdeeds. It’s the same attitude I see with many Arabs trying to “purify” Hamas.
Anyways, frankly to me discussing history is a headache. You have your version of it and we have ours. Events that happened long ago, happened long ago. They’re in the past. We’ll just bang our heads against one another if we discuss them.
What’s more important is, what do we do from here? How can we lessen the hatred and distrust? And no, not on a massive scale but on various and numerous small ones. That’s what matters more in my opinion and what it ultimately comes down to.
Otherwise let’s just continue and enjoy watching the drama.
very frankly, the best way is ,forth the arabs at least, to deny that the israeli arab conflict has any centrality for the arab world … it was not the bloodiest conflict experienced by the arab world .. neither the israeli occupation was anything severe by the standards of the region let alone that israel repeatedly tried to negotiate withdrawal and even offered that the future palestinain state will annex areas populated by israeli arabs that border the west bank …
resolving the israeli arab conflict, while not a bad thing in itself, will solve none of the problems of the arab world, if it won’t make some of them worse as happened to the palestinians who immediately sunk into a civil war after Israel withdrew from Gaza …
too much of this peaceful blah-blah-logy is counter productive in my view as it helps to maintain the illusion on both sides that the future of the region, if not the whole world, is at stake here and it’s not true
Ahmad, I would say that whenever two theoretical armies wage war, then each country’s population will hold a biased view towards their army, justifying their own atrocities (up to a point) and focusing on the enemy’s brutality.
And yet… Ahmad, in Israel we have people seriously debating this or that action of the IDF, including politicians. Show me such public debates in Arab countries. Heck, man, show me a movement along the lines of Peace Now. And don’t forget that Hezb in no way represents “Great Arab Nation”, it is merely viewed as such by many Arabs because it fights Israel. One of Iran’s current tactics, if you follow Ahmadinejad’s speeches, is to try and get Muslim Arabs to “Unite in Anti-Zionism” with Iran. Seems to be working for their proxy in Lebanon so far…
As for propaganda in Israeli history books, of course people think about it. Heck, man, some of us came from the Soviet Union, and any Jew who lived there long enough is cynical and mistrusting to amazing extremes. Myself, I’m quite satisfied with historical investigation and debate here in Israel, as well as what historians outside Israel have to say on our affairs. Propaganda fails quite miserably when you have a media so free that it will report exact missile strike locations for the extra ratings (which had us wondering what, exactly, happened to wartime military censorship for security matters), an academia so free that some in it freely advocate boycotting Israel (I wasn’t at all surprised when I found out that one of the chief supporters of a possible British academic boycott was a Jewish Israeli professor). We already have historians who bicker over every tiny detail of every event, and as for state policies on history… The newest Minister of Education said that schools identified as National-Arabic (I.E, part of the public school system, but with a focus on Arabic language, culture etc. Another example of such sub-systems of schools here are National-Religious, which have mandatory religious studies. It’s up to the parents whether or not to send them to these schools, to a standard public school, or to a private one) may teach the Nakba, which means teaching the foundation of Israel from the point of view of being a national tragedy to Palestinian Arabs.
A fairly common Jewish trait is to argue and debate everything to death. Partly this is due to the traditional religious studies, but this is also useful for other aspects of life. Annoying at times, but useful.
Regarding change… Yes, Israelis visiting Egypt as tourists may help matters, though Egypt discourages the opposite (you do know that you guys have free access to Eilat, right? And that the Egyptian authorities tend to treat Egyptians who make such visits rather, ah, unkindly, upon their return?). It’s not enough, though. One sided efforts will fail time and time again, especially when a significant part of the population on the other side acts to counter such efforts (be it with banning movies, or calling anything and everything a plot).
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