Will Someone Do The Math?
I have avoided getting into this because I assumed that Ehud Olmert would finally figure out that things don’t add up to good news for Israel.
In one action alone 22 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier have died. What does Olmert say to the family of the dead soldier? This was about saving one Israeli soldier, and they have already lost one with more to come.
Since I reported on the Swiss reaction, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has issued a warning on a Gaza ‘disaster’ [a waste of time as the Shrubbery will veto any UN action], the EU warns Israel on Gaza attacks, and the Christian Science Monitor is asking:
Are Israel’s actions in Gaza ‘war crimes’?
One of the first things the Israelis did was to bomb the main electrical plant in Gaza. Gaza is now without a sewage system. You can bring in fuel and water, but without that electrical system to power the waste treatment plant, there are no flushing toilets in Gaza.
These are Difficult days for Gaza residents, to the point that Hamas orders Palestinian forces to fight Israel, after the invasion of northern Gaza. The Palestinian forces are members of Fatah, so that was a waste of breath, even if the Israelis hadn’t already destroyed the facilities and equipment of the forces years ago. It’s difficult to police an area when everyone else is better armed than you are.
A little free advice for the Israeli government, dump Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev because no one will believe him. His stories might offer comfort to supporters of the government, but his excuses are so lame they annoy everyone else. Mr. Regev is a little confused about the timing of cause and effect, the tricky bit about the cause needing to occur before the effect.
By now, everyone, including the family of the captured Israeli soldier, has realized that this disaster is about Olmert’s testosterone level, not the soldier held in southern Gaza. The question is how many more Israelis and Palestinians are going to die while this man tries to prove he’s “tough”.
4 comments
If BushCo truly wants to bring peace to the Middle East they will stop winking and nodding at Israel; stop using Israel’s right to defend itself as an excuse for every punitive action.
I say this as a long-time supporter of Israel, but the Israel I have supported and admired was long ago hijacked by neocon soulmates.
This is about a government, not a people or a country. It is the same situation we have in the US, the recent governments of Israel have forgotten their roots as they pursue their “war on terror”.
Saying you aren’t going to compromise or talk to the other side, is saying you want the status quo to continue.
This situation is at the root of all of the other Middle East conflicts and is used as the excuse for the existence of all of the radicals in the area, on all sides.
What andante said, pretty much verbatim.
During the Clinton era, an attempt was made (not a very successful one, if longevity is your criterion) to have the U.S., despite its past in the region, act as an honest broker between the sides. Now that approach has been abandoned altogether. Ask any 10 Arabs or Arab-Americans; nine of them will say their frustration is with the U.S.’s enabling unfair treatment of Palestinians. I suspect the frustration among Arab terrorists is 10 out of 10; that, as surely as any religious or ideological clash, is why they do what they do. If Bush were interested in reducing anti-U.S. terrorism at its root… but I may as well say, if wishes were fishes…
Stella and I, who have known each other a long time, ran into each other about 20-odd years ago at a Democratic state senatorial district convention, long before our current involvement, while she was married to a man rather more, um, uncompromising in his pro-Israel views than I am. We of course chatted about Israel. I said then, and I say again, that I want to see the modern state of Israel last at least a hundred years (a long time indeed, as nations go these days), and that their current approach isn’t supporting that goal at all. Some people need to learn from history, and Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush aren’t the only ones.
All of these people need to get their minds around the fact that there is a difference between dreams and realities. Supporting dreams to the exclusion of reality serves no purpose other than death.
Friends don’t let friends occupy other countries. It is time to break the co-dependency cycle with Israel and seek some professional help.