LRB has a powerful collection of contributors condemning the slaughter. Excerpts:
Yitzhak Laor:
Israel is engaged in a long war of annihilation against Palestinian
society. The objective is to destroy the Palestinian nation and drive
it back into pre-modern groupings based on the tribe, the clan and the
enclave. This is the last phase of the Zionist colonial mission...
Michael Wood:
If self-defence includes the bombing of ambulances and feeling no
qualms about a death toll that is a third children, then we have
entered a moral territory from which there may be no return.
David Bromwich:
American politicians exhibit an identification with Israel that is now
in excess of the measurable effects of the Israel lobby.... Yet grant the potency of the
lobby and the identification – even so, the arrogance with which Israel
dictates policy is hard to comprehend on the usual index of motives.
Ehud Olmert boasted to a crowd in Ashkelon on 12 January that with one
phone call to Bush, he forced Condoleezza Rice to abstain from voting
for the UN ceasefire resolution she herself had prepared. The depth,
the efficacy, and the immediacy of the influence are treated by Olmert
as an open secret.
Tariq Ali:
The war on Gaza has killed the two-state solution by making it clear to
Palestinians that the only acceptable Palestine would have fewer rights
than the Bantustans created by apartheid South Africa. The only
acceptable alternative is a single state for Jews and Palestinians with
equal rights for all.
The element of Israeli policy that hinders a two-state solution is the extent of the settlements.
The war between Israel and Gaza-Hamas hinders a peaceful one.
The phrase "democratically elected Hamas" is bandied about. But Fatah was also democratically elected, and Hamas undertook a coup in Gaza that violated the Palestinian constitution.
Phil,
You yourself argued that something shocking had to occur to change the current setting of political stagnation and incremental settlement expansion.
Freidman thinks that this might be it, for BOTH the jar to Hamas power, and the blowback to Israeli presumptuousness.
It sincerely does take two to dance, even if its an agreement to leave each other alone.
Witty, the blockade that Israel imposed as a result of the DEMOCRATIC election of Hamas PRECEDED Hamas' violent move against Fatah. Nice try, though.
Still no mention in our newspaper of record that Al Qaeda has issued what it calls "A Call for Jihad to Stop the Aggression on Gaza".
It sounds like it might be have some bearing on the well-being of the American people.
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Sharon's senior advisor, Dov Weissglas, famously said that "the disengagement [from Gaza] is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians…This whole package that is called the Palestinian state has been removed from our agenda indefinitely."
SOURCE – link to alternet.org
THAT LINK SHOULD HAVE READ -
link to alternet.org
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_its_gaza_aggression_/?page=entire
I just read D Miliband's screed in the grauniad, much touted as showing he has the temerity to criticise bush's "war on terra" slogan, but all it is is two-faced piffle, actually, as I predicted, them all being whores:
link to guardian.co.uk