    http://www.counterpunch.com/neumann07292006.html
    Humanitarian Intervention
    The White Man's Burden?

    By MICHAEL NEUMANN

    If we look at the world through the eyes of a nouveau-imperialist, few
    things are more certain than that humanitarian intervention is the
    special and last prerogative of the white race (known in polite circles
    as The West). When the Americans, Canadians, British, French, Germans,
    Norwegians, Danes, Belgians, Spanish and Dutch go into Afghanistan(*),
    we can rest assured that the few dark faces will not spoil the party:
    the commanders, the decision-makers will be white, as will the the bulk
    of the crackers - crackers of every nation - who make up the rank and
    file. These are blessed circumstances. Killing, racial supremacy and
    morality - how often do we see these enjoyable items so closely, so
    irreproachably bound together?

    This is why the humanitarian imperialist is so deeply offended when
    non-whites insolently usurp the humanitarian prerogative. Perhaps it is
    worse when there is an Iranian connection, because then it is necessary
    to ignore the fact that Iranians are not only white but (if the term has
    any legitimate meaning) Aryan. But ignorance conquers all, and these
    subtleties are lost on the good ole boys of the West (and the
    pseudo-West, i.e., Israel): The Iranians wear funny turbans. Hizballah
    leaders wear funny turbans. People who wear funny turbans aren't really
    white. So these guys aren't really white. Such are the joys of redneck
    logic. Yet the White Man's humanitarian burden could be Hizballah's
    burden as well.

    Hizballah's raid on Israel may have sparked the current conflict in
    Lebanon, but it is also a very plausible case of humanitarian
    intervention. In the first place, it was apparently intended to help the
    Palestinians in the occupied territories, who certainly could use some
    help. For over thirty years they have been under Israel's tyranny -
    there is no other word for a government which holds (and generously
    exercises) the power of life and death over a population which has no
    voice whatever in that government. They are brutalized; they are
    malnourished; they are continually threatened by a settler movement
    resolved to take every inch of land from them. This bloody occupation
    is, according to many Israeli military men, of no strategic value, and
    it is clear that Israel would do much better to mind its own borders
    than to spread its forces all over the landscape in order to defend
    settler enclaves. So this is just plain tyranny, not self-defense, and
    Palestinian resistance is justified. If it is justified, so is
    Hizballah's attempt to support it.

    In the second place, Hizballah fights to keep Israel out of Lebanon.
    That it sometimes initiates attacks on Israel in no way undermines this
    claim: sometimes the best defense is offense. And here too, the strategy
    certainly seems to incorporate humanitarian aims.

    Hizballah came into existence as a response to Israel's earlier invasion
    of Lebanon, to a man-made humanitarian disaster in which tens of
    thousands of innocent lives were lost, and which features the atrocity
    of Sabra and Shatilla, described here by the organization Jewish Voice
    for Peace:

    "From September 16 to 19 [1982], the Maronite Phalangist militia
    rampaged through Sabra and Shatilla. The camps were sealed off by
    Israeli soldiers who remained outside. Some later reported unease at the
    noises they heard, but no sound emanating from the camps could have
    betrayed the horror that was taking place inside them. When it was all
    over, the number of dead was estimated by Israel at between 700 and 800,
    the Lebanese government issued over 1,200 death certificates in the
    camps and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society put the death toll at
    over 2,000. Subsequent attempts at estimating the dead ranged from the
    Israeli figure to as many as 3,500. But in the end, the number is not
    what is most important. Even if it were the low figure, which seems
    unlikely, this would not diminish the horrifying nature of the atrocity.
    Thousands of men, women and children were killed, beaten, raped and
    tortured. The stories that emerged from survivors of Sabra and Shatilla
    were as chilling as those from any war or atrocity in history."
    http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/publish/article_252.shtml

    There is no proof but every reason to suspect that Israel's commander
    Ariel Sharon - and the much-admired Israeli intelligence services - knew
    very well what was happening. Certainly Israel had demonstrated, by its
    exuberant bombing of Lebanese civilians, that no decency would restrain
    it from such collusion.

    So the Lebanese can reasonably expect Israel to invade when it likes,
    and to usher in a legion of atrocities: it is not as if Israel has
    subsequently found compassion or indeed anything else to restrain it in
    its treatment of 'Arabs'. The Lebanese army has again and again proven
    utterly incapable of defending the country. Only Hizballah has proven
    its ability to deal with the Israelis, and only by the sort of
    aggressive defence for which it is known. So here too, Hizballah fights
    on behalf of a helpless, threatened population; its insertion of
    military forces into South Lebanon can plausibly count as humanitarian
    intervention.

    To some this may seem laughable. How can unprovoked attacks on a
    sovereign nation, one which made no obvious move to attack across its
    Northern border, count as humanitarian intervention? Whoever asks this
    is unfamiliar with the concept's wonderful elasticity. In terms of (how
    old-fashioned!) international law, humanitarian intervention is almost
    always aggressive and almost always contemptuous of sovereignty: it is
    not as if Afghanistan ever dreamed of attacking anyone, yet my Canadian
    newspaper is full of heart-warming stories about the fine young men and
    women who are travelling thousands of miles to kill as many inhumane
    Afghans as possible. In fact the lessons of Rwanda and Srebrenica,
    countlessly reiterated by large white people such as Michael Ignatieff,
    are that 'we're too fussy' about borders and sovereignty, too wimpy
    about shedding blood, too passive when we should be, not only
    aggressive, but pre-emptively so.

    Now it may be true that Hizballah is also acting in its own interests
    and/or those of other countries seeking to extend their influence. Under
    the new rules of humanitarian intervention, as articulated by Ignatieff
    and others, that's just fine. Ignatieff mocks unmanly whiners who
    protest that America, in its humanitarian interventions, is following
    its own agenda - of course it is. Self-interest is part of what makes
    humanitarian intervention such great fun.

    It may also be true that Hizballah's actions have led to a disaster for
    the Lebanese; perhaps for the Palestinians as well. (This may be the
    case even if it's odd to blame Hizballah for Israel's murderous
    excesses.) But failure doesn't seem to matter much for the humanitarian
    imperialist - only robotic ideologues would claim success for their
    humanitarian interventions in Afghanistan, Somalia or Rwanda. The
    response to failure is to 'stay the course', i.e., persist whatever the
    military and civilian losses, and Hizballah certainly seems ready to
    make just such a response.

    Finally it must be stressed that, against humanitarian intervention, a
    country has absolutely no right of self-defense. Israel's correct
    response to the raid, according to this doctrine, would be to free the
    Palestinians and respect the sovereignty of its neighbors. A criminal
    has no active right of self-defense and neither, it seems, does a
    criminal state.

    Not everyone would agree that Israel is indeed such a state, but
    according to the doctrine of humanitarian intervention, it doesn't take
    much to fit the bill. Thus Serbia became a criminal state because of (i)
    uncertain connections to poorly understood massacres outside its
    borders, and (ii) concerns about its treatment of civilians in Kosovo,
    part of its territory but claimed by some to be occupied. The parallel
    with Israel in Lebanon and the occupied territories is unmistakable.
    Indeed the case against Israel is quite as strong as against other
    stigmatized nations: human rights organizations have held Israel guilty
    of crimes against humanity and war crimes; international jurists have
    added violations of international law and defiance of UN resolutions.

    The doctrine of humanitarian intervention is certainly flawed and
    certainly dubious. It is well on the way, however, to becoming an
    international article of faith, and it rests on the fateful precedents
    set by idiotic American ideologues and their spineless European
    catamites. Properly interpreted, it may have some merit: few can applaud
    the caution of Western powers in Rwanda. This must be borne in mind when
    it is said that, after all, Israel has a right to defend itself.

    --- (*) Every country contributing forces is predominantly 'white'
    except perhaps for Turkey, a country which aspires to join the
    paradigmatically white European community.

    Michael Neumann is a professor of philosophy at Trent University in
    Ontario, Canada. Professor Neumann's views are not to be taken as those
    of his university. His book What's Left: Radical Politics and the
    Radical Psyche has just been republished by Broadview Press. He
    contributed the essay, "What is Anti-Semitism", to CounterPunch's book,
    The Politics of Anti-Semitism. His latest book is The Case Against
    Israel. He can be reached at: mneumann@trentu.ca