GETTING OUT FROM UNDER:

The six-day war is not over. Today, it brings the spectre of al-Qaida in Gaza: Victory in 1967 was as much curse as blessing. It paved the way for 40 years of mortal, political and moral disaster (Jonathan Freedland, May 23, 2007, The Guardian)

I am as old as this war. Officially the war of 1967, the year of my birth, lasted for six days. In reality, it's still going on: it is the 14,600-day war. Witness the violence in Gaza, one chunk of the territory which the young state of Israel - then just 19 years old - conquered in that extraordinary, whirlwind victory. In Gaza, there is fighting among the Palestinians - a barely repressed civil war between the old Fatah movement of Yasser Arafat and the Islamists of Hamas - but also between them and the Israelis. Hamas has resumed firing Qassam rockets from Gaza into Israel, a break in their ceasefire. On Monday, one rocket succeeded in killing a civilian, a woman in the southern Israeli town of Sderot. And Israel has resumed its targeted assassinations, including one attack on the home of a Hamas member of parliament, killing eight people. The war which marks its 40th anniversary in a fortnight may have brought Israel a breathtaking victory - but it has brought no peace.

Ever since I first travelled properly in Israel, as a young student, I came to believe that what had been won in 1967 was as much curse as blessing. Yes, Israel had done something remarkable, defeating the armies of three nations that had vowed its destruction. And yes, it salved the wounded psyche of Jews all over the world to see that, just two decades after Auschwitz, the Jews were not fated to be history's permanent victims, but could defend themselves and win. I understood the pride of 1967, the sense of recovered dignity that it brought; subliminally, as a child raised in the glow it brought, I even shared in it.

But I could see 20 years ago what Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, had seen 20 years earlier. Even before the war was over, he was advocating a conditional withdrawal from the territories just won. He understood what holding on to those lands, and the Palestinian people who lived in them, would mean: a mortal, political and moral disaster for the state he had founded and loved.

Democrats make bad occupiers. Doing what needs to be done violates our own ideals as does not trusting the natives to figure it out themselves.

MORE:
Resistance, not terror: The Grand Ayatollah Ahmed Alhasani al-Baghdadi (Munthir Alkewther, 5/24/07, Asia Times)

Munthir Alkewther: What do you think of the resistance in Iraq?

Grand Ayatollah al-Baghdadi: In the name of Allah and from him we seek help. There is a demagogic propaganda against the national and Islamic practical and political resistance, which asserts that [the resistance] targets and kills children, women and old people. Those who carry this propaganda are forgetting that the world is becoming a village and there is a difference between resistance and terror.

Resistance is the right to fight in order to kick out the occupiers from the Islamic homeland. This opinion is based on the Koran and the correct teachings of the Prophet Mohammed. It is also based on international law according to the Geneva Conventions. Terrorism, on the other hand, is what targets the infrastructure and popular areas, and this is one of the biggest sins from an Islamic point of view.

MA: Does this mean you support the resistance carrying guns to enable them to attack the American and British troops?

Al-B: There should be no doubt about it. People have the right to free their countries from any occupation; even President [George W] Bush in a speech condemned terrorism in Iraq and complimented the resistance when he said, "If my country was occupied, I would have fought."

MA: Are you demanding that the Americans leave immediately or gradually?

Al-B: I repeated many times: the Americans should be removed immediately from Iraq, but after I found that all the people who are resisting the occupation were asking for a timetable for the Americans to leave, then I accepted the principle of having a timetable. Even if the Americans' claims come true and a civil war broke out in Iraq, then that should not be a big issue, because as Iraqis we will reach an agreement in the end.

MA: What is the alternative you suggest to the Americans and the Iraqi government, which you describe as American agents?

Al-B: When the Americans and their agents leave we will establish an advisory council to have people with differing political opinions from this nation. We give the Americans a period of two years to leave, then a constitution has to be written by people who are specialized in law, and then this constitution is submitted to the Iraqis for their approval.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 23, 2007 6:56 AM