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
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
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/
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
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
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
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 seethe blood in the streets.Come and see the bloodin the streets. Poem by Pablo Neruda, "I'm Explaining a Few Things"
Come and see the blood in the streets.Come and seethe blood in the streets.Come and see the bloodin 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
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'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
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.
© 2008 The Progressive
SOURCE - http://www.progressive.org/mag/shalom123008.html
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
AP
A Palestinian man places a green Hamas flag on the rubble of a destroyed mosque after an Israeli air strike in Gaza
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
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
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
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
Israel Rejects Truce Calls, Presses on With Gaza Offensive
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
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
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 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.
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
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
![[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)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/worldwideprotests-1231.jpg "worldwideprotests-1231.jpg")
![[As Israel's Gaza offensive continues Palestinian civilians are dying amid the rubble, while survivors struggle just to find food. (AFPTV)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/noceasefire-1231.jpg "noceasefire-1231.jpg")
