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.
How most of the American media gives Israel a free pass to commit war crimes in Gaza.
Rule one for corporate journalists: the Jewish state is a sacred religion; don’t dare criticise it.
Leading Jewish blogger Phil Weiss thinks the current Gaza strikes will “help end the Israel lobby“:
It’s just a theory, and yes I’m an optimist. But the grotesque events in Gaza rise above, well, the previous grotesque events in Gaza. And here is the great Glenn Greenwald attacking Marty Peretz for his disgusting rationalization of the slaughter. And note that Greenwald goes on to the Real Enemy here: the “suffocating” orthodoxy of our politicians on Israel/Palestine and the “total abdication” of political responsibility. Honey, it’s breaking up. Iraq and its lesson that terrorism arises from political disfranchisement is going to be applied to I/P under Obama. The Israel lobby is starting to fracture. “J Street”‘s brave statement is huge. Just watch, you will see some major delamination in the days to come specifically on the suffocating orthodoxy issue. Jeffrey Goldberg will come over to our side. Or Tom Friedman. It’s gonna happen, because Israel has completely lost the ability to imagine its future, witness Gaza, and who has been right about this again and again? The marginalized “left,” from realist Mearsheimer to Ian Lustick, let alone anti-Zionist Jews and Arabs. And because history does not repeat itself. If Israel expects to do Lebanon II, it is going to find that it won’t get the political cover it did 2 years ago.
I wish I was so optimistic. There are undoubtedly more voices of dissent in the US against Israeli actions, though predominantly in the liberal blogosphere. The White House and (probably) Barack Obama act like it’s still 1967. Israel can do no wrong. Killing hundreds of Palestinians for no real purpose is the Jewish state’s right.
So what has changed on the ground in Palestine?
Yesterday I attended a 2000-strong march in Sydney against Israel’s behaviour in Gaza.
Some people marched under a Hamas flag, some under a Hizbollah flag and many, such as myself, simply as an individual outraged by the Jewish state’s typically stupid action against the Palestinians. Some other Australian Jews are thankfully speaking out:
More photos here.
Israel’s attempted end game, articulated by Jennifer Loewenstein (no relation), is the following:
“HAMAS”… the word that, in this case, renders any action taken by the other side, no matter how barbaric or sadistic, legitimate. Couple any noun with the preceding adjective “Hamas” and it will be immediately quarantined as if tainted by some infectious bacteria. This is how to dehumanize a million and a half people overnight; how to render them different from us and dangerous to us. While it is true that a poll showing what the average American knows about Hamas might be cause for concern; a poll showing what the average elite-educated American knows about Hamas would reveal immediately how effective voluntary indoctrination in democratic societies has become and why those with the power to stop crimes against humanity overnight refuse to do so even after they understand that what they’re doing is wrong.
Robert Fisk in The Independent:
Hamas’s home-made rockets have killed just 20 Israelis in eight years, but a day-long blitz by Israeli aircraft that kills almost 300 Palestinians is just par for the course.
Israel will never receive security, nor deserve it, until it ends the occupation completely and treats Arabs with respect.
In the meantime, it should know resistance, an internationally recognised right.
Much of the global mainstream Jewish establishment still denies ethnic cleansing took place in 1948, but in some countries things are beginning to change:
Challenging 90 years of institutionalized denial of the massacre and deportation of the Ottoman Empire’s indigenous Armenian community during WWI, tens of thousands of Turkish intellectuals, academics, writers, journalists and dissidents have apologized online for the “Great Catastrophe.”
Perhaps one day soon Zionists will acknowledge the sins of their past.
Those who have condemned Israel for falling into a trap ought to be just as vocal in condemning Hamas for setting such a trap.
Leading dissident Israeli journalist Shraga Elam opines on the real agenda behind Israel’s madness:
Reading Jeff Halper’s analysis I don’t know if I should cry or laugh.
He writes: “Let’s be crystal clear. Israel’s massive attacks on Gaza today have one overarching goal: conflict management.”
I presume that the Israeli government is not consulting Halper and that he does not have some secret sources. For me it is crystal clear that since the outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000 the Israeli leadership has being trying to complete the ethnic cleansing of 1948. Of course nobody can call ethnic cleansing just “conflict management”.
The US opposition to this Israeli goal has been able only to slow down the cleansing but not to stop it. Israel just made from time to time some symbolic concessions under US pressure but not more.
This analysis is almost the only one that can explain the behavior of the Israeli leadership and there is enough material to support it.
The plan to “clean” Gaza is old, but only now it seems to be very close. I myself pointed at it again and again and predicted that it will be implemented along the same strategy demonstrated by the Israeli army in Southern Lebanon, i.e. an extensive bombardment that will lead to the flight of hundred thousands of civilians to Egypt and afterwards it would be much easier to cope with the Palestinian fighters. Some Israeli former generals propagated this strategy openly as papers of a respected Israeli military institute of the Tel Aviv University. A farther proof, among many others, is the recent publication in Ha’aretz that the Israeli government asked for expertise on the international legal situation of bombing of civil areas. As published in this daily, it can be understand that there are some “legal” ways to commit these war crimes, including the “evacuation” of civilians from their homes.
As a kind of Christmas and parting present president Bush obviously authorized a limited operation that should concentrate on combatants after Israel brought on November 4th. (US election day) the fragile ceasefire to fall through an obvious provocation, that the Hamas leadership was foolish enough not to overlook or to look for non-violent means to answer it.
The Israeli leadership obviously hopes now that there will be Palestinian reactions that will enable harsher steps, meaning more extensive bombardments which will lead to the flight of most of the Palestinians. In this way Israel will avoid the problems of the “day after” the war. Israel has no desire to control directly Palestinians and there is no acceptable alternative of other reliable force capable or wishing to oppress the Gazans.
In the geographical conditions in Gaza this Israeli strategy has better chances than in Lebanon. But still it is not clear how Hizballah, Syria and Iran will react to the blood bath in Gaza. They have the capability to fire missiles all over Israel. Another possible fall out is upheavals in various Arab countries.
It remains to hope that on the one side the Palestinian militants in Gaza will refrain from firing rockets at Israeli settlements and will develop at this late hour a non-violent strategy. On the other side it is necessary to appeal directly unto Israeli soldiers to do what is in their might to stop and prevent war crimes.
Today, as the Israeli army relies to a wide extent on computer technology and therefore even a single soldier at the right place can stop the war crimes. Never have possessed so few people, like computer experts, so much power. The Israeli military law says clearly that everybody has to prevent war crimes and prevent the implementation of orders over which a so called black flag is flying.
The support, publication and propagation of the appeal unto Israeli soldiers to do their duty published in a German website might have a deterring effect on the Israeli leadership even if not a single soldier will follow it. The broader support for the appeal will build a further pressure on the Israeli government to look at last for a just political settlement.
The Israeli soldiers will not just fulfill their moral duty but will help to prevent a catastrophe (Shoa) from happening to all the residents of the Middle East including the Israeli Jews.
Shraga Elam
Zurich/Switzerland
It’s a view partly echoed by The Israel Lobby co-author Stephen Walt.
Tom Segev, Haaretz, December 29:
Israel is striking at the Palestinians to “teach them a lesson.” That is a basic assumption that has accompanied the Zionist enterprise since its inception: We are the representatives of progress and enlightenment, sophisticated rationality and morality, while the Arabs are a primitive, violent rabble, ignorant children who must be educated and taught wisdom – via, of course, the carrot-and-stick method, just as the drover does with his donkey.
The bombing of Gaza is also supposed to “liquidate the Hamas regime,” in line with another assumption that has accompanied the Zionist movement since its inception: that it is possible to impose a “moderate” leadership on the Palestinians, one that will abandon their national aspirations.
A weakened Hamas is the goal of both Israel and the US.
The Arab states, typically powerless, agree on this point:
Arab [government] solidarity with the Palestinians is crumbling under Hamas’ leadership.
Some ideas of what should happen next.
