Make love and war

Ricochet

Back in 2007, the pages of Maxim magazine played host to a public relations effort to refurbish the image of the Israel Defense Forces, which had been tarnished by—among other nefarious affairs—the organized slaughter of civilians in Lebanon and Gaza the previous year.

The magazine spread featured scantily clad women, sporting bust-accentuating bikinis and come-hither looks—“The Chosen Ones,” apparently, of the Israeli military.

Seven years later, the female body has acquired additional uses in the context of Israel’s war machine. A page titled “Standing With the IDF” recently debuted on Facebook with an appeal for women to submit photographs of themselves for morale-boosting purposes among Israeli troops. This resulted in expressions of love for the IDF being emblazoned across various breasts and buttocks.

To be sure, naked women will always be way hotter than piles of corpses. READ MORE AT RICOCHET.

Informant nation

Middle East Eye

It’s no secret that the 9/11 terror attacks in the US constituted a boon for various enterprises—weapons manufacturers, defence contractors, private security firms—which saw a soaring need for their products and services in the ensuing bellicosity abroad and the fortification of the homeland.

An array of new professional opportunities also sprang up, such as in the field of “terrorism expertise”. The ranks of domestic informants swelled, too, and the FBI currently boasts over 15,000 of them. Many are assigned to Muslim communities.

“Informants”, a new documentary by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit, sheds light on this last component of the 9/11 industry and confirms that we pessimists generally aren’t exaggerating when it comes to US policy.

Convicted con artist Craig Monteilh, one of the informants interviewed in the film, summarises his motive for faking a conversion to Islam in order to enhance his employability by the FBI: “I wanted to be in on the big game, and to be paid top dollar for it.’” READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.

A New Round of Birth Pangs

TeleSUR English

During Israel’s 2006 war on Lebanon—a 34-day affair that ultimately killed approximately 1200 persons, primarily civilians—then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice helpfully described the carnage as the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.”

Of course, some observers may have been at a loss to detect the war’s life-giving qualities. But “birth pangs” admittedly sounds better than, say, the “coat-hanger abortion of the Middle East.”

The blatant Orientalism embodied in Rice’s suggestion is certainly par for the course among U.S. politicians and pundits, for whom the Arab/Muslim world is a backwards region that lacks agency and must be whipped into shape by the “West” and its adopted progeny, the state of Israel.

The 2006 birth pangs were Orientalism 101—the presumed creation of the Middle East according to Western specifications. In this case, Israel’s godlike efforts were facilitated by rush shipments of bombs from the U.S. (Other Orientalist incursions by the empire and its friends have featured Arabs and Muslims in slightly post-fetal stages of development; see, for example, New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman’s depiction of Afghanistan as a “special needs baby”). READ MORE AT TeleSUR ENGLISH.

The second coming of the caliphate in Spain

Al Jazeera

In June, Spanish monarch Juan Carlos abdicated the throne in favour of his son Felipe.

More drastic systemic rearrangements have since been proposed, however, by the guardians of another world order. A short video, the subject of recent hype in the Spanish media, features two men who claim to be jihadists in Syria and who explain - in Spanish - that "Spain is the land of our grandfathers" and will thus be reclaimed for Islam as part of the effort to recuperate rightful territory "from Jakarta to Andalusia". (Their particular jihadist outfit is not specified.)

The tone of the declaration is slightly less than spine-chilling. The holy warriors appear carefree, and one laughingly encourages the other to speak: "Come on, man."

Of course, some view prospects of land recuperation as more apocalyptic in nature. On her website Atlas Shrugs, professional Islamophobe Pamela Geller took credit for predicting the impending Muslim takeover; in a post under the category Spain's Islamic Kingdom, she wrote: "Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Libya… Jordan and now Rome and Spain. Regular Atlas readers have been expecting this for some time". READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA.

Dershowitz’s tunnel vision

Middle East Eye

Let’s imagine for a moment that recently retired Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz defended animals rather than criminals and savage states.

In a case involving the mauling of a goat by a hyena, for example, a typical Dershowitzian approach might argue that the hyena was engaged in self-defence and that the civilised world must thus stand behind it.

In a situation in which a group of hyenas devours an entire goat farm, including an array of baby goats, he might instead lecture us that the goats in question had built underground tunnels to facilitate the mass murder and kidnapping of young hyenas.

It may appear that Dershowitz has been over-represented in my writings of late, but the fact is that the man is never absent from the sidelines during periods of systematic slaughter of Palestinians and other Arabs by the state of Israel. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.

Burn Before Reading

Jacobin

Matt Taibbi once remarked with regard to the journalistic techniques ofThomas Friedman, the New York Times foreign affairs columnist, corporate lapdog, and Iraq war fetishist: “Friedman never forgets to name the company or the brand name; if he had written The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa would have awoken from uneasy dreams in a Sealy Posturepedic.”

So we can only imagine what must have been Friedman’s utmost glee when the current Israeli slaughter of Palestinians enabled him to unleash the sentences: “You used to need a contract with Boeing to get a drone. Now you can make one in Gaza.”

This analysis appears in Friedman’s latest dispatch, titled “Order vs. Disorder, Part 2” (never mind that the previous column was titled “The World According to Maxwell Smart, Part 1”). In the lede, Friedman asserts that the Israeli-Arab conflict is “to the wider war of civilizations what Off Broadway is to Broadway … a miniature of the most relevant divide in the world today: the divide between the ‘world of order’ and the ‘world of disorder.’” READ MORE AT JACOBIN.

Israel’s war on civilisation

Middle East Eye

The recent Haaretz headline “Hamas rockets spur births in southern Israel” might raise a few eyebrows. After all, isn’t the reason for the current demolition of the Gaza Strip supposed to be that Hamas rockets endanger Israeli life, not “spur” it?

According to the article, the staff of Be'er Sheva's Soroka Medical Center observed a 10 percent increase in births in the days following the debut of Operation Protective Edge last week. The “surge” was attributed to the stress of air raid sirens and other centrepieces of life in Israel whenever the state is pummeling its neighbors. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.

Schnitzel the Cat

Jacobin

In my last blog post, I marveled at Israeli resilience in managing to survive — with the help of Facebook and other life-saving devices — the wanton slaughter Israel’s military is currently inflicting on the Gaza Strip. One hundred seventy-two persons have thus far been killed in the coastal prison, but at least the Palestinians don’t have to listen to air raid sirens.

As it turns out, humans are not the only heroes in wartime Israel. A Jerusalem Post article headlined “Missiles are no match for Schnitzel the Cat” reports that an Israeli cat “escape[d] unscathed after missile shrapnel fell directly on his tree Sunday afternoon.” The shrapnel, we are told, was the result of a rocket interception by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system. The scene is captured in a 12-second security camera video, at the end of which “Schnitzel the Cat hops down from the same tree and runs home, presumably to the joy of his owners.”

Since said owners apparently haven’t been spoken to, it’s not clear how the Posthas determined the cat’s name. But hey, it sounds good. READ MORE AT JACOBIN.

Homage to Bint Jbeil

Middle East Eye

In July and August of 2006, the Israeli military pummeled Lebanese territory for 34 days, killing approximately 1200 people. Most were civilians. Other casualties of the onslaught included bridges, highways, homes, farmland, power plants, factories, UN observation posts, and a variety of non-human organisms; as Oxfam reported at the time, “initial estimates put livestock loss at one million poultry, 25,000 goats and sheep, and 4,000 cattle.”

Shortly after the end of the bloody affair, a friend and I embarked on a hitchhiking tour of Lebanon that lasted for several months and transformed our conception of what constituted a normal landscape. When we subsequently crossed into Syria and then Turkey, intact infrastructure seemed suddenly aberrant. Villages that hadn’t been reduced to rubble looked out of place.

A main epicentre of Israeli destruction in Lebanon was the south Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil, situated four kilometers from the Israeli border and occupied by the Israel Defense Forces for 18 years until the IDF was forced to withdraw in May 2000. Bint Jbeil’s recent history reveals much about why the Israelis were so intent on flattening it. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.

'Nazis rape Brazil': The World Cup according to Twitter

Al Jazeera

For viewers of the World Cup, it's been pretty hard not to notice FIFA's ubiquitously advertised#SayNoToRacism social media campaign. As it turns out, football audiences could potentially benefit from other educational campaigns as well, such as #SayNoToRapeAndNaziJokes.

When Germany defeated Brazil 7-1 in the July 8 semifinal match, Twitter and other social media platforms played host to a competition for most repugnant reaction. Tweeters showcased their presumed wit, with a heavy focus on gang rape and the Adolf Hitler era: "Brazilian team decided to file a case in the court against Germany for gang rape"; "I expected a Germany win. I didn't know they'd dish out a brutal prisongang rape"; "july 8 2014 germany starts it's second holocaust,this time it's for brazilians and it's welcomed by everyone. #BrazilvsGermany #gangrape"; "Brazil did Nazi this coming".

A tweet from the official Twitter account of "Lebanese STAR Maya DIAB", which boasts 335,000 followers, speculates that "#hitler is there in person", while a Malaysian parliamentarian weighed in with the following: "WELL DONE..BRAVO...LONG LIVE HITLER…" READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA.

Dead People Can't Take Selfies

Jacobin

In one of the worst opening lines ever, Allison Kaplan Sommer writes atHaaretz: “When the going gets tough, the tough take selfies.”

She continues: “That’s the attitude that Sara Eisen, a resident of [the Israeli town of] Beit Shemesh decided to adopt when she started a Facebook groupcalled ‘Bomb Shelter Selfies.’”

The need for this valiant effort arose when “rockets began to rain on Israel” from the Gaza Strip earlier this week. Of course, the Israelis love to allege that rockets are raining on them. But weather reports for their neighbors are inevitably much worse.

To pick one from the timeline of largely one-sided slaughter by Israel — euphemized as “conflict” in international media — the Israeli army launched “Operation Summer Rains” on Gaza Strip in June of 2006, one year after it had supposedly un-occupied the coastal enclave. More than 400 Palestinians, including 85 children, were killed, while only five Israeli soldiers lost their lives. READ MORE AT JACOBIN.

Lebanon's World Cup own goal

Middle East Eye

When Brazil beat Croatia in the opening game of the World Cup on 12 June, Lebanon erupted in fanfare. Although it was the middle of the night in the diminutive Middle Eastern nation, fireworks were wantonly set off while cars and motorbikes draped in Brazilian flags made endless circuits accompanied by a cacophony of horns.

Among residents of Lebanon immune to World Cup fervour, the sudden commotion prompted a variety of creative interpretations. One friend of mine woke up convinced that Palestine had been liberated from Israel, while another assumed that his neighbourhood was under mortar attack. A friend’s uncle speculated that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had been killed. Others thought Lebanon had finally managed to elect its own presidentafter weeks without one.

A recent AFP article on the World Cup frenzy contends that the Lebanese “display a near-fanatical enthusiasm for chosen proxy nations” - fitting vocabulary, perhaps, given Lebanon’s history as a preferred site for international proxy battles. Citing a common Lebanese perception of “World Cup mania as one of the few non-political events in a country often marked by political and sectarian divisions”, the article ends with a quote from a 24-year-old Germany fan who describes the football competition as “a unifying event”.

Should this month-long “unification” be seen as an unquestionably positive arrangement? READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.