Organize the South

I started writing book reviews for Left Turn magazine, below is my first. I plan on continuing since it’s a way to get free books and to get published.

LEFT TURN REVIEW: AMERICAN METHODS

Kristian Williams’ American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination is the latest from the author of Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America. Williams has produced a well-documented and extremely readable, if also extremely disturbing, piece of work. In this work Williams seeks to lay out the idea that torture works. It is not something used to get information or punish, it is a system designed to control populations and is a base characteristic of state power. He says, “Torture doesn’t represent a system of failure; it is the system.”

Williams begins with and spends a lot of time on Abu Ghraib. He then takes us on a trip around the world and back in time. Williams talks in detail about present-day prison conditions in Guantanamo and Afghanistan, and he also details the torture systems of US allies beginning with Israel. He takes us to Chicago, New York, California, Hawaii, and across the US. He goes back as far as the Monroe Doctrine, but he doesn’t stay there long. Throughout it all he avoids passing moral judgment on any individual from those soldiers convicted at Abu Ghraib to Jon Burge, the Chicago cop responsible for torturing scores of people, on through war criminals like Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Yet Williams leaves no doubt that in a just world Rumsfeld’s deliberate decisions to allow torture would be prosecuted as a war crime. Williams, it seems, believes people are good and bad so it’s best to focus on how power is used.

The highlights of the book are sections where Williams lays out the legal framework on what is torture and why it’s illegal. In the section “Defining Torture” Williams’ presents a definition that is intentionally broad and designed to force one to consider what he calls “the question of humanity” first. He holds to this standard throughout the work. Williams devotes an entire chapter to examining whether or not torture is ever justified and concludes that for the sake of humanity the answer must be no. In my favorite part, “Torture Warrants and the Banality of Evil,” he intellectually trounces Alan Dershowitz, the defense attorney who sold his soul for a Harvard professorship and a national reputation. Dershowitz has become a fan of “torture warrants.” Williams rightly exposes the absurdity of Dershowitz and moves on.

In “The Centrality of Rape” section he does a good if limited job of showing the reader how to view torture through a gender lens. I read statements like, “Rape is…the model around which torture is organized” and “To be feminized, to be emasculated, is to be put in a subordinate position. It is to be labeled a candidate for abuse. It may be a humiliation; it is definitely a threat” and was eager to see him show how patriarchy serves to structure power under capitalism. Williams approaches the topic, but he doesn’t go through the door. As the penultimate chapter Williams comes to the subject too late. It would have been better to truly explore the notion while defining torture.

More than anything else Williams’ work lacks a grounding in true human rights history. Williams views human rights as a strictly legalistic framework. This is reflected throughout the book. Williams rightly documents US attacks on international law. He explains the concept of US exceptionalism. He writes about Jeane Kirkpatrick, former US ambassador to the UN under Reagan, referring to the Universal Declaration of Human rights as a “letter to Santa Claus.” What he doesn’t write about is why and how the concept of human rights came about. We are left with the idea that international law and human rights agreements are imaginings of diplomats, lawyers and scholars. Human rights as an organizing strategy of the oppressed to not only curb state power but to restructure power is invisible. He mentions Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as partial instruments for change today, but not the All-Colonial People’s Conference or the Fifth Pan-African Congress as places where the concept of human rights was shaped. Ironically, restructuring power and particularly curbing state power is what Williams prescribes as the strategy for ending torture. Even a brief background on the grassroots history of human rights would illuminate how to fill Williams’ prescription.

Despite the shortcoming Williams’ book is exceptional. Someone had to confront the idea that horror of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, or the local police precinct. Williams took up the challenge and answered it well.

Anger grows over police slaying of elderly victimBy SAEED AHMED, ADRIANNE MURCHISONThe Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionPublished on: 11/29/06
Calling the fatal shooting of Kathryn Johnston one of the worst tragedies the city has experienced, Mayor Shirley Franklin pledged to an angry crowd Tuesday night that the investigation into the death of the 88-year-old woman will be "fair, honest and transparent."
In her first public comments about the Nov. 21 confrontation, Franklin also said she would stand by police Chief Richard Pennington.
"To some folks, that's not good enough, and I have to apologize for that," she said.
Franklin spoke to a crowd gathered for a community meeting at the Lindsay Street Baptist Church, located off Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard not far from the house where Johnston was shot.
Pennington appeared at the meeting earlier, as did various City Council members and state politicians.
"My mother is 85, and I am blessed to still have her," Franklin said. The Johnston family, she said, expected that of their kin as well.
"There is no question that the tragedy you've experienced and we've experienced is one of the worst the city's experienced," she said. "All of us felt it personally."
During the four-hour-long meeting, the crowd — which at times swelled to more than 300 — angrily recounted stories about drug raids into their homes when officers knocked down doors, armed with warrants that were unsigned.
They also demanded to know why the officers involved in Johnston's death were still being paid by their tax dollars while they were on administrative leave. Franklin urged the crowd to be patient as the investigation took its course.
"Some folks have asked me, 'Why weren't you in front of the police chief?' [in the days following the shooting]," she said. She said that when she recruited Pennington she knew he would be fair and honest.
"I am going to stand beside him and ensure the police are held to the highest possible standard," she said.
At the meeting Pennington said he became concerned after community response to the shooting.
When he learned that the information he received conflicted with what a confidential informant told the Internal Affairs Unit, he brought in the FBI to lead the investigation, he said.
"I am not new to police misconduct," he said. "I've worked in Washington and New Orleans. I've made this move based on law enforcement and my gut feeling."
Earlier in the evening, about 70 residents gathered outside Johnston's home, some holding placards condemning police, others venting angrily about the botched narcotics raid.
"I'm enraged," said Walterine Jones, 50. "I mean, my God, if they can do this to an elderly woman like her, what does it mean for the safety of the rest of us." Marchers to the church carried signs that mocked the police, passed around by rally organizers, the New Black Panther for Self-Defense.
"Warning taxpayers & black citizens. Don't dial 911. The police will kill you," said one.
Another was a cartoon of a smiling uniformed officer holding a phone, with the caption: "They gave me administrative leave ... with pay. Kill a black citizen and get paid."
The message was a reference to Pennington's decision to place on paid leave the sergeant and seven detectives who are part of the narcotics unit.
Even without the signs, there was plenty of anger to go around among those who gathered in front of a makeshift memorial outside the now boarded-up house where Johnston died in a gun battle with officers.
Residents said that while crime is rampant in the area, the stretch of Neal Street where Johnson lived alone for almost two decades was home to other elderly residents.
"There's crime that needs to be tackled here, that's true. But this road right here, there's never been any drug dealing here," said Michael Jaye, 46, who has lived in the area since he was 4.
"But the police don't come here to fight crime. They come to knock heads," he added.
Johnny Colbert, 27, echoed many of the suspicion that police made up the description of "Sam," who they said was the man who sold drugs to an undercover informant.
"There are a lot of 'Sams' around here. They are all make-believe by the police," he said.
As some of the people in attendance pumped fists into the air and shouted "Black Power" at the exhortation of the organizers, a few stoic GBI and FBI agents stood by watching.
On a nearby porch, an elderly woman leaned on the railing, straining to catch what was happening.
She too would have walked down and shown her support, she said. But she was too feeble, she said.
The meeting at Lindsay Street Baptist Church was organized by State Sen. Vincent Fort and Rep. "Able" Mabel Thomas, both Democrats from Atlanta.
"I just don't understand how you bust in someone's house and don't know who lives there," said Mary Thomas, an usher at the church. "My daughter and I said this could be any of us."
Joe Cobb, who works in the neighborhood, said he never believed Johnston or anyone else sold drugs at the house.
"What's unfolding just reinforces what I first thought: the police lied," he said.
Civil rights activist the Rev. Markel Hutchins, the family's designated spokesman, has established a confidential hotline for tips from people with information.
The number is: 404-838-9645. The e-mail address is: justiceforkathrynjohnston

This is a working document meant to express general thoughts brought up in recent political conversation within Bring the Ruckus. This document does not represent a final view of thought on this subject and is meant only to further our understanding.

Family is a central part of society. A free family, therefore, is a central part of a free society. Bring the Ruckus proposes that to create a free society we must look to the struggles to create a free family, a liberatory family.

The family, particularly in the feminist context, has come under considerable critique, and justifiably so. For this reason we make it clear we are not talking about the patriarchal family but the liberatory family. The liberatory family is the form taken by those who, for strategic as well as moral reasons, recognize struggle against white supremacist capitalist patriarchy as a totality. Simply put, the liberatory family is the struggle of the oppressed to maintain close social relations and have those relations recognized. The family cannot and should not be defined by the state. The struggle to define oneself and one’s relation to others against the pressures of capitalism is the struggle for the liberatory family. These efforts often incorporate all the elements of a liberatory family: non- patriarchal leadership, prison abolition, fights for a living wage, a focus on health care, the call to recognize extended families as legitimate, and the recognition that women are the one’s who keep the family together. We propose this struggle as the basis from which any movement for freedom and justice will develop its most successful structures.

We see family struggles as feminist struggle even though mainstream feminists often argue against the family unit. For example, attacks on reproductive freedom do not simply affect those seeking abortion rights, but also those seeking to have families at all. LGBT families, for example, are often engaged in struggles to have and maintain family units. The attack on reproductive freedom does not only include the right to have a pregnancy terminated, but also the right to create healthy families. To attack reproductive freedom is to attack the liberatory family, especially those families who are not seen as legitimate by the state or who have been living under state encroachment.

The United States is structured by race and class. Thus, it should be no surprise that we often see this struggle to build a free family coming from women of color, who frequently act as bulwarks against social control. Their struggles to keep families together in the face of mass incarceration, invasive policing, or repressive immigration policies are struggles for a liberatory family.

The idea of liberatory family is an idea we in Bring the Ruckus are still struggling to flesh out. It came from observing and participating in two struggles: one working against social control and one focused on workplace organizing. We hope in developing the concept of the liberatory family we will help identify where radicals need to focus their struggles for a free society.

Work, Social Control & the Family
Struggles around work and against social control are at the heart of the struggles for the liberatory family. We recognize that women are key political agents for social change because women have been and continue to be key targets of oppression.

Women are often at the centers of campaigns against social control because the state has always had a gendered view of social control and it has always been aimed at containing people of color. During chattel slavery, there were essentially no gender distinctions between men and women of color. A Black woman could be whipped just as heinously as a Black man because they weren’t considered to be men or women- just property. After abolition, systems of social control changed in order to keep the newly freed population in line. and These systems treated men and women of color differently. For example, prisons were designed to lock up Black men in order to do two things. First, they "protected" white women because it was believed that the newly freed Black man endangered white women’s "virtue." Thus things like miscegenation laws were enacted to prevent race mixing while prisons and lynch laws were aimed at keeping Black men off the streets and "in their place." However, these systems of social control recognized the usefulness of Black female domestic labor even as they took many Black men out of the labor market. States couldn’t lock up Black women like Black men because they were doing all the domestic labor. These systems of social control ultimately preserved Black domestic labor while it systematically locked up 1/2 of the Black population. The legacies of these systems of racialized social control continue today.

Social control systems have had a direct impact on wages, particularly for families of color. The earning power of all women in the workplace has always been below men. During the time of the welfare state, when social programs kept extreme poverty within limits, this impact was somewhat muted. Today, neoliberalism has ended the family wage pact. The result is that more women of color are now often forced into the workplace at substandard wages while other family members are incarcerated. This has made entire populations superfluous to society.

Since the days of chattel slavery, the role function of the family under capitalism in the United States has not been the same for people of color as it has for white folks. While white women have been struggling to emancipate themselves from a family system that subordinated them to their fathers and husbands, women of color have been struggling to be able to even have a family and have it recognized as legitimate. Whereas in the days of slavery Black women married men in secret and struggled to keep their families together as they faced the prospect of having their partners or children being sold off, today women of color are consumed with struggles to keep their families together as they face the prospect of their partners or children being sent to prison and/or deported. As part of this struggle, many women of color have in practice expanded the nuclear family to include extended families and partnerships.

If we are going to do radically feminist work, we must begin by re-imagining and reconstructing the family in the ways that women of color are already doing. We must support the struggles of these women to redefine, legitimate, and keep their families together. To challenge the structures of social control that break the family up leads to a different type of radical feminist politics and in fact is a more radical form of politics than is being done today.

A radical feminist praxis focused on the systems of social control can help to link the struggles against prisons and police with struggles in the workplace. Rather than competing areas of struggle they can be viewed as connected. For example, the activist-scholar Ruthie Gilmore has done excellent work in showing how patriarchy is the primary system used to determine who is a danger to society and who must be protected. Focusing on women in the workplace and why they are there could lead to a greater and more complete understanding of capitalism’s pressures on the family.

What Needs to be Done
In discussing the liberatory family one thing becomes very apparent: we have a lot of work to do. We must define and flesh out what the liberatory family is and how it compares to our common understanding of family. We should further define “what is a family” and “what is a liberatory family.” We must also further define gender and how the construction of gender is significant to the family and the liberatory family. In terms of expanding our feminist praxis and family discussions we must also develop a new framework that engenders the notion of freedom, not choice as most feminist literature does. This new framework of freedom must include a discussion around families and health as well as politics.

Studying the family and developing feminist praxis around the liberatory family must look at and understand how communities are struggling to maintain their families in the face of state intervention. It must also dive deeper into the connections of our work around systems of social control (e.g. prisons, police & immigration) and the workplace through the lens of feminist praxis. We must understand what women in the workforce means for the perpetuation of capitalism. We must look at the different roles that women of color have played in the workforce. After all, they have always been a park of the working class. How does this historical fact change our understanding of workplace organizing? How does this relate to our understanding of race and the workplace? How does it change our examination of all our political work? Ultimately, what is the relationship between the racial patriarchy and capitalism? These are only some of the questions we must examine more closely.

But engaging in study is only half of our task. We must also engage in work. Because systems of social control have been developed and refined in the South, Bring the Ruckus feels the southern region of the US is vital to revolutionary change. Having first-hand experience in the region will help in understanding the multitude of ways systems of social control function. Furthermore, it will help us to understand and engage in the already existing work around radical feminist praxis, and see how people are struggling to establish forms of the liberatory family.

Revolutionaries must continue to examine current work through the lens of feminist praxis. If we truly seek to build a free society, we must have a theory and engage in work that fully incorporates a radical feminist praxis that ultimately struggles for the liberatory family.

Key Questions:

1. What has it meant for capitalism to have women in the workforce? How has women’s racially differentiated experience in the workforce impacted capitalism?


2. What is the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism?


3. Is globalization changing the relationship between patriarchy & capitalism? If so, how?


4. How do we define family? How do we define the liberatory family?


5. How might a theory of the liberatory family challenge existing constructions of gender and sexuality?

The US and the western media back protests over controversial elections when it suits them, but are silent over those in Mexico
Mark AlmondTuesday August 15, 2006The Guardian
A couple of years ago television, radio and print media in the west just couldn't get enough of "people power". In quick succession, from Georgia's rose revolution in November 2003, via Ukraine's orange revolution a year later, to the tulip revolution in Kyrgyzstan and the cedar revolution in Lebanon, 24-hour news channels kept us up to date with democracy on a roll.

Triggered by allegations of election fraud, the dominoes toppled. The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, was happy with the trend: "They're doing it in many different corners of the world, places as varied as Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan and, on the other hand, Lebanon ... And so this is a hopeful time."

But when a million Mexicans try to jump on the people-power bandwagon, crying foul about the July 2 presidential elections, when protesters stage a vigil in the centre of the capital that continues to this day, they meet a deafening silence in the global media. Despite Mexico's long tradition of electoral fraud and polls suggesting that Andrés Manuel López Obrador - a critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) - was ahead, the media accepted the wafer-thin majority gained by the ruling party nominee, Harvard graduate Felipe Calderón.

Although Mexico's election authorities rejected López Obrador's demand for all 42m ballots to be recounted, the partial recount of 9% indicated numerous irregularities. But no echo of indignation has wafted to the streets of Mexico City from western capitals.

Maybe Israel's intervention in Lebanon grabbed all the attention and required every hack and videophone. Back in 2004 CNN and the BBC were perfectly able to cover the battle for Falluja and the orange revolution in the same bulletins. Today, however, even a news junkie like me cannot remember a mainstream BBC bulletin live from among the massive crowds in Mexico City. Faced by CNN's indifference to the growing crisis in Mexico, only a retread of an old saying will do: "Pity poor Mexico, so far from Israel, so close to the United States."

Castro's failing health gets more airtime than the constitutional crisis gripping America's southern neighbour, which is one of its major oil suppliers. Apparently, crowds of protesters squatting in Mexico City for weeks protesting against alleged vote-rigging don't make a good news story. Occasionally commentators who celebrated Ukrainians blocking the main thoroughfares of Kiev condescend to jeer at Mexico's sore losers and complain that businessmen are missing deadlines because dead-enders with nothing better to do are holding up the traffic. Ukraine's Viktor Yushchenko was decisive when he declared himself president, but isn't López Obrador a demagogue for doing the same?

The colour-coded revolutionaries of the former Soviet Union had a pro-western agenda - such as bringing Georgia and Ukraine into Nato and the EU - but in Latin America radicals question the wisdom of membership of US-led bodies such as Nafta and the WTO. The crude truth is that Washington cannot afford to let Mexico's vast oil reserves fall into hands of a president even half as radical as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.

But didn't the western observers certify the Mexican polls as "fair", while they condemned the Ukrainian elections? True, but election observers are not objective scientists. The EU relies on politicians, not automatons, to evaluate polls. Take the head of its observer mission, the MEP José Ignacio Salafranca: as a Spanish speaker in Mexico, Salafranca had a huge advantage over many of the MEPs in Ukraine who draped themselves in orange even while en mission - but he is hardly neutral. His rightwing Popular party is an ally of Calderón's Pan party, which is in power in Mexico. Calderón was immediately congratulated by Salafranca's colleague Antonio López-Istúriz on the "great news".

The days of leftwing fraternalism may be over, but the globalist right has its own network, linking the Spanish conservatives, American Republicans and Calderón's Pan party - and they provided the key observer. To paraphrase Stalin: "It doesn't matter who votes, it matters who observes the vote."

Salafranca has a track record as an election observer. In Lebanon's general elections in 2005 he had no problem with the pro-western faction sweeping the board around Beirut with fewer than a quarter of voters taking part and nine of its seats gained without even a token alternative candidate. "It is a feast of democracy," he declared. His mood changed when the democratic banquet moved to areas dominated by Hizbullah or the Christian maverick General Aoun. Suddenly, "vote-buying" and the need for "fundamental reform" popped up in the EU observation reports.

Unanimity on the scale seen across Lebanon suggests that the cedar revolution - despite the hype - did nothing to promote real democratic pluralism. Hizbullah's hold on the south is the most controversial aspect of the sectarian segmentation of Lebanese society, but everywhere local bosses dominate their fiefdoms as before. Similarly, more scepticism about Ukraine's revolution would have left people better informed than the orange boosterism that passed for commentary 18 months ago.

But Mexico is different because it is so under-reported. The cruel reality is that "people power" has become a global brand. But like so many global brands it is owned by Americans. Mexicans and any other "populists" who try to copy it should beware that they're infringing a copyright. No matter how many protesters swarm through Mexico City or how long they protest, it is George Bush and co who decide which people truly represent The People. People power turns out to be about politics, not arithmetic.
· Mark Almond is a history lecturer at Oriel College, Oxford
mpalmond@aol.com

Critical Resistance is fighting for amnesty for people arrested because of the storm, for example, individuals arrested for "looting" and people whose cases were impacted by the storm – such as those held beyond release dates or cases where evidence has been destroyed.

If you, or someone you know fits into these categories, please call

504-304-3784 (collect if needed) or write

Critical Resistance
PO Box 71553,
New Orleans, LA 70172

Or email crnational@criticalresistance.org


We may be able to help.

If your sickened by the Israeli invasion, by the deaths in Gaza, the scores of children dead, then hop over to this website and make a donation. My friends at Atlanta Palestine Solidarity (www.atlanta4palestine.org) did a benefit for this organization. The Middle East Children’s Alliance (www.mecaforpeace.org) works in Palestine and Gaza and is working on emergency relief in Lebanon. Given Israeli intentional destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure (can you say “war crime”?) they’ll need every penny to get relief distributed. Their links page alone is worth the trip.

A special shout out to Ali Abunimah (www.abunimah.org). His blog was a great resource for info on the Middle East. He has co-founded 2 new sites where his posts will be made. The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net) and Electronic Iraq (www.electroniciraq.net) are a must see.

UK Guardian

Whatever we think of Israel's assault on Lebanon, all of us seem to agree about one fact: that it was a response, however disproportionate, to an unprovoked attack by Hizbullah. I repeated this "fact" in my last column, when I wrote that "Hizbullah fired the first shots". This being so, the Israeli government's supporters ask peaceniks like me, what would you have done? It's an important question. But its premise, I have now discovered, is flawed.

Since Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, there have been hundreds of violations of the "blue line" between the two countries. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) reports that Israeli aircraft crossed the line "on an almost daily basis" between 2001 and 2003, and "persistently" until 2006. These incursions "caused great concern to the civilian population, particularly low-altitude flights that break the sound barrier over populated areas". On some occasions, Hizbullah tried to shoot them down with anti-aircraft guns.

In October 2000, the Israel Defence Forces shot at unarmed Palestinian demonstrators on the border, killing three and wounding 20. In response, Hizbullah crossed the line and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers. On several occasions, Hizbullah fired missiles and mortar rounds at IDF positions, and the IDF responded with heavy artillery and sometimes aerial bombardment. Incidents like this killed three Israelis and three Lebanese in 2003; one Israeli soldier and two Hizbullah fighters in 2005; and two Lebanese people and three Israeli soldiers in February 2006. Rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel several times in 2004, 2005 and 2006, on some occasions by Hizbullah. But, the UN records, "none of the incidents resulted in a military escalation".

On May 26 this year, two officials of Islamic Jihad - Nidal and Mahmoud Majzoub - were killed by a car bomb in the Lebanese city of Sidon. This was widely assumed in Lebanon and Israel to be the work of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. In June, a man named Mahmoud Rafeh confessed to the killings and admitted that he had been working for Mossad since 1994. Militants in southern Lebanon responded, on the day of the bombing, by launching eight rockets into Israel. One soldier was lightly wounded. There was a major bust-up on the border, during which one member of Hizbullah was killed and several wounded, and one Israeli soldier wounded. But while the border region "remained tense and volatile", Unifil says it was "generally quiet" until July 12.

There has been a heated debate on the internet about whether the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbullah that day were captured in Israel or in Lebanon, but it now seems pretty clear that they were seized in Israel. This is what the UN says, and even Hizbullah seems to have forgotten that they were supposed to have been found sneaking around the outskirts of the Lebanese village of Aita al-Shaab. Now it simply states that "the Islamic resistance captured two Israeli soldiers at the border with occupied Palestine". Three other Israeli soldiers were killed by the militants. There is also some dispute about when, on July 12, Hizbullah first fired its rockets; but Unifil makes it clear that the firing took place at the same time as the raid - 9am. Its purpose seems to have been to create a diversion. No one was hit.

But there is no serious debate about why the two soldiers were captured: Hizbullah was seeking to exchange them for the 15 prisoners of war taken by the Israelis during the occupation of Lebanon and (in breach of article 118 of the third Geneva convention) never released. It seems clear that if Israel had handed over the prisoners, it would - without the spillage of any more blood - have retrieved its men and reduced the likelihood of further kidnappings. But the Israeli government refused to negotiate. Instead - well, we all know what happened instead. Almost 1,000 Lebanese and 33 Israeli civilians have been killed so far, and a million Lebanese displaced from their homes.

On July 12, in other words, Hizbullah fired the first shots. But that act of aggression was simply one instance in a long sequence of small incursions and attacks over the past six years by both sides. So why was the Israeli response so different from all that preceded it? The answer is that it was not a reaction to the events of that day. The assault had been planned for months.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that "more than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and thinktanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail". The attack, he said, would last for three weeks. It would begin with bombing and culminate in a ground invasion. Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, told the paper that "of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared ... By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board".

A "senior Israeli official" told the Washington Post that the raid by Hizbullah provided Israel with a "unique moment" for wiping out the organisation. The New Statesman's editor, John Kampfner, says he was told by more than one official source that the US government knew in advance of Israel's intention to take military action in Lebanon. The Bush administration told the British government.

Israel's assault, then, was premeditated: it was simply waiting for an appropriate excuse. It was also unnecessary. It is true that Hizbullah had been building up munitions close to the border, as its current rocket attacks show. But so had Israel. Just as Israel could assert that it was seeking to deter incursions by Hizbullah, Hizbullah could claim - also with justification - that it was trying to deter incursions by Israel. The Lebanese army is certainly incapable of doing so. Yes, Hizbullah should have been pulled back from the Israeli border by the Lebanese government and disarmed. Yes, the raid and the rocket attack on July 12 were unjustified, stupid and provocative, like just about everything that has taken place around the border for the past six years. But the suggestion that Hizbullah could launch an invasion of Israel or that it constitutes an existential threat to the state is preposterous. Since the occupation ended, all its acts of war have been minor ones, and nearly all of them reactive.

So it is not hard to answer the question of what we would have done. First, stop recruiting enemies, by withdrawing from the occupied territories in Palestine and Syria. Second, stop provoking the armed groups in Lebanon with violations of the blue line - in particular the persistent flights across the border. Third, release the prisoners of war who remain unlawfully incarcerated in Israel. Fourth, continue to defend the border, while maintaining the diplomatic pressure on Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah (as anyone can see, this would be much more feasible if the occupations were to end). Here then is my challenge to the supporters of the Israeli government: do you dare to contend that this programme would have caused more death and destruction than the current adventure has done?

www.monbiot.com