JOHN LEWIS-DICKERSON's Blog

YouTube, Twitter: Weapons in Israel's Info War

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:29:02 EST

YouTube, Twitter: Weapons in Israel's Info War

By Nathan Hodge @ wired.com - December 30, 2008 | 1:47:01 PMCategories: Info War, Sabras

Days after sending aircraft to strike Hamas militants in Gaza, the Israeli government is launching a campaign to dominate the blogosphere.

Among other things, the Israeli military has started its own YouTube channel to distribute footage of precision airstrikes. And as I type, the Israeli consulate in New York is hosting a press conference on microblogging site Twitter. It's pretty interesting to see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reduced to tweets of 140 characters or less ("We hav 2 prtct R ctzens 2, only way fwd through neogtiations, & left Gaza in 05. y Hamas launch missiles not peace?"; "we're not at war with the PAL people. we're at war with a group declared by the EU& US a terrorist org").

The Jerusalem Post quotes Maj. Avital Leibovich, the head of the Israeli Defense Forces' foreign press branch on the digital media campaign. "The blogosphere and new media are another war zone," she says. "We have to be relevant there."

It appears, however, that some of the YouTube posts have already been scrubbed. A note on the page of the pro-Israel YouTube channel reads: "We are saddened that YouTube has taken down some of our exclusive footage showing the IDF's operational success in operation Cast Lead against Hamas extremists in the Gaza Strip. ... It is also worth noting that one of the videos removed had the highest number of hits (over 10,000) at the time of its removal."

SOURCE - http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/12/israels-info-wa.html

Americans Should Act to End Violence Against Gaza

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:11:20 EST

Americans Should Act to End Violence Against Gaza

by Jeremy R. Hammond @ smirkingchimp.com | December 31, 2008 - 9:36am

Israel's bombardment of Gaza has long been in the planning, and the purpose is to terrorize the Arab population in the hopes that they will revolt against the Hamas leadership and to punish them further for electing them. The siege Gaza has remained under since Israel withdrew its military from the Strip in 2006 has had the same intended purpose.

A comparable policy was implemented by the US against Iraq. The sanctions were intended to further the goal of regime change. The means by which this goal was pursued was to punish the Iraqi people, to deny them food and medical supplies. By United Nations estimates, more than a million Iraqis died as a result. More than half a million of those victims were children.

In the end, although then US ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright publicly said that the "price" of half a million dead children was "worth it", the sanctions served only to strengthen the control of Saddam Hussein's regime over the people by making them totally dependent upon the regime for their very survival.

When it became clear that the genocidal sanctions were not sustainable due to overwhelming global opposition, the military option came to be seen as the only option for implementing regime change..........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/19473

Gaza Clouds Obama’s Prospects

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:06:57 EST

Gaza Clouds Obama’s Prospects

By Robert Scheer @ truthdig.com - Posted on Dec 30, 2008

So, why didn’t they give peace a chance? Why did the leaders of Hamas and Israel not wait for the incoming U.S. president’s inauguration before mutually escalating hostilities? Here was a president-elect chosen, in part, on the expectation that he could enhance prospects for Mideast peace, even if it meant negotiating with people thought to be enemies.

Why not give that approach an opportunity to succeed regarding the future of Palestine? Why not see if Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose husband had been more successful than any other president in advancing the prospects for peace in the Mideast, could have accomplished more than the lame-duck secretary of state she will soon replace?

The question answers itself.

Unfortunately, neither Hamas’ nor Israel’s leaders believe that a meaningful peace of the sort all U.S. presidents have endorsed is in their interest. That peace stipulates two independent and viable national entities, one Israeli and the other Palestinian. Clearly, Hamas and its hard-line supporters in the region reject the goal of an Israel at peace with its neighbors and secure within its boundaries, even if those borderlines return to those existing in 1967 at the time of the Six-Day War..........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081230_gaza_clouds_obamas_prospects/

AP photo / Dan Balilty

A Palestinian runs with the flag of Hamas during clashes with Israeli troops in the Shuafat refugee camp, on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The camp has been beset by protests against the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

America is Primarily at Fault for the Conflict in Gaza

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:57:22 EST

America is Primarily at Fault for the Conflict in Gaza

by Cenk Uygur @ smirkingchimp.com | December 31, 2008 - 10:33am

If you're a conservative reading this, I know what you're thinking - typical liberal. Part of the blame America first crowd. How could this war between the Israelis and Palestinians be America's fault?

First, I love America. I chose to be an American. I think this is the greatest country on earth. And part of what makes it great is that it is self-correcting. It can take criticism and use it to make itself better. It is a country confident enough to not shout down dissenters.

So, let me offer you something you hardly ever hear in the American media. The American government had a great deal to do with the outbreak of violence in the Gaza Strip right now. The Bush administration demanded - against the advice of nearly every expert in the field and the Israeli government - that the Palestinians hold elections. They did. Hamas won.

When Hamas won, we could have pulled them in toward the direction of political action and reconciliation. Instead, we chose to isolate them, start a coup against them (read this terrific article in Vanity Fair about our attempt to overthrow Hamas) and further radicalize them. We made a mockery of the idea of democracy. We proved to them that we never meant a word of the so-called Freedom Doctrine. We only wanted elections in which our guys won.

This kind of hypocrisy has consequences. It sends a message that democracy and voting doesn't work. And our botched coup against Hamas had the effect of sending the message that violence is the answer. If you don't get your way, the proper course of action is to try to change the results through use of force...........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/19481

Israel and the Silent Partner: Who Wins What in Gaza?

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:41:56 EST

Darkness in Qassam-Land

By Julia Chaitin (Israeli) @ washingtonpost.com - Wednesday, December 31, 2008; Page A15

In the winter, the Negev becomes quite beautiful. Though it rains very little here, the rain we get turns everything green, and there is a cleanness in the air that we don't have during the dry summer months. But since Saturday, when a major Israeli offensive began in the Gaza Strip, less than 20 kilometers from my home and less than two kilometers from the college where I teach, all we have had is darkness, despair and fear.

This war is wrong. It is wrong because it cannot achieve its manifest goals -- long-term "normal" life for the residents of the Negev region. The war is morally wrong because most of the victims are Palestinian and Israeli civilians whose only "crime" is that they live in Negev or Gaza. This war is wrong because it is not heading toward a viable solution of the conflict but is instead creating more hatred and greater determination on the part of both peoples to harm one another. It is wrong because it is leading to stronger feelings that we have nothing to lose by striking further, with greater force. This war is wrong because, even before the last smoke rises from the rubble and the last ambulance carries the dead and wounded to hospitals, our leaders will find themselves signing a new agreement for a cease-fire......

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/30/AR2008123002661.html

My Brilliant Career: Rampage in Gaza for a Bump in the Polls

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:52:46 EST

Rampage in Gaza for a Bump in the Polls

(A poll taken on Sunday in Israel showed that Barak's Labor Party has already gained 50 percent since the bombing began!)

My Brilliant Career

By MIKE WHITNEY @ counterpunch.org

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets.
Poem by Pablo Neruda, "I'm Explaining a Few Things"

Barack Obama has passed his first test with flying colors. He's made himself disappear so Israel can continue its killing spree in Gaza. The last time a president shrunk this small was when Ariel Sharon took his wrecking-ball through Jenin during the second intifada. Bush slipped down a mouse hole so Israel's "Man of Peace" could finish his dirty work unopposed. Now Obama has taken refuge in that same dark hideaway. What a relief it must be for his critics at AIPAC and the far-right think tanks to know that the next Commander in Chief will be every bit as compliant as the last. That's "continuity they can believe in".

Obama has remained serenely detached while American-made F-16's have dumped more than one hundred tons of lethal ordnance on the captive population of Gaza. In fact, the president-elect has spent more time working on his abs at the Semper Fit gym in Honolulu than trying to stop the bloody onslaught which has already resulted in the deaths of over 300 Palestinians, half of who are civilians.

When asked why he hasn't given his opinion on the conflict, Obama spokesman have blandly stated, "There's only one president at a time".

Uh-huh. So why was Obama so quick to condemn Russia's invasion of South Ossetia? Is the yardstick for measuring aggression different in the Caucasus than it is in the Middle East? Or is it because politicians are just too afraid to cross Israel?

"If somebody shot rockets at my house where my two daughters were sleeping at night, I'd do everything in my power to stop them," Obama proclaimed on a recent visit to Israel.

Right. It's too bad Palestinian parents can't claim that same right without being branded as terrorists..........

ARTICLE - http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney12312008.html

Mr. Mubarak, Tear Down That Wall!

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:47:01 EST

Accomplice in Cairo Mr. Mubarak, Tear Down That Wall!

By FRANKLIN LAMB

"I'm not calling for a coup d'etat, but go talk to your leaders and tell them you do not accept what is happening in Gaza".

-- Hezbollah Sec-Gen Hasan Nasrallah calling for Egyptians "in millions" to demonstrate their support for opening the Rafah crossing from Gaza to Egypt, 28 December 2008

Giggling like smitten teenagers, exchanging Channakah and Eid greetings (neither acknowledges the more Shi'a associated Ashoura) Hosni Mubarak and Tzipi Livni 'hooked up' this past week in Cairo to discuss Gaza.

Both spoke of their desire to see Corporal Shalit returned safely. Both knew Israel's former Mossad operative, current Foreign Minister, and Prime Minister wannabe had a permission slip from the Bush Administration for all-out war against the Palestinians in the 25 by 6 mile territorial snippet along the Eastern Mediterranean. When the correct photo-op was selected for public distribution, it showed a concerned and dour Egyptian President brooding with arching brow.

The duo focused on ‘diplomatic logistics and cover’ and the urgency to crush Hamas. They appeared oblivious to all who happened to be in the vicinity of American rockets and bombs or institutions leveled by waves of F-16 fighter jets and missiles kept in ready use from the $ 200 million worth of spare parts supplied by US taxpayers from 200l-2006, as well as 186 million gallons of JP-8 aviation jet fuel , and thousands of TOW, Hellfire and “bunker buster” bombs and missiles, freed up for delivery to Israel last year when the Bush administration signed a $ 1.3 billion contract with Raytheon.

What was not on the agenda was what both knew but ignored. The fate of 1.5 million people.........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.counterpunch.org/lamb12312008.html

Franklin Lamb, an international lawyer and researcher currently based in Beirut, drafted for HOKOK, the International Coalition against Impunity, its Complaint/Submission filed on December 10, 2008 (the 60th Anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) with the Internationally Criminal Court in The Hague. The Case charges Israel with continuing crimes in Gaza and throughout Occupied Palestine. In January 2009 HOKOK will petition the ICC to include Mohammad Hosni Mubarak as an additional defendant in the Case. Lamb can be reached at fplamb@sabrashatila.org.

Israel ordered to let international media into Gaza

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:24:22 EST

Israel ordered to let international media into Gaza

Toni O'Loughlin in Jerusalem
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 31 December 2008 13.59 GMT
Article history

Israel's supreme court today ordered the government to allow the international media into Gaza to report on the effect of the air strikes on Palestinians.

Over the past two months, foreign journalists and representatives have increasingly been restricted from entering Gaza.

Israel has closed the border completely since it began bombing the besieged Palestinian territory on Saturday.

However, the supreme court told the government it must allow up to 12 journalists to enter whenever it opens the Erez crossing, a passenger gateway, for humanitarian reasons......

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/31/israelandthepalestinians-middleeast2

Israeli Peace Group Say Stop the Bombing

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:10:43 EST

Israeli Peace Group Say Stop the Bombing

Gush Shalom www.gush-shalom.org - Published on Wednesday, December 31, 2008 by The Progressive

This war is inhuman, superfluous and harmful. Nothing good for Israel will come out of it!

The killing of hundreds of Palestinians and the destruction of the infrastructure of life in the Gaza Strip are abominable acts. Those who hope to reap electoral profits from them are greatly mistaken.

A ground invasion will cause even greater harm, destroy what is left in Gaza and cause many casualties - Israelis and Palestinians, soldiers and civilians.

If, after hard battles, the Israeli army will succeed in conquering the ruins of Gaza, the result will be, at most, to drive Hamas underground and to increase their influence both in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank.

The attack, which has already deepened the hatred, will

AROUSE the whole civilized world against us,

RAISE all over the region a new generation that will hate the State of Israel even more,

INCREASE the impact of Hamas,

UNDERMINE even more the status of peace-seeking Palestinians,

PREVENT Palestinian unity, without which there can be no peace.

On behalf of thousands of Israelis who have demonstrated in the streets of Tel-Aviv within hours after the start of the war, we demand:

To stop at once the attack on Gaza!
To propose - and to maintain - a cease-fire that will include the end off all violent actions by both sides, a real opening of the border crossings and the termination of the blockade against the population of the Gaza Strip.
To start a dialogue with Hamas. Hamas is an integral part of Palestinian society and the Palestinian political system. Without their participation, all negotiations and agreements are meaningless.

SOURCE - http://www.progressive.org/mag/shalom123008.html

So What Have The Palestinians Got To Complain About?

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:04:01 EST

So What Have The Palestinians Got To Complain About?

by Mark Steel - Published on Wednesday, December 31, 2008 by The Independent/UK

When you read the statements from Israeli and US politicians, and try to match them with the pictures of devastation, there seems to be only one explanation. They must have one of those conditions, called something like "Visual Carnage Responsibility Back To Front Upside Down Massacre Disorder".

For example, Condoleezza Rice, having observed that more than 300 Gazans were dead, said: "We are deeply concerned about the escalating violence. We strongly condemn the attacks on Israel and hold Hamas responsible."

Someone should ask her to comment on teenage knife-crime, to see if she'd say: "I strongly condemn the people who've been stabbed, and until they abandon their practice of wandering around clutching their sides and bleeding, there is no hope for peace."

The Israeli government suffers terribly from this confusion. They probably have adverts on Israeli television in which a man falls off a ladder and screams, "Eeeeugh", then a voice says, "Have you caused an accident at work in the last 12 months?" and the bloke who pushed him gets £3,000.

The gap between the might of Israel's F-16 bombers and Apache helicopters, and the Palestinians' catapulty thing is so ridiculous that to try and portray the situation as between two equal sides requires the imagination of a children's story writer.....

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mark-steel/mark-steel-so-what-have-the-palestinians-got-to-complain-about-1218135.html

A Palestinian man places a green Hamas flag on the rubble of a destroyed mosque after an Israeli air strike in Gaza

The Gaza War is Completely Stoppable

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:50:48 EST

The Gaza War is Completely Stoppable

by Robert Naiman - Published on Wednesday, December 31, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

We have seen this movie before. In the summer of 2006, Israel invaded Lebanon. Replace "Hizbullah" with "Hamas" and "Lebanon" with "Gaza," and much we have seen in the last few days is depressingly familiar. Once again, the Israeli military assault is justified on the basis of the need to stop rocket attacks on Israel, even though it is widely conceded that this will not be the result. Once again, establishment voices in Washington give carte blanche to the military action, even though few believe it will accomplish its stated objectives, and everyone understands that it will impose a huge political cost for the United States around the world, especially in the Arab and Muslim world.

But, although one can only be sick at the repeated, completely unnecessary loss of life, there is a silver lining to the Lebanon precedent: international outrage in 2006 effectively forced the United States government into a corner, in which it finally could no longer resist a ceasefire. And there is no reason to believe that what happened in 2006 can not and will not happen again now.

The question is then how long it will take international outrage to build to the level necessary to force the US government to stop backing the Israeli military action, and therefore how many Palestinians and Israelis will needlessly die in the meantime.........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/31-9

How Hypocrisy on 'Terrorism' Kills

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:35:32 EST

How Hypocrisy on 'Terrorism' Kills

by Robert Parry - Published on Wednesday, December 31, 2008 by Consortium News

Israel, a nation that was born out of Zionist terrorism, has launched massive airstrikes against targets in Gaza using high-tech weapons produced by the United States, a country that often has aided and abetted terrorism by its client military forces, such as Chile's Operation Condor and the Nicaraguan contras, and even today harbors right-wing Cuban terrorists implicated in blowing up a civilian airliner.

Yet, with that moral ambiguity excluded from the debate, the justification for the Israeli attacks, which have killed at least 364 people, is the righteous fight against "terrorism," since Gaza is ruled by the militant Palestinian group, Hamas.

Hamas rose to power in January 2006 through Palestinian elections, which ironically the Bush administration had demanded. However, after Hamas won a parliamentary majority, Israel and the United States denounced the outcome because they deem Hamas a "terrorist organization."

Hamas then wrested control of Gaza from Fatah, a rival group that once was considered "terrorist" but is now viewed as a U.S.-Israeli partner, so it has been cleansed of the "terrorist" label.

Unwilling to negotiate seriously with Hamas because of its acts of terrorism - which have included firing indiscriminate short-range missiles into southern Israel - the United States and Israel sat back as the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza worsened, with 1.5 million impoverished Palestinians packed into what amounts to a giant open-air prison..........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/123008.html

Gaza Attacks: Murder with Impunity

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:30:48 EST

Gaza Attacks: Murder with Impunity

by Mustafa Qadri @ Published on Wednesday, December 31, 2008 by Foreign Policy in Focus

It was about midnight last Sunday when my phone rang. "I'm not sure I will survive tonight, the Israelis are bombing us everywhere." It was Mahmoud, a young resident of Rafah, a city in the Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt. We first met when I visited the troubled coastal territory after Israel dismantled its settlements there in September 2005. On December 27, just before midday, Israel's powerful air force, the fourth largest in the world, commenced a deadly air assault on over 40 separate locations in the Gaza Strip. The strikes were as calculated as they were cold - the targets were almost entirely people and facilities vital to the Hamas government. In one of the areas hit, where police officers had gathered for a parade, body parts were strewn along a courtyard.

The present conflict is the deadliest since Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank in the Six Day War of 1967. That is a surprising achievement given the bloody history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, particularly during the Palestinian uprisings, or intifadas, of 1987 and 2000.

Israel has targeted Hamas, but the vast majority of the casualties from its attacks have been civilian police officers, government workers, and other civilians. The Palestinian death toll currently stands at 350 while more than a thousand have sustained injuries. The figure is expected to increase as Israel's bombardment continues. Since Monday morning, Israel's navy has commenced bombing Gaza from the coast. Compounding the suffering is the fact that medical and other humanitarian supplies are in a dire state thanks to Israel's three-year-old blockade of the territory. Half the population of Gaza, even before this most recent attack, was living below the poverty line.

So far, rockets fired from Gaza have killed two Israelis and injured several others......

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5769

Protesters Worldwide Keep up Pressure Over Gaza

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:25:09 EST

Protesters Worldwide Keep up Pressure Over Gaza

Published on Wednesday, December 31, 2008 by Agence France Presse

PARIS - Protesters denouncing Israel's deadly bombardment of the Gaza Strip returned to the streets in demonstrations around the world to keep up the pressure for an end to the violence.

In France, more than 7,000 protesters marched in a dozen cities across the country to denounce the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip , which continued for the fourth day running Tuesday.

In Paris, around 3,500 people according to police -- 5,000 according to the organisers -- marched towards the French foreign ministry on the Quai D'Orsay by the River Seine, shouting slogans and carrying banners denouncing Israel.

Police said another 700 marched in the western city of Nantes, while demonstrations in at least a dozen cities and towns across the country each attracted hundreds of protesters.

In London, between 200 and 300 demonstrators protested peacefully outside the Israeli embassy, after the two previous days' rallies had descended into violence.......

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/12/31-2

Protesters take part in a rally against Israel's air offensive in Gaza Strip, in front of the Israel embassy in Tokyo December 30, 2008. About 200 protesters participated in the rally criticizing Israel. The banner reads, "Stop air assault on Gaza."(Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon/Japan)As Israel, under increasing diplomatic pressure, mulled a proposed 48-hour truce and the death toll from its onslaught rose to at least 373 Palestinians, the protesters made their voices heard again.

Israel Rejects Truce Calls, Presses on With Gaza Offensive

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:17:16 EST

Israel Rejects Truce Calls, Presses on With Gaza Offensive

Published on Wednesday, December 31, 2008 by Agence France Presse

JERUSALEM - Israel on Wednesday rejected world calls for a truce and vowed to push on with its deadly Gaza offensive, as warplanes pounded Hamas targets for a fifth day and the Islamists shot back with rockets.

"The cabinet decided to continue with the military operation," a senior government official told AFP after a six-hour meeting of the country's security cabinet.

)"We did not launch the Gaza operation only to end it with the same rocket firing that we had at its start," he quoted Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as saying.

"If the conditions are ripe and we think that they might offer a solution that will guarantee a better security reality in the south then we would weigh the issue. We are not there yet."

Amid mushrooming protests around the globe , world diplomats have been scrambling to find a way to halt one of Israel's deadliest-ever offensives on Gaza that has so far killed at least 390 Palestinians.......

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/12/31-5

As Israel's Gaza offensive continues Palestinian civilians are dying amid the rubble, while survivors struggle just to find food. (AFPTV)

A Beginner's Guide: What is Hamas, Really?

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:12:45 EST

A Beginner's Guide

What is Hamas, Really?

By RON JACOBS @ counterpunch.org

Since it became clear that the intention of Israel's latest military assault on Gaza is to destroy Hamas, various newspapers in the US have printed opinion pieces echoing the Washington line that it is Hamas' fault that Gaza is being pummeled by Israeli warplanes. Now, there may be some things one can blame Hamas for, but firing missiles at people and buildings in Gaza from Israeli warplanes is not one of them. It has been the desire of Tel Aviv and Washington to eradicate Hamas as a political force for a long time. The military Israeli assault currently going on is but the latest installment in fulfilling that desire.

Just prior to the assault there was a Israeli-enforced blockade on Gaza. This blockade prevented necessary goods from reaching the people living there. There was also an Israeli incursion in November that was the culmination of a series of border clashes between Israel and Palestinian gunmen. These clashes resulted in the deaths of at least 16 Palestinians. Of course, these occurrences were but a continuation of the low-intensity conflict between Hamas and Israel that in themselves are but a part of the conflict between Israel and Palestine that has continued since 1948. Hamas is but the most recent organization to represent the militant wing of the Palestinian resistance and, therefore be at the receiving end of Israel's most violent responses. At this point in history if Hamas did not resist, there would be no resistance to Tel Aviv's plans to render the Palestinians completely irrelevant in their own land. Most Palestinians understand this and are understandably angry at the current campaign in Gaza, no matter which political faction has their allegiance..........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs12312008.html

Gaza's One-Sided Images: Five Little Girls on a Sofa

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:06:57 EST

Five Little Girls on a Sofa Gaza's One-Sided Images

By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY @ counterpunch.org

You wouldn't know from the western media that Israel's foreign minister (and would-be prime minister), Tzipi Livni, made a disastrous appearance on al-Jazeera television last week, just as you wouldn't have seen dreadful pictures of dead children and their screaming distraught mothers in Gaza unless you watch al-J TV, which is almost impossible in the US. Here in France we can receive al-Jazeera, and the images are truly horrific. But Ms Livni doesn't want us to see them. Nor do most western governments. She declared that "when you show one-sided images from Gaza you're not helping peace. I understand that pictures which create provocation lead to anger and hostility among the citizens, but we want a better future for this region." In other words – don't look at pictures that tell the truth because they will make you angry about people who blast children into ragged fragments. What we don't see, says Livni, won't harm us, which is the theme of authoritarian censors through the ages.

This woman, with all the compassion of a raging shark that has smelled blood in flesh-strewn water, is furious that pictures have appeared in public of the mangled bloody bodies of children her country has slaughtered in its frenzy of vicious bombing and rocketing. But they'll never be seen by the great majority of people in the west, simply because media outlets don't want to upset readers and viewers. Nor, of course, do they want to upset Israel, that bastion of kindly morality which wields so much influence over US politicians that they dare not speak out against airstrikes that kill children........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.counterpunch.org/cloughley12312008.html

Gaza crisis: a crossroads for Obama

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 15:08:26 EST

Gaza crisis: a crossroads for ObamaIt could bring renewal – if Obama is bold enough to stand up to Israel.

By Sandy Tolan - from the December 31, 2008 edition of "The Christian Science Monitor"

Los Angeles - The catastrophe unfolding in Gaza has the dark force of a recurring Middle Eastern nightmare: Scattered guerrilla-like attacks from the weak lead to massive retaliation by the strong. Excessive lethal force provokes enraged recriminations. Fresh bloodshed fuels the hard-liners on both sides.

We have seen this cycle many times before: throughout Lebanon (2006), across the occupied territories during the first intifada (1987-93), in east and west Beirut (1982), and even during the founding of modern Israel and the subsequent dispossession of the Palestinians in 1948.

When the smoke finally drifts from Gaza, and the human rights investigations begin – into the death of schoolchildren in midday rocket attacks or the demolition of a women's dormitory – sober voices will ask why Israel has still not learned a fundamental lesson: By trying to crush your enemy, you only make him stronger.

Two years ago, despite killing hundreds of Lebanese fighters and civilians, and driving some 800,000 from their homes, Israel could not defeat the radical Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which emerged stronger than ever. For Israel, again, the lesson was lost – ironically, on a nation whose tragic motto is "never again."

The difference now is that from the ashes of this war, new lands can be seeded – if President-elect Obama is bold enough to do what his predecessors would not. Like the financial meltdown in the US, Israel's grave and massive blunder in Gaza provides Mr. Obama with an opportunity for sweeping changes unimaginable on Election Day.

Obama could begin by making clear that the days of Israel's impunity are over.......

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1231/p09s01-coop.html

SLAVE MENTALITY.

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:42:05 EST

SLAVE MENTALITY.

from the group blog of "The American Prospect" - by A. Serwer

It always fascinates me how, in the context of the Arab Israeli conflict, Jews who err on the side of Israel in all things suddenly become immediate arbiters of ethnic authenticity, as Marty Peretz does here, going after, among others, my colleague Ezra Klein and roll dog Spencer Ackerman, as a result of their criticisms of Israel's Gaza operation:

I pity them their hatred of their inheritance. Actually of both their inheritances, Jewish and American. They are pip-squeaks, and I do not much read them. But when any one of them writes a real doozey it is likely to come to my attention.

I guess I find this fascinating because when Jews do this, they sound like no one more than Malcolm X divvying up black folks into Field Negroes and House Negroes. In the minds of folks like Peretz, any Jew who does not acquiesce, without criticism, to whatever military actions Israel deems necessary is caught, like a house slave, in the throes of their own self-hatred. They are unable to unshackle themselves from centuries of anti-Semitism and self-loathing, and are doomed to justify whatever viciousness undertaken against their people out of a twisted desire to be accepted by those who hate them. Rather than looking after massa, self-hating Jews look after Hamas......

ENTIRE POST - http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=12&year=2008&base_name=slave_mentality

Israel's 'victories' in Gaza come at a steep price

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:32:46 EST

Israel's 'victories' in Gaza come at a steep price

The Jewish ethical tradition means embracing Palestinians, too.

By Sara Roy @ "The Christian Science Monitor" - from the January 2, 2009 edition

Cambridge, Mass. - I hear the voices of my friends in Gaza as clearly as if we were still on the phone; their agony echoes inside me. They weep and moan over the death of their children, some, little girls like mine, taken, their bodies burned and destroyed so senselessly.

One Palestinian friend asked me, "Why did Israel attack when the children were leaving school and the women were in the markets?" There are reports that some parents cannot find their dead children and are desperately roaming overflowing hospitals.

As Jews celebrated the last night of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights commemorating our resurgence as a people, I asked myself: How am I to celebrate my Jewishness while Palestinians are being killed?

The religious scholar Marc Ellis challenges us further by asking whether the Jewish covenant with God is present or absent in the face of Jewish oppression of Palestinians? Is the Jewish ethical tradition still available to us? Is the promise of holiness – so central to our existence – now beyond our ability to reclaim?

The lucky ones in Gaza are locked in their homes living lives that have long been suspended – hungry, thirsty, and without light but their children are alive.........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0102/p09s01-coop.html

How to think about the missiles that terrorize Sderot, by Adam Horowitz, who's been there

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:16:53 EST

How to think about the missiles that terrorize Sderot, by Adam Horowitz, who's been there

by Phil Weiss @ "Mondoweiss"

Adam Horowitz writes:

Today the Christian Science Monitor has a piece by Alan Dershowitz defending Israel's actions. I could respond to his article point by point, but it's really just the same justifications for collective punishment that he and other Jewish luminaries have been offering for decades. In a tired tradition, Dershowitz tries to blame the Palestinians for making Israel kill them - "The firing of rockets at civilians from densely populated civilian areas is the newest tactic in the war between terrorists who love death and democracies that love life." Golda Meir articulated this sentiment most famously and succinctly after the 1967 war: "When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons."

The one piece of the Dershowitz article that is worth responding to is his comments on Sderot: "The residents of Sderot were demanding that their nation take action to protect them," which he takes as a demand that Israel obliterate Gaza.

Like Dershowitz I've been to Sderot: a year ago in November, 2007.....

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/12/how-to-think-about-the-missiles-that-terrorize-sderot-by-adam-horowitz-whos-been-there.html#more

The First Casualty of Israel's War

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:10:29 EST

There Aren't Two Sides to the Story of a Real Rape

The First Casualty of Israel's War

By TED HONDERICH @ counterpunch.org

It is said truth is the first casualty of war. It is rather the first casualty of inhumanity. You have to lie, maybe to yourself as well, when your are engaged in inhumanity. You wouldn't have to lie about a war that really was right.

By Zionism I mean the founding and actually necessary defence of the state of Israel in roughly its 1948 boundaries. It was justified by the Holocaust in the past and is justified by the existence of a Jewish homeland now. By neo-Zionism I mean the taking from the suffering Palestinians, the only indigenous people of historic Palestine, at least their autonomy in the last fifth of their homeland.

A decent humanity, the Principle of Humanity, ultimately justifies Zionism. It condemns neo-Zionism absolutely. There aren't two sides to the story of a real rape.

The neo-Zionist government of Israel says that in attacking the democracy of Gaza it is doing no more than engaging in self-defence. It is saving lives of its own citizens from rocket attacks.

That is not its aim. If that were its aim, Israel would achieve it immediately by embracing the solution to the Palestinian problem, in no way complex. It would give up neo-Zionism. It would withdraw, without negotiation, from the remaining homeland of another people............

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.counterpunch.org/honderich12312008.html

Where's the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:05:30 EST

Targeting Islamic University

Where's the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?

By NEVE GORDON and JEFF HALPER @ counterpunch.org

Not one of the nearly 450 presidents of American colleges and universities who prominently denounced an effort by British academics to boycott Israeli universities in September 2007 have raised their voice in opposition to Israel’s bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza earlier this week. Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University, who organized the petition, has been silent, as have his co-signatories from Princeton, Northwestern, and Cornell Universities, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Most others who signed similar petitions, like the 11,000 professors from nearly 1,000 universities around the world, have also refrained from expressing their outrage at Israel’s attack on the leading university in Gaza. The artfully named Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, which organized the latter appeal, has said nothing about the assault.

While the extent of the damage to the Islamic University, which was hit in six separate airstrikes, is still unknown, recent reports indicate that at least two major buildings were targeted, a science laboratory and the Ladies’ Building, where female students attended classes. There were no casualties, as the university was evacuated when the Israeli assault began on Saturday.

Virtually all the commentators agree that the Islamic University was attacked, in part, because it is a cultural symbol of Hamas, the ruling party in the elected Palestinian government, which Israel has targeted in its continuing attacks in Gaza. Mysteriously, hardly any of the news coverage has emphasized the educational significance of the university, which far exceeds its cultural or political symbolism............

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.counterpunch.org/gordon12312008.html

Israel stifles free press covering Gaza

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:01:29 EST

Monday, Dec. 29, 2008Israel stifles free press covering Gaza

By DION NISSENBAUM - McClatchy Newspapers

JERUSALEM -- On one hand, one can't blame the Israeli government for wanting to do what it can to prevent the world from seeing the effects of its devastating Gaza airstrikes that have killed hundreds of Palestinians.

In 48-hours, Israel has decimated the Gaza Strip, killed more than 300 Palestinians and injured 1,400 others in a "shock and awe" air campaign.

Israeli airstrikes have targeted a mosque, universities, and private homes as part of the military campaign aimed at destabilizing Hamas rulers and preventing Gaza militants from continuing to fire endless rounds of rockets into southern Israel.

But, as the BBC's Jo Floto noted last month after Israel first barred journalists from entering Gaza, Israel has joined a notorious and small list of countries preventing reporters from doing their job.

Israel, which prides itself on being the healthiest democracy in the Middle East, joins North Korea, Zimbabwe and Burma in denying media access to a major story.

In essence, Israel has transformed the entire Gaza Strip into a closed military zone.......

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.thestate.com/world/story/634467.html

George Washington's warnings and U.S. policy towards Israel

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:42:44 EST

George Washington's warnings and U.S. policy towards Israel

Glenn Greenwald @ salon.com - Tuesday Dec. 30, 2008 05:33 EST

University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes -- July 1, 2008:

A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 18 countries finds that in 14 of them people mostly say their government should not take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Just three countries favor taking the Palestinian side (Egypt, Iran, and Turkey) and one is divided (India). No country favors taking Israel's side, including the United States, where 71 percent favor taking neither side.

CQ Politics, yesterday:

Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle rallied to Israel’s cause Monday as it pressed forward with large-scale air attacks against Islamic militants in the Gaza Strip. . . .
“I strongly support Israel’s right to defend its citizens against rocket and mortar attacks from Hamas-controlled Gaza, which have killed and injured Israeli citizens, and to restore security to its residents,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev. . . .
His view was echoed by leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“Israel has a right, indeed a duty, to defend itself in response to the hundreds of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza over the past week,” Howard L. Berman , D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement.
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the ranking Republican on the House committee, also expressed support for the Israeli offensive. . . .
The White House on Monday also took Israel’s side in the fighting, demanding that Hamas halt its rocket fire into Israel and agree to a last ceasefire.

Earlier this week, Nancy Pelosi issued an identical statement, and yesterday Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer did the same.

There sure is a lot of agreeing going on -- one might describe it as "absolute." The degree of mandated orthodoxy on the Israel question among America's political elites is so great that if one took the statements on Gaza from George Bush, Pelosi, Hoyer, Berman, Ros-Lehtinen, and randomly chosen Bill Kristol-acolytes and redacted their names, it would be impossible to know which statements came from whom..........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/12/30/democracy/index.html

Several Jewish Organizations Call For End to Gaza Bombings

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:34:51 EST

Jewish Organizations Call For End to Gaza Bombings
by Ali Gharib @ antiwar.com

With a fresh outbreak of violence between Israel and Palestine, a battle of a different sort is being waged in Washington between various interests in Mideast policy circles.

As Israeli air strikes continue to pummel the Gaza Strip for a fourth day and crude homemade rockets launched by Palestinian militants land in Israeli towns near the densely populated and besieged Strip, Jewish groups in the U.S. are taking two distinctly differing tacks at addressing the latest Middle East bloodshed.

Some of what are traditionally thought of as pro-Israel groups are undertaking a major public relations campaign to support the bombing runs against Hamas that have claimed more than 370 Palestinian lives – largely parroting the Israeli government line that the attacks are a justified defense of Israelis.....

.....But instead of offering unquestioning support of Israel's latest military venture in the decades-long conflict, four major Jewish organizations are calling for an immediate end to the bombings, and for humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip......

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.antiwar.com/ips/gharib.php?articleid=13980

Gaza Becomes a Chessboard for Israeli Leaders

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:22:41 EST

Gaza Becomes a Chessboard for Israeli Leaders

by Mel Frykberg @ antiwar.com

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Israel's devastating bombardment of Gaza, and the mounting death toll continue as Operation Cast Lead entered its fourth day Tuesday.

Despite massive damage to Hamas' infrastructure and the enormous loss of life inflicted on Gaza, the Islamic resistance organization continues to fire rockets at Israel, with three Israelis killed to date.

The Palestinian death toll currently stands at more than 350, with about 1,400 injured. The UN released figures several days ago stating that at a conservative estimate more than 50 of the dead were civilian, and expected the figure to rise within the coming days.

Israel's stated goals that its massive aerial campaign was meant to stop Hamas and its allies launching rockets at Israel have so far failed to materialize.

Although the firing of projectiles at Israel had been problematic, hundreds of rockets caused little damage and no casualties for many months prior to Operation Cast Lead. The rockets were fired mostly in response to Israeli attacks.

Following a six-month cease-fire, Israel launched a cross-border military incursion into Gaza last month, provoking a barrage of missiles.

Analysts, and some politicians, argue that the real motivation behind the military operation is ambitious Israeli politicians and the upcoming Israeli elections due Feb. 10.........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.antiwar.com/ips/frykberg.php?articleid=13977

Electioneering With Bombs

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:16:19 EST

Electioneering With Bombs
Livni and Barak pin their hopes on Gaza rampageby Jonathan Cook @ antiwar.com

Of the three politicians who announced the military assault on Gaza to the world on Saturday, perhaps only outgoing prime minister Ehud Olmert has little to lose – or gain – from its outcome.

Flanking the Israeli prime minister were two of the main contenders for his job: Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister and the new leader of Olmert's centrist party, Kadima, and Ehud Barak, the defense minister and leader of the left-wing Labor Party.

The attack on Gaza may make or break this pair's political fortunes as they jostle for position against Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing party, Likud, before a general election little more than a month away.

Until now Livni and Barak have been facing the imminent demise of their ruling coalition as Netanyahu and the far Right have surged in the polls and looked set to form the next government.

Both have strenuously denied that the election has any bearing on the timing of the Gaza operation. But they equally hope a successful strike against Hamas may yet save them from electoral humiliation.

In the run-up to the election, observed Michael Warschawski, a founder of the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem, "all Israeli leaders are competing over who is the toughest and who is ready to kill more."

Netanyahu, pushed out of the spotlight, has had to turn his fire away from the two other parties and instead lambaste easy political targets: in recent speeches he has questioned the loyalty of Israel's 1.2 million Arab citizens and demanded the resignation of the only Arab government minister...........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cook.php?articleid=13975

Israel's Constant Crisis

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:04:32 EST

Israel's Constant Crisis

It's a survival mechanismby Justin Raimondo @ antiwar.com

As the Israelis continue to pound Gaza, killing Hamas cadre, traffic cops, and civilians alike, Americans shake their heads and wonder: why can't they all just get along? Why must we be involved? The answer to both questions lies in understanding the peculiar nature of the Israeli state and its "special relationship" to the West, specifically the U.S.

Defenders of the Israeli government and its policies often complain that Israel just wants to be treated as a "normal country," like any other. They cavil that the Jewish state is treated like an outsider, a pariah, and held up to standards that don't apply anywhere else. The big problem for these complainants, however, is that Israel is not a normal country, and never has been.

From the day of its birth, Israel has been a Western project, a unique creation of European ideologues whose vision of a Jewish state was rooted in myth, custom, and remembrance, rather than blood and soil.......

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13978

Israeli Military Declares Online Media ‘Another War Zone’

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:09:08 EST

Israeli Military Declares Online Media ‘Another War Zone’

Journalists Kept Carefully Away From Gaza as Israel Tries to Restrict Coverage

compiled by Jason Ditz @ antiwar.com - Posted December 30, 2008

Across the world, mainstream journalists are expressing increasing disquiet at the way the Israeli government is trying to manage international coverage of its war on the Gaza Strip. Journalists have been barred not just from the strip itself, but the government is now prohibiting journalists from going to parts of Israel near the Gaza Strip.

The Foreign Press Association is petitioning the Israeli Supreme Court to overturn the ban, which is limiting the ability of media outlets to cover the attacks, and forces them to rely on second and third hand reports from Israeli military and Hamas spokesmen regarding the situation on the ground.

As the media struggles to get up-to-date information, television news coverage is narrow, and often relies on interviews with Israeli government officials explaining why the killings are righteous and legitimate expressions of democracy and freedom, more and more people are turning to online news sites (like Antiwar.com) for their war coverage.

The Israeli military has therefore announced that online media and the blogosphere are another warzone for the military to manage. To that end, the military is launching its own Youtube channel to bring the viewing public footage of “precision bombing operations” in the strip.

In ensuring that the only footage of their military operation is provided directly from them, the Israeli military is another step closer to completely managing public perception of the ongoing attacks. The military says the footage will allow the public to “know that people killed did not have peaceful intentions toward Israel,” which presumably means coverage of the killing of five children in their beds in a refugee camp last night, and the scores of other civilian deaths, will be carefully omitted from the official coverage.

SOURCE - http://news.antiwar.com/2008/12/30/israeli-military-declares-online-media-another-war-zone/

Remembering How Gaza Got Like This

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:54:40 EST

Remembering How Gaza Got Like This (+)

by: Daniel De Groot @ openleft.com - Tue Dec 30, 2008 at 09:00

Those debating how much condemnation to allocate to Israel or the Palestinians need to save a bunch for the current crew in the Bush Administration. It's a good time to dig up a piece from Vanity Fair in April of this year, which goes into great detail about how Hamas came to power in Gaza almost entirely because of Bush Administration bungling. I re-present, David Rose and The Gaza Bombshell:

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America's behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)
But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.

Yes, that Elliott Abrhams, the Iran-Contra one. Neoconservatives really do never ever learn from their mistakes and manage to be always wrong about everything. It's their superpower...........

ENTIRE ARTICLE-http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=0B305E255D070ECCC8275FFC2B4AF58C?diaryId=10659

Bush Refuses To Interrupt His Final Vacation As Middle East Crisis Escalates

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:49:03 EST

Bush Refuses To Interrupt His Final Vacation As Middle East Crisis Escalates»

By Faiz Shakir on Dec 29th, 2008 at 3:13 pm @ thinkprogress.org

In an effort to “prevent Palestinians from attacking towns in southern Israel” with rockets, Israel today undertook its third day of offensive military airstrikes in the Palestinian territory of Gaza, raising the death toll to more than 300. The Palestinian casualty numbers have been described as the highest over such a brief period since the 1967 Six-Day war. Scores of Israelis have been wounded — and at least one killed — by rocket attacks fired by Palestinians. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called the situation “all out war.”

While Bush has been briefed on the situation by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, he has opted not to interrupt his final vacation as president to make a public statement on the crisis. For someone who has enjoyed the most vacation days as sitting president — including days spent relaxing in comfort during Hurricane Katrina and in the lead-up to 9/11 — it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that Bush prioritizes vacationing over crisis management........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://thinkprogress.org/2008/12/29/bush-vaca-middle-east/

Former Powell aide: Bush was ‘Sarah Palin-like’ in his knowledge of foreign policy.

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:41:40 EST

Former Powell aide: Bush was ‘Sarah Palin-like’ in his knowledge of foreign policy.»

By Satyam Khanna at 10:22 am @ thinkprogress.com

In an interview with Vanity Fair for its upcoming issue on the Bush White House, Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, ripped President Bush, saying that after the 2000 election, Bush’s knowledge of foreign affairs was as poor as that of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R):

We had this confluence of characters—and I use that term very carefully—that included people like Powell, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, and so forth, which allowed one perception to be “the dream team.” It allowed everybody to believe that this Sarah Palin–like president—because, let’s face it, that’s what he was—was going to be protected by this national- security elite, tested in the cauldrons of fire.

Bush famously was unable to name the leaders of Pakistan, Chechnya, and India when running for President in 1999. In a recent interview, he reflected on his early days as President, stating, “I think I was unprepared for war.” Similarly, in 2004, Bush said he “was not on point” prior to 9/11. “I didn’t feel that sense of urgency, and my blood was not nearly as boiling.”

SOURCE - http://thinkprogress.org/2008/12/30/bush-sarah-palin/

Bolton: Gaza Crisis Means We Should Attack Iran Now

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:34:11 EST

Bolton: Gaza Crisis Means We Should Attack Iran Now»

By Satyam Khanna at 3:23 pm @ thinkprogress.com

Yesterday, on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes, Iran war hawk John Bolton said that Israel’s recent bombing campaign in Gaza is all the more reason for the United States to bomb Iran now. “So while our focus obviously is on Gaza right now, this could turn out to be a much larger conflict,” he said, adding that “we’re looking at potentially a multi-front war here.”

“You would strike Iran right now?” asked host Alan Colmes. “I would have done it before this,” Bolton responded. Colmes asked whether tensions and war across Middle East would escalate if the U.S. or Israel were to bomb Iran. Bolton said that the many Arab countries would secretly be cheering if Iran were attacked......

ENTIRE ARTICE - http://thinkprogress.org/2008/12/30/bolton-iran-israel/

‘Key Ally In The War On Terror’ Breaks With U.S., Condemns Israel For Gaza Strikes

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:31:00 EST

‘Key Ally In The War On Terror’ Breaks With U.S., Condemns Israel For Gaza Strikes»

By Faiz Shakir at 7:00 pm @ thinkprogress.org

After disastrously invading and occupying Iraq, one of the justifications President Bush frequently offered for sustaining the enormous U.S. costs in lives and resources was that we were developing a “key ally” in the Middle East:

Together we’ll help Iraq become a strong democracy that protects the rights of its people and is a key ally in the war on terror. [9/22/05]
Our mission in Iraq is clear. … We’re helping Iraqis build a free nation that is an ally in the war on terror. We’re advancing freedom in the broader Middle East. [6/28/05]
Freedom will prevail in Iraq; freedom will prevail in the Middle East; and as the hope of freedom spreads to nations that have not known it, these countries will become allies in the cause of peace. [3/20/06]

The Wonk Room’s Matt Duss notes that — in a central test of the U.S. alliance with Iraq — our “key ally” is instead more eager to disassociate itself completely from the United States:

Just as they did during Israel’s 2006 war against Hezbollah, Iraq’s leaders are now showing where their true sympathies lie. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Da’wa Party “issued a statement condemning the attacks and calling on Islamic countries to cut relations with Israel and end all ’secret and public talks’ with it.”
Khalid Hussain of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) told Gulf News “We have obligations towards Palestine and all Iraqi people are in solidarity with the people in Palestine, and we will support the people in Gaza.” […]
“Iraqi resistance groups have to retaliate against the Israeli aggression on Gaza by escalating their operations against the US military in Iraq since the US position is in favour of this aggression, firstly, and secondly because the United States and Israel are both enemies of the Arabs,” Omar Al Kubaisi, an activist of the Sunni Muslim Clerics Association.

Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Sistani has also condemned the Gaza strikes. Duss concludes, “Looking on the bright side, if one can call it that, as with opposition to the U.S. occupation, Gaza is an issue on which Iraqis have achieved rare political consensus.”

SOURCE - http://thinkprogress.org/2008/12/30/iraqis-on-gaza-strikes/

Ex-Army engineer pleads guilty to passing classified documents to Israel decades ago

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:02:35 EST

Ex-Army engineer pleads guilty to passing classified documents to Israel decades ago

LARRY NEUMEISTER
AP News

Dec 30, 2008 13:38 EST

An 85-year-old former Army mechanical engineer has pleaded guilty to conspiracy, admitting that he passed classified documents to the Israelis in the 1970s and '80s.

Ben-ami Kadish entered the plea Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan and is to be sentenced in February. A prosecutor says the government will not oppose a sentence that calls for no prison time.

Kadish pleaded guilty to only one of the four conspiracy charges he originally faced.

Kadish was accused of taking home classified documents from 1979 to 1985 when he worked at an Army base in New Jersey. The government said he let an unidentified Israeli agent photograph the documents in his basement. Those documents included information about nuclear weapons.

SOURCE - http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2008/12/ex-army_engineer_pleads_guilty.php

Has Israel Revived Hamas?

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:53:17 EST

Has Israel Revived Hamas?

By Daoud Kuttab @ washingtonpost.com

Tuesday, December 30, 2008; Page A15

JERUSALEM -- In its efforts to stop amateur rockets from nagging the residents of some of its southern cities, Israel appears to have given new life to the fledging Islamic movement in Palestine.

This Story

For two years, the Islamic Resistance Movement (known by its Arabic acronym, Hamas) has been losing support internally and externally. This wasn't the case in the days after the party came to power democratically in early 2006; despite being unjustly ostracized by the international community for its anti-Israeli stance, Hamas enjoyed the backing of Palestinians and other Arabs. Having won a decisive parliamentary majority on an anti-corruption platform promising change and reform, Hamas worked hard to govern better than had Fatah, its rival and predecessor.

Things began to sour when Hamas violently seized control of Gaza, but even then, Hamas enjoyed considerable domestic support -- and much goodwill externally. Then the movement turned down every legitimate offer from its nationalist PLO rivals and Egyptian mediators to pursue reconciliation, and support for it began to slip.......

ARTICLE - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/29/AR2008122901901.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Commentary Magazine: Howling In The Abyss

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:37:23 EST

Commentary Magazine: Howling In The Abyss

By: Jane Hamsher @ firedoglake.com - Tuesday December 30, 2008 7:02 am

As JPod prepares to man the helm of Commentary Magazine, he assumes quite a legacy.

Fresh off joining with the ADL to condemn Joe Klein as an anti-semite for criticizing Israel, Commentary dismisses the critiques of Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias and Spencer Ackerman because they "have nothing invested in Israel other than their American liberalism and their Jewish surnames," trot out the always classic "soft bigotry of low expectations," and conclude that FDL and our commenters are "objectively pro-Hamas" (based on this post by Siun, where she herself says nothing about Hamas).

I'll let others defend themselves, but as to FDL being "pro Hamas," I don't think you'd be able to support that claim with any reasonable evidence, which is probably why they don't try. There is no official "FDL position" regarding the situation in Gaza, and individual writers have differing opinions, but I think Hugh had an interesting analysis with which many concur....

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://firedoglake.com/2008/12/30/commentary-magazine-howling-in-the-abyss/

Why Israel Won’t Allow Journalists Into Gaza

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:28:36 EST

Why Israel Won’t Allow Journalists Into Gaza

By: Siun @ firedoglake.com - Tuesday December 30, 2008 7:55 am 63

Overnight, the Jerusalem Post carried a story titled Navy Sends Activist Boat Back to Cyprus which said:

The Navy has turned back a boat trying to carry pro-Palestinian protesters to the Gaza Strip, officials said Tuesday
Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the boat ignored an Israeli radio order to turn back early Tuesday. He said the boat tried to outmaneuver the navy ship and crashed into it, lightly damaging both vessels. The navy then escorted the boat to the territorial waters of Cyprus.
ENTIRE POST - http://firedoglake.com/2008/12/30/why-israel-wont-allow-journalists-into-gaza/

Axelrod’s Refusal To Endorse Israel’s Actions

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:23:42 EST

Axelrod’s Refusal To Endorse Israel’s Actions

By: Jane Hamsher @ firedoglake.com - Tuesday December 30, 2008 11:23 am

I'm not generally one for projecting meaning into silence, but I think it's worthwhile to consider what David Axelrod didn't say about the Gaza strikes on Meet the Press this Sunday.

As Glenn Greenwald notes, 71% of Americans don't think the US should take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite this fact, the statements of Republican and Democratic leaders alike are in lockstep with George Bush. Reid, Pelosi, Hoyer and Berman all unilaterally support Israel's actions -- their releases could have been written by Bill Kristol.

Barack Obama himself has demurred, saying "there's only one President." So the only statement so far coming out Team Obama is from Axelrod.

As M.J. Rosenberg writes:

On Meet The Press this morning, David Axelrod was asked about Gaza by David Gregory. Gregory reminded Axelrod that the President-Elect had visited Sderot earlier this year and said that Israel had the right to defend its people against the mortars. What does he think now?
Axelrod said, predictably, that we have one President at a time. He also said that Obama understood the "urge" to respond militarily..........
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://firedoglake.com/2008/12/30/axelrods-refusal-to-endorse-israels-actions/

Why Are Palestinians Expected to Do What Americans Would Never Do?

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:19:04 EST

Why Are Palestinians Expected to Do What Americans Would Never Do?

By: Ian Welsh @ firedoglake.com - Tuesday December 30, 2008 12:14 pm

Mohammed al-Borai Killed in February Bombings

One of the things I don't understand about the debate over Israel and Hamas is what, exactly, people expect Palestinians to do. I constantly read that Palestinians need to never use violence, and that non-violence will do the trick. This may or may not be true, but it's odd, because folks want Palestinians and Hamas to do something their own governments would never, ever, do.

Let's put this in context, first. The truce was not broken by Hamas:

“The escalation towards war could, and should, have been avoided. It was the State of Israel which broke the truce, in the 'ticking tunnel' raid ... two months ago,” the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom wrote in a press release. “Since then, the army went on stoking the fires of escalation with calculated raids and killings, whenever the shooting of missiles on Israel decreased.”

So. Israel attacks Palestinians. Hamas responds by counter-attacking. If a nation bombed the US, would the US counter-attack?

Of course it would. The question is absurd...........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://firedoglake.com/2008/12/30/why-are-palestinians-expected-to-do-what-americans-would-never-do/

Those Who Don’t Learn From George Bush’s Mistakes Are Destined To Repeat Them

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:14:54 EST

Those Who Don’t Learn From George Bush’s Mistakes Are Destined To Repeat Them

By: Jane Hamsher @ firedoglake.com - Tuesday December 30, 2008 3:00 pm

Benjamin Netanyahu was on CNN today saying "We'll have to bring down the Hamas regime." (It's the busy season for Josh Isay -- Caroline Kennedy and Joe Lieberman's handler also has Netanyahu as a client.)

If getting rid of Hamas is the objective of the Gaza strikes, the plan is backfiring says Daoud Kuttab in the Washington Post:

The lack of international support since the 2006 elections, followed by this rebuff to Gaza's only Arab neighbor, Egypt, compounded the deterioration of Hamas's internal support. By November, the survey showed, only 16.6 percent of Palestinians supported Hamas, compared with nearly 40 percent favoring Fatah. The decline in support for Hamas has been steady: A year earlier, the same pollster showed that Hamas's support was at 19.7
percent; in August 2007, it was at 21.6 percent; in March 2007, it was at 25.2 percent; and in September 2006, backing for the Islamists stood at 29.7 percent.

And now?

The disproportionate and heavy-handed Israeli attacks on Gaza have been a bonanza for Hamas. The movement has renewed its standing in the Arab world, secured international favor further afield and succeeded in scuttling indirect Israeli-Syrian talks and direct Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. It has also greatly embarrassed Israel's strongest Arab neighbors, Egypt and Jordan.
While it is not apparent how this violent confrontation will end, it is abundantly clear that the Islamic Hamas movement has been brought back from near political defeat while moderate Arab leaders have been forced to back away from their support for any reconciliation with Israel.
SOURCE - http://firedoglake.com/2008/12/30/those-who-dont-learn-from-george-bushs-mistakes-are-destined-to-repeat-them/

Israelis Get Truth About Gaza Attack

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:08:05 EST

Israelis Get Truth About Gaza Attack

by Ira Chernus @ smirkingchimp.com | December 30, 2008 - 8:50am

If you get your news from the American mass media, you know that there's a nice simple explanation for the massive Israeli attack on Gaza. That explanation comes straight from the Israeli government, via the White House: Hamas, the group that controls Gaza, is responsible for all the violence. "These people are nothing but thugs," a White House spokesman said. "Israel is going to defend its people against terrorists like Hamas." End of story. As usual, Israel is depicted as the innocent victim of an evil it did nothing to provoke.

But if you read Israel's most respected newspaper, Ha'aretz, you find out that things are rather more complicated. (All the quotes below come from Jewish journalists writing in recent editions of Ha'aretz.)

You know the reality of Gaza today: "The tremendous population density in the Gaza Strip does not allow a 'surgical operation' over an extended period that would minimize damage to civilian populations." "There are many corpses and wounded, every moment another casualty is added to the list of the dead, and there is no more room in the morgue. . A mother whose three school-age children were killed, and are piled one on top of top of the other in the morgue, screams and then cries, screams again and then is silent."

And you know that some Israelis are outraged: "Israel's violent responses, even if there is justification for them, exceed all proportion and cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law and wisdom."

The justification Israel offers is the increased firing of rockets from Gaza. But Israelis can read that Hamas is responding to Israeli provocation.........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/19455

Palestine doesn't get to have a 9/11

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:01:53 EST

Palestine doesn't get to have a 9/11

by Justin Podur @ smirkingchimp.com | December 30, 2008 - 9:20am

In September 2001, a group of terrorists from al Qaeda killed several thousand Americans in New York. US friends and enemies alike condemned the attacks and the attackers. Debates that occurred were about how discriminate America should be in seeking revenge and justice. The horrors of 9/11 are invoked whenever questions arise about US occupations of Iraq or Afghanistan. The US is allowed to use the suffering and deaths of its people to justify what it has done.

In November 2008 a group of terrorists attacked several sites in Mumbai and killed almost two hundred civilians. We still don't know very much for certain about who they were or what they were after. Their planning took place in secret. The attackers were all killed or captured. The massacres were dubbed "India's 9/11." India's friends and enemies alike condemned the attacks and the attackers.

Right now, Israel is still attacking sites all over Gaza and has killed more than three hundred civilians (with more deaths to follow). Their planning has been slow, deliberate, and open. The killers are celebrated and encouraged to continue. The countries of the West are falling over themselves to endorse the atrocities as retaliation, with an occasional word of concern that Israel be judicious in its murders......

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/19457

barbarism in Gaza

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:55:54 EST

barbarism in Gaza by Dennis Rahkonen @ smirkingchimp.com | December 30, 2008 - 9:23am

We all have our bad dreams, but this is the ultimate nightmare:

A man takes a shortcut across a vacant lot and is abruptly swallowed by a hidden sinkhole.

He falls all the way to Hades, where he's press-ganged by Satan's enforcers. Throughout eternity, he's expected to endlessly shovel coal into the biggest, hottest boiler in Hell.

One day, however, that boiler belches, and its explosive force sends him, through a different hole, back to the earth's surface.

He finds himself in a strange, incredibly crowded place. Thousands teem in narrow streets bordered by tightly-packed dwellings and myriad businesses.

Suddenly, warplanes appear overhead and begin unleashing bombs and rockets, on everything and everyone. Men, women, and children run and scream. They're then blown apart in sprays of blood and bone.

Welcome to Gaza, after Christmas, 2008.......

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/19458

You say it best when you say nothing at all

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:51:10 EST

You say it best when you say nothing at all

By Cernig @ crooksandliars.com - Monday Dec 29, 2008 6:00pm

A lot of people seem to be wondering today whether Barack Obama will break his silence over Israel's attack on Gaza. The NY Times devotes a whole article to the question, noting that Team Obama's message discipline is strong and they are sticking to the mantra of "there is only one president at a time." Despite that, there are signs that Obama is broadly sympathetic to Israel - but if he's the more nuanced individual he has claimed to be then he has to realise that the current assault is deeply counter-productive.

Obama could, if he wished, stick to his "one president at a time" - which is only just and correct - while still pressuring the current president to end his hands-off stance on events in Gaza. He could, if he wished, make use of the tame stenographers of the press corps by planting questions to which he could answer "there's only one president at a time" in many, inventive ways.

Consider, for example, that the UK's Gordon Brown has been one of the first Western leaders to break their enabling silence and demand both a ceasefire and access for humanitarian aid to Gaza. Imagine a planted question leading from that.

Reporter: Mr President-Elect, Gordon Brown has called for a ceasefire and access for aid to Gaza. Do you agree the Israelis should now cease their assault?

O: Prime Minister Brown has my greatest respect, he's a strong friend and ally. However, the US only has one President at a time so I can only urge you to ask President Bush that question.

See how it would work? That would put the focus of the American media back on Bush, who has refused to cut short his final vacation to help deal with the crisis.

SOURCE - http://crooksandliars.com/node/24905

Operation Cast Lead - A familiar story in Gaza

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:41:35 EST

Operation Cast Lead - A familiar story in Gaza

By Hugo Foster @ thedailybanter.com

Life got a whole lot worse for the 1.5 million residents of Gaza over the weekend. With a death toll now exceeding 300, the latest war in the battered coastal strip has already surpassed in scope and brutality most previous Israeli assaults on the impoverished territory since the Six Day War of 1967. Yet the grim reality is that the futile and disproportionate incursion – known to Israel’s military as Operation Cast Lead – is only the latest episode in the cycle of bloodletting over Palestine, and will do nothing to alter the basic dynamic of periodic violence in the region. In fact, the latest fighting shows that nothing has been learnt over decades of flawed military policies in the region.

Since the recent expiry of a six-month ceasefire, or tahidiyeh, both Israel and Hamas have sought to renew the agreement but on more favourable terms. For Hamas, which has dropped suicide bombings as its modus operandi to gain leverage over Israel, this has meant once again allowing Israel’s southern towns to be terrorised by makeshift and highly inaccurate Qassam rockets and mortar shells. It figured that by raising the stakes it could force Israel into accommodating its aims, these being the reopening of crossings into Gaza, the cessation of Israeli operations in and around it, the release of Palestinian prisoners and an end to attacks on its infrastructure in the West Bank........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.thedailybanter.com/tdb/2008/12/operation-cast-lead-a-familiar-story-in-gaza-.html

Steve Walt on the reports of a truce

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:26:30 EST

Steve Walt on the reports of a truce

by Philip Weiss @ "Mondoweiss"

Last summer an Iraq veteran stood up in the balcony during John McCain's speech at the Republican convention with a sign "You Can't Win an Occupation." Steve Walt sent me an email that contained the same truth this afternoon, and has let me publish it:

If reports that Israel is now seeking a ceasefire are true, this is a tacit admission that Israel is reluctant to move to a ground offensive and doesn't have a clear sense of the end-game here. If so, then they may have repeated the key blunder of the 2006 Lebanon War: assuming that air power could accomplish major strategic objectives (i.e., destroying Hamas) and failing to consider what would happen if the adversary didn't collapse as planned.

At the same time, it presents Hamas with a difficult decision. They have two main choices: 1. Accept the ceasefire and start rebuilding, while emphasizing the brutality and ultimate futility of what Israel did. My guess here is that there will be immediate recriminations in Israel for not "finishing the job," and Netanyahu will sail to victory.........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/12/walt-israels-blunder-hamass-choice.html

Reuters: 'Jewish lobby' accounts for Obama's silence re Gaza

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:22:18 EST

Reuters: 'Jewish lobby' accounts for Obama's silence re Gaza

by Philip Weiss @ "Mondoweiss"

The discourse is changing under our feet. Good piece from Jonathan Wright in Cairo. To wit:

"Obama's position is very precarious. The Jewish lobby warned against his election, so he has chosen to remain silent (on Gaza)," added Hilal Khashan, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut.

SOURCE - http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/12/reuters-jewish-lobby-accounts-for-obamas-silence-re-gaza.html

Zbigniew Brzezinski calls Joe Scarborough's Mideast views "stunningly superficial"

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:18:53 EST

Zbigniew Brzezinski calls Joe Scarborough's Mideast views "stunningly superficial"

By SilentPatriot @ crooksandliars.com - Tuesday Dec 30, 2008 3:00pm

Download | Play Download | Play

TO VIEW VIDEO - http://crooksandliars.com/node/24918

I've always had a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for Zbigniew Brzezinski. And after this epic smackdown of the eminently ignorant and simple-minded Joe Scarborough, I know that affection was well-placed.

Scarborough: "You cannot blame what's going on in Israel on the Bush administration."

Brzezinski: "You know, you have such a stunningly superficial knowledge of what went on that it's almost embarrassing to listen to you."

Ouch. Make sure to watch the entire clip because the intellectual beat down continues to the very end.

SOURCE - http://crooksandliars.com/node/24918

Why Bombing Ashkelon is The Most Tragic Irony

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:57:33 EST

Why Bombing Ashkelon is The Most Tragic Irony

by Robert Fisk - Published on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 by The Independent/UK

How easy it is to snap off the history of the Palestinians, to delete the narrative of their tragedy, to avoid a grotesque irony about Gaza which - in any other conflict - journalists would be writing about in their first reports: that the original, legal owners of the Israeli land on which Hamas rockets are detonating live in Gaza.

That is why Gaza exists: because the Palestinians who lived in Ashkelon and the fields around it - Askalaan in Arabic - were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They - or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren - are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80 per cent of whose families once lived in what is now Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of the people of Gaza don't come from Gaza.

But watching the news shows, you'd think that history began yesterday, that a bunch of bearded anti-Semitic Islamist lunatics suddenly popped up in the slums of Gaza - a rubbish dump of destitute people of no origin - and began firing missiles into peace-loving, democratic Israel, only to meet with the righteous vengeance of the Israeli air force. The fact that the five sisters killed in Jabalya camp had grandparents who came from the very land whose more recent owners have now bombed them to death simply does not appear in the story...........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-why-bombing-ashkelon-is-the-most-tragic-irony-1216228.html

Haaretz describes the ethnic cleansing of Majdl (Ashkelon) in 1953 so as to explain Hamas's rockets!!

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:43:11 EST

Haaretz describes the ethnic cleansing of Majdl (Ashkelon) in 1953 so as to explain Hamas's rockets!!

by Phil Weiss @ "Mondoweiss"

Skyredoubt translated portions of a piece in Hebrew by Benny Tziper, in Haaretz, only Haaretz, and posted it on his flickr site.

[...]A nice man was there at the entrance to the museum, an invalid of IDF from the Yom Kippur War, who was born and lived all his life in Ashkelon. From his knowledge and enthusiasm one could tell that he loves the city very much. He had no problem telling me how in 1953 the Arabs were expelled, and the long process of looking for a new name for the place started (the Arab name was Majdl), till it was decided to call the place Ashkelon. The entire communications between the authorities regarding the cleansing of the city of Arabs and Hebrewisation of the name is exhibited in the museum. I think that nobody makes the connection today between the fact that the Qassams land on Ashkelon and the fact that poor Arabs who did nothing wrong to anybody were put on trucks and expelled from their city to Gaza fifty five years ago, and since then they are there and Ashkelon is here.............

ENTIRE POST - http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/12/to-explain-hamass-rockets-haaretz-describes-the-ethnic-cleansing-of-majdl-ashkelon-in-1953.html

Peace Is Possible

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:29:16 EST

Peace Is Possible

By: Spencer Ackerman @ firedoglake.com - Tuesday December 30, 2008 10:49 am

Some people have wondered over the past three days where progressive Jewry is at. And they're right to. To dive into an uncomfortable conversation that Jane admirably waded into yesterday, when a debate gets demagogued by a self-appointed ethnic mafia, it's up to progressive voices who share that ethnicity to stand up to the, say, Shtetl Police. A lot of people-- ok, fuck it, enough generalities. A lot of progressive Jews don't want to do this. And I totally understand and relate. You don't want to reduce yourself to the mere fact of your heritage and become a self-parody. You have other stuff to write about and pay attention to. You don't want to hurt your mother's feelings. But this is how the Shtetl Police win, and when the Shtetl Police win, Israel does stupid and self-destructive things and children die in the streets of Gaza and Sderot. Sometimes Israel does stupid and self-destructive things even if they don't win, but it's not worth chancing it.

So I wrote this piece for the Washington Independent about what the progressive Jewish infrastructure -- led and symbolized, in important ways, by J Street -- is doing about Gaza. This is a test for them -- for us.

“Absolutely,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of J Street, a new liberal Jewish lobby group. “This is a real testing moment for those of us who honestly believe you can be supportive of Israel but questioning of steps its government takes.”
M.J. Rosenberg, director of policy analysis for the Israel Policy Forum, another progressive Jewish organization, was similarly blunt. “It’s put-up-or-shut-up time,” he said. “For a two-state solution, for the U.S. to be an honest broker — if all of us just sit back and say, ‘Israel had no choice [to bomb Gaza], then we’re just a bunch of phonies. But I don’t see that happening.”

I don't know how we'll do. We might have no effect. We're only four days into this disgusting bombardment. But if progressive Jewry comes up short this time, we'll get stronger for the next time..........

SOURCE - http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2008/12/30/peace-is-possible/

Are you a Lincoln or a Douglas--take the test now

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:25:37 EST

December 30, 2008Are you a Lincoln or a Douglas--take the test now

by Philip Weiss @ "Mondoweiss"

Spencer Ackerman has a good point, that this is a moment of testing for progressives in the face of the "shtetl police." He says progressive Jews-- I don't care so much about Jews--Everyone in the U.S. faces the shtetl police: the Israel lobby. It's a moment that tests Obama's anti-Iraq-war base in the face of actual atrocities. So: Who's with us? J Street has passed the test, Jeffrey Goldberg has failed it. Brit Tzedek has failed it. Steve Clemons has passed it, Huffpo has passed it, the New York Times has failed it. Rabbi Brant Rosen has passed it. So has Rabbi Ellen Lippmann. The Forward is about to take the test; I bet they're going to fail it. Reform Judaism failed it. JVP passed it. The mainstream media have failed it, bigtime. Though there are certain editors and producers who obviously are quietly on our side, just with picture placement. Dailykos has passed it. Zbig Brzezinski has passed it.

From this moment forward a new coalition goes forth. Join us. It's easy. Just pass a test. Here's how: Remember that you are an American, and that in the words of our founding fathers, all men are created equal. And condemn the slaughter of Arabs..........

SOURCE - http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/12/are-you-a-lincoln-or-a-douglastake-the-test-now.html#more

He didn't present her with a single argument against the Israeli attack. He didn't challenge a single word she uttered. He was even more sycophantic with her than the average American journalist is with the average American political leader.

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:18:31 EST

David Gregory Shows Why He's The Perfect Replacement for Tim Russert

by Glenn Greenwald - Published on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 by Salon.com

Several months before he was named as moderator of Meet the Press, David Gregory went on MSNBC to categorically reject Scott McClellan's accusations that the American media failed to scrutinize the Bush administration's pre-war claims. Gregory vigorously praised the job which he and his "journalistic" colleagues did in the run-up to the Iraq War -- the period which Salon's Gary Kamiya called "one of the greatest collapses in the history of the American media." Proclaimed Gregory, with a straight face: "Questions were asked. I think we pushed. I think we prodded. I think we challenged the President. Not only those of us in the White House Press Corps did that, but others in the media landscape did that." Most revealingly of all, Gregory said:

I think there are a lot of critics who think that . . . . if we did not stand up and say this is bogus, and you're a liar, and why are you doing this, that we didn't do our job. I respectfully disagree. It's not our role.........

..........Whatever one's views are on Israel's attack on Gaza -- pro, con or otherwise -- there's no denying that it's an extremely controversial matter -- at least it is in the world that exists outside of mainstream American political discourse. Even within Israel, there are scathing criticisms of what the Israeli Government is doing -- on both strategic and moral grounds. Yet none of those objections made their way into David Gregory's interview of Livni. He didn't present her with a single argument against the Israeli attack. He didn't challenge a single word she uttered. He was even more sycophantic with her than the average American journalist is with the average American political leader............

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/12/29/gregory/index.html#

New US Policy Needed Toward Israelis and Palestinians

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:11:53 EST

New US Policy Needed Toward Israelis and Palestinians

by Jess Ghannam - Published on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 by The San Francisco Chronicle

Israeli forces have just killed and wounded hundreds of Palestinians in the very neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip where I have worked for decades to help establish clinics.

As I walk the orderly San Francisco streets, Gazans struggle to clear the rubble on theirs. I know that my tax dollars have helped pay for the Israeli planes that attacked densely packed Gaza cities, tore bodies asunder and sent schoolchildren fleeing in fear.

During my stay in Gaza last month, Palestinians expressed little hope that an Obama administration would bring peace or security. The main topic of conversation was the suffocating impact of Israel's siege on the daily life of Palestinians there.

Although Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005, it has continued, like a warden of a large-scale prison, to control access into and out of Gaza by land, sea and air. As such, Israel remains an occupying power in Gaza and, according to international law, is responsible for the welfare of its civilian population.

Israel imposed the siege on Gaza last year, severely restricting the food, medical supplies and fuel that can enter. It has been roundly condemned by the United Nations and international human rights organizations for the resulting humanitarian catastrophe. More than 80 percent of Gazans have come to depend on food assistance to survive. The health system is crippled by lack of medicines and electricity to run life-saving machines...........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/30

Israel's War Crimes (in Gaza)

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:11:01 EST

Israel's War Crimes

by Richard Falk @ Published on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

(Richard Falk is professor of international law at Princeton University and the UN's special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories.)

The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war

Even the most naive American voter cannot be expected to see the morally, legally and politically questionable death sentence given to Saddam Hussein a milestone in the Bush Administration's illegal war in Iraq. As the milestones pile up, so do the bodies.

Those violations include:

• Collective punishment: The entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.

• Targeting civilians: The airstrikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.

• Disproportionate military response: The airstrikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza's elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.......

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/30-5

Party to Murder

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:53:09 EST

Party to Murder

by Chris Hedges

TruthDig.com editor's note: In light of the recent fighting in Gaza, Truthdig asked Chris Hedges, who covered the Mideast for The New York Times for seven years, to update a previous column on Gaza.

Can anyone who is following the Israeli air attacks on Gaza-the buildings blown to rubble, the children killed on their way to school, the long rows of mutilated corpses, the wailing mothers and wives, the crowds of terrified Palestinians not knowing where to flee, the hospitals so overburdened and out of supplies they cannot treat the wounded, and our studied, callous indifference to this widespread human suffering-wonder why we are hated?

Our self-righteous celebration of ourselves and our supposed virtue is as false as that of Israel. We have become monsters, militarized bullies, heartless and savage. We are a party to human slaughter, a flagrant war crime, and do nothing. We forget that the innocents who suffer and die in Gaza are a reflection of ourselves, of how we might have been should fate and time and geography have made the circumstances of our birth different. We forget that we are all absurd and vulnerable creatures. We all have the capacity to fear and hate and love. "Expose thyself to what wretches feel," King Lear said, entering the mud and straw hovel of Poor Tom, "and show the heavens more just."

Privilege and power, especially military power, is a dangerous narcotic. Violence destroys those who bear the brunt of its force, but also those who try to use it to become gods. Over 350 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians, and over 1,000 have been wounded since the air attacks began on Saturday. Ehud Barak, Israel's defense minister, said Israel is engaged in a "war to the bitter end" against Hamas in Gaza. A war? Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely crowded refugee camps and slums, to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command and control, no army, and calls it a war. It is not a war. It is murder.........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081229_party_to_murder/

AP photo / Fadi Adwan

The body of a Palestinian security force officer lies in the

Lights Out in Gaza, News Blackout in US

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:49:05 EST

Lights Out in Gaza, News Blackout in US

by Deena Guzder - Published on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have decried Israel's continued aerial bombing campaign as unlawful and denounced the killing of more than 300 Palestinians since 27 December, including scores of unarmed civilians not taking part in the hostilities. Israel's attacks on the densely populated Gaza Strip also elicited condemnation from numerous world politicians and sparked protests in global cities.

Despite international outcry over escalating violence, the U.S. mainstream media continues to privilege a prepackaged narrative in which Israel's actions are never disproportionate, never counterproductive and certainly never gratuitous. According to the mainstream media, the U.S. must continue uncompromisingly supporting Israel because the allegedly beleaguered democracy is held hostage by monomaniacal Islamofascists who are inherently evil. Promoting a paradigm in which Israel is always David up against Goliath, the U.S. media presents suffering Palestinians as expendable for the greater cause of Israel winning its epic struggle. To justify U.S.'s carte blanche to Israel, the mainstream media restricts American readers to an echo chamber in which the following claims are repeated ad nausem until they are mistaken for fact..........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/30-10

In the face of Israel's latest onslaught, the only option for Palestinian nationalism is to embrace a one-state solution

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:40:27 EST

From The Ashes of Gaza

In the face of Israel's latest onslaught, the only option for Palestinian nationalism is to embrace a one-state solution

by Tariq Ali - Published on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 by The Guardian/UK

The assault on Gaza, planned over six months and executed with perfect timing, was designed largely, as Neve Gordon has rightly observed, to help the incumbent parties triumph in the forthcoming Israeli elections. The dead Palestinians are little more than election fodder in a cynical contest between the right and the far right in Israel. Washington and its EU allies, perfectly aware that Gaza was about to be assaulted, as in the case of Lebanon in 2006, sit back and watch.

Washington, as is its wont, blames the pro-Hamas Palestinians, with Obama and Bush singing from the same AIPAC hymn sheet. The EU politicians, having observed the build-up, the siege, the collective punishment inflicted on Gaza, the targeting of civilians etc (for all the gory detail, see Harvard scholar Sara Roy's chilling essay in the London Review of Books) were convinced that it was the rocket attacks that had "provoked" Israel but called on both sides to end the violence, with nil effect. The moth-eaten Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt and Nato's favourite Islamists in Ankara failed to register even a symbolic protest by recalling their ambassadors from Israel. China and Russia did not convene a meeting of the UN security council to discuss the crisis.

As result of official apathy, one outcome of this latest attack will be to inflame Muslim communities throughout the world and swell the ranks of those very organisations that the west claims it is combating in the "war against terror".

The bloodshed in Gaza raises broader strategic questions for both sides, issues related to recent history. One fact that needs to be recognised is that there is no Palestinian Authority. There never was one. The Oslo Accords were an unmitigated disaster for the Palestinians, creating a set of disconnected and shrivelled Palestinian ghettoes under the permanent watch of a brutal enforcer. The PLO, once the repository of Palestinian hope, became little more than a supplicant for EU money...........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/30/gaza-hamas-palestinians-israel1

Cynthia McKinney Relief Boat Hit by Israeli Ship

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:27:13 EST

Cynthia McKinney Relief Boat Hit by Israeli Ship

by Craig Schneider - Published on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A boat carrying international activists, including former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, and medical supplies to the embattled Gaza Strip sailed back into a Lebanese port on Tuesday after being turned back and damaged by the Israeli navy, organizers of the trip said.

The crowds on the docks in the Lebanese port city of Tyre were jubilant and cheering as they welcomed the vessel.

The boat, which set off from Cyprus Monday wanted to make a statement and deliver medical supplies to embattled Gaza. The trip's organizers said the boat was clearly in international waters, 90 miles off the coast of Gaza, at the time of its close encounter with the Israeli navy.

"Our boat was rammed three times, twice in the front and one on the side," McKinney told CNN Tuesday morning. "Our mission was a peaceful mission. Our mission was thwarted by the aggressiveness of the Israeli military."

Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry, denied there had been any shooting although the two ships had made "physical contact."

Palmor said there was no response to a radio warning to the Dignity, and the vessel then tried to out-maneuver the Israeli patrol boat, leading to the collision.

Cyprus state radio said the Cypriot government would seek explanations from Israel over the incident..........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/dekalb/stories/2008/12/29/cynthia_mckinney_gaza.html

Lebanese fishermen cheer as the vessel SS Dignity arrives at Tyre, Lebanon, on Tuesday after being turned back and damaged by the Israeli navy, according to organizers of the trip. (Mohammed Zaatari / AP)

The National Lawyers Guild Condemns Illegal Israeli Massacre of over 300 Gazans

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:20:40 EST

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 29, 2008
4:46 PM

CONTACT: National Lawyers Guild (NLG)
Marjorie Cohn, NLG President, marjorie@tjsl.edu; 619-374-6923
Radhika Sainath, NLG Free Gaza Committee, radhika.sainath@gmail.com, 917-669-6903

The National Lawyers Guild Condemns Illegal Israeli Massacre of over 300 GazansCalls for Ceasefire and Urges Participation in Protests

WASHINGTON - December 29 - The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) condemns Israel's massive bombardment of the Gaza Strip which has left over 300 dead and 1,400 wounded, with the tolls mounting. The Israeli Air Force dropped more than 100 bombs in dozens of locations throughout the Gaza Strip as children left school on Saturday. The dead include men, women and children in school uniforms.

"International law forbids the targeting of civilians," said Radhika Sainath, a civil rights attorney and member of the Free Gaza Committee of the NLG. "Israel must comply with laws of war and the Fourth Geneva Convention." Today's massacre marks an escalation of Israel's two-year blockade of the Strip which has deprived 1.5 million Palestinians of necessary food, medicine, fuel and other necessities. In November 2008, the United Nations stated that it had run out of food to feed over 750,000 needy Gazans.

Israel claims that the attack is in response to Palestinian rocket fire, which caused no recent Israeli deaths and few injuries. However, Israel's "rolling bombardment" and impending ground invasion is grossly disproportionate in light of the minimal damage caused by Palestinian rockets. "The law of war prohibits collective punishment and the targeting of a civilian population disproportionate to military necessity. Israel has flouted both these prohibitions, that follow its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and its sealing of Gaza, subjecting Gazans to near starvation," said Marjorie Cohn, NLG president and a professor of international law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. "The Human Rights and Security Assistance Act mandates that the United States cease all military aid to Israel, which has engaged in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights."

Israeli military spokesman Avi Benayahu stated that the Israeli bombardment of Gaza was "only just the beginning," showing utter contempt for international norms and the lives of innocent Palestinians. The Guild calls on the entire international community, and the United States in particular, to demand an end to Israel's blockade of the Occupied Territories and its murderous assault on the Palestinian people. We urge everyone to join in the demonstrations planned across the country in opposition to this latest attack on the rule of law by Israel and we call on both sides to immediately reinstate the cease fire.

Founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association, which did not admit people of color, the National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York and it has chapters in every state.

Planned demonstrations and protests:

Israel Warns Attack on Gaza Has Just Begun

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:09:55 EST

Israel Warns Attack on Gaza Has Just Begun

by James Hider in Jerusalem and Nico Hines - Published on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 by Times Online/UK

Israel warned today that the aerial attack on Gaza, which has now entered its fourth brutal day, is only "the first of several" military stages intended to wipe out Hamas.

As the army said it was ready to launch a ground incursion and tanks and infantry forces massed on the border, Israeli officials claimed the military "has made preparations for long weeks of action".

Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, upped the stakes further today when he said he had informed Shimon Peres, the country's ceremonial president, that the current aerial phase of the operation was the "the first of several stages approved by the security cabinet".

Hamas continued to fire rockets back at the Jewish state as Israeli forces carried out a fourth day of attacks on the Gaza Strip, broadening the offensive to include naval as well as aerial bombardments. But as Britain and other nations called for an end to the violence, there were signs that Hamas was feeling the strain with claims that its leader-in-exile was ready to renew a ceasefire that expired ten days ago.

Rhetoric from Jerusalem has hardened, however, with Meir Sheetrit, the Interior Minister, claiming "there is no room for a ceasefire" with Hamas until the threat of rocket fire had been removed.

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5418172.ece

A Palestinian boy carries his belongings after an Israeli air strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip December 30, 2008. Israel rejected any truce with Hamas Islamists on Tuesday and said it was ready for "long weeks of action" on a fourth day of the fiercest air offensive in the Gaza Strip in decades. (REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa (GAZA)

The Fishbarrel War

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:20:40 EST

Will Obama Sanctify Israel's Targeting of Civilians in Gaza?

The Fishbarrel War

By GARY LEUPP

"It was just like shooting fish in a barrel,” recalled the U.S. pilot, describing the carnage along the “highway of death” stretching from Kuwait to Basra on February 26-27, 1991. While tens of thousands of Iraqi conscripts withdrew from Kuwait in compliance with UN resolutions, terrified boys commandeering school buses and milk trucks when military vehicles weren’t available, U.S. aircraft bombed as many of the helpless as possible. The point was to debase Saddam’s defeated army for the foreseeable future. Of course, Iraq remained helpless and bleeding for another dozen years before Bush II destroyed what was left of it.

Similarly over the weekend, when Israel rained down death onto the vast concentration camp which is the Gaza Strip. There was no contest. The point was to eliminate the Palestinian authority structure in place: all the government offices, all the police force. As the London Telegraph headline put it: “Israel changed the rules forever with Gaza airstrike.”

The purposewas to kill all those in the Hamas political party, democratically elected in 2006, and in the security apparatus of Gaza. As the Telegraph puts it: “Membership alone of the security structures of Hamas was yesterday turned by Israel into grounds for attack. To put on a Hamas police baseball cap is to make oneself a target...........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp12302008.html

Electioneering with Bombs: Livni and Barak Pin Their Hopes on Gaza Rampage

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:02:36 EST

Livni and Barak Pin Their Hopes on Gaza Rampage

Electioneering with Bombs

By JONATHAN COOK

Of the three politicians who announced the military assault on Gaza to the world on Saturday, perhaps only the outgoing prime minister Ehud Olmert has little to lose -- or gain -- from its outcome.

Flanking the Israeli prime minister were two of the main contenders for his job: Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister and the new leader of Mr Olmert’s centrist party, Kadima, and Ehud Barak, the defence minister and leader of the left-wing Labor Party.

The attack on Gaza may make or break this pair’s political fortunes as they jostle for position against Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing party, Likud, before a general election little more than a month away.

Until now Ms Livni and Mr Barak have been facing the imminent demise of their ruling coalition as Mr Netanyahu and the far Right have surged in the polls and looked set to form the next government.

Both have strenuously denied that the election has any bearing on the timing of the Gaza operation. But equally they hope a successful strike against Hamas may yet save them from electoral humiliation...........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.counterpunch.org/cook12302008.html

The Gaza Ghetto and Western Cant

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 12:56:17 EST

Official Apathy

The Gaza Ghetto and Western Cant

By TARIQ ALI

The assault on the Gaza Ghetto, planned over six months and executed with perfect timing was designed largely to help the incumbent parties triumph in the forthcoming Israeli elections. The dead Palestinians are little more than election fodder in a cynical contest between the Right and the Far Right in Israel. Washington and its EU allies, perfectly aware that Gaza was about to be assaulted, as in the case of Lebanon a few years, sit back and watch. Washington, as is its wont, blames the pro-Hamas Palestinians, with Obama and Bush singing from the same AIPAC hymn sheet.

The EU politicians, having observed the build-up, the siege, the collective punishment inflicted on Gaza, the targeting of civilians, etc [See Harvard scholar Sara Roy’s chilling essay in the latest LRB] were convinced that it was the rocket attacks that had ‘provoked’ Israel but called on both sides to end the violence, with nil effect. The moth-eaten Mubarik dictatorship in Egypt and NATO’s favourite Islamists in Ankara, failed to even register a symbolic protest by recalling their Ambassadors from Israel. China and Russia did not convene a meeting of the UNSC to discuss the crisis.

As result of official apathy, one outcome of this latest attack will be to inflame Muslim communities throughout the world and swell the ranks of those very organisations that the West claims it is combating in the ‘war against terror’............

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.counterpunch.org/tariq12302008.html

Israeli Attack May Complicate Obama's Plans

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 12:32:05 EST

Israeli Attack May Complicate Obama's Plans

by Jim Lobe @ antiwar.com

Israel's massive three-day aerial assault on Gaza is likely to complicate President-elect Barack Obama's hopes of aggressively pursuing Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, and it risks inflicting greater damage to Washington's standing in the Arab world, according to analysts.

Indeed, if the current campaign goes on much longer and the Israelis launch a major ground invasion of Gaza as they now appear to be preparing to do, Obama could face a major international crisis – comparable to Israel's failed 2006 war against Lebanon's Hezbollah – just as he takes office in three weeks' time.

"With this assault, the fallout has already started to spread considerably beyond the constituency of people who are Palestinians," noted Helena Cobban, a veteran Middle East analyst, who cited popular protests in Egypt, Jordan, and elsewhere in the Arab world since the Israeli campaign began Saturday...........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=13971

Evanston rabbi calls Gaza a sick-making 'outrage'

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 00:03:32 EST

(It's happening!) Evanston rabbi calls Gaza a sick-making 'outrage'

by Philip Weiss @ "Mondoweiss.com

I tell you: this is the anti-67 war. It will unrally American Jewry and make them wake up to what Zionism has built in the Middle East. Brit Tzedek has failed the test, not surprisingly: its statement on the slaughter seems to blame both Israelis and Palestinians. It has missed the moment. It has refused to see what is before its eyes. But here is a supporter of Brit Tzedek who doesn't fail the test: Rabbi Brant Rosen, a Reconstructionist leader-- read his whole beautiful post:

The news today out of Israel and Gaza makes me just sick to my stomach.

I know, I can already hear the responses: every nation has a responsibility to ensure the safety of its citizens. If the Qassams stopped, Israel wouldn’t be forced to take military action. Hamas also bears responsibility for this tragic situation…

I could answer each and every one of these claims in turn, but I’m ready to stop this perverse game of rhetorical ping-pong. I don’t buy the rationalizations any more. I’m so tired of the apologetics...........

ENTIRE POST - http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post_edit/_new/3jvFJ

Outraged American Jews turn last night of Hanukkah into Shiva for Gaza

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:23:58 EST

Outraged American Jews turn last night of Hanukkah into Shiva for Gaza

by Philip Weiss @ "Mondoweiss"

Lynn Pollack is a board member of "Jewish Voice for Peace," who lives in Obamaland, Chicago. She wrote this piece Latkes and Laments, and kindly shared it with Adam Horowitz:

My husband and I offered to host the annual Jewish Voice for Peace non-violent Hanukkah party at our house. As usual, we’d invited not just our small activist core, but friends and allies and friends of friends. “You don’t have to be Jewish,” the invitation stressed. For me, it was a bit of an excuse to make latkes and brisket, both channeling and competing with my beloved dead mother, to see if I could make these two essential Hanukkah staples as good as hers, maybe better.......

ENTIRE POST - http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/12/outraged-american-jews-turn-last-night-of-hanukkah-into-shiva-for-gaza-.html#more

The Assault on Gaza Will Not Stop Rockets, but Could Influence The Israeli Elections

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:54:34 EST

The Assault on Gaza Will Not Stop Rockets, but Could Influence The Israeli Elections

by Justin Alexander - Published on Monday, December 29, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

Palestinian militants have been firing mortars and home-made rockets from Gaza since 2002, long before the Israeli disengagement. In the 20 months between the disengagement in September 2005 and Hamas' consolidation of control in June 2007 (when it defeated Fatah aligned security forces), around 2,700 rockets were fired into Israel, killing 4 Israeli civilians. It is widely accepted both that these indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli towns such as Sderot are wrong and inexcusable, and that Israeli attacks-such as the ones yesterday that killed hundreds in a few hours-are on an entirely different scale.

However, Israel's past military responses to the rocket threat, although massively disproportionate, have also been largely ineffective. It demolished buildings and levelled large areas of farm land in the northern part of Gaza to reduce the cover available for rocket crews. It fired over 14,000 artillery shells in 2006, killing 59 Palestinian civilians in the process, in what was framed as a preventive tactic to make it more difficult for rocket crews to operate. It launched major and prolonged incursions such as Operation Summer Rains in June 2006, devastating infrastructure such as the Gaza power station and killing hundreds. But still rocket fire continued, and in fact intensified in response to any increases in Israeli hostilities...........

ENTIRE ARTICE - http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/29-2

Marty Peretz and The American Political Consensus on Israel

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:47:55 EST

Marty Peretz and The American Political Consensus on Israel

by Glenn Greenwald - Published on Monday, December 29, 2008 by Salon.com

Opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute are so entrenched that any single outbreak of violence is automatically evaluated through a pre-existing lens, shaped by one's typically immovable beliefs about which side bears most of the blame for the conflict generally or "who started it." Still, any minimally decent human being -- even those who view the world through the most blindingly pro-Israeli lens possible, the ones who justify anything and everything Israel does, and who discuss these events with a bottomless emphasis on the primitive (though dangerous) rockets lobbed by Hamas into Southern Israel but without even mentioning the ongoing four-decades brutal occupation or the recent, grotesquely inhumane blockade of Gaza -- would find the slaughter of scores of innocent Palestinians to be a horrible and deeply lamentable event.

But not The New Republic's Marty Peretz. Here is his uniquely despicable view of the events of the last couple of days:

So at 11:30 on Saturday morning, according to both the Jerusalem Post and Ha'aretz, as well as the New York Times, 50 fighter jets and attack helicopters demolished some 40 to 50 sites in just about three minutes, maybe five. Message: do not f**k with the Jews.....
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/12/28/peretz/

Israelis Get Truth About Gaza Attack

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:43:08 EST

Israelis Get Truth About Gaza Attack

by Ira Chernus - Published on Monday, December 29, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

The justification Israel offers is the increased firing of rockets from Gaza. But Israelis can read that Hamas is responding to Israeli provocation........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/29-0

Gaza: The Logic of Colonial Power

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:32:41 EST

Gaza: The Logic of Colonial Power

As so often, the term 'terrorism' has proved a rhetorical smokescreen under cover of which the strong crush the weak

by Nir Rosen @ Published on Monday, December 29, 2008 by The Guardian/UK

I have spent most of the Bush administration's tenure reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia and other conflicts. I have been published by most major publications. I have been interviewed by most major networks and I have even testified before the senate foreign relations committee. The Bush administration began its tenure with Palestinians being massacred and it ends with Israel committing one of its largest massacres yet in a 60-year history of occupying Palestinian land. Bush's final visit to the country he chose to occupy ended with an educated secular Shiite Iraqi throwing his shoes at him, expressing the feelings of the entire Arab world save its dictators who have imprudently attached themselves to a hated American regime.

Once again, the Israelis bomb the starving and imprisoned population of Gaza. The world watches the plight of 1.5 million Gazans live on TV and online; the western media largely justify the Israeli action. Even some Arab outlets try to equate the Palestinian resistance with the might of the Israeli military machine. And none of this is a surprise. The Israelis just concluded a round-the-world public relations campaign to gather support for their assault, even gaining the collaboration of Arab states like Egypt.

The international community is directly guilty for this latest massacre. Will it remain immune from the wrath of a desperate people? So far, there have been large demonstrations in Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The people of the Arab world will not forget. The Palestinians will not forget. "All that you have done to our people is registered in our notebooks," as the poet Mahmoud Darwish said.........

ENTIRE COMMENT - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/29/gaza-hamas-israel

Leaders Lie, Civilians Die, and Lessons of History are Ignored

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:24:46 EST

Leaders Lie, Civilians Die, and Lessons of History are Ignored

by Robert Fisk - Published on Monday, December 29, 2008 by The Independent/UK

We've got so used to the carnage of the Middle East that we don't care any more - providing we don't offend the Israelis. It's not clear how many of the Gaza dead are civilians, but the response of the Bush administration, not to mention the pusillanimous reaction of Gordon Brown, reaffirm for Arabs what they have known for decades: however they struggle against their antagonists, the West will take Israel's side. As usual, the bloodbath was the fault of the Arabs - who, as we all know, only understand force.

Ever since 1948, we've been hearing this balderdash from the Israelis - just as Arab nationalists and then Arab Islamists have been peddling their own lies: that the Zionist "death wagon" will be overthrown, that all Jerusalem will be "liberated". And always Mr Bush Snr or Mr Clinton or Mr Bush Jnr or Mr Blair or Mr Brown have called upon both sides to exercise "restraint" - as if the Palestinians and the Israelis both have F-18s and Merkava tanks and field artillery. 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.

The blood-splattering has its own routine. Yes, Hamas provoked Israel's anger, just as Israel provoked Hamas's anger, which was provoked by Israel, which was provoked by Hamas, which ... See what I mean? Hamas fires rockets at Israel, Israel bombs Hamas, Hamas fires more rockets and Israel bombs again and ... Got it? And we demand security for Israel - rightly - but overlook this massive and utterly disproportionate slaughter by Israel. It was Madeleine Albright who once said that Israel was "under siege" - as if Palestinian tanks were in the streets of Tel Aviv.......

EARTICLE-http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-leaders-lie-civilians-die-and-lessons-of-history-are-ignored-1215045.html

Reuters

A Palestinian woman walks past a destroyed Hamas police compound after an Israeli air strike

"I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing."

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:19:41 EST

We Have No Words Left

by Ali Abunimah - Published on Monday, December 29, 2008 by The Guardian/UK

"I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing." Those chilling words were spoken on al-Jazeera on Saturday by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense official in the Sderot area adjacent to the Gaza Strip. For days Israeli planes have bombed Gaza. Almost 300 Palestinians have been killed and a thousand injured, the majority civilians, including women and children. Israel claims most of the dead were Hamas "terrorists". In fact, the targets were police stations in dense residential areas, and the dead included many police officers and other civilians. Under international law, police officers are civilians, and targeting them is no less a war crime than aiming at other civilians.

Palestinians are at a loss to describe this new catastrophe. Is it our 9/11, or is it a taste of the "bigger shoah" Matan Vilnai, the deputy defense minister, threatened in February, after the last round of mass killings?

Israel says it is acting in "retaliation" for rockets fired with increasing intensity ever since a six-month truce expired on 19 December. But the bombs dropped on Gaza are only a variation in Israel's method of killing Palestinians. In recent months they died mostly silent deaths, the elderly and sick especially, deprived of food, cancer treatments and other medicines by an Israeli blockade that targeted 1.5 million people - mostly refugees and children - caged into the Gaza Strip. The orders of Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, to hold back medicine were just as lethal and illegal as those to send in the warplanes.......

ENTIRE COMMENT - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/29/israel-gaza-attack-palestinian-reaction

Death toll moves above 300. Calls for investigation after seven students at UN college die in missile attacks

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:09:59 EST

Civilian Death Toll Rises After Second Day of Air Strikes Death toll moves above 300. Calls for investigation after seven students at UN college die in missile attacks

by Hazem Balousha in Gaza City, Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem - Published on Monday, December 29, 2008 by The Guardian/UK

To the doctors at the Shifa hospital in Gaza City it was another body on a chaotically busy day. By early Saturday afternoon the morgue was already overflowing so they laid out the corpse of 20-year-old Ali Abu Rabia on the floor outside. One of the hospital staff pulled out a mobile phone from his pocket, scrolled through the numbers, and called the young man's father.

"I was at work. Someone from the hospital called and said they had found my son," said Marwan Abu Rabia, 44, a plumber. "I went straight to the hospital and found him lying on the floor outside the morgue. There were too many bodies. It looked like a massacre."

The hospital was so crowded staff held back relatives outside the building and turned away the lightly injured. They struggled to treat the seriously hurt, some of whom lay on beds in the corridors because of the congested wards.

Palestinian officials said the death toll from Saturday's air strikes was at least 280, with another 600 people injured. Most are thought to be police or security officials, but among the casualties were many civilians.

Several more Palestinians were killed and injured yesterday, although the Israeli air strikes were less extensive. One Israeli civilian was killed on Saturday by a rocket fired by Palestinian militants from Gaza.

Ali Abu Rabia was a student at a UN vocational college for Palestinian refugees in the Rimal district of Gaza City. He sat an exam on Saturday morning, his father said, and after the first Israeli air strikes decided to go home. He was standing in the street with others when an Israeli missile struck, at around 1.30pm. Reportedly it had been aimed at a policeman seen nearby with a walkie-talkie......

ENTIRE ARTICLE- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/29/israelandthepalestinians-middleeast

Palestinians mourn over a body during the funeral of Ramzi Al Dheni and Ahmed Hammad, at a mosque in Rafah refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2008. The two were killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza on Tuesday, dealing a new blow to efforts to restore a cease-fire. The army said it attacked militants who fired mortar shells at Israeli troops. Palestinian medical officials said the dead were civilians, boys ages 16 and 17.(AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

Obama Adviser Aligns with White House in Criticism of Rocket Attacks on Israel

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:57:45 EST

Obama Adviser Aligns with White House in Criticism of Rocket Attacks on Israel

by Ewin MacAskill - Published on Monday, December 29, 2008 by the Guardian/UK

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama yesterday appeared to line up behind the Bush administration in support of Israel's attack on Gaza.

Speaking on CBS's Face the Nation, his chief adviser, David Axelrod, initially repeated the Obama team's formula that there could only be one president at a time and that president was George Bush.

But he went on to recall comments that Obama made in July at Sderot, the Israeli town that is the target of rocket attacks from Palestinian militants in Gaza.

At the time, Obama said : "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."

A similar sentiment was expressed by Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, on Saturday. She said: "The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza." She added: "The ceasefire should be restored immediately. The United States calls on all concerned to address the urgent humanitarian needs of the innocent people of Gaza."

Gordon Johndroe, the White House security spokesman, also blamed Hamas, whom he referred to as terrorists and thugs. Rice briefed Obama by phone for about eight minutes on Saturday and further calls are planned to ensure he is up to speed on the issue by the time he takes office...........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/29/barack-obama-israel-gaza

Today I end my support of Israel

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:31:00 EST

Today I end my support of Israel

by Chilean Jew @ dailykos.com - Sun Dec 28, 2008 at 11:07:48 AM PST

Like davidminzer, I'm Jewish and descendant of holocaust survivors. Moreover, I've been a Zionist all of my life. I went to a Zionist school, I was active in Zionist youth groups. I've always been a fervent supporter of Israel as a refuge for Jews around the world who seek a place to exercise their traditions and embrace their identity in peace.

I sang the Israeli anthem in the train rails of Aushwitz-Birkenau and I pledged to fight every day of my life to make sure the savage crimes that had taken place there would never happen again. Every year I pledged: Never Again. Remember and Never forget.

Well, I haven't forgotten. And so to honor that pledge, to honor the memory of my family members who died in those death camps and because "there comes a time when silence is betrayal", today I finally and publicly end my support for the state of Israel......

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/12/28/114432/83/489/677860

Israel's Attempted Endgame in Gaza

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:21:27 EST

Before Our Very Eyes Israel's Attempted Endgame in Gaza

By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN @ counterpunch.com

The intensity of the bombings on Saturday, which left over 230 people dead and 800 wounded, many seriously, was what struck one witness, R., who claimed never to have heard so many explosions so close together and for such an uninterrupted period of time inside the Gaza Strip. One after another, the explosions sounded, most of them near heavily populated areas; and in one case only 30 meters away from his daughter’s elementary school.

The bombings were timed to cause the maximum number of “enemy” casualties. They occurred at approximately 11:20am on a bustling Saturday morning, just as schools were changing shifts and many children were either leaving for home or coming to afternoon classes; when offices were filled with their employees, and streets busy with the late morning crowds out getting lunch or on quick errands of one sort or another. The day before, Israel had opened some of the crossings into Gaza to let in another trickle of humanitarian aid. ‘See how generous we are to our enemy!’ they exclaim with straight faces to the international media...........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.counterpunch.org/loewenstein12292008.html

Exception From Humanity: The War Against Palestine

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:22:03 EST

Exception From Humanity

The War Against Palestine

By GEORGE SALZMAN and MANUEL GARCIA, Jr. @ counterpunch.org

The war against the Palestinians arises from the merging of the Zionist view of Jewish exceptionalism with the view in the United States of American exceptionalism, which have focused their common root ambitions for domination and possession as a hostility to Islam, and this is the leading crusade in the "clash of civilizations," proclaimed by just-deceased Harvard historian Samuel P. Huntington, which is the war against the world's poor and dark-skinned people, the war of conquest carried out to enforce a rule of worldwide apartheid by a culturally Euro-American, racially white, highly industrialized capitalist elite.

The Zionist view of Jewish exceptionalism is critically examined, and demolished, in the book Overcoming Zionism, by Joel Kovel. This mind-set boils down to 'any victimization of Jews we Zionists can remember, historically, justifies all our aggression, persecution and even genocide of Palestinians; we are, and will always be, the exceptional victims of world history and so are forever blameless; to disagree is to be one with our historical persecutors.' The Jewish religion is quite incidental to the actual intent of the exceptionalism; Zionism is a criminal conspiracy drawing participants through a Jewishness filter, in the same way the Mafia exploits Sicilian heritage to filter its recruitment and promotion..........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post_edit/_new/48BQc

Obama and the "Special Relationship"

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:17:27 EST

"No Comment" on Gaza's Dead

Obama and the "Special Relationship"

By JOSHUA FRANK

As President-Elect Barack Obama vacationed in Hawaii on December 26, stopping off to watch a dolphin show with his family at Sea Life Park, an Israeli air raid besieged the impoverished Gaza Strip, killing at least 285 people and injuring over 800 more.

It was the single deadliest attack on Gaza in over 20 years and Obama’s initial reaction on what could be his first real test as president was “no comment”. Meanwhile, Israel has readied itself for a land invasion, amassing tanks along the border and calling up 6,500 reserve troops.

On Sunday’s Face the Nation, Obama’s Senior Adviser David Axelrod explained to guest cost Chip Reid how an Obama administration would handle the situation, even if it turns for the worst.

“Well, certainly, the president-elect recognizes the special relationship between United States and Israel. It’s an important bond, an important relationship. He’s going to honor it ... And obviously, this situation has become even more complicated in the last couple of days and weeks. As Hamas began its shelling, Israel responded. But it’s something that he’s committed to.”

Reiterating the rationale that Israel’s bombing of Gaza was an act of retaliation and not of agression, Axelrod, on behalf of the Obama administration, continued to spread the same misinformation as President Bush: that Hamas was the first to break the ceasefire agreement, which ended over a week ago, and Israel was simply responding judiciously.......

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.counterpunch.org/frank12292008.html

Hanukkah Games: Operation Cast Lead

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:10:36 EST

Operation Cast Lead

Hanukkah Games

By BELÉN FERNÁNDEZ

I was surprised to learn on Saturday afternoon that Israel's latest assault on Gaza, though not even half a day old, already boasted a Wikipedia entry. I was even more surprised to learn the origins of the assault's codename.

At first glance, Operation Cast Lead appeared to be quite straightforward in its evocation of imagery, at least in comparison to Operation Summer Rains—Israel's 2006 foray into Gaza, the title of which may have functioned more appropriately on the cover of a romance novel in the checkout lane of a supermarket. According to Wikipedia, however, the significance of Cast Lead was not readily discernible by superficial symbolic analysis.....

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.counterpunch.org/fernandez12292008.html

On the Ground in Gaza: University Bombed, UN Staffers Amongst the Dead

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 01:13:47 EST

On the Ground in Gaza: University Bombed, UN Staffers Amongst the Dead

By: Siun @ firedoglake.com - Sunday December 28, 2008 6:00 pm

New Israeli airstrikes are going on now. CNN is broadcasting video of the attacks, Maan News Agency's breaking news includes reports of fires from bombs in the Western Gaza Strip and that the Intelligence and Olympics Committee buildings ahve been leveled. The Israeli news site Ynet reports that "Israeli warplanes bombed the Islamic University in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, a significant Hamas cultural symbol" and Xinhua confirms:

The residents in Remal neighborhood in western Gaza City said they heard four huge explosions that wrecked the whole area, and white and gray pillars of smoke were seen coming out of the building. Several buildings, which surround the Islamic University were badly damaged, said the residents, adding that another college run by the Islamic University in southern Gaza City was hit too. Israeli drones and F16 warplanes still hover over Gaza City. The buzz of the drones and war fighters was strongly heard shortly before the four airstrikes were carried out. The residents said that several buildings at the female campus into the Islamic University compound that include chemical labs were completely destroyed. No injuries were reported.

Meanwhile, Israeli tanks continue to mass at the borders and Time is reporting that support within Israel is very high for these attacks as demonstrated by their description of Israelis gathering on hilltops to watch and applaud the bombs.

Al Jazeera is now reporting "United Nations officials in New York said nine of its staff had been killed in the strikes.".........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://firedoglake.com/2008/12/28/on-the-ground-in-gaza/

'The constant, ominous, maddening droning sound of the Apaches overhead'

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 00:49:13 EST

'The constant, ominous, maddening droning sound of the Apaches overhead'

from Philip Weiss @ "Mondoweiss"

Another update from Safa Joudeh in Gaza City:

Here's an update on whats happening here from where I am, second night of Israeli air (and sea) raids on Gaza.

It's 1.30 am but it feels like the sun should be up already. For the past few hours there's been heavy aerial bombardment of Gaza city and the northern Gaza Strip simultaneously. It feels like the longest night of my life. In my area it started with the bombing of workshops (usually located in the ground floor of private/family residential buildings), garages and warehouses in one of the most highly condensed areas in Gaza city "Askoola". About an hour ago they bombed the Islamic university, destroying the laboratory building. As I mentioned in an earlier account, my home is close to the university. We heard the first explosion, the windows shook, the walls shook and my heart felt like it would literally jump out of my mouth. .....

ENTIRE POST - http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/12/the-constant-ominous-maddening-droning-sound-of-the-apaches-overhead.html#more

A Conservative Estimate of Total Direct U.S. Aid to Israel: Almost $114 Billion

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 20:15:44 EST

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2008, pages 10-11

Congress Watch

A Conservative Estimate of Total Direct U.S. Aid to Israel: Almost $114 BillionBy Shirl McArthur

(Shirl McArthur, a retired U.S. foreign service officer, is a consultant based in the Washington, DC area.)

TABLE 1: Direct U.S. Aid to Israel (millions of dollars)

TO VIEW CHART - http://wrmea.com/archives/November_2008/0811010.html

This estimate of total U.S. direct aid to Israel updates the estimate given in the July 2006 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. It is an estimate because arriving at an exact figure is not possible, since parts of U.S. aid to Israel are a) buried in the budgets of various U.S. agencies, mostly that of the Defense Department (DOD), or b) in a form not easily quantifiable, such as the early disbursement of aid, giving Israel a direct benefit in interest income and the U.S. Treasury a corresponding loss. Given these caveats, our current estimate of cumulative total direct aid to Israel is $113.8554 billion.

It must be emphasized that this analysis is a conservative, defensible accounting of U.S. direct aid to Israel, NOT of Israel’s cost to the U.S. or the American taxpayer, nor of the benefits to Israel of U.S. aid. The distinction is important, because the indirect or consequential costs suffered by the U.S. as a result of its blind support for Israel exceed by many times the substantial amount of direct aid to Israel. (See, for example, the late Thomas R. Stauffer’s article in the June 2003 Washington Report, “The Costs to American Taxpayers of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: $3 Trillion.”)

Especially, this computation does not include the costs resulting from the invasion and occupation of Iraq—hundreds of billions of dollars, 4,000-plus U.S. and allied fatalities, untold tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, and many thousands of other U.S., allied, and Iraqi casualties—which is almost universally believed in the Arab world to have been undertaken for the benefit of Israel. Among other “indirect or consequential” costs would be the costs of U.S. unilateral economic sanctions on Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria, the costs to U.S. manufacturers of the Arab boycott, and the costs to U.S. companies and consumers of the 1973 Arab oil embargo and consequent and subsequent soaring oil prices partially as a result of U.S. support for Israel.

SOURCE - http://wrmea.com/archives/November_2008/0811010.html

The Costs to American Taxpayers of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: $3 Trillion

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:58:25 EST

Special Report - Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 2003

The Costs to American Taxpayers of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: $3 Trillion

By Thomas R. Stauffer

(Thomas R. Stauffer is a Washington, DC-based engineer and economist who has taught the economics of energy and the Middle East at Harvard University and Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.)

Conflicts in the Middle East have been very costly to the U.S., as well as to the rest of the world. An estimate of the total cost to the U.S. alone of instability and conflict in the region—which emanates from the core, Israeli-Palestinian conflict—amounts to close to $3 trillion, measured in 2002 dollars. This is an amount almost four times greater than the cost of the Vietnam war, also reckoned in 2002 dollars.

Even this figure underestimates the costs because certain classes of expenditure remain unquantified. In particular, no reliable figure is available for the costs of "Project Independence," Washington's lavishly promoted effort to reduce U.S. dependence on oil from the Middle East. That effort, which was subverted early on by diverse local special interests, was designed primarily to insulate Israel from any new "Arab oil weapon" after 1973/74, and may easily have cost $1 trillion. Even though the outlays were rationalized in the interest of "national security," however, they contributed little or nothing to reducing U.S. strategic dependence upon imported oil from the Middle East. Similarly, aid to Israel—and thus the regional total—also is understated, since much is outside of the foreign aid appropriation process or implicit in other programs. Support for Israel comes to $1.8 trillion, including special trade advantages, preferential contracts, or aid buried in other accounts. In addition to the financial outlay, U.S. aid to Israel costs some 275,000 American jobs each year.

SOURCE - http://www.wrmea.com/archives/june2003/0306020.html

Obama: Gaza Siege ‘Forced on Israel’

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:51:15 EST

January, 2008

Dear Ambassador Khalilzad,

I understand that today the UN Security Council met regarding the situation in Gaza, and that a resolution or statement could be forthcoming from the Council in short order.

I urge you to ensure that the Security Council issue no statement and pass no resolution on this matter that does not fully condemn the rocket assault Hamas has been conducting on civilians in southern Israel…

All of us are concerned about the impact of closed border crossings on Palestinian families. However, we have to understand why Israel is forced to do this… Israel has the right to respond while seeking to minimize any impact on civilians.

The Security Council should clearly and unequivocally condemn the rocket attacks… If it cannot bring itself to make these common sense points, I urge you to ensure that it does not speak at all.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama
United States Senator

SOURCE - http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2008/01/24/obama-gaza-siege-forced-on-israel/

Is Israel writing another 'Exodus' for Gaza?

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:38:12 EST

Horowitz: Is Israel writing another 'Exodus' for Gaza?

by Philip Weiss @ "Mondoweiss"

Adam Horowitz writes:

The year in Gaza started on January 23, 2008. That is when, under the stifling pressures of Israeli, and internationally-supported, siege the Gazans broke out. Hamas was credited with blowing several holes in the border wall between Gaza and Egypt in what was widely compared to a prison break. Over 20% of Gaza's resident's streamed across to Egypt to buy desperately needed provisions, including food and building materials.

Well, 2008 is ending in much the same way. Today according to Ha'aretz:

Gaza residents on Sunday breached the border fence with Egypt in several places and hundreds have crossed the frontier prompting Egyptian border guards to open fire, said officials and witnesses on both sides of the border.

An Egyptian security official said there were at least five breaches along the 9 mile (14 kilometer) border and hundreds of Palestinian residents were pouring in. At least 300 Egyptian border guards rushed to the area to reseal the border, the official added on condition on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press......

ENTIRE POST - http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/12/horowitz-is-israel-writing-another-exodus-for-gaza-.html#more

Gaza: Silence is not an option

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:32:23 EST

Gaza: Silence is not an optionDecember 28th, 2008 | Posted in Press Releases, Reports, Gaza Region | Edit By Eva Bartlett
Photos below

To view Eva Bartlett’s blog please click here
Shifa ICU: a glimpse of hospital critical injuries

Dr Khaled from Shifa hospital ICU told me the majority of cases in the intensive car unit are critical. He estimates 80% will not survive. At the time that we spoke the ICU was handling its 4th shift of critically injured. The ICU normally has 12 beds, but the hospital expanded it to 24 using beds and rooms from other departments.

There is a critical need for more ICU beds, as well as mechanical ventilators. The majority of injuries were “multi-explosive injuries” with a concentration of head injuries (”head trauma”) resulting from the explosions and from shrapnel in the brain. Other injuries include abdominal injuries resulting in internal bleeding caused by shrapnel in the abdomen. The majority of head injuries are not expected to survive, and those who do are expected to have brain damage and some with full paralysis (quadriplegia). Because of the shortage of spaces and equipment, the ICU has turned patients away. Others have been waiting in the reception area until a patient dies and the space can be used.

Among the critically wounded were a number of children and minors:

A six year old down’s syndrom with brain trauma
An 11 year old with brain trauma, not likely to survive
A 13 year old with a head injury (”brain matter out”)
A 21 year old, leg amputated, various shrapnel injuries over body and face, loss of hearing in one ear
A 21 year old, braindead, hopeless case
A man in his fifties, neither police nor resistance
A man in his forties, on the beach when struck, head trauma (”brain matter out”)
A man in his fifties, head trauma
A 53 year old, shrapnel in the brain, no surgery possible
Aany other men in their 20s and 30s, head injuries (shrapnel in brain), and abdominal injuries some policemen.

The ISM will continue to post updates on the situation in Gaza. Eva Bartlett, on the ground in Gaza, will also post directly to http://ingaza.wordpress.com/.

Condemnation of "collective punishment" Israeli attack on Gaza mounts

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:21:57 EST

December 28, 2008 -- Condemnation of "collective punishment" Israeli attack on Gaza mounts

From wire service reports. - from waynemadsenreport.com

Israel's brutal "collective punishment" air Blitzkrieg that has killed over 230 mostly civilians in the Gaza Strip, Israel's version of Nazi Germany's Warsaw Ghetto, is resulting in widespread international condemnation. One notable exception is the United States. Gordon Johndroe, National Security Council spokesman, expressed U.S. support for the Israeli collective punishment assault on Gaza.

The Cuban Foreign Ministry called the Israeli attack "a genocide and crime." From Johannesburg, South Africa's ruling African National Congress stated: "'Collective punishment' which saw children and civilians killed would not solve the problems in the Mideast."

Jordan's lower house of Parliament issued a statement on the Israeli attack: "This aggression will only lead to more hatred and push the region towards more violence."

From Jakarta, the following statement was released: "The Indonesian government condemns the attack and calls for Israel to end the use of violence in the Gaza Strip because this will prompt new tensions, while, on the other side, the attack is an abuse of the Annapolis agreement which had been negotiated."

The French presidency of the European Union condemned "the disproportionate use of force" by Israel.

SOURCE - http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/

Israel bombs university in Gaza

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:09:26 EST

Israel bombs university in Gaza

from BBC News - last updated at 23:53 GMT, Sunday, 28 December 2008

Israeli officials say the raids have been a success so far

Israeli air force jets have bombed the Islamic University in the Gaza Strip, a significant cultural symbol for Hamas.

Warplanes also struck Hamas government offices as air raids aimed at forcing Palestinian militants to halt rocket fire into southern Israel continued.

Palestinian medics say nearly 300 people have been killed in the air raids that began on Saturday.

Israel has threatened to launch a ground assault and is now calling up 6,500 army reservists......

ARTICLE- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7802515.stm

BBC journalist and Gaza resident Hamada Abu Qammar describes the impact of the current wave of Israeli airstrikes against Hamas targets.

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:04:05 EST

Grief and fear in Gaza

BBC journalist and Gaza resident Hamada Abu Qammar describes the impact of the current wave of Israeli airstrikes against Hamas targets.

Hospitals have been struggling to cope with the injured

The streets of Gaza are deserted, apart from a few cars taking urgent cases to hospital and families screaming and shouting as they take bodies to the cemetery to be buried.

This morning I visited Shifa Hospital, the main one in Gaza.

I spoke to one man, a civilian, and also a 14-year-old boy who were injured in an airstrike on a police station in the east of Gaza City this morning.

The man said he had been going to work in a clinic when he heard the sound of planes and turned back. But after that he cannot remember what happened - he just woke up injured, with wounds in his hand, leg and stomach......

Israel is not currently permitting international journalists to cross into Gaza

ARTICLE - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7801973.stm

EU calls for immediate ceasefire in Gaza

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 18:47:42 EST

EU calls for immediate ceasefire in Gaza

REUTERS
Reuters North American News Service

Dec 27, 2008 10:37 EST

BRUSSELS, Dec 27 (Reuters) - The European Union called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza on Saturday and backed Egyptian efforts to restore a truce and end the "disproportionate use of force".

"We are very concerned at the events in Gaza. We call for an immediate ceasefire and urge everybody to exert maximum restraint," a spokesman for European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said.

"Everything must be done to renew the truce," he said.

Israeli war planes and helicopters pounded the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing at least 195 people and prompting rocket fire from Palestinian militants that killed an Israeli, medics said.......

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://wire.antiwar.com/2008/12/27/eu-calls-for-immediate-ceasefire-in-gaza-3/

ANALYSIS / With Gaza raid, Barak is back in the political ring

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 16:56:54 EST

ANALYSIS / With Gaza raid, Barak is back in the political ring

By Yossi Verter, Haaretz Correspondent (Israel)

Two months after Ehud Olmert was elected as Israel's prime minister, the Second Lebanon War broke out. Two months before Olmert departs, the military campaign in the south breaks out.

But Olmert isn't the story here; he's on his way to the Prime Minister's Bureau pensioners' ward. Ehud Barak is the story here. The man who, until yesterday, had to remind the Israeli voter of his existence with self-ridicule on billboards and satirical shows is returning to the political ring with force. In the coming days, weeks maybe, Barak will stand in he center of the public's attention. For better or worse, he's in his element.

The beginning of the raid in Gaza bears the wily and deceptive fingerprint of Barak, the Israel Defense Forces most highly decorated combat soldier. This does not make him the most suitable candidate for the premiership, but it may deliver him and his party from the humiliating defeat the polls are predicting.........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050437.html

"Something to be ranked with Deir Yassin. With the Sabra and Shatila massacres. Something, at last, that Israel's foes can say looks like an atrocity."

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 16:43:36 EST

To be in Gaza is to be trapped

Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 28 December 2008 00.05 GMT

Gaza. Always the suffering of Gaza, most potent symbol of the tragedy of Palestine. In 1948, during the Nakba – or "The Catastrophe" as Palestinians describe the war that gave birth to the state of Israel – 200,000 refugees poured into Gaza, swelling its population by more than two-thirds. Then Gaza fell under Egyptian control.

The six day war of 1967 saw more refugees, but with it came the occupation of Gaza by Israel – an occupation that, despite Israel's declaration under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that it would unilaterally withdraw its settlements and troops in 2005, has never really ended.

It has not ended, for to be in Gaza is to be trapped. Without future or hope, limited to a few square miles. Its borders, land and sea, are defined largely by Israel (with Egypt's compliance along the southern end of the Strip)..........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/27/israelandthepalestinians-terrorism

Israeli Drones, Warplanes Loom Over Southern Lebanon

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 16:33:53 EST

Israeli Drones, Warplanes Loom Over Southern Lebanon

Hezbollah Fighters on Alert Over Possible Israeli Attack

compiled by Jason Ditz @ antiwar.com - Posted December 28, 2008

With the world’s attention focused on the Israeli military’s killings in the Gaza Strip (over 300 as this article is written), comparisons are already being drawn between this war and Israel’s 2006 military adventure into Lebanon. Hard feelings remain between the two nations after that war ended in the deaths of over 1,000 Lebanese civilians. Growing Israeli activity in that area is now raising fears that the new war may well extend beyond the Gaza Strip and into Lebanon as well.

Reports abound of Israeli drones flying overhead across southern Lebanon, and Israeli warplanes have set off sonic booms in the area. And though they did little to contest Israel’s last invasion, the Lebanese military have canceled leave of all of its soldiers and raised its level of alert.

Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah has also ordered his militant faction to remain on alert, saying “in the shadow of the Arab conspirators and the American political vacuum, between Bush and Obama, there is the possibility that the enemy will take advantage of the situation and attack Lebanon.”

SOURCE - http://news.antiwar.com/2008/12/28/israeli-drones-warplanes-loom-over-southern-lebanon/

Israel pounds Gaza for second day

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 16:27:57 EST

Israel pounds Gaza for second day

from "The Indepedent" (U.K.) - Sunday, 28 December 2008

Israel pounded Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip from the air today for a second day and prepared for a possible invasion of the territory after killing nearly 290 Palestinians in the opening rounds of a powerful offensive.

Israel said the campaign that began yesterday was a response to almost daily rocket and mortar fire that intensified after Hamas, an Islamist group in charge of the coastal enclave Israel quit in 2005, ended a six-month ceasefire a week ago.

Despite the air attacks, militants fired some 80 rockets into Israel, emergency services said. In one of the longest-reaching salvoes, two rockets struck near Ashdod, a main port 18 miles from Gaza, causing no casualties.

Israeli tanks deployed on the edge of the Gaza Strip, poised to enter the densely populated enclave of 1.5 million Palestinians. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's cabinet approved a call-up of 6,500 reservists, a government official said............

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-pounds-gaza-for-second-day-1214624.html

Inside Gaza: 'The hospital morgues were already full. The dead were piled on top of each other outside'

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 16:22:51 EST

Inside Gaza: 'The hospital morgues were already full. The dead were piled on top of each other outside'

By Sami Abdel-Shafi in Gaza city @ independent.co.uk - Sunday, 28 December 2008

I am safe, and yet I feel like a walking dead person. Everything around me shows it. It is hard to write something of any coherence while exposed to cold winter air and to the smell that lingers after the detonation of Israeli bombs. They must have been massive. During the bombing I opened all the windows around my apartment to avoid them imploding as a result of the vacuum shocks sweeping through Gaza City after each enormous bang. While the bombing continued, I jumped down two flights of stairs to my father's house, to make sure he was OK. Should I open up all his windows too? That would expose the old man to the risk of illness. We have no medical care or medication. However, the risk from shattering glass was greater, so I opened them all.

Mobile phones did not work, because of electricity outages and the flood of attempted calls. I flipped the electricity generator on so that we could watch the news. We wanted to understand what was going on in our own neighbourhood. However, this was impossible. Israeli surveillance drones flew overhead, scrambling the reception............

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/inside-gaza-the-hospital-morgues-were-already-full-the-dead-were-piled-on-top-of-each-other-outside-1213839.html

EZRA KLEIN: There's a saying in the Jewish community: "Israel, right or wrong." But sometimes Israel is simply wrong.

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 16:07:33 EST

ISRAEL, WRONG.

by Ezra Klein @ "The American Prospect"

This is the paragraph that I can't get out of my head:

Hamas had in recent weeks let it be known that it doubted Israel would engage in a major military undertaking because of its coming elections. But in some ways the elections have made it impossible for officials like Mr. Barak not to react, because the public has grown anxious and angry over the rocket fire, which while causing no recent deaths and few injuries is deeply disturbing for those living near Gaza.

No deaths and few injuries. "Deeply disturbing." Hamas lacks the technology to aim its rockets. They're taking potshots. In response, the Israeli government launched air strikes that have now killed more than 280 Palestinians......

ENTIRE POST- http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=12&year=2008&base_name=israel_wrong

Ezra Klein is an associate editor at The American Prospect. His work has appeared in the LA Times, The Guardian, The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, Slate, The Columbia Journalism Review, and other outlets. He's been a commentator on MSNBC, CNN, NPR, and more. He cooks a mean kung pao, and likes to talk about health care policy.

Bush Winks at Israel’s Slaughter in Gaza, While Obama and Clinton Are Silent

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 15:44:26 EST

Bush Winks at Israel’s Slaughter in Gaza, While Obama and Clinton Are Silent

By Matthew Rothschild, December 27, 2008 @ progressive.org

Israel recklessly bombed Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 205 Palestinians and wounding at least 350 more, according to Palestinian health officials.

This wholly disproportionate response to Hamas’s immoral but largely ineffective rocket attacks on Israel is guaranteed to further enflame the Middle East.

Not lost on anyone there will be the Bush Administration’s winking at Israel’s attacks.

White Houses spokesman Gordon Johndroe laid all the blame on Hamas..........

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.progressive.org/mag/wx122708.html