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• Monday, January 5, 2009 03:39 PM

  Not in Our Name

  The fact that the author readily and casually admits that both political aspirations and low national self-esteem motivated the ongoing butchery in Gaza makes the action all the more repellent.

  If Israelis collectively need to need to recapture the "exhilarating" feeling of their glory days, let them do so on their own dime. There is nothing "smart" or "daring" about slaughtering a bunch of unarmed women and children from the sky, though there is plenty about such acts that is "vengeful."

  Our present support for Israel's military is no less heinous than our previous support for Noriega, Pinochet or Saddam; indeed, our present one-sided support for Israel is even worse than the afore-mentioned misadventures, since those guys at least seemed to serve a short-term purpose. Our relationship with Israel, on the other hand, serves neither any political or economic interest but, to the contrary, has only brought Israel's blood feud onto our shores.

  Just as we learned (albeit, belatedly) the error of propping up Saddam and Latin American dictators, and finally cut them loose, so do we need to disassociate ourselves from the twisted psychology and bad juju presently festering in Israel and Gaza. While we can't expel Israeli leadership as we did our own cowboy diplomats, we can stop sponsoring their misadventures. If Israel then chooses to continue their own little apartheid/concentration camps program in their own neighborhood, let them do so in their own name, not ours.

  —chanayut Read chanayut's other letters
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