Great quote.... Adulthood is just a fantasy. Humans remain are forever young in the sense that so part of us never lets go of ego.

Is it telling us everything we need to know about Gaza? Or Israel? Israel and the Lefties who become right-wing, authoritarian militarists when it comes to Israel?

Great! Isn't that why the news never shows the shiny officers towers in those big cities that we always thought were made of mud bricks and old hay? Painting your enemy as something less than human?

MJ: You have been remarkedly brave on this. Maybe you sense something about the policy trajectory of these events. We are entering a new, dark phase.

The sad fact is that the complete delegitimization of secular Palestinian leaders has occurred. Mission accomplished, Ehud(s).

Pray tell: Who is Abbas going to negotiate for, never mind, with?

"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them...."

you mean like people being ok with rockets when they're aimed at Israel, but not when they're aimed FROM Israel?

or people weeping over the same photo of the same Palestinian kid being carried to the hospital, but not having said a peep during years of Hamas rockets that killed many Israeli children?

sorta like that?

huh--well maybe the poor people that don't have an air force or tanks should have thought of that before they attacked a more powerful army.

or perhaps their focus in the years since Israel LEFT GAZA TO THEM should have been on building a country for themselves, instead of buying crappy missiles.

just a thought.

Thanks for the quote, M. J. May I return the compliment with one of my favorites. Nobody much quotes Emma Goldman any more--more's the pity. But here she is in 1917:

Indeed, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.

The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that, from early infancy, the mind of the child is poisoned with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood, he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner.

Perhaps Emma is a bit over the top here. But then again, perhaps she isn't. The entire essay can be found at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Writings/Anarchism/patriotism.html

Sorry my html skills approximate nil. But cutting and pasting should work. Keep up the good brave work.

aMike

BUSH'S PARTING GIFT TO OBAMA - SCORCHED EARTH POLICY IN THE MIDDLE EAST
President Bush is the first American President to openly talk about a two state solution in the Middle East. But beyond that him and his Secretary of State Condi Rice have done everything to destroy the Middle East peace process.

Bill Clinton left him a fairly advanced peace process, but GWB took an axe and crushed it. First, by declaring the Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat a terrorist and then unleashing Ariel Sharon on the Palestinians. The same Ariel Sharon who was wanted in a European court on terrorism charge for instigating and killing of over one thousand innocent men, women and children in Sabira and Shatilla camps in Lebanon.

It seems that Bush and Sharon's policy was to weaken Palestinians to such an extent that a planted Palestinian leader, Mahmood Abbas would accept whatever peace agreement was offered to him. But that was doomed to failure. Israel continues to fight and has not only suffered humiliation but also lost invincibility at the hands of a rag tag Hizbollah.

And now, when it seemed that Israelis had started talking peace and King Abdullah's peace plan and when a new U.S. President was about to be sworn in with much hope for Middle East peace, President Bush & Condi Rice have encouraged Israel to attack Gaza and possibly destroy all chances of peace.

A majority of American public and many Jews around the world (who otherwise support Israel) have shown anger and disgust at Gaza attacks and are refusing to buy Bush Administration's rhetoric. It seems that the World and Americans cannot be rid of George W. Bush soon enough. Even in the dying days of his Presidency he is hell bent on causing death and destruction and leaving behind a scorched Middle East.

sholomA: you are absolutely right. boy, those whiny Jews, they're still complaining about the Holocaust even! what the hell is wrong with them? why don't they just get over themselves...or better yet, just disappear.

because as soon as we get rid of those troublesome Jews, the Arabs will finally be able to become the peace-loving people they have shown they WANT to be.

ROTFL.

Just thinking out loud,

Or maybe Israel shouldn't LIE about returning a territory to its rightful owners, then spend the next two years laying seige to that territory controlling its borders and airspace and blocking all money, food, water, oil, electricity from its people because those "free" people freely elected a political party that Israel doesn't like.

or perhaps Israel should honor its end of a cease-fire, and not hold that territory under seige and continue the indiscriminate killing in that territory of members of that freely elected political party they don't like.

How about if Israel really actually lived up to its end of any agreement it has ever made and stopped lying about every thing they have ever done?

just a thought.

This is actually true on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict, as anyone can see. While it is true that pro-Israel types like me often try to justify some of the the harsh tactics used by the IDF, surely the anti-Israel crowd, Arabs especially, are worse. The continual rationalization and downplaying of the worst Palestinian terrorism as somehow understandable is nothing short of disgusting. Other peoples way more oppressed than the Palestinians ever have been managed to liberate themselves without resorting to these tactics.

Fundamentally it all boils down to what you think the intent of the parties are. For me, knowing Israel as I do, I believe that Israelis wants peace but wants security more. If the Arabs were able to offer security, Israel would not stand in the way of peace and would confront its own extremists. By contrast, I believe that most Palestinians want Israel destroyed. They might be willing to live with Israel in a state of their own if one magically appeared. But they're not going to confront their own extremists to make it happen. Talk to most Israelis, even liberals, and most will tell you that they believe that if Palestinians could, they would destroy Israel.

Then of course you need to take into account the extreme cynicism of the Palestinians. The main reason there are civilian deaths in Gaza is that Hamas deliberately puts its facilities in the middle of densely populated areas. Israel takes extreme care to avoid civilian deaths but it is simply impossible to completely avoid them if they want to achieve their objectives. By contrast, Hamas wants as many civilian deaths as possible.

To me, both of these things put Israel on a higher moral plane. While one cannot explicitly condone the deaths of innocent bystanders, one can also realize that Israel has no alternatives. Doing nothing about the threat of Hamas, with Iran behind it, is not an option.

Of what liberals do you write? I'm not seeing liberals cheering the bombing in Gaza. Quite the opposite.

I am reluctant to even dip a toe into these shark infested waters, but feel constrained to point out that the Orwell quote MJ refers to was the subject of a far more cogent and nuanced blog post by Glenn Greenwald at Salon (http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/). I find it hard to believe MJ never came across Greenwald's piece. Indeed, Greenwald uses the quote for precisely the same purpose - as a retort to liberals who find the war justifiable despite the enormous suffering of the residents of Gaza. MJ's re-use of the quote without noting where he found it is, if not technically plagiarism, misleading. (If I'm wrong, I apologize.)

The point of the quote (and of Greenwald's worthy post, most of which I nonetheless disagree with) is that liberals who seek to justify Israel's actions are unwilling or perhaps incapable of viewing the conflict objectivily because tribalism prevents them from fully identifying with those on the other side. In other words, because my side is right and good, I can support things that they do that I would not accept from others.

Plainly, there is plenty of intellectual dishonesty on both sides of the conflict. Exposing it is like shooting fish in a barrel. Yet, this is what drives so much of the discussion on the topic, and is the reason it never seems to get anywhere. Indeed, after nearly ruining more than a few friendships trying to rationally discuss even what I thought were areas of agreement, I have all but given up on the possibility of rational discussion of the conflict.

That said, I find myself continually returning to the same question for which I have not yet received a satisfactory answer from those (like MJR) who support Israel's nationhood but oppose the current operation:

What should Israel do?

Those calling for a ceasefire/truce and end to the blockade overlook one salient fact. Hamas as a movement is inalterably opposed to the existence of Israel and committed to armed struggle achieve its goals. That is the movement's defining idea - it's entire reason for being. Should Israel then allow an implacably hostile group to use its territory to launch attacks on Israel's citizens, consolidate its power and perhaps most importantly, arm itself to the teeth to make itself even more undeterrable than it already seems to be? The fact that Hamas used the temporary truce to acquire the more sophisticated missiles now raining down on Israel's cities confirms the impossibility of this approach. Hamas' leaders have already shown that the misery they have brought to the people of Gaza is subordinate to their movement's divine aim.

Does tribalism play a part in my thinking? Absolutely. I have strong ties to Israel. While I criticize Israel for not doing enough to make peace with its neighbors and confronting its own radicals, I do believe the overwhelming majority of its citizenry would withdraw from all the territories if it meant true peace and security. I am saddened by the appalling suffering of the people of Gaza - not just now, but over the past 60 years. I do not seek to dehumanize them or justify the killing of innocents as somehow necessary to prove a point about Israel's deterrent capability.

Of course, for someone who believes otherwise - that the formation of the state of Israel was itself a crime, that Israel is committed to its expansion and the dispossession of the Palestinians as a goal unto itself, etc. - there is nothing for us to discuss. But to those who support Israel's right to exist and defend its citizens, the question remains: What do you propose?

jdielell writes:

The answer is to lock all the leaders of the surrounding arab countries, the two major Palestinian and Israeli factions along with the US, EU and UN in a room and don't let them out until an agreement is reached.

Before they get into the room they should all take, after intense preparation, psychoactive mushrooms which induces a sense of oneness, removing the sense of otherness. See this CNN report.

YouTube Link

It seems rather odd that Shimon Peres was concerned that Obama might engage Iran prior to Iranian elections and influence those elections, yet he doesn't seem to realize that Israel's own actions are doing just that.

Apparently, the Israelis have studied Orwell as well:

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.