Gaza Battle-- Israel Loses Politically

The Israeli blockade severely limits the import of medicine, gasoline and other essential goods into Gaza. Children and other civilians suffer. Photo (c) Reese Erlich

-by Reese Erlich

Earlier this week the Israeli military and armed groups in Gaza clashed in the worst fighting since their 2014 war. Israeli planes bombed Palestinians, killing seven, wounding 26 and destroying numerous office and apartment buildings. Palestinian groups fired rockets and mortars into Israel, killing one civilian and wounding 18. Both sides agreed to an uneasy ceasefire, but the key political issues are unresolved.

Israel dominated the fighting militarily, but Palestinians nonetheless celebrated a victory because they forced Israel to back down and agree to a ceasefire.

In a tacit admission of political defeat, Israeli politicians bickered among themselves. The Israeli defense minister resigned and right-wing politicians clamored for the head of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, complaining he had ended the conflict too soon.

Lara Kiswani, executive director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, told me that months of Palestinian protests at the Israeli border, combined with resistance to the most recent attacks, have produced empathy for Palestinians.

“It's hard to see what's happening without sympathizing with the occupied people and being outraged about the U.S. support for Israel,” she said.

Some Gaza history

Gaza consists of a small strip of land along the Israel-Egypt border, twenty-five miles long and five miles wide. Gaza is packed with two million residents.

It was created in wake of the 1948 war that established the state of Israel and drove out many of its Arab residents. Gaza was ruled by Egypt until seized by Israel in the 1967 war, during which Israel also took the West Bank and the Golan region in Syria. Israeli settlers and military personnel occupied Gaza but faced such strong political and armed resistance that Israel was forced to withdraw in 2005.

If peace talks for a two-state solution ever succeed, Gaza and the West Bank would become an independent Palestinian state, living in peace alongside Israel.

In 2006 Hamas, a conservative political Islamic party, won parliamentary elections in both the West Bank and Gaza. Israel and the United States rejected the election results and assisted Fatah, the other major Palestinian party, in taking control of the West Bank a year later. Hamas took power in Gaza.

Israel has imposed a harsh blockade controlling sea, air and land access to Gaza. It limits the amount of food, medicine and fuel that enter, and curtails the export of Gaza's agriculture and manufactured products. Palestinian fishing boats can't even venture further than a few miles off shore or face attack by the Israeli Navy.

“It's similar to the daily reality of prisoners," said Palestinian activist Kiswani. "Nothing can get in or out. They live in fear of being bombed. But people are still organizing.”

Every week since March Palestinian youth have demonstrated at the Israeli border. Israeli soldiers killed at least 214 Palestinians, mostly with live fire, and wounded over 18,000.

Nevertheless Israeli authorities portray their country as the victim. Israel's UN Ambassador Danny Danon argued that Hamas intentionally targets civilians while Israel bombs only military sites.

“There is a side that attacks and fires 400 rockets toward civilians and there is a side that protects its civilians,” he said. “Every member country in the Security Council ought to ask itself how it would respond after a barrage of missiles is fired at its people.”

Ellen Brotsky, a Bay Area activist with Jewish Voice for Peace, told me that's a phony argument. The Israeli military knows Gaza “is an open air prison with civilians all over. It's not possible to separate out civilians in any bombing, and the Israelis know this.”

Recent clashes

Before the recent fighting, the Israeli government and Hamas had reached an informal ceasefire. Feeling international and domestic pressure from nine months of border protests, Israel had allowed Gaza to import diesel fuel, food and medicine. It allowed Qatar to bring in three suitcases stuffed with $15 million in cash to pay Gaza's civil servants. Qatar supports Hamas politically and has provided economic aid in the past.

Then Israel got cocky. It sent a commando squad into Gaza to assassinate a Palestinian military leader, according to Hamas. Israel claimed the raid was designed to install surveillance equipment in the home of the Hamas leader.

Palestinian security discovered the Israelis and a firefight broke out, killing one Israeli officer and seven Palestinians. Israeli leaders portray such deadly raids as routine. But as Yousef Munayyer, executive director of US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, tweeted, “Imagine if Palestinians crossed into Israel and killed … Israelis. All hell would break loose. But Palestinians are expected just to accept this.”

Hamas and Islamic Jihad responded to the raid by firing some 460 rockets and mortars into Israeli cities close to the border. They also fired an anti-tank rocket at a bus carrying Israeli soldiers, seriously wounding one.

Israeli officials have long assured the Israeli public that their U.S. designed Iron Dome system will intercept enemy rockets mid-air. But press accounts indicate Iron Dome only stopped about 100, having been overwhelmed by the sheer number in the Palestinian assault.

Israel deploys a huge variety of other hi-tech weaponry in an effort to halt Palestinian resistance. But it hasn't worked.

When Israel stopped goods from arriving by land, Palestinians dug smuggling tunnels to nearby Egypt. When Israel cut off sea access to prevent arms smuggling, Palestinians created a cottage industry of homemade rockets and mortars. When Israel's hi-tech sensors discovered tunnels being dug into Israel from Gaza, Palestinians sent kites and balloons with incendiary devices to burn Israeli fields.

I am opposed to intentional attacks on civilians by either side. But the recent fighting in Gaza demonstrates once again that Israel can't win the war militarily. As I’ve reported before, Israeli and Palestinian leaders know the broad outlines for a peace settlement. The only question is how long will Israeli leaders reject meaningful negotiations?

“Israel cannot military solve the situation with Palestine," said Jewish Voice for Peace activist Brotsky. "There has to be a political solution which recognizes the land belongs to Palestinians as well.”

***

In 2016 Al Jazeera TV sent an undercover reporter to investigate the illegal activities of the Israel lobby in the United States. Reactionary Jewish-American groups pressured the Qatar government, funder of Al Jazeera, not to air it. But a digital version is now online. It's worth checking out:

Why Young People Are Protesting in Gaza-- Guest Post By Reese Erlich

On my most recent reporting trip to Gaza, I stayed with a family living just a short walk from the Israeli border. At dusk we watched a beautiful sunset over the Mediterranean and could forget the ongoing conflict for just a few minutes.

Living conditions for the family have gotten much worse since my visit. They have electricity four hours a day, medicine is in short supply, and they have to get all their water delivered by truck. Overall unemployment in Gaza is 27 percent, with youth unemployment at a staggering 60 percent, according to the World Bank.

That high unemployment presents the biggest problem, said one of my hosts, family member Jihad Mosalami, an English professor. “People can’t survive,” he told me in a phone interview.

Many of Mosalami’s students were among the tens of thousands who have gathered to demonstrate at the fence separating Gaza and Israel of the past several weeks. “A few went to the fence to throw stones,” he said. “Others went to the fence to pray.”

It didn't matter to Israel Defense Forces soldiers, who shot tear gas and live ammunition at the gathering Palestinians.

“It was like hell,” said Mosalami.

From March 30 to May 15, Israeli security forces killed over 100 Palestinians and wounded more than 10,000, according to the Palestinian health officials. No Israeli soldiers were killed or even seriously injured during this same period.

Palestinians organized the “Great March of Return,” to protest the Israeli military blockade of Gaza. Israeli soldiers control all food, medicine, building supplies, and other goods that enter or exit Gaza. The Israeli military frequently holds up essential goods to pressure Hamas, the ruling party of the Palestinian enclave.

Israeli authorities claimed they were protecting their border from hordes of Palestinians, some armed, intent on crashing through the fence. In reality, no one got though the double fence or the large “no man’s land” buffer zone created by Israel. The soldiers shot civilians to intimidate them-- not out of self-defense.

But these tactics backfired. Palestinians won the political battle by gaining renewed sympathy for their struggle around the world.

The young generation of Palestinians discovered they “can make a difference, not least of which is bringing global attention to their cause,” Brian Barber told me. He’s professor emeritus at the University of Tennessee and a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington D.C. The protests gave young Palestinians “their first taste of vibrant collective action... as their parents had with the first intifada.”

Why would young people risk their lives to protest the occupation? Let's take a look at some of the underlying political issues.

What’s the Right of Return?

Sixty-eight percent of people living in Gaza are registered with the U.N. as refugees, either expelled from Israel in 1948 or their descendants. I’ve interviewed Palestinians who still have the keys to their 1948 houses. Under international law, these refugees have the right to return to their towns and villages, according to James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute.

There are 5 million Palestinians worldwide. As a practical matter, many would not want to return to Israel. Their homes and villages may no longer exist. And many Palestinians “don’t want to live as a minority in Israel,” Zogby told me.

If Israel recognizes a fully independent, viable, and contiguous Palestinian state, many refugees would return there. Years ago the Palestine Liberation Organization proposed that a limited number of Palestinians should be allowed to return to their villages in Israel while the vast majority would have the right to return to a newly independent Palestinian state.

But Palestinians won’t make any compromises on such a critical issue except in the context of an overall peace settlement. (As of press time, neither the United States nor Israel have shown any interest in peace talks.)

One state or two?

For many years the left and progressives supported the concept of one state in which all Palestinians would be free to return to Israel as equal citizens. The democratic state would champion one person, one vote with no discrimination based on ethnicity or religion.

Eighty-one percent of Israeli Jews reject the idea of a one-state solution, according to a 2017 poll, because the return of millions of Palestinians would eliminate Israel as a Jewish state. The one-state plan has little support even among progressive Israelis opposed to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

By the 1980s, the Palestine Liberation Organization began to propose a two-state solution in which the Palestinians and Israelis would have their own states living in peace. Negotiations would determine borders based on Israel’s pre-1967 territory. Different parts of Jerusalem could serve as capitals for both countries. The two-state solution served as the basis for the 1993 Oslo peace accord.

Successive Israeli governments never implemented the Oslo agreement, however. They continued to build Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and unilaterally built a wall dividing Israel and the West Bank that doesn't follow the 1967 border line.

In March a Palestinian poll showed 48 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza supported two states and 50 percent opposed. But only 28 percent supported one state.

"I'm not an activist or politician," said my friend Mosalami, "but I do believe the majority of Palestinians will accept two states. It's the practical solution."

But doesn’t Hamas reject two states?

Actually, Hamas is willing to accept the two-state solution. Soon after Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian Authority parliamentary elections, its leaders faced reality. Having one state was not possible and most Palestinians favored two states.

“We accepted that our state should be on the 1967 borders, but Israel rejected that,” then top Hamas leader Khaled Meshal told me. He confirmed that position with former President Jimmy Carter. I re-confirmed that view with two different Hamas ministers during a 2011 trip to Gaza.

Hamas doesn't emphasize that position because there are no peace talks on the horizon. Hamas leaders want Israel or the United States to put forward a viable two-state option, and then it will respond.

But isn’t Hamas a terrorist organization? How could Israel trust them in negotiations?

Hamas is a political party with an armed militia that functions as Gaza’s security force. It considers itself a national liberation movement fighting occupation forces through armed struggle. Hamas has intentionally killed civilians, including bombing buses and restaurants.

Using terrorist tactics, however, does not make one a terrorist organization. Jewish militias fighting the British and Arabs in 1948 and 1949 used terrorist tactics. They murdered and tortured Arabs in the village of Deir Yassin, forcing residents to flee. They blew up the King David Hotel, killing over ninety Jews, Arabs, and British soldiers.

Some of the Jewish militia tactics parallel recent events in Gaza. Yuri Avnery, today one of the Israel’s major peace movement leaders, described how he participated in a 1948 Tel Aviv march organized by the Irgun, a militia later incorporated into the IDF.

Civilian Irgun youth marched down a street “where the offices of the British administration were located,” Avnery wrote. “There we sang the national anthem, ‘Hatikvah’, while some adult members set fire to the offices.”

I oppose the use of terrorism whatever the justification. But Hamas is fundamentally different from Al Qaeda or the Islamic State, who use terror to ethnically cleanse groups they oppose—Christians, Jews, Shia Muslims, and others. Those organizations refuse to participate in elections and use religion as the excuse to give themselves absolute power.

Hamas promotes a conservative religious agenda but it is not the Islamic State. I would not vote for Hamas if I lived in Palestine. But Hamas is a legitimate party whose views are part of the Middle East political reality.

Labeling Hamas a terrorist organization gives Israel, and the United States, an excuse to never hold peace talks. The Israeli government labelled the Palestine Liberation Organization terrorists until Israel agreed to the Oslo peace talks. Then they became peace partners.

Earlier this month Hamas offered Israel a “hudna” or ceasefire. Hamas sources told the website Al Monitor if Israel lifted the siege of Gaza, Hamas would enter into negotiations with Israel for a long-term ceasefire.

Should Israeli leaders trust Hamas? No. And Palestinian leaders shouldn’t trust the Israeli government. But there is a common need to begin serious discussions to establish a viable Palestinian state. Each side can advance partial measures and verify their implementation before moving ahead.

My Gaza friend Jihad Mosalami said, “They have to negotiate and reach a deal. People in Gaza want a decent life.”

He acknowledged that the current leadership in Washington and Tel Aviv won’t start talks anytime soon.

“We won’t have war forever,” he said with just a hint of optimism. “The war will end and there can be peace.”

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

The sickest, saddest little blonde joke in the land. Believe me.

Arab-Americans, Including Important So. Cal. Arab-American Newspaper, Endorse Sanders

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. ​Not a Sanders fan. (Manufactured image, but speaks the truth; source)

This may not seem like a big deal, but it could very well turn out to matter in California, home to a large Arab-American community, just as it may have helped turned the tide in Michigan.

Scholar Juan Cole has the story (my emphasis):

Arab-Americans, including ‘Watan’ Newspaper, Endorse Bernie Sanders

Many Arab-Americans want the Jewish candidate to be president. The prominent Arabic-language newspaper for that community in Southern California, Watan (“A Nation”), has endorsed Bernie Sanders.

This outcome is not as strange as it might appear. Arab-Americans (who include Christians and Muslims) had been split between the Democratic and Republican Parties until roughly 2003, when the Bush administration decided to invade and occupy a major Arab country. Then in 2006, the Republican Party decided to demonize Muslims by taking the religion of Islam with ‘fascism’ and ‘terrorism.’

The Muslim-Americans were stampeded into the Democratic Party, as were most Arab-Americans. It was an uneasy fit, since most Americans of both heritages are critics of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, whereas the Democratic Party has long been much more knee-jerk pro-Israel than the Realist Republicans (George H. W. Bush had a major tiff with Israel; Bill Clinton may as well have been an Israeli).

But with the rise of the Evangelicals in the GOP, who are revealed by opinion polls to be the most negative toward Muslims of all American populations, and the strategy of the party of appealing to ‘Angry White Men’ by denouncing immigrants and Muslims and Latinos, most Arab Americans and Muslim Americans felt they had no choice but to go Democratic.

About the impact of the Arab-American community on elections:

Muslim Americans number only a few million; self-identified Arab-Americans are at least 5 million (it would be several times more except that many Lebanese, the largest such group, don’t think of themselves as Arab if they are Christian, and they intermarried with US Catholics and so are often only one part Lebanese). But they have an outsized impact on US elections. They have communities of several hundred thousand each in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Florida. The margins of victory for the two parties in several of those states is often very thin. So several tens of thousands of Arab or Muslim voters could actually help determine the outcome, both in the state and nationally!

Though Cole doesn't mention it, the Arab-American community in California is also large. From the website Arab America:

The California Arab American Community

The State of California has the largest number of Arab Americans in any state, with the Los Angeles area constituting the largest cluster in the state. Each year, new immigrants from the Arab world choose California as their new home more than any other state. Large communities of Arab Americans reside in San Diego and the San Francisco Bay as well.

Diversity in the Arab-American Population

There are 22 Arab countries, including Palestine, which are members of the Arab League and share a common history, language and culture-the immigrants who migrated to America are from a select group of Arab countries.

Demographics

Arab Americans in California represent many different nationalities including Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian, Iraqi, Jordanian, Palestinian, Moroccan, as well as Arabs from Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Kuwait, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. The largest immigration of Arabs to California came from Lebanon, Egypt, and Iraq.
Population

Arab Americans are not officially recognized as a federal minority group and because of this, reporting numbers are almost never exact. Reports of the population of Arab Americans are estimated to 715,000 in California.

For the first time in a long while, a candidate for the presidency is not trying to appeal to voters as being reflexively pro-Israel. I find his comments on Israel and Palestine to be both credible and sincere. From the New York Times coverage of the Brooklyn debate:

Criticizing Israel, Bernie Sanders Highlights Split Among Jewish Democrats

It was the sort of question — Does Israel have a right to defend itself as it sees fit? — that had often caused candidates, especially those with designs on winning a primary in New York, to produce paeans to the strength of the Israeli-American relationship and a stream of pro-Israel orthodoxy.

But Senator Bernie Sanders dug in.

“There comes a time when if we pursue justice and peace, we are going to have to say that Netanyahu is not right all of the time,” Mr. Sanders said, referring to the Israeli prime minister, amid cheers from the crowd at Thursday’s Democratic debate in Brooklyn. He added: “All that I am saying is we cannot continue to be one-sided. There are two sides to the issue.”

Jewish Democrats, like the rest of the party, have been struggling for years over the appropriate level of criticism when it comes to Israel’s policies in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. But that debate burst onto a big national stage this week thanks to Mr. Sanders, the most successful Jewish presidential candidate in history.

About the Palestinians, this is also refreshingly new:

Mr. Sanders’s response on Thursday was to a question about his past statement that Israel had used disproportionate force in responding to Hamas’s rocket attacks from Gaza into Israeli towns. One of the moderators, Wolf Blitzer of CNN, asked whether Israel had a right to defend itself.

Mr. Sanders said Israel had “every right in the world to destroy terrorism.”

“But,” he said, “we had in the Gaza area — not a very large area — some 10,000 civilians who were wounded and some 1,500 who were killed.”

At this point, it's almost certain, at least to me, that Sanders will campaign to the end, if only to make sure everyone who can vote in the primary gets a chance to vote. He can certainly afford to continue, and I'm sure he understands that his legions of supporters would feel betrayed if he left the race early. I'll be very interested, therefore, in seeing what the vote in California looks like.

(Blue America has endorsed Bernie Sanders for president. If you'd like to help out, go here. If you'd like to "phone-bank for Bernie," go here. You can volunteer in other ways by going here. And thanks!)

GP
 

Never A Good Sign: "My Men Are Brave And Honourable; Their Cause Is Holy"

Kaiser Wilhelm II allowed zeppelins to bomb Liège in Belgium in August, 1914, right at the beginning of WW I and soon the zeppelins were dropping bombs on Paris as well, even damaging Notre Dame Cathedral. Willy was ok with bombing English military installations and docks but forbade targeting London in the fear that a bomb might hoot one of his royal relatives but by 1915 he was already being ignored by the military and they began a terror bombing of London. Watch the video from documentary sources above. In all, Britain suffered 1,413 civilian deaths and 3,409 injuries from the first aerial terror bombing of civilians. It was far from the last.

Although the Germany master plan-- "to break an enemy's morale by deliberately targeting civilians"-- failed, it was a clear demonstration of "how all future wars would be fought." Their brutal doctrine, "that modern warfare is total warfare, has resonated ever since."

If it looks like Ken and I have avoided talking about the Gaza War, that's because we pretty much have, although not because we talked about avoiding it. A couple weeks ago I watched a documentary about WW I zeppelins on the History Channel similar to the one above and it made me want to write about the Gaza War but, other than on Twitter, I never got to it.

I have good friends on both sides of this contest and none of them could possibly be happy without a complete acceptance of their perspective-- like that German zeppelin leader who said God was on their side.The first I ever heard of this problem was when, as a child, I learned the Jews claimed "God" told them to exterminate the Canaanites (pre-Muslim Palestinians) so they could take the land of Israel for themselves. At one time there was a bounty on Gazan (Philistine) severed penises.

Encouraged by a new foreign policy perspective in America that no longer has all sides rally behind the president, the Israeli right appears to want to exterminate the Palestinians or, at least, make them all move away somewhere. Gaza first.

Moshe Feiglin, the deputy speaker of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, has published a plan for the total destruction of the Palestinian people in Gaza.

His detailed plan, which calls for the use of concentration camps, amounts to direct and public incitement to genocide-- a punishable crime under the Genocide Convention.

In a 1 August posting on his Facebook page, Feiglin, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, calls for the “conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters.”

“This is our country-- our country exclusively,” he writes, “including Gaza.”

…Feiglin writes that the Israeli army must “designate certain open areas on the Sinai border, adjacent to the sea, in which the civilian population will be concentrated, far from the built-up areas that are used for launches and tunneling. In these areas, tent encampments will be established, until relevant emigration destinations are determined.”

“Tent encampments,” where the Palestinian civilian population would be “concentrated,” are simply concentration camps.

“The supply of electricity and water to the formerly populated areas will be disconnected,” he adds.

He then calls for the “formerly populated areas” to be “shelled with maximum fire power. The entire civilian and military infrastructure of Hamas, its means of communication and of logistics, will be destroyed entirely, down to their foundations.”

The Israeli army would then “exterminate nests of resistance, in the event that any should remain.”

Do Israeli civilians have a right to not be bombarded by Hamas rockets in their own homes? You bet they do. But extermination of the Palestinian people isn't a tenable or realistic solution. And Gazans have a right not to be forced to live in a blockaded ghetto in their own homeland. We've come a long way since the Bronze Age writing that gave the Jews all the land "from the desert in the south to the Lebanon Mountains in the north; from the great Euphrates River in the east, through the Hittite country, to the Mediterranean Sea in the west." Roughly, that would be not just the present Israel and Palestine, but also Jordan and most of Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. And there's been a lot of water under the bridge since their Bronze Age god supposedly "ordered" the Jews to destroy with the sword every living thing in it-- men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys."

That's not allowed anymore. People who want to do that are sociopaths and war criminals. Here's how today's primitive evangelical lunatics justify all this. These people don't think they're reading a fairy tale; to them it's a game-plan:

First, the Promised Land belonged to God before the Canaanites established temporary residency there. It had always been his plan to give this land to the descendants of Abraham: "In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here" (Gen 15:16a). The Lord did not take from the Canaanites that which was "theirs"-- he reclaimed that which was his according to his foreordained purposes.

Second, the Canaanites lived in wicked rebellion against the will and purposes of God. The Lord had predicted that Abraham's descendants would claim the land when "the sin of the Amorites" reached its "full measure" (Gen 15:16b). This "full measure" of sin was attained by the Canaanites in the generation leading to the Jewish conquest.

Moses warned his people about these sins they would encounter upon entering the Promised Land: "Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead" (Deut 18:10-11).  He stated that anyone who practices such sins is "detestable to the Lord," and explained that "because of these detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you" (v. 12).  Those who were conquered by Joshua and his armies were not innocent victims, but wicked sinners who received the judgment their transgressions had warranted.

Third, the blood retribution practiced by ancient tribal culture required the Jewish armies to destroy not only the soldiers of their enemies, but their families as well. So long as one member of a family remained, that person was bound by cultural law to attempt retribution against the enemies of his people. Such unrest and hostility would have persisted throughout the nation's history, with no possibility of peace in the land. What appears to be genocide was actually the way wars were typically prosecuted.

…God does not change. But his purposes are fulfilled in different ways at different times in redemptive history. Justice required retribution against the sinful Canaanite civilization. And his salvation plan required a purified nation through whom he could bring the Messiah of all mankind. When Christ came, Joshua's leadership of conflict and conquest was fulfilled.

Now we are taught to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors (Mt 5:44). Not because God has changed, for such love proves that we are "sons of your Father in heaven" (v. 45). Rather, because such love expresses his grace toward us and all mankind.

Was it fair that Israel destroyed the residents of Canaan? If God were fair, none of us could see his perfect heaven. We are all spiritual Canaanites, saved from eternal wrath only by the love of our Creator. Think back to your last sin. Admit that this one transgression warrants the judgment and condemnation of a holy God. And thank God that he is not fair.

There you go! Almost half a million Gazans have been displaced so far and far more have been killed than the German zeppelin terror bombing of London 99 years ago. Amnesty International: "Israeli forces have carried out attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians, including through the use of precision weaponry such as drone-fired missiles, and attacks using munitions such as artillery, which cannot be precisely targeted, on very densely populated residential areas, such as Shuja’iyyeh. They have also directly attacked civilian objects."

An Israeli perspective reads very differently:

[I]t has been clear since the days before this conflict began that Netanyahu has not wanted to launch a full-scale war against Hamas. He repeatedly offered “quiet for quiet” when the rocket fire first escalated, immediately accepted the Egyptian ceasefire proposal two weeks ago, agreed to a series of “humanitarian time-outs” which were then breached by Hamas over recent days, and waved away what he called the “background noise” from those, like Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, who have been loudly urging him to smash Hamas and deriding him for his hesitancy.

Nobody can imagine for a moment that Netanyahu does not consider Hamas the embodiment of Islamic extremist evil. Nobody can doubt that he takes seriously Hamas’s declared goal of destroying Israel. Netanyahu does not believe for a second that Hamas can be reformed. Netanyahu does not believe any conceivable post-conflict framework could achieve the demilitarization of Gaza if Hamas remains largely intact. He knows all too well how Hamas has strengthened its capacity to do Israel harm over the seven years since it seized control of Gaza, and that it will only strengthen further if it is able to do so after this conflict. It was he who warned that the tunnels would have been used to “catastrophic” effect against the residents of Gaza-adjacent communities had they not been tackled now. It was he on Monday night who declared it untenable for Israelis to be faced with the threat of “death from above” by rocket fire and “death from below” via the terror tunnels.

So why, from a prime minister clear-eyed about the danger Hamas poses to Israel, and urged by his right-wing base to approve more intensive military action, this manifest disinclination to send the IDF "all the way?"

One possible explanation: He believes that for all Hamas’s swaggering, it is in real trouble-- not militarily, where its key capacity has not been significantly harmed, but in terms of its credibility in Gaza and thus its likely standing when the guns fall silent. That Gazans loathe Israel is a given. But might they also increasingly loathe Hamas for bringing Israel’s military force down upon them? And might a weakened Hamas be forced to accept the return of Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority to Gaza, with the possibility of the “sustained calm” for Israel that Netanyahu set as his opening objective for this conflict?

There are other considerations, namely, 1-how many IDF deaths Israel can absorb without mass hysteria, 2- the prospect of Israel having to occupy Gaza again, and 3- how Israel's other Muslim neighbors (and Iran) will eventual react to the slaughter of their co-religionists. But that part about teaching someone a lesson and the Gazans rebelling against Hamas? How silly is that? When's the last time someone used brutal deadly force to "teach someone a lesson" that the lesson they learned was the particular one being taught? It didn't work in London in 1915. And, speaking of lessons, when do governments-- or the people who elect them-- ever learn the fallacy of "precision" bombing not hurting civilians?

Winds Of Change Blowing In Egypt-- But Not Everyone Is Thrilled With The Direction

Last week in Tahrir Square- ©2011 Reese Erlich

How long will it take for Fox News to find this article in the English-language edition of the Egyptian newspaper Al Masry Al Youm and then start yowling about who lost Egypt... and it won't be McCain or Lieberman they turn their guns on.

Muslim Brotherhood Sheikh Hazem Abu Ismail announced his intention to run in Egypt’s upcoming presidential elections.

He said that if elected he would implement Islamic sharia law and cancel the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

...Abu Ismail said that his platform revolves around Islam, while "Mohamed ElBaradei, Amr Moussa, and Hamdeen Sabahi, the liberal candidates, will be unable to present a clear vision” for the country.

“If I could apply sharia in Egypt, all people, including non-Muslims, would applaud me four years later,” said Abu Ismail.

The sheikh said that no current presidential candidate represents the Egyptian people.

“We seek to apply Islamic law, but those who don’t want it prefer cabarets, alcohol, dancers and prostitution, as the implementation of Islamic law will prohibit women to appear naked in movies and on beaches,” Abu Ismail added.

...Concerning the peace treaty with Israel, he said, “The Camp David peace treaty is insulting to the Egyptian people, so it must be canceled, and I will do my best to convince people to cancel it."

Our old friend Reese Erlich is in Cairo this week, on assignment for a number of public radio networks and blogging for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. He's been writing about the struggle to determine what kind of new government Egyptians will create post-Mubarak. Last week, on his first day in Egypt he "lit out for Tahrir Square."

Tahrir has taken on mythic status in the Arab world, but it’s really just a large traffic circle surrounded by high rise buildings. At one point several million people filled the square, symbolically stopping the government, and leading to the overthrow of the autocratic regime of Hosni Mubarak.

On this day, however, only a few thousand rallied here, chanting slogans against the military government that took over from Mubarak, and demanding release of political prisoners. Dozens had been arrested on May 15 for protesting in front of the Israeli Embassy. They were tried in military, not civilian, courts. Under popular pressure, one week later, almost all the protesters were given one-year suspended sentences and released. The military also released over a hundred demonstrators from previous protests.

And that’s the contradiction facing today’s Egypt. The old dictatorship has been replaced with a military council that carries out many of the same domestic and foreign policies as Mubarak, according to the Tahrir activists. It arbitrarily arrests dissidents, and still engages in abuse and torture. Tahrir activists want the military out of power as soon as possible.

But many other Egyptians support the military as a force for stability. They see developments in Syria and Libya, where most of the military supports the old regime, and praise the Egyptian Army for forestalling a similar disaster.

“We should give the government some time,” truck driver Ahmad Fathi tells me. “We shouldn’t have sit-ins and demonstrations every day. We need time for things to get back to normal.”

Tahrir activists admit they’ve got a lot of organizing to do if they are to have a significant impact on the wider public. “We need 5 million in the streets to make change,” Tahrir Square leader Tarek Shalaby tells me.

Everyone is scrambling to prepare for parliamentary elections now scheduled for sometime in September. Presidential elections may be held two months later, although no date has been set. Tahrir Square activists are hoping to consolidate their gains by backing leftist candidates. But so far the conservative Muslim Brotherhood and elements from Mubarak’s old party, the National Democratic Party, seem better organized.

Meanwhile, workers continue wildcat strikes demanding higher wages. Violent conflicts have broken out between extremist Muslims and Coptic Christians. And activists have called for a mass mobilization against the military government to be held in Tahrir on May 27.

The revolution is far from over.

This morning Reese sent us an update from Cairo as he prepares to set out for his next stop: Gaza via the newly-opened Rafah crossing. He writes that "for many young activists Egypt’s revolution isn’t over" and describes a large Tahrir Square rally he covered-- over 100,000 people-- Friday. It had been called by many of the same people who had called the rallies and demonstrations that had toppled the Mubarak regime this past January and February.

They demanded that a civilian dominated council take over from the current all-military government. They wanted an end to military trials for civilians and stronger protection for Coptic Christians being violently attacked by Muslim extremists. They were angry that former President Hosni Mubarak and his entourage weren’t already facing trials for corruption and ordering the murder of protesters.

Student activist Shimaa Helmy told me, “This is our day of anger because we feel our revolution is being taken over by people who didn’t participate.”

But the Moslem Brotherhood, which did participate in the Tahrir Square uprising, boycotted today’s event. Officially, Brotherhood leaders were affronted because they weren’t consulted about rally plans. But many protesters believe that the Brotherhood’s senior leadership doesn’t want to offend the military.

Some Moslem Brotherhood youth defied their leaders and came anyway. The Brotherhood faces numerous internal contradictions, with two of its former leaders announcing plans to run for president. They defied Brotherhood national leadership’s decision not to run anyone for president and to run parliamentary candidates for not more than 50% of the eligible seats.

Many of the demonstrators were middle class, but workers and urban poor also attended. Activist Helmy admits, however, that the mainly secular and leftist demonstrators had their work cut out to win over ordinary Egyptians.

“Some people are starting to hate the uprising,” she told me. “The prices are getting high, and they think it’s the revolution. We’re trying to explain ‘it’s for you, not just for us.’”

Pro-military government rallies were called in other parts of Cairo and a few hundred supporters showed up.

Protesters argued that popular support for the military is declining. They saw today’s demonstration as one more battle in what promises to be a long struggle for power.

To the degree most Americans have any interest in what's going on in Egypt, it revolves around how the events there-- a country of over 80 million people with immense influence on the entire Arab world-- impacts Israel's 7 million people. But, as Robert Naiman wrote for Common Dreams yesterday, "You can't love democracy and denigrate protest, because protest is part of democracy. It's a package deal. Likewise, you can't claim solidarity with Egyptian protesters when they take down a dictator, but act horrified that the resulting government in Egypt, more accountable to Egyptian public opinion, is more engaged in supporting Palestinian rights. It's a package deal."

It was the Tahrir uprising that brought about an Egyptian government more accountable to public opinion, and it was inevitable that an Egyptian government more accountable to public opinion would open Rafah, because public opinion in Egypt bitterly opposed Egyptian participation in the blockade on Gaza.

In addition, opening Rafah was a provision of the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation accord brokered by the Egyptian government-- an achievement facilitated by the fact that the post-Tahrir Egyptian government was more flexible in the negotiations with Hamas that led to the accord.

Mubarak had a deal with the U.S. government: I obey all your commands on the Israel-Palestine issue, and in exchange, you shut your mouth about human rights and democracy. Tahrir destroyed this bargain, because it forced the U.S. to open its mouth about human rights and democracy in Egypt, regardless of Egypt's stance on Israel-Palestine. When it became clear to Egypt's rulers that subservience to the U.S. on Israel-Palestine would no longer purchase carte blanche on human rights and democracy, there was no reason to slavishly toe the U.S. line on Israel-Palestine anymore.

The Mubarak regime also had a domestic motivation for enforcing the blockade: it saw Hamas as a sister organization of Egypt's then semi-illegal opposition Muslim Brotherhood, and it saw enforcing the blockade as a means of denying Hamas "legitimacy," figuring that more "legitimacy" for Hamas would mean more "legitimacy" for Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, thereby threatening Mubarak's iron grip on Egypt's politics.

But of course post-Tahrir developments in Egypt threw that calculation out the window: the post-Mubarak government in Egypt has reconciled with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a de facto partner in the present interim government, and is expected to do well in September's parliamentary elections. It would be absurd for the Egyptian government to try to isolate the Muslim Brotherhood by trying to isolate its sister Hamas, when the Muslim Brotherhood is de facto part of the Egyptian government and the role of the Brotherhood in running Egypt is likely to increase.

As chaos engulfs Gaza, we hear Daniel Barenboim's wish: "We hope 2009 will be a year of peace in the world, and of human justice in the Middle East"

by Ken

When Howie called awhile ago I was working on tomorrow's classical music piece, which is about Johann Strauss and his famous musical family, taking off from Thursday's Vienna New Year's Concert, the first conducted by the distinguished music director of the Berlin State Opera (and former music director of the Chicago Symphony), Daniel Barenboim.

I had already sent Howie the planned opening video clip, of Barenboim leading the Vienna Philharmonic -- and the Musikverein audience, of course -- in the invariable final encore, Johann Strauss I's Radetzky March, which he loved, and I had already mentioned the maestro's much-quoted New Year's wish: "We hope 2009 will be a year of peace, and of human justice in the Middle East." I mentioned that the conductor had been quoted earlier in the week, from Vienna, referring to the "terrible events" in Gaza and expressing the vehement belief that the situation can't be resolved militarily. He was quoted as saying, "There are still ... far too many people who are still convinced that they can resolve this conflict militarily. That can't be done. That absolutely can't be done."

I avoided writing about the nightmare in Gaza while Howie was away, because I just didn't want to deal with the automatic defensive response you get from the people who will defend the Israeli government no matter how outrageously it behaves. In this case they refuse to acknowledge, let alone grasp the significance of, the Israeli blockade that was steadily and deliberately starving Gaza.

Barenboim himself is a subject of controversy in Israel, where he grew up. He has been outspoken in his commitment to justice for all parties in the MIddle East, and with the late Edward Said founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, an Israeli and Arab youth orchestra. Last year he created a sensation when he accepted a Palestinian passport.

Howie, realizing that I tend to be incommunicado on Saturday, asked if I knew that the long-hypothesized Israeli ground offensive in Gaza had finally begun today. I didn't, but I wasn't surprised. It's been talked about all week. We can assume that the Israeli government has been given an "all clear" by the Bush regime. No doubt the strategic thinking includes a calculation of how "successful" our famous "surge" was in Iraq, though all knowledgeable observers agree that actual military force had little to do with whatever stability has been achieved there. (Just how much stability has been achieved we probably won't know until we leave.)

Meanwhile, it's a measure of how badly out of control the situation has become that Barenboim's New Year's wish for "human justice in the Middle East," which surely should arouse a minimum of controversy, is automatically assumed to be "anti-Israel."

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