Al-Ahram weekly in Cairo has an unsettling piece from a writer in Nablus on the recent Israeli raids, which it characterizes as “Gestapo-like behaviour.” Note that these raids were not covered in the U.S. but are the talk of the Arab world. The piece makes the same observation; the outrages–closing down a strip mall, looting computers, shutting beauty parlors and the like–have met with silence outside of the Arab world, with the exception of a brave piece by Gideon Levy in Haaretz and an ad in Haaretz by Gush Shalom called, “Orphans and widows” said to read:
“As part of the actions against Hamas, the Olmert government is destroying orphanages, schools and charities in the West Bank. There are no other institutions to take their place. Orphans, widows and poor people will be thrown into the street. Will this isolate Hamas? On the contrary.”
Noble Jews! I believe the depravity of Israeli actions in the West Bank is exposed by U.S. actions in Iraq. Think of it this way: the surge has worked so far (as even Mike Massing agrees in the NYRB); earnest generals are doing their utmost to restore civil society; the U.S. is bent on making democracy work in Baghdad. What can the Israelis say for their occupation of 41 years? Both Obama and McCain have lately invoked a radical concept: What do the Iraqi people want? Some day my country will have the courage to ask: What do Palestinians want? Ah, the great neocon nightmare!
Related posts:
- Legendary ‘NY Review’ Hasn’t Gotten Around to Walt & Mearsheimer, Now Out for a Year
- Kenneth Pollack Misrepresents His Support for Peace Process Prior to Iraq War
- Press Wouldn’t Have Fanned Iraq War Flames If Their Kids Had to Serve
- Some Israeli Kids Refuse to Serve the Occupation. Why Don’t We Know About Them?
- Israeli campaign against Palestinian protest makes the ‘Times’ as Bil’in leader is arrested again
{ 5 comments }
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1004143.html
"the surge has worked so far"
Worked how? Violence (civilian casualties) are still worse than in 2005, and nobody was crowing victory then.
More importantly, why should any intelligent, humane person WANT the USA to 'win' in Iraq? By any rational reading of events (we lied about Saddam's weapons and invaded, for reasons still unclear, though hotly debated – Weiss has argued that Jewish society in the United States bears a particular responsibility), we're the bad guys there. A US victory would just encourage the bad guys.
"the U.S. is bent on making democracy work in Baghdad. What can the Israelis say for their occupation of 41 years?"
Israel's position seems to me more defensible than the USA's – at least they live next door to the people they're brutalizing, which puts them squarely in the company of Russia and China. The US stands alone in the world's absolute worst humanitarian disaster, which it deliberately stepped into by invading a country thousands of miles away. In contrast, there was never a singular Israeli decision to make war against the Arabs without provocation – Israel has become part of a cycle of violence and retaliation. Further, death tolls from Israel's brutality are several orders of magnitude less than Iraq's accepted body count – so far.
"The U.S. is bent on making democracy work in Baghdad"
Nothing says democracy like the occupying army ignoring the people and government's demands that it should leave.
The dog and the tail, have committed equal barbarity consistently, as bad as as the worst the world has ever seen.Their has been parallels in logistical approaches, eg. walling in nieghbourhoods.Breaking Geneva conventions.Abu Gharibs (according to the UN) still going on on Ships in the Indian ocean.If anyone feels otherwise they have no right to say anything bad about WWII.And the dog and the tail are the same animal, many are so proud to be jewish.
I can't wait till Richard Witty logs on to tell us that he once knew an orphan who twisted an ankle, and that the Palestinians should therefor stop their anti-Semitic insistence that Israelis don't set up a racist state.
God, I tried to mock Witty's callous indifference to human suffering, but this is nowhere near as disgusting as the actual garbage he writes here.
The Lobby has it's fangs in the Australian media too, but not nearly as deeply as in the US. So while I can find no coverage in the Sydney Morning Herald of the Nablus raids, they did at least publish Antony Loewenstein's Lobby-critical letter yesterday, and at the head of the queue too.
http://www.smh.com.au/letters/index.html
Comments on this entry are closed.