ETTL need hardly remind the intelligent reader that Israel is a horrible, paranoid little country that has no real right to exist besides that necessitated by European guilt over mass murder not committed by any Arab state. The recent events in Gaza may have been the latest war crime of the Israeli state but there is clearly precedent for them; Deir Yassin in 1948, Sabra and Shatila in 1982 - the history of Israel is a history of war and conquest of appropriately biblical proportions.
And so it is proportions to which I would like to turn. Much of the media, particularly in the US, would have us believe that Israel's actions against the people of Gaza are "proportionate" given the rockets Hamas periodically fires at Israeli border towns. If this is taken literally then, given the relative death tolls, Israel believes a Jewish life is worth 100 Arab ones (five IDF soldiers and 500 Palestinians are dead as this is being typed).
If memory serves me, another aggressive regime once determined Jewish lives as not being 1 for 1 in relation to non-Jews. But it is one thing to engage in conflict with similarly powerful nation-states, and quite another to use the world's fourth largest army and a ready supply of US arms to kill kids throwing stones and bomb hospitals. At its heart Israel is a nation of cowards, and this cowardice, in creating future killers through its killing, will ultimately be its undoing.
Monday, 5 January 2009
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2 comments:
1. Not all Israelis are Jewish, as you know.
2. A 'proportionate' response would, presumably, be firing 1,800 rockets seemingly at random into civilian areas. Proportionality, as a concept in international law, is not about a 1:1 ratio of deaths. Infact, it is an explicit permission for states to respond in the knowledge that civilian deaths will occur, providing they are in line with a concrete military advantage.
3. Hamas are neither 'kids', nor - as mentioned above - do they throw stones.
Israel and Hamas should agree to a cease fire now, no more civilians must lose their lives. However, the real cowards here are the fascist racist thugs in Hamas, hiding behind innocent (and now dead) Gazans. If you want to throw around worn out Nazi anaologies, surely the delightful Hamas and their chums in Islamic Jihad are a much better fit? I will not lose any sleep over their demise.
I agree with you that Israel should know better, and that this will radicalise a new generation of Palestinians.
Israel's response is, I feel, bourne out of frustration, not agression. Olmert et al are rational actors; they know how much damage images of blood-soaked children does to Israel, but think that the advantages outweigh this.
"Israel [...] has no real right to exist".
By what right does the UK exist?
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