Juan Cole Sees Some Light

Juan Cole, Professor of Middle East Stuff at the University of Michigan is a well respected member of the left-wing blogosphere and a commonly quoted expert on the Middle East. He also hates Israel. He may or may not hate Jews, I'm sure some of his best friends are Hebrews, but Juanito sure does hate him some Israel.

Just be warned, whenever you see the man quoted in a blog or Mainstream Media, you should know they are employing Edward Said's replacement.

On his website [called Informed Comment, meant to be as truthful as Fox's 'fair and balanced' no doubt] you can read some wonderfully twisted reportage and commentage about the nasty Israelites.

However, as an example of just how bad Hezbollah is, even Juan Cole thinks they have gone too far.

This is important to know because we pro-Israel people don't make a distinction between the PLO, Hamas, or Hezbollah. They are all terrorists; they all want to kill Jews, they will not stop until we're dead. I guess they *do* wear different uniforms and may even kill each other a few times just to keep in practice, but, c'mon, what's the difference?

Anyway, if Juan Cole thinks Hezbollah is off the chain, then I we need to figure out what exactly makes the Hezzies different from the PLO and, uh, explain that to people? Ah, forget it, they'll never follow simple arithmetic.

Anyway, this is what Cole has on his site:

[Ar.] Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah (Hezbollah), gave a televised speech on Sunday explaining his own strategy. He said in an eerily calm and calculating voice that he had aimed his rockets only at military targets, not at Israeli settlements 'in Occupied northern Palestine' (i.e. Israel). In contrast, he said, the Israeli military had from the beginning targeted civilians. (In fact, Nasrallah's katyushas are impossible to aim with any precision and in loosing them on Israel, he inevitably killed and wounded civilians; likewise in Haifa. His opening statement is a self-serving lie.)

He complained at length about Israeli airstrikes against civilian targets. He linked hitting the Israeli warship to Israel's airstrikes on Baalbak [where they hit a Husayniyah or Shiite mourning center].

He added, "We arose to strike at the city of Haifa, and we know the importance and grave significance of this city. Had we targeted with our missiles the chemical and petrochemical factories, an enormous catastrophe would have ensued for the inhabitants of that area. But we deliberately avoided those factories, which were in the sites of our missiles, since we were eager not to push things toward the unknown and were eager that this weapon be a weapon not of revenge but of defense . . . a weapon that would return the crazies in the Olmert government to a modicum of reason and save them from a grandiosity complex, or, I might say, the stupidity whereby they distinguish themselves . . . But because we set those targets aside this time does not mean that we we always adopt this position. At any point where we consider that we are involved in defending our nation and our people and our families, we will resort to all means we can in pursuit of that defense . . . " (-Cole translation)

He also denied that there were any Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon or that he had had Iranian help. He said people were always putting down the Arabs and saying they could not accomplish anything, but, he said, look at the Israeli warship in flames. That was an Arab accomplishment.

Uh, wouldn't an Arab accomplishment be more like, oh, inventing something or building up something nice? Destroying things and killing people is not an accomplishment.

I watched in horror as this maniacal speech unfolded in which Nasrallah actually threatened the Israelis with releasing chemical gas from local factories on civilians in Haifa. Despite fighting them for all those years, he clearly does not understand the Israelis' psyche or the trauma of the Holocaust. A threat like that. The Israelis don't like being caught in a quagmire any more than the next person, which is why Nasrallah could get them to leave southern Lebanon. But his victory appears to have given him megalomania, and he has now gone too far.

Hizbullah's attacks on Israeli civilians are war crimes. The killing of the civilians in Haifa at the train station was a war crime. And threatening to release chemicals from factories on civilian populations is probably a war crime in itself, much less the doing of it.

Obviously, I do not accept that Hizbullah's actions justify the wholesale indiscriminate destruction and slaughter in which the Israelis have been engaged against the Lebanese in general. But they do have every right to defend themselves against Nasrallah and his mad bombers.

If we can only get Cole to understand that Lebanon, ya know, supports Hezbollah... actually, that's too strong... howzibout: Lebanon effectively is Hezbollah... yeah ... maybe he'll see that 1+1 = 2?

Nah.

{2009 Update: pic from campus-watch.}