An Eye For An Eye?
McClatchy provides the basic numbers in Israel launches air assault on Gaza, killing more than 200
…
Saturday night, medical officials in Gaza said that 225 people were killed and 300 more were injured in the prolonged Israeli attacks, which propelled Israel’s confrontation with the militant Islamic group into a new and even more volatile phase. The White House gave tacit support for the assault by blaming Hamas for provoking the Israeli attack.
…Israeli leaders, however, said they could no longer allow Gaza militants to fire rockets into southern Israel. Rocket and mortar attacks have killed at least seven Israelis in the last two years, including one Saturday.
The BBC has more background and reaction in Israel set for prolonged Gaza op
The BBC’s Katya Adler in Jerusalem says the timing of Israel’s operation is significant, as Israeli politicians are keen to score points ahead of a general election in February.
Ah, yes when it comes to something as important as politics, who can be concerned about a disproportionate reaction that kills women and children. Politics are important which is why the fact that Israel has kept Gaza in the vice of a siege for voting for the wrong party in the Palestinian election.
Ehud Olmert may compare the Jewish settlers in the West Bank to the Tsar’s Cossacks conducting a pogrom, but others must never criticize the actions of the Israeli government.
In a profile in The New York Times, Once a Political Riser, an Israeli Challenges His Country’s Identity , Avraham Burg goes even further:
Widely known by his nickname, Avrum, Mr. Burg, a happily married father of six and the son of one of Israel’s most admired and longest-serving government ministers, was talked about as a candidate for prime minister. Long before his 50th birthday, he led the World Zionist Organization and served as speaker in Parliament.
But four years ago Mr. Burg not only walked away from politics, but also basically walked away from Zionism. In a book that came out last year and has just been translated and released in the United States, he said that Israel should not be a Jewish state, that its law of return granting citizenship to any Jew should be radically altered, that Israeli Arabs were like German Jews during the Second Reich and that the entire society felt eerily like Germany just before the rise of Hitler.
Cut Israel loose. We can’t afford the money we send them, and they have not been a friend to the US when they inflame the Middle East with their violent overreactions. We should withdraw and await an Israeli politician strong enough to make peace.
9 comments
danger will robinson! your peace on earth link is broken.
that last article especially reminded me of the ones who walk away from omelas. the scapegoat theme doesn’t quite fit here, but the walking away because they can no longer stomach what their utopian society does to ensure its survival is aptly parallel.
i’ve long thought that the israelis should give palestine — all of it — back to the palestinians. any who want to stay can become palestinian jews, like the ones who lived there for generations as a [well-tolerated iirc] minority. the ones who still want to be *israelis* can go settle somewhere else. friends who have visited both places tell me that the texas hill country looks an awful lot like israel.
The U.S. has turned a blind eye toward Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians for way too long. The whole concept of Israel was a mistake in the first place and an overreaction to our feelings of guilt over the holocaust.
I haven’t been too keen on Israel since I lost some good friends on the USS Liberty which still sticks in my craw.
Link fixed.
Israel is a European country dropped down in Asia. The Israelis keep trying to make it into something it isn’t and are destroying the land to do it. They use too much water, and that’s why they don’t want a Palestinian state, they need the water from the West Bank. That’s also why they couldn’t live in the Texas hill country – it doesn’t have the water of Central Europe that they are trying to be recreate.
The USS Liberty is almost unknown to people who weren’t “in The Game”, but it still burns among those of us who were. John McCain’s father should have provided an air cap after the first attack, we had a carrier available. Multiple attacks against a US vessel operating in international waters and nothing was done.
When’s the last time the US handed out a life sentence to someone spying for Hamas or Hezbollah?
Oh, yes, I have issues with the Israeli government, and it has absolutely nothing to do with religion, and it started with the Six-Day War.
Israel is not our friend. It thumbs its nose at us while we constantly justify its existence with our monetary aid and claims that it must exist to keep the rest of the Middle East in balance.
I am bothered by the whole concept of “Israel’s right to exist”. Apparently Hamas is unacceptable because because they don’t recognize “Israel’s right to exist”.
Nobody recognizes another nation’s “right to exist”. Nations exist or they don’t – just ask the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Tibet, Czechoslovakia, etc. There is no such right for anyone else, so why does Israel get to expect something no one else has?
The various empires of history kept things “in balance” for extended periods, but they didn’t have a “right to exist”, and disappeared.
The new guy in the neighborhood doesn’t get to change the rules for the street.
i don’t actually want several million people plunked down in my beloved hill country. i have many, many fond memories of summers [and a few winters] spent camping there [and a wild tale or two]. i’d be happy with most or all of them repatriating to europe.
The new guy in the neighborhood doesn’t get to change the rules for the street.
which is probably why they have the bomb. once you go nukular, it’s a lot easier to dictate the rules.
[next up… now that we can embed lolcats, you’re going to fix it so that we can embed youtubes too, right? 8) ]
I have been posted to Wichita Falls, San Antonio, and San Angelo. As a result I am persuaded that “Uncle Billie” Sherman was right when he said that if he owned a house in Texas and a house in Hell, he’d live in Hell and rent out Texas. There seem to be nice people on the ‘Net who live in Texas, but I didn’t meet any nice people when I lived there.
There will be no embedded videos because they drag down the site loading, which is why I use straight links to the YouTube, or other video sites. Some people still have dial-up and I am already pushing it with the graphics loads.
Such a terrible mess, and all that dumping of American money hasn’t helped. Israel is only acting in their own best interests, its just the people over here who really seem to believe there’s love there that get the rest of us duped.
Unfortunately it is Israeli and Palestinian politicians who are acting in their own best interests, aided and abetted by US politicians looking to their best interests which allows a small group of madmen to get thousands of people killed.
There is no US interest in this mess beyond a general desire for peace in the world.
I have always found Israelis to be generally nice and warm people, but their government, like the current US government, is under the control of ideological whackos.