‘Withdrawing doesn’t work’: the distorted logic of Netanyahu and his ilk
It always bemuses me how wanton distortion of causality works. It recalls the famous remark from Francis Bacon, recalling Aesop: It was prettily devised of Aesop: The fly sat upon the axle-tree of the chariot-wheel, and said, What a dust do I raise!
A similar kind of false causality, which has its own internal logic but is nevertheless fallacious, can be seen in Israeli political and military circles that absurdly attribute apparently increased violence to withdrawal.
As the warped logic goes, “we unilaterally withdrew” (from Gaza, forgetting the increased illegal settlements in the West Bank, forgetting the invasions and ongoing occupation and creation of an open-air prison and cutting off of electricity and countless other acts), yet “THEY” (read Palestinians, and now Lebanese) have the temerity to fight back and resist us, therefore it was a stupid decision to withdraw in the first place.
See Netanyahu’s latest coments in a Sydney Morning Herald article today speculating about Olmert’s next moves:
“We left Lebanon to the last centimetre and they are firing. We left Gaza to the last centimetre and they are firing,” said Mr Netanyahu, who refused to support the decision by his former party leader, Ariel Sharon, to withdraw from Gaza last year.
It doesn’t even seem to occur to Netanyahu that its not the withdrawal causing the unrest, its the occupation, stupid. This rhetoric is cultivated only to “prove” that the far-overdue act of (grudging) withdrawal from another people’s land is somehow wrong and that they are somehow just congenitally predisposed towards violence. No, Mr Netanyahu, its called resistance. (Not to mention that withdrawal-with-continued-occupation is not really a withdrawal).
And here, speculation about what the political falllout from Lebanon could spell for plans in the West Bank:
The war in Lebanon has raised widespread doubts about Mr Olmert’s leadership and could affect his plan to unilaterally withdraw Israeli troops and settlements from the West Bank.
Well Mr Netanyahu has no reservations in stating that those who have the temerity to resist (sorry, they are “terrorists”) must still be disarmed and that this spells another war:
The opposition leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has received widespread praise for his refusal to personally attack Mr Olmert during the fighting, said the ceasefire plan had failed to ensure that Hezbollah would disarm and would lead to another war.
“Right now, we are in an interim period between wars,” Mr Netanyahu said.
“Unfortunately, there will be another round because the Government’s just demands weren’t met.”
The government’s demands weren’t met? I’ll give you a few “demands” – don’t lay waste to a whole country, end the occupation, stop imprisoning the elected officials of Palestine, along with hundreds of other political prisoners, initiate a dialogue with Hamas and Hezbollah – yes, that’s right – a real novelty, talk to them. And a few others: adhere to UN resolutions, give Lebanon maps of landmines that continue to kill in South Lebanon, stop this insane adventurism for which there is no military solution, as the Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery has been telling us.
But no, Netanyahu’s response is that withdrawal was a mistake:
He said the conflict showed that Israel’s policy of unilaterally withdrawing from occupied territory was a failure.
The only thing he got right was that unilateralism was wrong.
Many of Israel’s leaders seem to think that consultation doesn’t exist in their vocabulary, at least inasmuch as it applies to the rest of the Middle East. Negotiate with Arabs, how unthinkable! But peace treaties were forged with Egypt and the Jordan and if Israel doesn’t deign to talk to its neighbours, peace will and that much sought after commodity security will be hard to come by.
Security Israel wants. But does it want peace?
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