The PenOpticon

Update: The UN has extended UNIFIL’s mandate for one month to August 31, 2006. This was done “pending consideration of other options for future arrangements in South Lebanon.” Kofi Annan pushed for a one month extension instead of six for obvious reasons. Although some Israeli groups question the very neutrality of UNIFIL, since they are still in the region, they have the power to do more good than harm.

UNIFIL — the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon — has been getting a bad rap lately. In addition to losing four observers to Israeli shells last week, today we learn that two Indian UNIFIL members were wounded during an air strike in the border village of Adaisseh. In total, the 2000-strong UNIFIL group has lost 249 troops since it was first deployed in March of 1978.

To add insult to injury, UNIFIL has been called a weak and ineffectual force by countless media outlets and analysts. Maybe so. But UNIFIL’s ineffectiveness does not mean they have failed. Rather, it is Hezbollah and Israel (and their respective backers and arms dealers) that have failed to keep the peace. UNIFIL’s own press releases tell the story. Depressing statements such as these:

Heavy exchanges of fire continued along the length of the Blue Line in the last 24 hours, with a major concentration in the western sector. Hezbollah fired rockets from various locations, and the IDF continued the shelling and aerial bombardment.

have become a boilerplate paragraphs that appear in daily UNIFIL announcements. The UN group has struggled to resupply its posts with water and provisions while at the same time escorting hundreds of trapped Lebanese civilians to safer ground. It will be interesting to see what happens on July 31 2006 when UNIFIL’s mandate expires. Given the ferocity of this war, and both side’s willingness to inflict collateral damage, UNIFIL has already saved thousands of innocent lives. While the U.S. and Israel dither over when conditions will be right for a cease fire, let us hope UNIFIL’s mandate is extended and even expanded. “Ineffectual” they may be, yet they appear to be the only force in the region doing any good at all.

Last night a CNN Mideast expert confessed that the term “Mideast expert” is an oxymoron. If so, then it’s no wonder people like me are baffled by the shifting ironies and contradictions in this conflict. Consider: the Israeli army has a large number of Russian-born soldiers using American-made weapons to attack and occupy southern Lebanon in order to defend Israel. So far they have managed to kill a large number of civilians (a 10-story apartment building in Tyre was demolished last night). They have killed foreign tourists (including 8 Canadians). They have killed UNIFIL peacekeepers (including another Canadian).

All of this killing is supposed to be an act of “defense” against Hezbollah, who (stupidly) stirred up this mess by capturing 2 Israeli soldiers. I watched a British BBC correspondent tour the carnage in Beirut, while bloodied women screamed out the names of missing children. Then I watched a British-born Israeli soldier explain how the bombing was done with pinpoint accuracy — just surgical strikes. In another report we see Israeli intelligence analysts sporting 3D visors as they explain how they use a system akin to Google Earth to virtually “fly” through Lebanese streets to define targets. Maybe their data points are just a few metres to the left of pinpoint accurate?

Then we have the world’s only remaining superpower pretending to feel “concern” for the Lebanese people, while declaring that conditions are not yet “conducive” for a ceasefire. In order to prove that conditions are not yet right, the U.S. agrees to expedite a shipment of bunker buster bombs. Can someone help me out here? According to the rules of geopolitical etiquette, when a country ships weapons to Israel and humanitarian aid to Lebanon, is it OK to ship everything on the same airplane?

To further confuse the issue, Israel announces they will not seek to “expand the offensive” (I thought this was defense?) but that they are calling up an additional 30,000 troops.

I can not imagine the political machinations that must be taking place in Washington (while my country’s dopey PM tags along as best he can). Does they Bush administration seriously think all of this death will do anything but guarantee another decade of terrorism? Are they trying to divert attention from Iraq? By hammering Hezbollah do they think they are somehow fighting Iran by proxy?

At the same time, Hamas and Hezbollah would do better to disarm and put their resources into a coordinated publicity campaign to raise awareness of Israel’s border incursions and shameful treatment of Palestinians as others are already doing. Of course, such a campaign could only work if Hamas and Hezbollah refrained from suicide bombings and other terror activities. Oh yes — and they would have to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Or why not just keep on fighting. Keep pouring more money, weapons and blood into the region so that U.S. arms makers can keep their stockholders happy. War hasn’t solved anything in the past and the only thing certain in the region is war not solve any problems in the future. But that is no reason to stop fighting, is it? Not in an area of the world where conditions are not conducive to reason.

Well, what with the summer heat, an unavoidable home renovation project and various other leaky pipes and infrastructure “malfunctions”, I’ve been running out of time and energy to blog. As well, my blogal lobe has been trying to process the events in Lebanon and unfortunately it’s doing a “heckuva good job” (in the Mike Brown/FEMA sense of the phrase). I keep hearing about the need for “nuanced” discussion and understanding of the conflict. But I can’t seem to get anywhere near such a thing. I’m not sure I want to although “On the Face” provides a thoughtful — and mostly nuanced — Israeli point of view.

But in the less-nuanced world, today we saw pictures of a happy, smiling Condoleezza Rice meeting with Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. Earnestly, she told him how the U.S. is “deeply concerned about the Lebanese people and what they are enduring”. But the U.S. has many concerns. In April 2005, Israel asked the U.S. to sell them 100 guided bunker-busting bombs and (several days ago) asked that the sale be fast-tracked. Yesterday Bush agreed so an unspecified number of two-ton bombs may already be en route to Israel. Has anyone checked the FedEx tracking number to see exactly where these things are? So how do you reconcile Condee’s “deep concern” with the fact that the U.S. is selling/giving a good chunk of the hardware to Israel for use in this war. Anyone?

So what’s with the Ladybug? Well… I didn’t manage to snag any decent bird photos this week. We checked out the local sewage ponds for interesting shorebirds on Sunday morning and all my camera has to show for it is this Ladybug with aphids. So, imagine if you will, that the green leaf represents some remote corner of the world. The Ladybug represents a large, technologically advanced army. There are at least two kinds of aphids. One color represents ordinary citizens and the other may be some sort of militant organization. The point of all this is that, as Marissa K. Bergman proved in the 2002 California State Science Fair, Ladybugs are color-blind and can’t tell which is which. Essentially, almost all of these aphids are about to become the Ladybug’s lunch. Given the number of Lebanese families that have been destroyed and the number of Lebanese children that have been killed or maimed, this is about as nuanced as I can get.

I felt compelled to blog the last few entries on Israel’s “incursion” into Lebanon because it struck me that bombing a country into oblivion and killing hundreds of people is an absurd response to Hezbollah’s kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. In addition to the human toll, I’m also saddened by the environmental implications of this war — by the waste of energy and resources that will be needed to rebuild Lebanon and by a growing suspicion that part of Israel’s strategy is to secure water resources such as Lebanon’s Litani River.

So, although I have my peculiar opinions, I’m a rank amateur at this. I find it too easy to fall into the trap of trying to appropriate an “authoritative” voice of a pundit or analyst. What I really mean to say is just too obvious, I guess: simply that war is such an ugly, repugnant thing, it is difficult to believe we still have ‘em. I believe violence and war really are “the last refuge of the incompetent”, as Robert Heinlein used to say. It’s interesting that “civilized” nations seem to have more than their fair share. But such things are easy to say, aren’t they? Especially for someone who has never experienced the real thing.

So I’ll defer to better expressed opinions and information at antiwar.com.  As harsh as his words are, much of what Paul Craig Roberts writes in “The Shame of Being an American” rings true to me and applies equally well to Canada, the UK and Australia and any other country giving Israel a free pass to use terror tactics to subdue the people living in southern Lebanon.

It is strange and peculiar that a large swath of Queens and La Guardia airport in NY has been without electricity for five days. Utility workers are  repairing feeder lines and transformers, but they have not yet found the root cause of the failure. Con Edison officials told the New York Times that damage was “significant and extensive.”

So where has all the power gone? If I didn’t know better, I’d guess that the protagonist in Ralph Ellison’s 1952 Invisible Man just might know the answer. Ellison’s guy is alive and well and living near Harlem, but in order to survive, the Invisible Man must live underground, must operate beneath the radar of a dominant culture that refuses to include him. He writes:

I have been carrying on a fight with Monopolated Light and Power for some time now. I use their service and pay them nothing at all, and they don’t know it. Oh, they suspect that power is being drained off, but they don’t know where. All they know is that according to the master meter back there in their power station a hell of a lot of free current is disappearing somewhere into the jungle of Harlem… My hole is warm and full of light. Yes full of light. I doubt there is a brighter spot in all New York than this hole of mine, and I do not exclude Broadway. Or the Empire State Building on a photographer’s dream night.

In many ways the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and almost everyone in southern Lebanon seem to be invisible these days. How else can one explain the indiscriminate way in which Israel has been pulverizing Beirut? Who would drop bombs on young children if they were not invisible? Of course, Hezbollah and Hamas are living in a dream world if they do not believe in Israel’s right to exist. But, at the same time, the only way Israel can truly disarm these militant factions is by offering Palestinians a full share of life in the region. They could start with an equitable distribution of water and electricity. Since israel bombed a power station serving Gaza City, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have gone with out electricity and without enough water (since electricity is required in order to pump it). As far as water goes, it is interesting that Israel wants to push Hezbollah north of the Litani river. As Marq De Villiers noted in Water:

The Israelis have never really given up thinking of the Litani as rightfully theirs. And since almost half the water used in Israel is already captured, diverted, or pre-empted from its neighbors, why stop there?

Although much of the electricity in Queens, Lebanon and Gaza has gone “missing” of late, it will ultimately be restored with the help of engineers and line workers. But these electrical repairs will only be temporary fixes unless we also repair cultural and economic circuit breakers. Anything less and the global grid will remain broken and increasingly unreliable. The displaced and the invisible will get some of what they need one way or another.