Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star, December 29:
God punished the arrogance and hubris of the Hebrews in the Old Testament by making them wander the wilderness for 40 years, before allowing a later, more humble, generation to enter Canaan. The current generation of Israeli Jews is not as proficient at learning these 40-year lessons, it seems, to judge from Israel’s current ferocious attack on Gaza.
The media has missed just what it is that Israeli forces attack and demolish.
We’re not just talking indiscriminate taking out of people. Arabs are non-people so the odd tens, hundreds, thousands, are of no import.
What the little boys and girls with the big toys are doing is taking out the essential infrastructure.
2002 Ramallah – pretty much the entire Palestinian governmental and cultural apparatus destroyed systematically.
consider the comparable events in Iraq after March 2003, no accident.)
In particular, the destruction (or theft) of the records at the Central Bureau of Statistics in Ramallah in 2002 was to my mind the work of Svengali genius. How can a Palestinian nation exist without records? If there is to be any documentation at all, it must be in our (Israeli) hands. As it now is.
2006 Nablus. cleaning up what remained.
2006 Lebanon. emasculates Lebanese industrial capacity. This is not to prevent Lebanese forces waging war; this is to knock out the local competition in economic warfare.
2008 Gaza. civil, industrial and cultural infrastructure (or what’s left of it).
It’s called ethnic cleansing. And Israel means business.
no half measures.
the go-ahead from the US; complicity from Egypt; serial inaction from Europe. Full steam ahead.