Reading the justifications that Israeli supporters are offering for the IDF assault, I don’t see any rationale being offered that would not justify killing everyone in Gaza.
If a single rocket is fired from Gaza territory, does that mean that everyone living in that area has automatically forfeited their life? The New York Times notes today that Israeli supporters believe that “the issue of proportionality… is a false construct because comparing death tolls offers no help in measuring justice and legitimacy.”
And we are obliged to accept whatever exonerations are offered by the IDF and their apologists. Max Blumenthal had an excellent piece on Huffington Post on the response to the initial IDF attacks on Gaza:
Almost as soon as the first Israeli missile struck the Gaza Strip, a veteran cheering squad suited up to support the home team. “Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life,” Charles Krauthammer claimed in the Washington Post. Echoing Krauthammer, Alan Dershowitz called the Israeli attack on Gaza, “Perfectly ‘Proportionate.'” And in the New York Times, Israeli historian Benny Morris described his country’s airstrikes as “highly efficient.” …. “It was Israel at its best,” Yossi Klein Halevi declared in the New Republic.
The Israeli government is doing backflips to muzzle the media and offer its own spin. The primary lesson it appears to have learned from its 2006 debacle in Lebanon is to make it far more difficult to permit outsiders to see the carnage it inflicts. The Israeli Supreme Court declared that the IDF must permit some journalists access to the battle front. The IDF has thus far scorned that decision as effectively as the Bush administration trampled the US Constitution.
The cheering by Bush and top Republicans and Democrats for the bombing of the Gaza concentration camp epitomizes how the American political leadership has learned nothing since 9/11. The United States will be blamed for atrocities committed with American weapons and planes.
Jim,
Thanks for the link to the Blumenthal article. I read it, but I’m afraid I can’t be quite as optimistic as he is when celebrates a single opinion poll showing 41% against the bloodletting in Gaza and a few pols showing opposition.
It’s my premise – and has been since 9/11 – that, whether we like it or not, we’re all Israelis now. I don’t mean that we all support that murderous, socialist regime, but that our country now functions in a self-induced, self-perpetuated climate of fear and bunker mentality.
Everyone is against us, everyone hates us, we are the chosen, there is no illegal or unethical step that we shouldn’t take to ‘preserve’ ourselves. I think that’s a tidbit of the hubris which runs through both societies.
Corrigendum: read ‘when HE celebrates’ for ‘when celebrates’
Why should the Israelis conduct themselves any differently than their friends the Americans who solved the proportionality problem by simply refusing to keep track of Iraqi deaths…..while sneaking American coffins in under cover of darkness.
Needless to say, the various and sundry Satraps of Despotic Middle Eastern Countries are pleased as punch that the Palestinians are taking another shot for the team. After all, if there were no Israelis around to draw fire, the attention of angry masses would fall on the despots and this is bad for
business.
But wait, Condi is going to bring all these true-believers together and stinkeye them into a cease fire so that Halevi’s “Israel at its Best” stays bestest.
Jim, this great post of yours has been published together with mine today at http://uprootedpalestinians.blogspot.com/2009/01/brave-idf-soldaten-destroy-un-run.html
see also http://azvas.blogspot.com/2009/01/brave-idf-soldaten-destroy-un-run.html
How DARE they hit a UN-based school!!
They must be suicidal!
This is doom for Israel and the uS in the Middle east. We HAVE to stop selling thenm illegal weapons, as well as the UK
Now , the homemade missiles are being fired from Lebanon and so one assumes that Assad Junior must have a good bomb shelter in that Vast Palace Complex in the hills outside Damascus. The folks in charge will not be happy until the entire region erupts into the kind of bloody chaos that would make the carvers of heads on gibbets in the stone temples of Assyria blush. Economic clusterboinks demand their equal and covalent geo-political clusterboinks because if everybody is going to be broke then one might as well enjoy a little gunplay and bloodlust.
I remember those cockroaches dancing and celebrating as the towers fell.
Which group are you referring to?
There was dancing by both the Israelis and the Arabs on 9/11.
Dirk – I hope the missiles from Lebanon were flukes, not the breaking of the dam.
On the ancient Assyrian reference – maybe someone should translate that poem by Keats (?) into both Arabic and Hebrew…. OK – maybe that poem wasn’t about the Assyrians – but about some long dead middle Eastern king….
Wes – on the “we’re all Israelis now” – that was the theme that many of the neoconservatives took right after 9/11.
It worked out well for them, esp. since none of them shed any blood in Iraq.
I can’t help but wonder why Hamas isn’t using their magic rockets to take out Israeli tanks and soldiers on the ground in Gaza. Anyone got any ideas on this?
Maybe because the magic rockets are about as accurate as a twice-pawned sling shot?
Hey, Jim,
Just to clarify. ‘We’re all Israelis now’ is true only in the sense that now we – just like the Israelis – don’t mind killing a few thousand or million Arabs and other assorted ethnicities every few years or when it really matters like right before an election…
Yea, we’ve been killing little brown people all around the world for a long time, and that’s terrible and atrocious, but by my recollection we’ve only recently jumped into the Semitic hornets nest with guns and tanks. Reagan thought about it, and then thought better of it. Bush I really opened the can of worms, but we could have kept the lid on it by simply ending the horrible sanctions. Bush II, with his invasion and occupation of Iraq, has permanently designated us as Israelis to most of the world. It’s not enough that we pay out huge sums to Israel in foreign and military aid (to say nothing of loan guarantees), nor that always protect them at the UN or in other international discussions, but now we picked up a rifle and are actively firing at their cousins.
And that’s were it gets real bloody for a really long time….
Yes… great idea. Kill all the Gazans. That has my vote.
Wes – I agree with your assessment of how much of the world views the USA thanks to GWB.
Hopefully the US government can turn over at least a tiny corner of a new leaf….
uh-oh — that last sentence means NO MORE PILSNERS tonight for me.