UPDATE 2: From Updates on the Aggression Against Lebanon: more people that Grossman, Oz and Yehoshua, as intellectual and purportedly moral voices of the Israeli peace movement, seek to erase from our consciousness:

15:35 al-Jazeera: most bodies pulled out from under rubble in Ainata not identified yet

15:34 Red Cross: 11 bodies pulled out from under rubble in Ainata

14:08 al-Jazeera: 6 bodies pulled out from under rubble in al-Teebeh

00:20 Lebanese security forces say that 2 Lebanese civilians, including 1 child, killed and 5 wounded in southern Lebanon in cluster bomb explosions following implementation of ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israeli

And, from the Angry Arab News Service, the passionate, personal commentary of Hanady Salman, managing editor, As-Safir in Beirut:

As of yesterday, new stories will unveil : those returning to find .. nothing. Those returning to find their loved ones under the rubble. But returning anyway. 7 a.m. ( or 8) was the official time for the cease fire on Monday morning. People were on the roads at 7 sharp. I am so proud. Sad, hurt, but proud. Proud of my people, proud of their resistance, proud of their commitment and dignity. Hussein Ayoub, my colleague, finally found his mother today. Ten minutes ago actually. He went to Aynatha in the morning and the rescuers were able to pull her out of the rubble of a house where she, and some 17 other people had taken refuge. We don’t know when she was killed. But at least he was able to recognize her body. She was 75. His father was killed by the Israelis in 1972. We will be fine, I hope. We will burry our dead, the way they deserve to be buried, we will remember them as long as we live. We will tell their stories to our children; they will tell their own children the story: the story of a great people, one that never lost faith despite all the crimes, pains and injustices. One that started rebuilding the minute the fighting stopped. Rebuilding although they know that the enemy might destroy everything again, as it did so many times before. We will also tell them the stories of our enemy : how they killed our children, our elderly, how they hit us from the air, from the sea and from the ground and how we prevailed. How they starved our families in their villages, killed them on the roads, bombed their houses, their shelters, their hospitals, they even bombed vans carrying bread to them; and how in return we did not give up.

As for the rest of us, we should also remember those who professed to believe in peace, in non-violence, in the necessity of people of different cultures to live and work together, who, when confronted with the planned, systematic destruction of Lebanon, a deliberate effort to subordinate the identity of the Lebanese to the Zionist project, were not just mute, but publicly rationalized such brutality.

UPDATE 1: Yitzhak Laor, in the London Review of Books, evaluates the performance of Israel's peace activist intellectuals:

Amos Oz, on 20 July, when the destruction of Lebanon was already well underway, wrote in the Evening Standard: ‘This time, Israel is not invading Lebanon. It is defending itself from a daily harassment and bombardment of dozens of our towns and villages by attempting to smash Hizbullah wherever it lurks.’ Nothing here is distinguishable from Israeli state pronouncements. David Grossman wrote in the Guardian, again on 20 July, as if he were unaware of any bombardment in Lebanon: ‘There is no justification for the large-scale violence that Hizbullah unleashed this week, from Lebanese territory, on dozens of peaceful Israeli villages, towns and cities. No country in the world could remain silent and abandon its citizens when its neighbour strikes without any provocation.’ We can bomb, but if they respond they are responsible for both their suffering and ours. And it’s important to remember that ‘our suffering’ is that of poor people in the north who cannot leave their homes easily or quickly. ‘Our suffering’ is not that of the decision-makers or their friends in the media. Oz also wrote that ‘there can be no moral equation between Hizbullah and Israel. Hizbullah is targeting Israeli civilians wherever they are, while Israel is targeting mostly Hizbullah.’ At that time more than 300 Lebanese had been killed and 600 had been injured. Oz went on: ‘The Israeli peace movement should support Israel’s attempt at self-defence, pure and simple, as long as this operation targets mostly Hizbullah and spares, as much as possible, the lives of Lebanese civilians (this is not always an easy task, as Hizbullah missile-launchers often use Lebanese civilians as human sandbags).’

The truth behind this is that Israel must always be allowed to do as it likes even if this involves scorching its supremacy into Arab bodies. This supremacy is beyond discussion and it is simple to the point of madness. We have the right to abduct. You don’t. We have the right to arrest. You don’t. You are terrorists. We are virtuous. We have sovereignty. You don’t. We can ruin you. You cannot ruin us, even when you retaliate, because we are tied to the most powerful nation on earth. We are angels of death.

The entirety of the article is well worth reading for its insight into the IDF's cultural dominance of Israeli society, and the unwillingness of anyone to contest it. Hat tip to the Angry Arab News Service.

INITIAL POST: On July 20th, David Grossman, a novelist and Israeli peace activist, supported the Israeli attack upon Lebanon, an attack that has killed over 1,000 Lebanese, created over 900,000 refugees and destroyed much of the country's infrastructure and economy:

Hizbullah's surprise blitz against the Galilee, Israel's northern region, proves - if anyone needed proof - how sensitive and explosive this region is, and how little it takes to bring it to the brink of war. Israel has launched a counter-attack, and it has every right to do so. There is no justification for the large-scale violence that Hizbullah unleashed this week, from Lebanese territory, on dozens of peaceful Israeli villages, towns and cities. No country in the world could remain silent and abandon its citizens when its neighbour strikes without any provocation.

In language echoing Alan Dershowitz, Grossman rationalized the consequences upon the Lebanese people:

Israel has attacked Lebanon because that country is officially responsible for Hizbullah. It is also the address from which missiles are being fired at Israeli cities. Hizbullah's leaders are members of the Lebanese cabinet, and participate in setting the country's policies. Even those who hope for an immediate end to violence and the opening of negotiations must acknowledge that Hizbullah deliberately created the crisis.

On the date of the publication of Grossman's column in the Guardian, the IDF had already killed 306 Lebanese civilians, 20 during a notorious airstrike in southern Lebanon when it attacked a convoy of civilians fleeing their village after being warned to do so, and displaced approximately 500,000 people. The IDF had targeted homes, schools, village centers and vehicles, including ambulances. One-third of the dead were Lebanese children. As reported by NPR, in urbanized south Beirut, block after block, whole roads were choked with chunks of cement, twisted metal and wiring from buildings that crumbled under the barrage of Israeli ordnance.

Read Grossman's Guardian column carefully. Nowhere does he express the slightest remorse at what the IDF had already done to Lebanon, or express any compassion for what the Lebanese have experienced. Indeed, the entire subject goes unmentioned. A highly regarded novelist, known for his humanism, antiseptically writes with the emotion of a bureaucrat. His mind was sharp, but his heart was still.

To his credit, Grossman had, at least, awakened to the fact that no military victory was possible, even if he closed his eyes to the collective punishment of the Lebanese:

What began as a justified Israeli response to aggression now looks like a trap with two doors, one for each side. Neither can defeat the other, but neither can concede. As the popular saying in these parts goes, each adversary is willing to lose an eye if that is the price to pay for gouging both of its enemy's eyes. Now is precisely the moment when the international community must step in, mediate, formulate a compromise, and save both sides from self-destruction.

Sensing the peril from the escalation of the war through a massive invasion of ground forces, Grossman again expressed opposition to it about a week ago, but, again, in ambiguous, if not cynical fashion:

Acclaimed Israeli authors Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, and David Grossman publicly stated their opposition Thursday to the cabinet's decision to expand ground operations in Lebanon, calling for a diplomatic solution to the crisis based on the proposal put forth by Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

This past Sunday, the literary giants published an advertisement in the press calling for a cease-fire and negotiations. Critics felt the demand for a halt in the fighting was late in coming, and that the advertisement was aimed both at justifying the war as well as an attempt to distance the authors from the war.

The three men convened a joint news conference with reporters Thursday afternoon, a rarity in the world of Israeli literature, a few meters from the Defense Ministry compound at the Kirya in Tel Aviv. Later Thursday evening, Meretz and Peace Now are to stage a large demonstration in the vicinity.

"The literary people who are sitting here thought that Israel initiated a just war," said the organizer of the joint briefing, Professor Nissim Calderon. "After yesterday's cabinet meeting, they feel that the decision to widen the war is mistaken, and that [we] need to go from a military operation to a diplomatic operation."

Again, if the linked Haaretz article accurately reflects the content of the advertisement and the remarks at the press conference, little, if any, alarm was expressed over the extent of the carnage inflicted by the IDF, which, by that time, included 759 known dead Lebanese civilians, through killings of refugees at Qana and farmworkers at Qaa, and increasing numbers of refugees, approaching the 900,000 currently reported. Nor was there any mention of the fact that Hizbollah has been killing significantly more IDF soldiers than Israeli civilians, while the IDF has been killing far more Lebanese civilians than Hizbollah.

Now, David Grossman's son is dead:

There were an estimated 30,000 Israeli Defence Force (IDF) troops in the 30km strip of Lebanon south of the Litani river yesterday. But last night they were still fighting battles with Hizbullah close to the Israeli border, and suffering their heaviest casualties to date - 24 dead on Saturday with another heavy toll expected yesterday.

Among the dead was staff sergeant Uri Grossman, the 20-year-old son of David Grossman, one of Israel's most celebrated authors and peace activists who three days ago issued a public appeal with two other writers for the government to end the war.

One must ask the impertinent question: Did David Grossman abandon his initial support for the war for any reason other than the prospect that the resilience of Hizbollah and its allies in southern Lebanon would result in the unanticipated deaths of large numbers of Israelis in combat? Robert Fisk reports 43 dead IDF soldiers within a 24 hour period on Sunday.

From the West Coast, the record is no doubt incomplete, but, based upon what we already know, it appears that the Lebanese have only been, at best, a fleeting presence in his thought. I empathize with his grief, but shudder at his apparent erasure of the far greater suffering of the people of Lebanon. Perhaps, there is something very telling in it, and, maybe, something hopeful as well, because Israelis will eventually discover that they cannot personally avoid what they have done to Lebanon. In other words, the return of the repressed, and the consequences are likely to be both unpredictable and profound.

Labels: David Grossman, Israel, Israeli/Lebanese/US War, Lebanon, Zionism