Agreed! Israelis are despicable racists and their settle state should be disbanded. The one state solution is the only solution. MJ won't you please advocate for complete economic and academic boycott?

Simply appalling!

First, it is true that ALL wars mean that innocent civilians will significantly suffer grievous harm, both directly and indirectly. Even in the most justly implemented instrinsically just-and-essential war, these developments are "regrettable". Admitting that means nothing.

But in Gaza, even the Israeli figures (which maximize the supposed number of Hamas combatants killed and minimizes civilian harm), the OVERWHELMING majority of those killed were -- and WERE PREDICTABLY -- noncombatants, including approximately one-third children. This in itself should be defined as a war crime, if it isn't already.

I don't see how one can suggest that the 'jury is still out' on whether Israel committed war crimes. Nothing is certain. One could say that the war crimes issue jury is still out on the Vietnam War, although to do so honestly and with any intelligence takes great will power. For me, the jury is out only on the precise extent and nature of the war crimes in Gaza, including the launching of a full-scale, long-planned war itself, after a four month cease-fire in which Israel never lifted the economic blockade was, albeit imperfect, still a nearly 95% improvement. And Israel failed to produce even a MAJOR improvement in ITS policies during that time.

As a Jew, I regard this episode as yet another 'shande fur de goyim', (loosely translated: an embarrassment to the Jewish people before the rest of the world. I don't claim to have the answer to the situation, and recognize that it isn't a simple situation. Personally, however, for example, I think that the time for a FREEZE on the settlements, rather than a vigorous process of removing them and radically cutting the proportion of resources in the West Bank that they absorb is long past due. I think that a "balanced" approach demands no less.

Netanyahu is promising regime change in Gaza and expansion of the settlements.

The future for peace in the Middle East is getting dimmer every day.

Notice how quickly the volatile phrase, "blood libel" is emitted from Ben Meir's propaganda stew.

The phrase has been drained of all meaning by right-wing Zionists using it as an all-purpose reply to anything said about them that they reject.

Whether some Israeli is indifferent to the killing of Gazan children, or instead cries and wrings his hands over the awful human toll of a war he nevertheless supports 100%, is not really the main issue here. Both characters are accepting in their own way the official story that the deaths of those children are unintended collateral damage in a war targeting only adult bad guys.

But there is now abundant eyewitness evidence of Israeli soldiers intentionally shooting unarmed kids in cold blood. There is now an extremely strong circumstantial case that either the Israeli government, or at least significant extremist elements within the IDF and religious parties, sent Israeli soldiers on a mission into Gaza with the aim of roughing up the Gazan population as a whole, in order to send a strong message of collective punishment.

Most Israelis these days are cowards. They now kill children because they lack the guts to get their own colonist countrymen to leave the illegally occupied West Bank.

Allow me to shill for myself for a moment. Take a look at the story of Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish, the doctor whose children were killed while he was interviewed by Israeli TV. http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/nycdefender/2009/02/a-story-of-loss-and-decency-in.php

After suffering an unbearable loss, Dr. Al-Aish told Haaretz: "I have two options - the path of darkness or the path of light. The path of darkness is like choosing all the complications with diseases and depression, but the path of light is to focus on the future and my children. This strengthened my conviction to continue on the same path and not to give up."

The mudslingers around here tossing around overheated, dime-store demonization could learn a lesson from him.

"No civilian who was harmed -- even if because of a mistake -- is weighing on the Israeli conscience. This is the truth that lets us walk with our heads high." -- Ben Meir

We don't accept any guilt, therefore we are not guilty. And why is everybody else looking at us funny?

Netanyahu has also indicated that he will be giving Avigdor Lieberman a prominent position in his government.

The terrible mass killing of 400 children is without precedent in modern warfare, or even in ancient conflict. I know of no army that has knowingly shot and killed hundreds of children in order to terrorize its enemy. It is an atrocity that must not be allowed to go unchallenged and the perpetrators must be brought before an international criminal court to be tried for war crimes and/or crimes against humanity. This is not a plea for revenge - which is pointless. It is because justice is essential to the whole ethos of democracy in our society. If this atrocity is accepted, then there is no future, not only for the Israeli state, but also for our own - for next time it will be 4000 children. And they will be ours.

Over at Sullivan's blog, he links to an article by Norman Geras which is a good indicator of how supporters of Israel manage to find all the outrage at Operation Cast Lead to be an outcome of anti-semitism and not a logically supportable reaction to Israel's behavior.

http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2009/02/oneeyed-in-gaza.html

Basically he says maybe Israel's actions in Gaza were objectionable, but Hamas has clearly committed war crimes in Gaza and thus to be outraged only at Israel, even if you pretend it's due to disproportionate body counts, is actually hypocritical and can only be based in applying a double-standard that rises out of anti-semitism.

What really strikes me about his argument is the incredible gaping hole in the middle of it. He actually has a section titled "Palestinian Suffering" and yet manages to completely ignore the idea of suffering before Operation Cast Lead, much less issues of blockade, occupation, settlement etc. Things I think are very much on the mind of those who criticize Israel.

The logic is essentially Hamas is worse than Israel so criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic, and I'm obviously in denial if I think I'm not an anti-Semite when I criticize Israel. But when I read the article, what strikes me most about it is how much it is itself based on denial.

MJ:
It would be interesting to hear your analysis of Khaled Abu Toameh's statement and Q&A posted at www.michaeltotten.com

Marvin Hier may be a Rabbi and he may run the Museum of Tolerance - but what he is above all else is a bigot. We need a word with the moral force of anti-Semitism to describe those like Marvin Hier who abandon all moral scruples in "supporting" Israel merely BECAUSE Israel is a Jewish state.

A few weeks ago Marvin Hier almost gloated when he viciously attacked those who condemned the Israeli carnage in the Gaza Strip. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (I know it is the home of all the crazy coots in the land), he wrote:

The world-wide protests against Israel's ground incursion into Gaza are so full of hatred that they leave me with the terrible feeling that these protests have little to do with the so-called disproportionality of the Israeli response to Hamas rockets, or the resulting civilian casualties

These are the words of a man who doesn't understand tolerance and the words of a man who doesn't understand humanity - yet he styles himself a Rabbi.. And just as we rightly condemn American bishops for their long-lived defence of child abuse by their priests so we should condemn American Rabbis for what seems to be almost universal support of Israeli carnage.

M.J., your sorrow resonates with me.

I have a strong affection for the state of Israel for many reasons.

I have listened to the original BBC news broadcast from Belsen-Bergen. (Don't do this while driving!)

I come from a country where the pre-war policy on Jewish immigration was summarized as "none is too many."

I'm painfully aware that as a (non-Jewish) citizen of a western country, there is an automatic historical limit to the moral authority with which I can speak on any subject involving the defence of Israel.

I have a great sense of sorrow when I hear the news from Gaza. Partly it's because my own moral compass is based in large part on "the law and the prophets." Partly it's because Israel was founded in response to a horror and seemed to carry with it an implication that it would not become a horror itself.

So there's no reaction to the stories out of Gaza that feels "right." And it's harder and harder to avoid the conclusion that I do not want to come to.