You and Landau are committed to narcissism. You don’t mind radical condemnation of Hamas, but when someone follows the evidence and concludes that Israel also targets civilians, you and Landau close your eyes and ears and start attacking the messenger. I suppose Judge Goldstone is also committed to radical condemnation–he wrote the report.

The fact is that over and over again, so-called Israeli liberals claim to favor peace, but they insist that the other side is worse. (I exclude genuinely honest groups like B’Tselem). The same dynamic is no doubt at work on the Palestinian side, among those who try to justify their violence. So long as you have hypocrites on both sides claiming to support peace, but also claiming that their own atrocities are justified (even Hamas now claims they don’t intend to kill civilians), one is always going to have the phenomenon of self-proclaimed peace advocates supporting acts of violence. Look at you, supporting the Gaza War. And I bet you agree with what I said about Hamas–that’s the funny part. You are a fascinating part of this blog, because in reading your rationalizations it’s possible to see how self-proclaimed peace lovers have kept the cycle of violence going.

It’d be easier for you, much easier, if I romanticized Hamas and defended their right to use violence against civilians, but I don’t. So all you can do is frame a consistent standard regarding violence on both sides as “commitment to radical condemnation”. I guess that’s the best you could come up with on short notice.

America crossed a lot of lines in its battle against Communism, and profiteering elements also used the Cold War to facilitate abuses, but Communism had murdered so many tens of millions (hundreds if you add in Mao) that a lot of those transgressions are understandable, given the context.

But after the Cold War victory, the excuses were gone. 9/11, perpetrated by a relative handful of Islamic terrorists, might have justified Afghanistan, but the Zionist and war-profiteering/oil imperialism complex ploy to parlay it into the Iraq war and a wider war against Islam clearly turned America into a nation of imperial aggression.

IMO, none of this would have happened but for Washington entanglement with Zionism and the Jewish lobby. There is no way the war profiteering complex could have pulled Iraq off on its own, because it didn’t have the intellectual foundation and game plan provided by Neoconservatism, and it didn’t have the MSM in its pocket. The Jewish Zionist element provided it both of these.

What we’re dealing with is a case of extremely bad influence (both parties upon each other), and the best way to short-circuit the aggression is to sever the relationship with Zionism.

wrt Iran, for example, the US quarrel with Iran has far deeper roots than the Israeli, which dates only from the end of the Iran/Iraq war. Israel wasn’t responsible for Kermit Roosevelt. But now it’s the Israeli warmongering trying to drag along the slightly-reluctant partner.

You really are only committed to radical condemnation, aren’t you?

Meaningless, if they won’t investigate themselves and if the United States prevents any action in the ICC. And Hamas is subject to prosecution by the ICC as well, if they don’t investigate themselves.

This whole business about accountability was discussed back in the 90′s when American liberals and conservatives argued about the ICC. The conservatives were afraid that the ICC would try Americans and presupposed this would be a travesty, because Americans by definition never commit war crimes. The “liberals” claimed there was no chance of this, tacitly agreeing that such a thing would be a travesty, because we are a democracy and have our own structures of accountability and so the ICC would have no jurisdiction. Both sides were half-right, half-wrong and completely full of BS. No US official is going to be tried in the ICC, not because we have our own structures of accountability or because no official is a possible war criminal, but because we are a hyperpower and nobody can make us submit to this. That’s how accountability works in the real world, outside the pious slogans of liberals. And Israel is our close ally, so the same applies to them.

Agreed, but who conceived the entire “war on terror” in emulation of Israel’s own? Whose relentless lobbying on behalf of Israeli impunity led to the 9/11 attacks that enabled the war on terror? America is suffering from successive generations of gullible, complacent and corrupt leadership, and their cowardly failures to root out the Zionist fifth column, which dating back to its Trotskyite days, never has subscribed to basic American tenets and has been playing its own angle all along.

It’s such an elaborate and sophisticated operation, it’s not too hard to see how both the Left and the Right were seduced by Zionism, but on the other hand there have been Americans (mostly on the “isolationist” Right) who have been warning about this entire state of affairs for decades. But just as the ploy used against the Palestinians, they were smeared as somehow in continuity with Nazism, even though what they really were was old-fashioned patriots — the kind who fought and died defeating Nazism.

Look what they got for their trouble.

The US criticism was on the basis of methodology, resulting in what was described as a distorted conclusion. The left should have similarly criticized the methodology, and the precedents of that.

Witty, it hasn’t been that long and you’re already summarizing what ‘the Left’ thinks of this report.

We’ve heard what Israel and it’s supporters think though.

Furthermore, how can you come to conclusions about the methodology? Let’s be clear, you have done so, because you go on to say:

The left should have similarly criticized the methodology, and the precedents of that.

Yet, you go on to state that you haven’t even read the report:

I didn’t read the report, so can’t comment on it directly.

What is the specific issue with the report’s methodology?

Furthermore, you have also stated that Hamas was hiding amongst civilians. Where is your proof? Are you alluding to the ‘human shield’ argument?

Again, there is justice whose goal is to return to a past status, and there is justice whose goal is to seek a just future status.

Both goal orientations, change from the present to some different future.