Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 10:55:50 +0200
Subject: Re: AUT: Israel in Crisis: Why Now?


Hi People

Scott Hamilton wrote:

> Maybe I'm being misled by the media, but it seems to
> me that the tide of the war in Palestine has changed
> in the space of a few days.

The tide of the war changed about two months ago.
The demolition of houses in Rafa and the killing of a Palestinian
commander near his home proved to all that Sharon do not want
any kind of settlement.

It was during the second time that the Palestinian attacks
were at a very low level, and the articles in the media were
trying to guess what Sharon will do.

As predicted by many he initiated few provocations to inflame the
region. In addition, the army spoke person and generals tried to
lie to the Israelis and the world in spite ample evidence.

> After a handful of
> sophisticated and successful Palestinian attacks the
> Nazionist state is running scared: Sharon is under
> pressure, deserters' and peace activists' protests are
> spreading to the mainstream, and the 'kill em all'
> right is getting ever more shrill.

The new wave of refusers in public means shift in the
public opinions of the elite. People who evade the service
are many thousands, but as long as they do it in private
it was tolerated.

> The thing that strikes me is the fact that the losses
> caused by the Palestinians are, in a strictly military
> sense, peanuts. The attack that really threw Israel
> into panic mode - the attack on a checkpoint a couple
> of days ago - was a hit and run affair that killed
> only six soldiers.

It was after the most sophisticated Israeli tank was demolished.
Most of the people are now aware that the army cannot
extinguish the Intifada, and the fight is only on the nature of the
settlement.

> It's not like there is any chance
> of Israel is in danger of suffering a strictly
> military defeat, so some other factor is presumably
> behind the sea change.

Continuous terror is a sufficient factor to demoralize a
country with deep recession.

> Are we seeing the hidden hand of the great victory of
> the Vietnam war showing itself here? Before Vietnam,
> horrendously costly wars like World War 2 and Korea
> evoked little protests in America; after Vietnam,
> imperialist adventures are constrained by a terror of
> prolonged and/or high-cost war.

If you need analog - look to South Africa...............

> As Black Hawk Down
> inadvertently shows, one decent scrap frightened
> America out of Somalia; a couple of weeks of steady
> rsistance in Afghanistan was enough to cause a
> creeping crisis before the timely Northern Alliance
> breakthrough.
>
> I think that Toni Negri has argued that there has been
> a radical change in the willingness of 'the
> proletariat to die in war' over recent decades. Has he
> got a point?

The nationalist ideology that enabled the elite to send
soldiers to die is diminishing in a neo-liberal and globalized
world. Information in real time prevent the complete
dehumanization of the enemy.

When a Palestinian whose home was demolished in Rafa
speak in the radio in perfect Hebrew without accent, it is
hard to demonize him.

> Would Israel be in crisis if the recent
> attacks been mounted thirty years ago, during (say)
> Nasser's War of Attrition? Just wondering...

Of course it was not helping. In Israel, the Nazionist settler
colonialism have now the growing modern capitalism as an
enemy.

Just make the Israeli capitalists suffer a bit more and they
will kick the Nazionists out of the government.
Ilan




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