The Power of Evil
By WILLIAM A. COOK

Nothing so graphically illustrates the dilemma facing the United States and the United Nations as the catastrophic collapse of negotiations that failed in Italy when America found itself standing alone before the entire world, nakedly defending the defiant state of Israel as it demolishes Lebanon. While the remainder of the world castigated Israel for pulverizing the people of Lebanon in retaliation for the acts of a few Hezbollah guerillas, the state of Israel cried that it had to defend itself against the onslaught of missiles from this terrorist organization that has vowed to wipe Israel off the map. Rather than demand that Israel agree to an immediate cease fire, the Bush administration rallied behind Israel to demand that the UN force Syria to abide by Resolution 1559 and rid Lebanon of Hezbollah. Here's the double edged dilemma: how does America force the UN to consider a resolution on behalf of Israel and deny Hezbollah and Hamas the right to ask the UN to raise all 65 UN resolutions that Israel has defied since 1948? And how does the United States support Israel's right to defend itself when its defense includes not just the land granted to it by the UN in Resolution 188 in 1947, the only true and recognized borders of the state of Israel, but all the land and natural resources it has confiscated from the Palestinian people?

For Israel to proclaim that it has a right to defend itself when it occupies another people's land illegally, when it continues to construct more than 60 new settlements on confiscated land since March of 2001, when it demolishes more than 4,170 Palestinian homes, when it defies more than 65 UN Resolutions calling for return of stolen land and a return to human rights, when it denies the right of return to those forced from their homes against international law, when it imprisons 9,599 Palestinians including women and children without charge or due rights, when it kills 734 Palestinian children since September 2000, when it ignores the rulings of the International Court of Justice regarding the illegality of the Wall of Lamentation, when it has amassed a military force that has in excess of two million four hundred thousand fit for military service, when it alone of all the nations in the mid-east possesses nuclear weapons, when it utilizes illegal chemical weapons of war on civilians as it does in Lebanon, when it presents itself to the international community as a victim of terrorists when in fact it is the perpetrator of terrorism, then it has no right to defend the indefensible, its criminal acts against the people of the mid-east. This is the Israeli state of demonocracy, a state in which evil rules.

Consider as well the defiant hypocrisy of the Israeli state that condemns Hamas and Hezbollah for sins it inflicts on Palestinians and Lebanese. Olmert and his ministers argue that both Hamas and Hezbollah are committed to the destruction of Israel, that, indeed, their very existence rests on "wiping Israel from the face of the map." Yet no one mentions that four of the Israeli political parties launching candidates for the Knesset have platforms that call for the removal of Arabs from the land that, according to their twisted logic, belongs to Israel by historical right. No one mentions that Israel has already used ethnic cleansing to force Palestinians off their land, confined them behind a wall that steals their land and olive groves, refused the right of return to those forced from their homes, and created apartheid laws that prevent them from owning their own land. No one mentions that the current map of Israel obliterates the 45% of land provided for the indigenous population in Resolution 188 and graphically shows how the remaining 14% of Palestinian land in the West Bank and Gaza are totally surrounded by the Israeli IDF cutting the West Bank into three distinct bantustans and isolating Gaza from the West Bank thus making impossible a Palestinian state. This is the racism that the Israelis claim exists in the minds and hearts of Islamic fanatics when in reality it exists in the actions of the Israeli state. This, too, is the Israeli state of demonocracy where evil rules.

Evil confers intensity; it allows a state to confer on itself acceptance of an inscrutable purpose that mirrors its sick desires to hide its own insecurity. Such is the condition of the state of Israel as it mercilessly pounds the Lebanese people into oblivion, wantonly destroying apartment buildings, businesses, bridges, roads, airports, communication centers, generating plants, and the people as they attempt to flee the barbaric onslaught of the Israeli IDF. All of this brutality appears acceptable in the minds of Olmert and his Zionist fanatics to force the return of two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah guerillas as prisoners of the occupying power that confiscated their Shaba farmlands in Syria three decades ago. Now with approximately 600 Lebanese dead, with more than 50 Israeli dead, with thousands made homeless, the insane intensity of Olmert's drive into Lebanon demonstrates to the entire world what Israel has inflicted on the Palestinians these past 60 years but has managed to hide from the glare of TV cameras. The "civilized" state of Israel, like all imperialist ventures that cycle through human history, conceals its brutality as philanthropy noting it is destroying the evil of "terrorism" for the ultimate benefit of the world communities. Such hubris.

Here is how Joseph Conrad described this phenomenon in "Autocracy and War" in 1905: "The idea of ceasing to grow in territory, in strength, in wealth, in influence ­ in anything but wisdom and self-knowledge - is odious to them as the omen of the end. Action, in which is to be found the illusion of a mastered destiny, can alone satisfy our uneasy vanity and lay to rest the haunting fear of the future" That self-knowledge is the fear that suppresses their insecurity as they fail to find harmony with their neighbors because ultimately they seek to dominate them and confiscate their land. But history, especially that in the middle-east, demonstrates the folly and futility of the Zionist dream, the "greater Israel" of the covenant, that has no more chance of reaching fulfillment than the aspirations of the Roman emperors that destroyed the Jewish kingdom and dispersed its population throughout the world. Israel's devastation of Lebanon graphically demonstrates a savage mentality dressed in pin striped suits and combat fatigues.