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Michael Ignatieff on Israeli Self-Defense and Serb EthnicCleansing
August 25, 2006By
Edward S. Herman
 http://www.zcommunications.org/znetMichael Ignatieff, now a Canadian MP and contender for a top leadership position in theLiberal Party, was slow in responding to the Israeli war on Lebanon. He told theCanadian media on August 1st that "I've been following it minutely from the beginningand watching it unfold and figuring out when was the time when a statement would beimportant and relevant." (Linda Diebel, "Rae criticizes liberal rival for delay," TorontoStar, August 2, 2006). He considered it necessary to give Israel enough time "to sendHezbollah a very clear message" that kidnapping soldiers and firing rockets on Israel willnot be tolerated. Of course, Israel was killing mainly civilians and destroying civilianinfrastructure while sending this message, and there was the question of whether theworld shouldn't be sending Israel the message that aggression and the commission of war crimes under the pretense of "self defense" is not permissible, but like George Bush andCondoleezza Rice, for Ignatieff the Israeli message was crucial, not any Lebanese civiliancasualties or Israeli law violations.Michael Ignatieff is a skilled trimmer, who has adjusted his principles and thoughts to thedemands of the U.S. and Canadian power elite, and advanced accordingly: fromacademia to preferred commentator on human rights and other political issues in the U.S.mainstream media, and on to becoming a member of the Canadian parliament. He was for some years Carr Professor of Human Rights at Harvard University, and for several yearswas a regular contributor to the New York Times Magazine. He has always found that
 
what the United States has been doing in the international arena is good: well-intentioned,necessary for international well-being, and inevitable, though occasionally flawed inexecution. He was a strong supporter of the U.S. wars in Yugoslavia, objecting mainly tothe sluggishness in the application of force. He approved the invasion-occupation of Iraqand has supported the use of torture in the abstract as well as specifically in the Bushadministration's so-called "war on terror," and as noted he has recently been veryunderstanding of Israel's need to defend itself against the threats of Hezbollah and itsother enemies.One would have thought it might be problematical for a professor of human rights tovigorously support two wars (Kosovo, Iraq) carried out in violation of the UN Charter and hence "supreme crimes" in the view of the judges at Nuremberg. These two wars of aggression also resulted in serial war crimes, such as the regular bombing of civilian sitesand the use of illegal weapons such as cluster bombs, napalm, phosphorus and depleteduranium, that should have been anathema to a devotee of human rights. But these mattersdidn't bother Ignatieff, who was troubled only by the lag in initiation of NATO violencein the Balkans and the ineffectiveness and mismanagement of the occupation of Iraq.Similarly, Israel's long-term ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the occupied territories,and massive human rights violations in the process, have not troubled him in the least,although he is bothered by the failure to bring "stability" and the absence of a quietoccupation and dispossession process.He gets away with this support for supreme crimes and systematic violations of humanrights because he does this only as regards crimes and abuses carried out by the UnitedStates and its allies and clients. He is quite passionate about the crimes or alleged crimesof target states such as Yugoslavia and Saddam's Iraq. As this bias parallels and thereforesupports official positions, he is treated well by the Western elite and their instrumentssuch as Harvard University and the New York Times. He can make egregious errors andunverifiable and dubious claims, accept official claims as unquestionably true, and applydouble standards across the board, without cost. Treating him well means not only givinghim support and access, it also means letting him get away with intellectual murder.Ignatieff came into prominence during the Balkan wars, where he joined forces with anumber of other liberal intellectuals and journalists who took on the cause of AlijaIzetbegovic--author of the Islamic Declaration and close ally of Osama bin Laden--andthe Bosnian Muslims, and pressed strongly for military intervention on their behalf.1Ignatieff's position also aligned him with the Clinton administration, and he established"close relations" with Richard Holbrooke, General Wesley Clark and former YugoslavTribunal chief prosecutor Louise Arbour.2 These close links with officials with an axe togrind might be thought to compromise a journalist and human rights activist, but itdoesn't work that way in the United States: as with "embedded" journalists, such linksenhance a reporter's authority. It is only in enemy states that official connections andembedding compromise journalistic integrity, as by assumption our officials don't lie andmanipulate, and/or the linkages do not cause journalists to lose their critical capacity,whereas elsewhere governments lie and embedded journalists become propaganda agentsof the state.3
 
One revealing illustration of Ignatieff's integration into the propaganda apparatus of thewar-making establishment was his November 2, 1999 op-ed column in the New York Times on "Counting Bodies in Kosovo." By the time Ignatieff wrote this piece, the wilder claims of the State Department that 100,000 or even 500,000 Kosovo Albanians had beenkilled by the Serbs had collapsed in the wake of the very modest results of the intenseforensic searches that followed the NATO takeover of Kosovo after June 10, 1999. Thenew claim made by Carla Del Ponte, the Yugoslav Tribunal's prosecutor (who hadsucceeded Louise Arbour), was that 11,334 Kosovo Albanians had been killed. Accordingto Ignatieff, whether all the 11,334 bodies will be found "depends on whether the Serbmilitary and police removed them." Possible error or inflation by the Tribunal and itssources was ruled out for no reason but deep bias.Del Ponte had been vetted by Madeleine Albright before taking her position, the Tribunalhad been organized and largely staffed and funded by the NATO powers, and itconsistently served as a PR-judicial arm of NATO.4 The Tribunal's investigator, whorecommended dismissing any charges of war crimes against NATO without a formalinvestigation, stated that he had been satisfied with NATO press releases as aninformation source on the motivations and results of NATO actions.5 Del Ponte followedhis recommendation, implicitly accepting this use of evidence, and expressing satisfationthat there was "no deliberate targeting of civilians or unlawful military targets by NATO"(presumably the targeting of the Chinese Embassy and the Serb broadcasting facility,among hundreds of other non-military targets, was lawful). Only an unscholarly partisanwould take her number as definitive (and only a partisan newspaper would inviteIgnatieff to write on the subject and subsequently bring him on board as a regular).Eventually only some 4,000 bodies were recovered in Kosovo after the NATO takeover, by no means all or even a majority Bosnian Muslim civilians, and 2,398 remain listed bythe Red Cross as missing, yielding a total: 6,398: substantially below the 11,334, adifference never commented on by Ignatieff or the New York Times.6During the Kosovo conflict Ignatieff offered a stream of claims and interpretations thatmake an enlightening contrast with his apologetics for Israeli aggression, ethnic cleansingand structured racism. Commenting on an incident in which the Kosovo Liberation Army(KLA) murdered six Serb teenagers, Ignatieff wrote that this was "doubtless a KLA provocation, intended to goad the Serbs into overreaction and then to trigger internationalintervention. Yet it is worth asking why the KLA strategists could be absolutely certainthe Serbs would react as they did [he is referring to the "Racak massacre" of January 15,1999]. The reason is simple...only in Serbia is racial contempt an official ideology."7We may note first that for Ignatieff the KLA killings were only a "provocation," not amurderous act to be severely condemned. Note also that although there is compellingevidence that the Racak incident was arranged into a "massacre" following a furious battle, and is therefore of extremely dubious authenticity, Ignatieff takes it asunquestionably valid.8 On the certainty of the Serb reaction, killings such as those carriedout by the KLA produce similar responses in civil conflicts everywhere, so that Ignatieff's blaming it on Serb racism is nonsensical for that reason alone. But it also flies in the face
of 00

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