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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Military / Setting An Example Of Making An Example

Setting An Example Of Making An Example

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“Son, where did you learn about disproportionate military response?”

“From you, Dad! I learned it from watching you, okay?!?”

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Wednesday that Israel should harshly respond to the Hezbollah shelling of IDF convoys near the border with Lebanon.

“The firing of rockets at our sovereign territory should be responded to harshly and disproportionately, just as China or the US would in similar circumstances,” said Lieberman.

Countries that blow up the crap out of the Middle East have client states that blow up the crap out of the Middle East.

And we wonder why Gaza is 139 square miles of lunar craters and despair with checkpoints.

Reader Interactions

46Comments

  1. 1.

    Cluttered Mind

    Avigdor Lieberman really had to work at it as there was stiff competition, but he managed to win the title of The Worst Lieberman.

  2. 2.

    Davis X. Machina

    Lieberman doesn’t actually need the example of the US, or China.
    He’s probably fondly recalling pictures of Grozny.
    Not that he’ll mention Russia in this context.

  3. 3.

    Paul W.

    Bush the younger excluded, I’m pretty sure the US actually normally executes proportional responses. That being one of the benefits, and drawbacks, of being a superpower is that you set the terms of the engagement or could risk exacerbating it if you respond disproportionately.

    So, I know it’s fun to take idiots like Lieberman at face value, but if it wasn’t one excuse it would be another. Most people these days, such as the recently ousted Sri Lankan President Raj, “learn” that disproportionate responses “work” from Israel. You know, where they have the whole Palestine thing neatly sorted out right now.

  6. 6.

    Comrade Dread

    And we wonder why Gaza is 139 square miles of lunar craters and despair with checkpoints.

    I don’t wonder at all.

    And I won’t be surprised when the inevitable ethnic cleansing and/or genocide happens either. Nor will I be surprised when the apologists for it show up on our cable TVs and explain why it’s not really ethnic cleansing/genocide because the ‘good’ guys are doing it.

    And we will share the blame for giving them weapons.

  8. 8.

    Cervantes

    @Paul W.:

    Bush the younger excluded, I’m pretty sure the US actually normally executes proportional responses.

    Well, look at Grenada. Or Panama. Or Nicaragua. Or even Cuba.

    Were these responses? To what were they proportional?

  10. 10.

    dedc79

    @Paul W.:

    I’m pretty sure the US actually normally executes proportional responses

    Would you call our response to 9/11 – particularly the part where we invaded Iraq – proportional?

  12. 12.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Israel is its own country, and does not need the US to lead it. If anything, the process works the other way – and is bizarrely out of tune with the rest of international politics. I assure you, the Likud’s desire for genocide and Israel’s broader ‘he pulls a knife, you pull a gun’ philosophy are Israel things. If he references US behavior, he’s just grabbing arguments of authority to justify what he would have justified some other way.

  14. 14.

    Botsplainer

    At some point in time when the combined Arab states get their shit together and overrun Israel en masse (a no longer interested US government standing by and doing nothing other than evacuating refugees from the bombed out port of Haifa, the glowing suburbs of Tel Aviv and the artillery fire cratered streets and homes of West Jerusalem), I doubt that Likud or its conservative enablers in the US will be capable of recognizing what they wrought.

    The world will keep spinning, and the overwhelming public attitude everywhere outside the US will be one of “meh”.

  16. 16.

    daveNYC

    Israel rolled hot into Lebanon in 1978 and the big one in 1982. I don’t think they needed the example of Iraq to shape their behavior.

  17. 17.

    Cervantes

    @dedc79:

    Well, I suppose one could argue that Bush II’s behavior was an outlier — but it would take an argument, of course.

  18. 18.

    SRW1

    How far off the mark is it to speculate that Israel is putting its thumb on the scale in Syria? I doubt that the Israeli government would like to see the jihadis there win outright, but maximizing the mayhem certainly would serve Israel’s interests.

    That mysterious Israeli helicopter attack on the Golan heights on January 18 that killed an Iranian general and six Hezbollah men did not happen for nothing and the Israelis must have known that Hezbollah would respond.

  19. 19.

    Botsplainer

    @daveNYC:

    Lets not forget the fact that they completely fucked a barely resurgent weak (but moderate and pro-Western) Lebanese government in ’06 over a Hezbollah cross border raid against Israeli armored units and the abduction of a few Israeli soldiers.

    Hezbollah’s actions were not santioned by the Lebanese government, which does not have a large security component, and is in fact a weak government that would score high on a libertarian scale (low tax rates, not a lot of agencies of force). The real downside is that the Lebanese government was in no position to exert any control over Hezbollah because of this.

    While the Israelis publicly stated that they weren’t blaming the Lebanese government, they were acting on a policy of total war on any territory from which barely effective rocket attacks came. Wiki sums it up like this:

    During the war the Israeli Air Force flew 11,897 combat missions, which was more than the number of sorties during the 1973 October War (11,223) and almost double the number during the 1982 First Lebanon War (6,052).

    The Israeli artillery fired 170,000 shells, more than twice the number fired in the 1973 October War. A senior officer in the IDF Armored Corps told Haaretz that he would be surprised if it turned out that even five Hezbollah fighters had been killed by the 170,000 shells fired.

    The Israeli Navy fired 2,500 shells.

    The combined effect of the massive air and artillery bombardment on Hezbollah capacity to fire short-range Katyusha rockets on northern Israel was very meager. According to the findings of the post-war military investigations the IDF shelling succeeded only in destroying about 100 out of 12,000 Katyusha launchers – less than one percent of the total. The massive fire led to a severe shortage of ammunition towards the end of the war. According to Human Rights Watch, 51 combatants were killed in Israeli bombardments.

    Northern command had prepared a list before the war on potential Hezbollah targets, identified by the Israeli intelligence, to be struck in case of renewed hostilities. By the fourth day of the war the IDF ran out of targets, as all the 83 targets on the list had already been hit. A high-ranking IDF officer told reporters off the record that the Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz had ordered the air force to destroy ten 12-story buildings in the Southern suburbs of Beirut for every rocket that fell on Haifa. The statement was denied by the IDF spokesperson.

    Large parts of the Lebanese civilian infrastructure, however, were destroyed, including 400 miles (640 km) of roads, 73 bridges, and 31 other targets such as Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport, ports, water and sewage treatment plants, electrical facilities, 25 fuel stations, 900 commercial structures, up to 350 schools and two hospitals, and 15,000 homes. Some 130,000 more homes were damaged.

    And what the ultimate cost was to Lebanese civil society?

    Israel attacked both Hezbollah military targets and Lebanese civilian infrastructure, including Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Israel also imposed an air and naval blockade. Hezbollah then launched more rockets into northern Israel and engaged the IDF in guerrilla warfare from hardened positions.

    The conflict is believed to have killed between 1191 and 1300 Lebanese people, and 165 Israelis. It severely damaged Lebanese civil infrastructure, and displaced approximately one million Lebanese and 300,000–500,000 Israelis.

  20. 20.

    Paul W.

    @dedc79: See above, where I excluded Bush the younger.

    And to the other response, yes there are times where we took the initiative ourselves. There is a difference between exacting a reprisal and having other motivations for taking action, but that’s always the case. If you want to invade a country, *cough* Russia *cough*, you invent reasons, if you actually want to create some semblance of justice and actually prevent negative outcomes from happening again then you respond proportionally to deter it.

  21. 21.

    Bobby B.

    It’s God’s will that the Middle East remains a howling pit of death and horror unto the end of Time (sorry, my meds aren’t kicking in yet).

  23. 23.

    Chris

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    This.

    America’s share of responsibility in Israel’s behavior isn’t inspiring it, it’s enabling it. Like the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, the mass reprisals we saw in 2006, 2008, and 2014 have become a routine, once-in-a-few-years thing that’s getting worse, not better, because Israel knows with absolute certainty that America will have its back no matter how far it goes. In the absolute worst-case scenario when you have a president who isn’t wild about it like right now, Congress will ensure that this discomfort doesn’t translate into real consequences. America may not always do what they want (we still haven’t bombed Iran), but it’ll always tolerate what they do. And as long as they’ve got America, they don’t need anyone else.

  24. 24.

    Chris

    @Comrade Dread:

    By “when,” I assume you mean “right now and for decades past,” unless you specifically meant only the Gaza strip. Genocide maybe not, but ethnic cleansing absolutely describes the West Bank and has for decades. And our cable TVs have indeed been justifying it and explaining why it’s not really ethnic cleansing for that long.

    @Botsplainer:

    Never happen. Israel has nukes, the very best the Arab world would be able to achieve is a tie in which everyone goes down in smoke. And most of them realize it too – the current governments have almost all made their peace with Israel’s existence in some way or other, whether they say so publicly or not (it’s been over forty years since Israel has faced an invasion, and that’s no accident). The Palestinians in the West Bank, and weak neighboring states like Lebanon and Gaza, are on their own. How Israel sorts out the “demographic threat” is the only question left, but I wouldn’t bet on it going in the Arabs’ favor there either.

  25. 25.

    scav

    This continual rapid switching between exagerated balls in the face dick-and-missile-swinging and the fluttering why does everyone always hate our poor little selves routine gets increasingly tedious.

  26. 26.

    Amber

    Every single person in this thread is ignoring the PATENTLY OBVIOUS issue happening here, namely that Israel has an election in about a month and some change and a long-standing history of a populace that votes right-wing whenever there are security threats/a war/impending war. Same way the US votes do.

    Which is, no doubt coincidentally, why the right wing politicians in Israel keep doing these strange things, like ordering a helicopter strike in Syria and risking retribution from Lebanon or Iran. Or talking tough about starting a new Lebanon war. It’s exactly the way that the Republicans in the US start talking about war every time they’re up for election, to show they’re tough and to make people afraid.

    Instead nearly every comment in this thread takes Liberman (who, btw, has a massive corruption scandal going on at home that basically eradicated his party and is dying to get into the news about anything other than that) at face value and ascribes his position to the entire Israel government. Excuse me while I go beat my head in against a wall. C’mon guys, you have awesome, nuanced examinations of politicking and face-saving PR moves in the US. Other countries (especially ones in which a number of important right-wing politicians were educated in the US and draw their advisors in part from Republican party operatives) do the same!

  27. 27.

    John M. Burt

    “And we wonder why Gaza is 139 square miles of lunar craters and despair with checkpoints.”

    I was never unclear on how that happened. Was someone unclear on it?

  28. 28.

    Cervantes

    @Comrade Dread:

    And I won’t be surprised when the inevitable ethnic cleansing and/or genocide happens either.

    Here’s a little something that happened in October 1948, in Al-Dawayima, one of many ancient Arab villages that existed in Israel’s Lakhish district:

    [Israeli Prime Minister] Ben-Gurion, quoting General Avner, briefly referred in his war diary to the ‘rumours’ that the [Israeli Army] had ‘slaughtered 70–80 persons.’ [A second-hand account by Kaplan, a parliamentarian] described the witness [an Israeli soldier] as ‘one of our people, an intellectual, 100 percent reliable.’ The village, wrote Kaplan, had been held by Arab ‘irregulars’ and was captured by the 89th Battalion without a fight. ‘The first [wave] of conquerors killed about 80 to 100 men, women, and children. The children they killed by breaking their heads with sticks. There was not a house without dead,’ wrote Kaplan. Kaplan’s informant, who arrived immediately afterwards in the second wave [of attackers], reported that Arab men and women who remained were then shut away in houses ‘without food or water.’ Sappers arrived to blow up the houses. One commander ordered a sapper to put two old women in a certain house … and to blow up the house with them. The sapper refused … The commander then ordered his men to put the old women in the house and the evil deed was done. One soldier boasted that he had raped a woman and then shot her. One woman, with a newborn baby in her arms, was employed to clean the courtyard where the soldiers ate. She worked a day or two. In the end they shot her and her baby.

    The Jewish population of the aforementioned Lakhish district now exceeds 70,000, while the Arab population is zero.

    The quotation is from Israeli historian Benny Morris (The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 2004).

    (And yes, I’ve mentioned it here before, sorry.)

  29. 29.

    Botsplainer

    @Chris:

    The victimized perpetually occupied (the occupation zones getting seemingly larger with each Israeli security improvement) haven’t gotten much of a fair shake out of the existing governments, true. The radicalization that seems to be occurring is shifting that calculus.

    There was an opportunity for a more secular Middle East. Israel fucked that all to hell, with the willing connivance of American conservatives. What is now in place is a competing set of Islamist warlords, the only real counterweight to warlordism seeming to be the Kurds (destined to fuck Turkey every which way), and surprisingly, Iranian Shi’ites, who do seem to like to govern realistically and have a relatively stable (even if hyperconservative) society.

    ETA: Yes, Israel has nukes, and is morally degenerate enough to use them against civilian populations for inadequate causus belli, just because. I’m beginning to think them a liability, and not game changers, not anymore. It would be the very action that would be cited as justification to hang every member of a cabinet that affirmed their use for the war crime it would be.

  30. 30.

    BruinKid

    True, but I’m always wary when it can be simplified to the Ron Paul fan’s cry of “blowback” as the all-encompassing answer to everything. Meanwhile, I see my Ron Paul friend just posted this anti-vaccination screed on Facebook. So I’m guessing someone should ask Rand Paul ASAP what his opinion is on vaccines, and if he agrees with his dad. Get the crazy out there in the open for all to see. My God, the utter stupidity of not understanding the basic concepts of immunology.

    So no, I will not vaccinate my kiddos. I will not avoid public places. I will also not put up with the intolerant sewage and bigotry coming out of your mouth or anyone else’s who thinks they have the right to weigh-in on my parenting. You want to vaccinate your kiddo and put every single child at risk? You go right ahead.

    We can still be friends but don’t take it personal when I avoid your recently vaccinated child for 3-6 weeks until the risk of viral shedding has passed and don’t be mad when I call your bluff when you say you’ll assault my unvaccinated child on the street when your temporary junk immunity to measles has long worn off. Whoa, you didn’t know you were just as much of a risk to that immunocompromised kid as my child is? Better get your booster.

    And oh, by the way, if this Disney measles outbreak taught you anything, it’s that the vaccinated can get measles and it is no more deadly than your seasonal sinus infection.

  36. 36.

    Kylroy

    @Botsplainer: So…Israel’s willingness to use nukes is a liability why? If Israel is in legitimate danger of being obliterated as a state (which I think we agree is far from current reality, but you state is still an inevitability), I really don’t think their cabinet is going to worry about what the Hague will say.

    The nukes are a liability to making Israel popular internationally, but I figure they have to weigh on the mind of any Arab state planning an attack. I don’t think any Islamic country is going to consider MAD worth getting Israel eliminated, except ISIL-level extremists.

  37. 37.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Kylroy: In 1973, as things looked pretty glum at the end of the Yom Kippur day, supposedly the Israeli cabinet seriously discussed using the nukes.

    As it turned out, the tide turned in both the Sinai and Golan shortly thereafter, and they backed off from the precipice.

  38. 38.

    Kylroy

    @Villago Delenda Est: Which means my (and I think Botsplainer’s) view of the current Israeli mentality was in place in 1973. The Arab states of 1973 were apparently willing to risk getting nuked, but the immediate aftermath showed them making a peace that has lasted (in terms of nations vs. nation, threat-to-Israel’s-existence conflicts) to the present day. Despite the perpetual saber-rattling, I think the leadership of the Arab states is more interested in nursing the grievance against Israel as a way to keep their populace focused elsewhere than actually destroying Israel as a nation.

  39. 39.

    Cervantes

    @Kylroy:

    Despite the perpetual saber-rattling, I think the leadership of the Arab states is more interested in nursing the grievance against Israel as a way to keep their populace focused elsewhere than actually destroying Israel as a nation.

    And do you think the leadership of Israel is aware that actual destruction of Israel is not a primary Arab interest?

  41. 41.

    Botsplainer

    @Kylroy:

    There’s no way to be sure, but the Israeli leadership of 1973 seems far sharper than the leadership now. Faced with that sort of crisis as existed in the Yom Kippur War, can you see Netanyahu reacting in a measured, deliberate way, or would he lose his shit and go all in?

  42. 42.

    Chris

    @Cervantes:

    I think they’re aware that it’s not a major interest of the current dictators and monarchs of the Arab world, but aren’t so sure about their populations. Which is why they’re much more comfortable having the dictators and monarchs (Assad being the exception – though now, not so sure anymore).

  43. 43.

    Spinwheel

    And we wonder why Gaza is 139 square miles of lunar craters and despair with checkpoints.

    Nobody “wonders” why, you asshole. It’s because Netanyahu is murdering Palestinians by the truckload and Obama looks the other way.

  44. 44.

    Sloegin

    Back and forth, back and forth. Israel bombs a bunch of Hezbollah leadership plus a visiting Iranian general, Hezbollah fires some rockets at an IDF convoy in response, and here we are.

  45. 45.

    Kylroy

    @Botsplainer: Yeah, I think he’d glass the Middle East. And I think that the heads of state in the Arab world know that, and aren’t eager for confrontation (especially since that sort of unified front to wipe out Israel hasn’t existed in my lifetime).

    Beyond that, I think Islamophobia in the U.S. and (especially) Europe means that he’d pay no price with nations he hasn’t already crippled. I mean, we’d condemn them, embargo them, and issue warrants for their arrest if they ever leave Israel, but enough of the West would be cheering dead Arabs that anything more than that would be hard to achieve. And I think Bibi (or his decades-later successor) would find that a fair trade for ensuring that Israel’s enemies are all gone.

  46. 46.

    PIGL

    @Spinwheel: To be fair to Obama, it’s no just him. Every western leader is looking the other way, or cheering them on. One day, that will change, and then we can find out how much having nuclear weapons helps when nobody want to do business with you anymore. The problem Israel faces is not the arabs. The problem is that the Shoa is rapidly passing from living memory, and the rest of the world is no longer buying their bullshit.

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