Moyers is a man of great inner strength and rock solid values. That is what makes his commentary on all subjects so powerful. Hopefully, his voice will be heard and make a difference.

Bill Moyers' Journal on PBS is something to look forward to on a regular basis... (thought the timing of the recent conflict over there was rather peculiar considering the current out-going U.S. administration giving way to the new in-coming administration).

It is really disturbing to watch the USA handcuff its foreign policy to Israel. All of the promise and excitement of a new Administration means very little if a President Obama continues our unquestioning support of Israeli policy.

This recent offensive, and Obama's silence have already sent a message to the Arab world that it will be business as usual in the US.

Then again, if Obama had entrenched his foreign policy views before taking office it would have no doubt inflamed the transition process on such a divisive foreign policy issue and squandered political capital as his opinion actually held no actual levers of power yet.

I can see the case for and against Obama taking a stand prior to being sworn in, and I see far less detractors from his current course than the opposite.

Hey, MJ, have you read this?

Hillary Clinton sent a message to Israel Tuesday during her Secretary of State confirmation hearing testimony, telling the Foreign Relations Committee that because of the conflict in Gaza "we have ...been reminded of the tragic humanitarian costs of conflict in the Middle East, and pained by the suffering of Palestinian and Israeli civilians."

Mainstream American politicians are famously reluctant to utter the words "suffering" and "Palestinian" in the same sentence. By breaking from that tradition, Clinton appeared to send a signal to Israel that that it would not have a free hand to operate in the Middle East.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/13/clinton-sympathizes-with_n_157487.html

...and the times, they are a changin'

Sen. Clinton Deplores Indoctrination of Palestinian Children and Hamas’ Use of Children as Human Shields

Clinton: No negotiations with Hamas Until they Recognize Israel’s Right to Exist

As Sen. Hillary Clinton begins confirmation hearings today (Jan. 13) to become the United States’ next secretary of state, one issue on which she has been both vocal and clear is her outrage over the use of Palestinian classrooms to teach Palestinian children hate and violence towards Israel and the West. [1] Clinton also has deplored the use of Palestinian children as human shields by Palestinian terrorists [2] - a tactic that Iran-backed Hamas terrorists currently are practicing in Gaza. [3]

Lanny Davis, TIP spokesperson and longtime friend of Senator Clinton praised her testimony and committment to the peace process in the Middle East and said, "Senator Clinton has been a tireless advocate for children around the world. We look forward to working with her on issues that will protect all children of the Middle East no matter if they are Muslim, Jewish or Christian."

At her confirmation hearing today, Clinton said the US would not engage in dialogue with Hamas as long as it refuses to renounce violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist. [4]

At the root of the indoctrination problem, Clinton has said, are Palestinian textbooks and TV cartoons that glorify suicide missions and other means of violence and teach them that Israel should not exist. [5]

"These textbooks do not give Palestinian children an education; they give them an indoctrination,” Clinton said during a press conference on Capitol Hill in 2007. “This propaganda is dangerous. You know, words really matter…Because in idealizing for children a world without Israel, children are taught never to accept the reality of the State of Israel, never to strive for a better future that would hold out the promise of peace and security to them, and is basically a message of pessimism and fatalism that undermines the possibility for these children living lives of fulfillment and productivity.” [6]

Several years earlier, Clinton condemned Palestinian terrorists’ use of children on the front lines of battle, calling it "horrific child abuse." [7]

As Israel attempts to stop Iran-backed Hamas from its years-long campaign of firing rockets and mortars – more than 3,200 in 2008 alone [8] – Palestinian children and adults alike are being purposely placed in the line of fire by Palestinian terrorists. [9]

An Israel-Arab weekly newspaper article last week told the story of a child describing being used by Hamas as scouts, couriers and other support roles. "We the children, in small groups and in civilian clothes, are fulfilling missions of support for the [Hamas] Resistance fighters, by transmitting messages about the movements of the enemy forces, or by bringing them ammunition and food,” the child said. “We ourselves are not aware of the movements of the Resistance fighters. We see them in one place, they suddenly disappear, and then reappear somewhere else. They are like ghosts, it is very hard to find them or hurt them.” [10]

An in-depth study released this month by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC), "Hamas Exploitation of Civilians as Human Shields,” shows Hamas’ current and past use of children and other civilians as human shields, such as by firing rockets at Israel from densely populated residential areas.

The Israel Defense Forces also provided documented evidence through photos and videos, of Palestinian children being used as human shields in March 2008. Before attacking buildings Hamas terrorists used manufacture rockets, the Israel Defense Forces – to avoid civilian casualties – sent warnings to Palestinians in Gaza to leave the facilities; Hamas would then call on children and other civilians into and around the buildings. [11] Such incidents have been documented by Hamas’ own media. View clip 1; View clip 2

Hamas Parliament Member Fathi Hammad, in a speech broadcast Feb. 29, 2008 on Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV, said, "[The enemies of Allah] do not know that the Palestinian people has developed its [methods] of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: 'We desire death like you desire life.'" [12]

Hamas has continued to fire rockets during the temporary humanitarian cease-fire imposed daily to allow a free flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, much of which is directed at children’s needs. Israel Air Force footage of a Hamas mortar crew operating inside a Gaza school compound, and a Hamas rocket salvo being fired at an Israeli city, during the three hour humanitarian hiatus on 8 Jan 2009:
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Footnotes:

[1] “Senator Clinton Joins with Palestinian Media Watch to Release New Report on Continuing Anti-Israel Bias in Palestinian Textbooks,” Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton Statements & Releases, Feb. 9, 2007, http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=269046&&

[2] Marcus, Itamar and Crook, Barbara, “Seducing Children to Martyrdom,” The Jerusalem Post, July 4, 2006, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150885912208&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[3] “Hamas Exploitation of Civilians as Human Shields,” Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC), January 2009, http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/pdf/hamas_e028.pdf

[4] Clinton rules out negotiations with Hamas, AFP, Jan. 12, 2009, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jHxrse1HSFMc4tFdmUrRrgZL1tcA

[5] “Senator Clinton Joins with Palestinian Media Watch to Release New Report on Continuing Anti-Israel Bias in Palestinian Textbooks,” Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton Statements & Releases, Feb. 9, 2007, http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=269046&&

[6] “Hillary Clinton’s full statement introducing PMW’s report on Palestinian schoolbook[sic],” Palestinian Media Watch, Feb. 8, 2007, http://www.pmw.org.il/Bulletins_Feb2007.htm

[7] Marcus, Itamar and Crook, Barbara, “Seducing Children to Martyrdom,” The Jerusalem Post, July 4, 2006

[8] IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Dec. 19, 2008; “Iran-backed Terrorists in Gaza Kill 3, Wound Others in Continuing Rocket Attacks on Israel,” The Israel Project press release, Dec. 29, 2008, http://www.theisraelproject.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=hsJPK0PIJpH&b=3587015&content_id={4F0CF025-98BF-4875-A59B-B1F5E4B079F7}¬oc=1;

Barzak, Ibrahim and Friedman, Matti, “Israel rejects truce call, pursues bombing Gaza,” Associated Press, Dec. 31, 2008, http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ioi_0jtO9RjMwPNRoXNCndRPRq3gD95DQIEO0

[9] Ibid.

[10] Marcus, Itamar and Crook, Barbara, “Hamas using children in combat support roles,” Palestinian Media Watch, Jan. 9, 2009, http://www.pmw.org.il/Bulletins_Jan2009.htm

[11] “Hamas exploitation of civilians as human shields: Photographic evidence,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs Web site, March 6, 2008, http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-+Obstacle+to+Peace/Hamas+war+against+Israel/Hamas+exploitation+of+civilians+as+human+shields+-+Photographic+evidence.htm

[12] Ibid

Bill Moyer Journal is a jewel but I'm sure that his program is not watched by many Americans. PBS is not afraid to broadcast very sensitive programs such as Frontline, Bill Moyer Journal

Just before Bill Moyers' editorial comment about Gaza he had as a guest, the head of the Steel Workers Union, as I recall, and that was very interesting. I had never heard of that man, which just shows how uninformed I am, but he was solidly on the side of universal health care, and equally solidly for card check voting for unionizing. It was an inspiring interview.

Watching Bill Moyers take on a subject is always inspiring, and his editorial about Gaza was no exception.

flavius and Anne, both too stupid for words, both posts based on an equivalency between Hamas and Israel which falls to pieces at the first look at a map or a history book. What a conbination, Orientalism and Glibertarianism all at once!
Both combined with a vicarious brutality which would be sickening if it wasn't so endemic.

Unless your name rally is Anne Frank, it's a hell of an assumption.

WWII was started by one clear agressor. The others acted in self-defence. Eight, yes, eight (perhaps nine) nations fell under the German heel before they reached the Channel, and a number more before the US entered the war.

Of course there are such things as war crimes. That's why there are the Geneva conventions and signatories. That's why there are agreements to ban chemical and biological weapons. Do some crimes go unpunished? Sure.

But here's an overbrief history lesson.

By the time of WWII, the British (and the world) had witnessed Guernica, carried out mostly by German aircraft.

In taking Poland, the Germans had shown no discrimination in aircraft bombing or artillery shelling during the invasion and the assault on Warsaw.

Following the "phoney war", Germany's bombing assault on Amsterdam and Rotterdam was again indiscriminate.

Following the Luftwaffe indiscriminate attack on the London populace, Churchill instructed a retaliatory raid on Berlin that Goering had boasted would "never" be bombed.

Even at this time the RAF was incapable of navigating or hitting precision targets even in daylight, which was a tactical impossibility, let alone night bombing. Thus, in the battle for national survival the strategic night bombing offensive was set in stone to the detriment of the German (and other civil populations) for the course of the war.

Israel is under no such immediate threat to its existence, nor does it lack the tools of precision. Nor is Israel at war.

Because it controls all the land and all exits, by international law Israel is in control and occupies both Gaza and the West Bank whether it has troops there or not and, as such, has to conform to international law, to which it is mostly under obligation, as an occupier.

These are big differneces you fail to see.

Punishing the populace for the sins of a few, and disproportionately so, are both crimes.

If the British had ghettoed the Nothern Irish Catholics and then systematically shot them up over the course of 5 years -- as the Israelis have the Gazans -- the Boston Irish would have been on the streets. Yet a minority of Catholics targeted British troops and innocent civilians.

You're not a bigot, I don't suppose, but you are talking like one.

The first article delineates Israel's strategic blunder. Read number one first and then number two.

1. Israel Doesn't Get 4GW
by William S. Lind

2. At Cairo Hospital, Injured Palestinians Increasingly Voice Support for Hamas
Washington Post

The bigger the military the bigger the mistakes.

The Arab world has more to fear from Iran and Iran-backed Hamasand Hezbolah than from Israel, as evidenced by their tacit acceptance of the attack on Hamas.

By the way, does it matter that Palestinian political organization was originally inspired by European fascism, and was explicitly and publicly allied with the Nazis and committed to the eradication of the Jews If Rommel had won the battle for North Africa, teams of ARAB Waffen SS were ready, trained in occupied Greece and supplied by the Nazis with gas chamber trucks, to continue the final solution in the Arab lands. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (uncle of Arafat and emotional father/hero of the Palestinian movement) instigated this.

Oh, and Israel is actually at war, a war declared by all the Arab countries in 1948. Those famous and mythical "1968 borders" are, of course, merely an armistice line, where the troops were when the shooting (temporarily) stopped.

The fascist connection is well documented. Current public and documentary statements support it. Testimony at Nuremberg even "credited" the Grand Mufti with pushing the Hitler regime towards eradication as the answer to the "Jewish Question." Whether he was an architect or just a fan of genocide, he said he would go to his grave in peace knowing that five million Jews had been killed.

Ask yourself why a democracy that holds itself to a higher moral standard than the vast majority of nations should be reviled as Israel is in most leftist discussions, and fascists explicitly committed to genocide are lionized.

Read Thomas Friedman today, and read some history, besides.

Questions for further study:

Why are there no Jews in refugee camps? (500,00 were displaced from Arab lands in 1948; what of their "right of return?")

Why do most of you believet that UN 242 requires Israel to return all of the land taken by Israel in war, when the plain language of the resolution, and documentation and interviews with the principals in the debate, clearly show otherwise?

Why will most of you be surprised to learn, when you try to prove me wrong, that 60% of ancient Palestine was given to Jordan, leaving Israel with around 20% and Palestinian territories less than that.

Extra credit (very short) essay: Discuss the history of local Arab political control of Palestine (it has never existed) and Palestinian language, literature, and cultural identity before WWI (don't waste too much time searching).

MJ, thanks for bringing this to our attention - I've long admired Mr. Moyers, and appreciate his journalism.

There's something that has been nagging me for some time on this, and I've finally managed to articulate it.

The Israeli government and arms industry has made some impressive advances in anti-missile and anti-artillery technology.
They've taken the Patriot system and improved it, deploying it as the Arrow. Obviously such a system is geared towards ballistic missiles, is of little utility against Katyushas, or the more low-tech Qassam.
They have also been cooperating with the US to developing systems that can track and destroy artillery shells. I don't recall whether they were testing them or had already reached the deployment stage - the article I recall is at least 2 years old at this time - I don't recall if it was NYT, Janes, what have you.

The thing nagging at me - if they've got these systems, even in the stage of advanced development ... why haven't they been used to protect the communities at risk from rocket fire from Gaza?
What does that mean, if they could have and chose not to? Qui bono?