I think that the end is very close to us as a state: Gideon Levy

Gideon Levy, an Israeli columnist and board member of the Israeli daily Haaretz, tells FRANCE 24 that the escalating violence is not surprising in light of Israel’s 53-year occupation of Palestinian territories and says only international action might eventually lead to a lasting solution to the conflict.

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Israel is living in chaos, we have been living in economic chaos since the beginning of Corona … and now we are in the midst of chaos, and we do not know what will happen to it.

Our storming of their mosque was a big mistake that was not taken into account. The government did not listen to the opinion of Mr. Emin Ayam, the head of the settlements, and hit his opinion across the wall. The Iron Dome is not the solution. Everyone knows that the accuracy of the Iron Dome is only from 20 to 30 percent and not as Netanyahu claims to reassure the people.

A $ 50,000 missile launches to hit a $ 300 missile, and is often mistaken. Today the Knesset announces a bill worth 912 million dollars for war expenses and losses with a fierce terrorist enemy in a small area called Gaza $ 912 million in transportation expenses, oil, missiles, military preparations, and civilian losses in the state’s infrastructure and other things .. This is really very much within a time span of only two days. Our budget will never allow that, and we will not be patient for a long time …. The solution is not in fighting .. We have understood the lesson ..These savages are not collapsed Arab armies that do not find power today … nor are they with money-holders. We may be able to ideologize them like sheep … the problem is in their belief and their complete belief that the land is theirs and not ours … America will not benefit us in the end, and the Arab leaders will not support us because of their impotence in their homelands and the people hatred for them.

Personally, I think that the end is very close to us as a state … especially that the peoples of the region have begun to wake up from their slumber and we have dreamed of making friendship between our peoples.

Personally, I fear that the tables will soon turn in Egypt and Jordan, which means that we have become without protection from the peoples of the barbarian region … Our destination must be to Europe and they must receive us as refugees. I think that this is better than being eaten alive by the Arabs. I am not trying to intimidate you, but I am trying to put points on the letters only. This is a fact that the US government in Tel Aviv does not want you to see.

How much we will be able to withstand in these circumstances … Hell is above our heads while we are in shelters, our business, our lives, and everything is completely disrupted and the government is unable to do anything, so be patient together, but I fear that the time has passed and we are in inescapable patience

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يورونيوز – جدعون ليفي – المحلل الاقتصادي والسياسي… يقول:

إسرائيل تعيش في فوضى, فقد كنا نعيش بفوضى اقتصادية منذ بدايات كورونا …والان اصبحنا في وسط فوضى لا نعلم ما ستؤول له الأمور.

اقتحامنا لمسجدهم كان غلطة كبيرة لم تكن بالحسبان, الحكومة لم تستمع لرأي السيد ايمين عاوام رئيس المستوطنات وضربت رأيه عرض الحائط, القبة الحديدية ليست الحل فالكل يعلم بأن دقة القبة الحديدية هي من 20 الى 30 بالمئة فقط وليس كما يدعي نتنياهو لتطمين الشعب.

صاروخ قيمته 50 الف دولار ينطلق لضرب صاروخ قيمته 300 دولار ويخطيء في معظم الاحيان.

اليوم يعلن الكنيست عن فاتورة قيمتها 912 مليون دولار مصاريف حرب وخسائر مع عدو ارهابي شرس في منطقة صغيرة تدعى غزة
912 مليون دولار من مصاريف نقل وبترول وصواريخ وتحضيرات عسكرية وخسائر مدنية في البنية التحتية للدولة وغيرها .. هذا كثير جدا فعلا في مسافة زمنية هي يومين فقط فميزانيتنا ابدا لن تسمح بذلك ولن نستطيع ان نصبر لفترة طويلة….الحل ليس في القتال .. فقد فهمنا الدرس .. هؤولاء المتوحشين ليسو جيوش عربية منهارة لا تجد قوة يومها … ولا هم باصحاب مال قد نستطيع ان نؤدلجهم كالخراف … المشكلة في عقيدتهم وايمانهم التام بان الارض لهم وليس لنا … امريكا لن تنفعنا في نهاية المطاف ورؤساء العرب لن يساندونا لعجزهم في اوطانهم ولكره الشعوب لهم.

شخصيا اعتقد ان النهاية قريبة جدا لنا كدولة .. بالذات ان شعوب المنطقة بدأت تفيق من سباتها وحلمنا في عمل مصادقة بين شعوبنا

اخشى شخصيا ان تقلب الطاولة قريبا في مصر والاردن مما يعني اننا اصبحنا بلا حماية من شعوب المنطقة البربرية …وجهتنا يجب ان تكون لاوروبا وعليهم ان يستقبلونا كلاجئين اعتقد ان هذا افضل من ان نؤكل احياء من قبل العرب
انا لا احاول ان اخيفكم ولكني احاول وضع النقاط على الحروف فقط فهذه الحقيقة التي لا تريدكم الحكومة الامريكية في تل ابيب ان ترونها.

كم سنستطيع ان نصمد في هذه الظروف …الجحيم من فوق رؤوسنا ونحن في الملاجئ وأعمالنا وحياتنا وكل شيء معطل تماما والحكومة عاجزة عن عمل اي شيء, لنصبر معا ولكني اخاف ان يكون الوقت قد مضى ونحنا في صبر لا مفر منه

“مترجم من جوجل”

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Israel is the sleeping enemy within the US

Agents of the Zionist state play a big role in American decision-making and Washington should realise their danger before it is too late

• Image Credit: Reuters
• Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

When writers daringly break barriers and put out reports on the dangers of Israeli manipulation of US politics for self-serving interests, their pieces are quickly dismissed as anti-Semitic hysteria. But historical events justify the alarm raised by a few western writers against a deeply embedded menace within the US political system. It is a menace that singularly promotes Israeli interests above American ones, and effectively uses US politicians for that purpose. Israel has also farmed out Zionists and their sympathisers across the US media, and who have churned out news consistently favourable to the image of Israel, regardless of the facts that often prove otherwise.
 

Israel is a country viewed by many outside the American continent as a rogue state. That reputation has not been unjustly earned. It has been carrying out a shameful holocaust against lawful inhabitants of the land for the past seven decades, while a silent world watches and coughs up pitiful justifications. Israel has perfected the art of terrorism against a people by circling, ensnaring and suffocating them to the point of explosion. And when there is a fight back from the oppressed, that’s all what most of the western press heralds. Lambasting the Palestinians for daring to react, the media brims over with concerns on Israeli security and stability. No thought or analysis is given to the course of events that have led a people threatened by ethnic cleansing or extermination to respond.
 

Gideon Levy, an Israeli writer and journalist who has followed his conscience and over the years has constantly visited the encircled Occupied Territories, says, “I immediately realised this was what I wanted to do; to understand the brutality and inhumanity of the Israeli occupation. I figured out three things. First, this was the biggest drama facing the state of Israel. Second, this story was not being covered by the Israeli media. And third, this was going to be my life mission — to report about the Israeli occupation to Israeli readers who did not want to know what was really happening there.”

In the past, he has submitted eyewitness accounts of Palestinian youth cold-bloodedly shot by Israeli soldiers or the burning of the farms of Palestinian olive growers by Israeli colonists intent on driving the farmers out and occupying their land, while the Israeli army look on without concern. He has also been deeply affected by the lack of judicial action against Israeli soldiers who have killed Palestinians in cold-blood, almost making a sport.

Scoffing criticism that he, an Israeli Jew is an anti-Semite, Levy adds, “History has witnessed worse and more brutal occupiers than the Israelis. But I’ve never heard about an occupation force that believes it is the victim. And the only victim! I sometimes feel ashamed of what is being done on our behalf. I feel really guilty towards the Palestinians. I think we are doing terrible things to them.”

Israel is a country that has also shown impunity against the sovereignty of other nations. It has cultivated and employed moles and spies in most countries, individuals who promote Israeli interests into the mainstream agenda, a tactic that has successfully enabled them to maintain their ongoing holocaust without much censure or condemnation. Following the Mossad sponsored hit squad that infiltrated Dubai back in 2010 and assassinated a Palestinian political leader, it was proven that Israel had been using fake or forged passports of various nationalities for their disreputable purposes. Australian-Israeli Mossad agent Ben Zygier, implicated in the Dubai strike, died under mysterious circumstances while under Israeli detention. There were reports that Zygier was about to blow the lid on Mossad’s use of western passports, among other sensitive operational issues. Israel went to extreme lengths to cover up the Dubai affair, and his convenient death put an end to a lot of answers.

Israel has also continually ignored or rejected UN resolutions, an action if undertaken by another country would have prompted Nato heads to quickly put together a coalition of forces and invade the country. They flatly reject any form of inspection by any quarter of their nuclear industry.

Israeli sympathisers in the American political arena were successful in creating the mesmerising but false threat of the weapons of mass destruction that Iraq supposedly had in its possession and was intending to use them against the US. This self-serving act led the US in an act of war against a country that had no ties to the September 11 attacks. It was a war that took the lives of innocent Iraqis and Americans, and led to an economic blowback against the US economy. But hey, all is ok in the interest of Israel.
 

Today, those same Israeli moles and sympathisers in American clothing are fighting against the nomination of Obama’s candidate for secretary of defence, Chuck Hagel. Why? Just why are some of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)- financed politicians in arms against Hagel, a highly respected ex-senator, a combat veteran, a two-time Purple Heart winner, and a true American. This shameful attack on his character and past history smacks of nothing except self-serving interests, with the spectre of Israel in the background. Hagel had in the past demonstrated that he was not blind to manipulations of US politics by self interest groups and had opposed the war on Iraq. Israel does not want someone in the US government that does not toe the line when it comes to their interests.

This is why they have to employ the enemy from within to consolidate their ambitions. This is not the ranting of an anti-Semite. Events I have mentioned can be verified by any independent news source. Americans must stamp out the enemy before it swallows them.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian  
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

WHAT ISRAELI CAN BE PROUD OF THIS?

No moments of reprieve in the probing documentary by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi, “5 Broken Cameras,” which chronicles the struggle in the West Bank Palestinian village of Bil’in.

By Gideon Levy

Guy Davidi, director of 5 Broken Cameras, in Bi’lin Photo by Tomer Appelbaum

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The soldiers arrive in the dead of night. They kick, they smash, they destroy. They break in, rudely awakening an entire house and its inhabitants, including children and babies. One officer pulls out a detailed document and declares: “This house is declared a ‘closed military zone.’” He reads the order – in Hebrew and in a loud voice – to the sleep-dazed, pajama-clad family.

This young man successfully completed his officers’ training course. Perhaps he even believes, deep down, that someone has to do this dirty work. And he reads out the order solely to justify why the father of the household, Emad Burnat, is forbidden to film the event on his own video camera.

There are no moments of respite or reprieve in the probing documentary by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi, “5 Broken Cameras,” which was screened, among other places, at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque last weekend after collecting a number of international prizes and having been shown on Channel 8.

This documentary should make every decent Israeli ashamed of being an Israeli. It should be shown in civics classes and heritage classes. The Israelis should know, at long last, what is being done in their name every day and every night in this ostensible time of no terror. Even in a West Bank village like Bil’in, which has made nonviolence its motto.

The soldiers – the friends of our sons and the sons of our friends – break into homes in order to abduct small children, who may be suspected of throwing stones. There is no other way to describe this. They also arrest dozens of the organizers of the popular weekly protest at Bil’in. And this happens every night.

I have often been to this village, to its protests and to its funerals. Once or twice I joined the Friday demonstrations against the separation fence that was built on its land to enable Modi’in Ilit and Kiryat Sefer to rise on its olive groves. I have breathed the tear gas and the stinking “skunk” gas. I have seen the rubber bullets that wound and sometimes kill, and the violent behavior of the soldiers and the police toward the demonstrating inhabitants.

Yet nevertheless, what I saw in this film shocked me more than all those hasty visits. The apartment buildings of Modi’in Ilit are swallowing up the village, just like the wall that was built here on their land. The inhabitants decided to embark on a struggle for their property and their existence. With a mixture of naivete, determination and courage – and, now and then, some exaggerated theatricality – the residents undertake various gimmicks, with the help of a handful of Israeli and international volunteers.

This struggle has even won a partial victory: Only in its wake did the High Court of Justice order the dismantling of the wall and its relocation to a different place. Even the High Court, which usually automatically accepts the positions of the security establishment, understood that a crime was being committed here. Together with Bil’in and, to a large extent, inspired by it, more villages began to conduct a determined popular struggle every Friday – which continues to this day – against the wall, half an hour’s drive from our homes.

This documentary proves that, for the locals, the reality of the occupation is that there is no such thing as nonviolent struggle. For the information of those who preach nonviolence (from the Palestinians ): The Israel Defense Forces soldiers and the Border Police will ensure that it becomes violent. Just one thrown stone, despite the pleas of the demonstration organizers, will suffice; just one verbal altercation will also suffice to open the most advanced weapons arsenal in the world – to pull the pin, to release the gas, the rubber bullet and the skunk gas, and sometimes the live fire, and to cut off the impossible dream of a nonviolent struggle.

Anyone who watches this film understands that it is very difficult to face the wall, the settlement project and the soldiers – all of which scream “violence” – and remain nonviolent. Nearly impossible.

Five times Burnat’s cameras were destroyed. Three times by the soldiers, once in a traffic accident opposite the separation wall, and once by the ultra-Orthodox and violent settlers – the “hilltop youth,” who break into homes even when the court prohibits this. “You are not allowed to be here,” says an ultra-Orthodox settler to a villager trying to get to his stolen land.

The truth is that Burnat’s cameras were damaged many more times; the film depicts only those incidents in which the equipment was rendered totally unusable. The cameras’ ruined parts are displayed as evidence.
But something much deeper has been broken here. A reality has been broken by broken cameras. These cameras documented a reality unfamiliar to most Israelis. They documented a slice of life, about which most Israelis prefer to be oblivious. In so doing, they have also proved that, in a place where hardly any courageous journalism remains, there are at least courageous and impressive documentaries. In a place where hardly any journalists remain, there are important documentary filmmakers like Burnat and Davidi.

After the vast majority of the local media decided not to report on the occupation any more, films like “5 Broken Cameras,” Ra’anan Alexandrowicz’s “The Law in These Parts,” and Mir Laufer and Erez Laufer’s “One Day After Peace” – all the harvest of just the past few months – are filling the role intended for the media, and excellently.
Anyone who some day wants to learn what was happening here during these cursed decades will hardly find what he is looking for in the newspaper and television archives. He will find it in the documentary movie archive, which is rescuing Israel’s honor.

“5 Broken Cameras” has already been shown in many countries, at festivals and commercial screenings. Davidi and Burnat documented the routine of the occupation. The IDF and Border Police come out looking bad. Even understatement and restraint cannot but describe them except as storm troopers.

Burnat’s voice, which accompanies the film, is one of the most restrained voices you have heard concerning the occupation, without rabble-rousing and without hatred. This is how they look in reality. Go see this film and form your own impressions.

There have been other films about Bil’in and while this one is relatively small scale, it is extremely personal. Burnat’s wife, who wants to keep him away from the camera and danger, and his young son, who has grown up in this reality, star in it along with the leaders of the struggle. There is only one person killed here: Bassem Abu-Rahma, a charming young man, loved by the children, who called him the Elephant – the needless victim of an alleged murder by a soldier in April 2009.

However, it is the non-deadly routine depicted in the movie that is so appalling. The camera breakers in it are breakers of the rule of law and of democracy. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has boasted to the world about how enlightened Israel is, apparently has not seen this film. Otherwise, he would not be able to talk about enlightenment.

Anyone who behaves this way in his dark backyard cannot boast about what happens in his enlightened show window, with all that high tech and democracy. Anyone who knows what is happening in Bil’in and the other villages understands that a state that behaves in this way cannot be considered democratic or enlightened. Someone has to make Netanyahu watch this film, just so he will understand. .

This week I drove to Bil’in with one of the two directors, Guy Davidi (Burnat was away on another trip overseas ). Davidi once lived in the village for several months, but prior to our trip hadn’t visited for over a year.

Ostensibly, nothing had changed. A Palestinian village drowsing in the afternoon. However, one thing was different: A large hill planted with olive trees has been liberated. In the place where the security fence had been, there is now only a dirt track. The barrier was removed and the hill was returned to its owners. The olive trees are dying after years of neglect, and the soil is scarred by all the earthworks carried out there. But still, some of the territory has been liberated.

The security fence has been replaced by a high concrete wall, but this has been moved several hundred meters to the west. Behind it, cranes continue to build Kiryat Sefer (aka Dvir ). In the liberated territory, they are already building a tiny playground for the village children. Only remnants of the burned tires and dozens of IDF gas-canister shells lying on the ground from the ongoing weekly demonstrations here testify that the struggle has not ended. It has not been completely successful. But if there were any justice, it would have been.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian  
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

Zionism Is Dead And Kicking

Wednesday, May 2, 2012 at 12:20PM Gilad Atzmon 

In a recent Haaretz article, leading Israeli columnist Gideon Levy affirms that Zionism is pretty irrelevant as far as Israelis are concerned. Similar to the line I myself develop in The Wandering Who, Levy contends that Israelis do not understand what Zionism stands for. For them it is an archaic notion.

The meaning of it is simple. That which seems as a vivid ‘Zionist’ / ‘anti Zionist’ debate is in practice an internal Jewish Diaspora quarrel with no significant practical meaning.

Levy writes, “In 2012, the 64th year of the (Jewish) state, no one even knows for certain what remains of it (Zionism), what the role of Zionism is and how it is defined.”

“Who is a Zionist?” asks Levy.

“The truth is that there is no answer. Not because Zionism was not a just cause – it was, even if it was tainted by unnecessary injustices, and not because it didn’t succeed. It was the greatest national success story of the 20th century. But that century is over and its greatest success story has been established. The national home arose, and now it is a regional power. Anyone who wanted to – about one-third of the Jewish people have – join it, and the door remains open to the rest.”

Zionism was clearly a Judeo-centric revolutionary idea, but as it seems, it achieved its goal in 1948. Hence, it isn’t surprising that contemporary Israelis fail to grasp the meaning of Zionism. If early Zionists promised to transform the Diaspora Jew into an civilised being, the Israelis, for some reason, see themselves as ‘civilised subjects’. They at least in their eyes, are the post revolutionary products.
Hence, Levy argues that “Zionism is no longer relevant, and its place is in the history books alone.” He suggests that “Zionism’s way has been lost to us (the Israelis). That was inevitable, because it has completed its task.”

Similar to the line of thought I develop in The Wandering Who, Levy also differentiates between Israeli patriotism and Zionism.

“Anyone who contributes to the state is a worthy citizen and a decent patriot. Anyone who contributes to its institutions is a philanthropist – this has no connection to Zionism.

Anyone who is required to serve in its army, exactly like anyone who is supposed to pay taxes to it, is fulfilling his legal obligations. This has no connection to Zionism or its values.”

However, as much as Levy is correct in his reading of the Israeli and the Israeli society, it may be possible that, being an Israeli, he misses the role of Zionism as a Jewish Diaspora collective symbolic identifier. The Jewish State has a clear and significant function within the contemporary Jewish Diaspora discourse.

The vast majority of Diaspora Jews and Jewish institutions identify or affiliate with Israel and support its cause. It is also true that some Jews, are critical of Israel and its policies. A few of these Jews identify themselves as ‘anti Zionists.’ Yet, bearing Levy observation in mind , the meaning of it all is that the debate between the Zionists and their Jewish opponents (i.e anti Zionists) has very little political significance for Israelis, Israeli politics and even Palestinians. This debate is there to help Diaspora Jews to identify themselves politically, spiritually and socially. It has very limited practical or pragmatic meaning if any at all.

But it also seems as if Levy ignores the huge impact of Zionist and Lobbies within Western politics. In the USA, it is AIPAC that dominates the country foreign policy. Here in Britain, 80% of the leading party’s MPs are CFI members (Conservative Friends of Israel). The situation in France and Canada is similar. So as much as Zionism is foreign to Israelis, it is pretty relevant for Diaspora Jews.

With AIPAC pushing in the open for an American attack on Iran, Zionism seems to be a serious threat to world peace. And yet, somehow, it is the so-called Jewish Anti Zionists who go out of their way to silence any criticism of Zionist lobbies and Jewish power within Western politics.

As much as Levy is correct in suggesting that Zionism may be dead for Israel, it is certainly alive and kicking in the West. It is probably the most influential and dangerous political school of thought. Especially because it has managed to drift away from the relatively modest notion of a ‘promised land’ into a globally belligerent expansionist ideology aiming at a ‘promised planet.’

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian  
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!
by Gilad Atzmon
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012

From the 'philosopher' who brought NATO to Libya ...

Via FLC

BHL; The humanitarian warrior poet, an admirer of Sultan Saladdin & one hell of a bigoted, pompous liar! Ah, that style!

"... We were used to seeing him in turbans, and there was something poignant in the denuding that renders this criminal strangely pitiable....
I don’t buy it. I may be an incurable romantic, or what amounts to the same thing, an unreconstructed opponent of the absolute evil that I believe the death penalty to be. There is, in the spectacle of Gaddafi’s lynching, something revolting. Worse, I fear that it will pollute the essential morality of an insurrection that had been, up to that point, almost exemplary. And anyone who knows something about revolutionary history knows that this could be the tipping point at which a democratic uprising begins to degenerate into its opposite.
I said as much by telephone to some of my friends in the National Transitional Council. I said it to Mustafa el-Sagizli, the leader of the fighters in Cyrenaica, who called me to share his joy after the liberation of Sirte. And then, later on Thursday, to the commander of the regiment that included the unruly elements that struck and killed Gaddafi. He was happy. He said (and he was right) that the disappearance of the tyrant opens a new page in the history of his country. ...

'Saladdin was a great man!'

I said that this was indeed a great day, a new dawn for Libya, but that the nobility of the conqueror is measured in how he treats the vanquished. “Do you know the difference between Caesar and Saladin?” I asked him. “Caesar, conqueror of the Gauls, lost the moral benefit of his victory by humiliating Vercingétorix, showing him off like a trophy before having him strangled. The glory of Saladin, by contrast, owes much to the magnanimity that he showed the Crusaders after he had defeated them and had them at his mercy.”...
Either this collective crime will be, like the beheading of the last king of France in Albert Camus’s account, the founding act of the coming era, which would be a terrible sign. Or it will be the swan song of a barbarous age, the end of the Libyan night, the death rattle of Gaddafi’s system..."

Posted by G, M, Z, or B at 10:33 AM
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

FLASHBACK TO THE START OF THE BLITZKRIEG ON GAZA

Link

December 29, 2009 at 7:00 am (Flashback.... from the archives, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, War Crimes)

Originally posted exactly one year ago today……

ZIONISM: THE REAL ENEMY OF THE JEWS

Amira Hass and Gideon Levy join those in the human race that condemn the actions of those destroying it. To those of my readers that still might have a problem differentiating Jews from zionists, here are but two examples of the difference. Not all Jews are supporters of the evils of zionism…. please remember that in your comments.

It is not Palestine that is the enemy of Israel, it is zionism itself.

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‘Gaza strike is not against Hamas, it’s against all Palestinians’

Amira Hass

At 3:19 P.M. Sunday, the sound of an incoming missile could be heard over the telephone. And then another, along with the children’s cries of fear. In Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, high-rise apartment buildings are crowded close together, with dozens of children in every building, hundreds in every block. Their father, B., informs me that smoke is rising from his neighbor’s house and ends the call. An hour later, he tells me that two apartments were hit. One was empty; he does not know who lives there. The other, which suffered casualties, belongs to a member of a rocket-launching cell, but no one senior or important. At noon Sunday, the Israel Air Force bombed a compound belonging to Gaza’s National Security Service. It houses Gaza City’s main prison. Three prisoners were killed. Two were apparently Fatah members; the third was convicted of collaborating with Israel. Hamas had evacuated most of the Gaza Strip’s other prisons, but thought this jail would be safe. At 12 A.M. on Sunday, a phone call roused S. “I wasn’t sleeping anyway,” he said. “I picked up the receiver and heard a recorded announcement in Arabic: ‘This is to warn you that we will bomb the house of anyone who has arms or ammunition at home.’” Three members of one neighboring family were killed, all young men in their twenties. None of them owned arms or ammunition; they were simply walking down the street when the IAF bombed a passing car. Another neighbor lost a 16-year-old daughter, and her sister was seriously wounded. The IAF had bombed a building that formerly housed the Palestinian Authority’s Preventive Security Service, and their school was located next door. S. saw the results of some of Saturday’s bombings when he visited a friend whose office is located near Gaza City’s police headquarters. One person killed in that attack was Hassan Abu Shnab, the eldest son of former senior Hamas official Ismail Abu Shnab. The elder Abu Shnab, whom Israel assassinated five years ago, was one of the first Hamas politicians to speak in favor of a two-state solution. Hassan worked as a clerk at the local university and played in the police band for fun. He was performing at a police graduation ceremony on Saturday when the bomb struck. “Seventy policemen were killed there, not all Hamas members,” said S., who opposes Hamas. “And even those who supported Hamas were young men looking for a job, a salary. They wanted to live. And therefore, they died. Seventy in one blow. This assault is not against Hamas. It’s against all of us, the entire nation. And no Palestinian will consent to having his people and his homeland destroyed in this way.”

Source

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The neighborhood bully strikes again

_{By Gideon Levy}

Israel embarked yesterday on yet another unnecessary, ill-fated war. On July 16, 2006, four days after the start of the Second Lebanon War, I wrote: “Every neighborhood has one, a loud-mouthed bully who shouldn’t be provoked into anger… Not that the bully’s not right – someone did harm him. But the reaction, what a reaction!” Two and a half years later, these words repeat themselves, to our horror, with chilling precision. Within the span of a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, the IDF sowed death and destruction on a scale that the Qassam rockets never approached in all their years, and Operation “Cast Lead” is only in its infancy.

Once again, Israel’s violent responses, even if there is justification for them, exceed all proportion and cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law and wisdom.

What began yesterday in Gaza is a war crime and the foolishness of a country. History’s bitter irony: A government that went to a futile war two months after its establishment – today nearly everyone acknowledges as much – embarks on another doomed war two months before the end of its term.

In the interim, the loftiness of peace was on the tip of the tongue of Ehud Olmert, a man who uttered some of the most courageous words ever said by a prime minister. The loftiness of peace on the tip of his tongue, and two fruitless wars in his sheath. Joining him is his defense minister, Ehud Barak, the leader of the so-called left-wing party, who plays the role of senior accomplice to the crime.

Israel did not exhaust the diplomatic processes before embarking yesterday on another dreadful campaign of killing and ruin. The Qassams that rained down on the communities near Gaza turned intolerable, even though they did not sow death. But the response to them needs to be fundamentally different: diplomatic efforts to restore the cease-fire – the same one that was initially breached, one should remember, by Israel when it unnecessarily bombed a tunnel – and then, if those efforts fail, a measured, gradual military response.

But no. It’s all or nothing. The IDF launched a war yesterday whose end, as usual, is hoping someone watches over us.

Blood will now flow like water. Besieged and impoverished Gaza, the city of refugees, will pay the main price. But blood will also be unnecessarily spilled on our side. In its foolishness, Hamas brought this on itself and on its people, but this does not excuse Israel’s overreaction.

The history of the Middle East is repeating itself with despairing precision. Just the frequency is increasing. If we enjoyed nine years of quiet between the Yom Kippur War and the First Lebanon War, now we launch wars every two years. As such, Israel proves that there is no connection between its public relations talking points that speak of peace, and its belligerent conduct.

Israel also proves that it has not internalized the lessons of the previous war. Once again, this war was preceded by a frighteningly uniform public dialogue in which only one voice was heard – that which called for striking, destroying, starving and killing, that which incited and prodded for the commission of war crimes.

Once again the commentators sat in television studios yesterday and hailed the combat jets that bombed police stations, where officers responsible for maintaining order on the streets work. Once again, they urged against letting up and in favor of continuing the assault. Once again, the journalists described the pictures of the damaged house in Netivot as “a difficult scene.” Once again, we had the nerve to complain about how the world was transmitting images from Gaza. And once again we need to wait a few more days until an alternative voice finally rises from the darkness, the voice of wisdom and morality.

In another week or two, those same pundits who called for blows and more blows will compete among themselves in leveling criticism at this war. And once again this will be gravely late.

The pictures that flooded television screens around the world yesterday showed a parade of corpses and wounded being loaded into and unloaded from the trunks of private cars that transported them to the only hospital in Gaza worthy of being called a hospital. Perhaps we once again need to remember that we are dealing with a wretched, battered strip of land, most of whose population consists of the children of refugees who have endured inhumane tribulations.

For two and a half years, they have been caged and ostracized by the whole world. The line of thinking that states that through war we will gain new allies in the Strip; that abusing the population and killing its sons will sear this into their consciousness; and that a military operation would suffice in toppling an entrenched regime and thus replace it with another one friendlier to us is no more than lunacy.

Hezbollah was not weakened as a result of the Second Lebanon War; to the contrary. Hamas will not be weakened due to the Gaza war; to the contrary. In a short time, after the parade of corpses and wounded ends, we will arrive at a fresh cease-fire, as occurred after Lebanon, exactly like the one that could have been forged without this superfluous war.

In the meantime, let us now let the IDF win, as they say. A hero against the weak, it bombed dozens of targets from the air yesterday, and the pictures of blood and fire are designed to show Israelis, Arabs and the entire world that the neighborhood bully’s strength has yet to wane. When the bully is on a rampage, nobody can stop him.

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River to Sea
 Uprooted Palestinian