Excellent news. This is precisely the correct action.

and a bone stupid one at that, and his exposure of his blatant terrorist sympathies in this column comes as no surprise. It shocks the conscience nonetheless, and perhaps some of the legal scholars around here can investigate whether he is in a legal sense "advocating terrorism" and if doing so is a crime under the various anti-terrorism provisions in what passes for "law" in this country.

I for one wouldn't mind seeing him frogmarched...

Meanwhile, another liar has been polluting the discourse here, one Gadi Ben Goebbles, who keeps repeating over and over and over (exactly as Goebbles instructed) the Big Lie that Israel does not target civilians!!! -- a Lie which of course Friedman uses to weasel his way through the minefield of what he is actually proposing.

Of course Israel targets civilians with plenty of deliberation and malice aforethought. This is not even a questionable proposition, and yet because they and their hirelings constantly repeat the refrain that they do not do what they obviously and self-evidently do do and have done relentlessly since the origin of the Jewish State, all sorts of people say, "Well, maybe they're not deliberately targeting civilians."

Yes they are.

Witness the liquidation of the Samouni Clan the other day: 110 civilian members of the clan rounded up by the Israeli forces and kept trapped at a house in Zeitoun, said house then shelled and bombed killing or wounding most of the clan, the wounded left to fester among the dead while Israelis forbade and prevented any sort of relief or aid for four days. This happened. Widely reported. Not disputed by Israel (but who would care if they did? They lie all the time anyway.) They will find some excuse, they always do. And people who are so in denial they can't believe the truth, that Israel very much does and has always targeted civilans will be relieved.

I'm sick of the lies of people like Gadi, and I'm sick of those who continue to cut Israel slack on this issue and who accept the lies so as not to have to face the truth.

If you'd like, Gadi and others, we can spend the rest of the day, the rest of the week, listing the documented cases of Israel's targeting of civilians, beginning back before there was a UN partition and continuing to today, or you all can just stuff a sock in it.

< spit >

@Elephantman

Maybe you can explain to me what you think the Israeli war aims are. Do you think they really believe, as Glenn alluded to earlier, that there are x number of Hamas militants out there, and that they can kill all or most of them?

I think the goals are: (1) Stop the rocket fire into Israel. (2) Stop the flow of weapons to an internationally-recognized terrorist organization. (3) Kill, capture and/or disrupt in every way possible, the leadership of that internationally-recognized terrorist organization.

If so, do you think the people they don't kill - many of whom have now lost a family member and all of whom have suffered in this war - will be likely to blame Hamas or the people who are actually shelling, bombing, invading and blockading? And does this make the future likelihood of peace greater or less?

I'm just talking outcomes here, not justification or ideology. What's the goal?

-- Paul Daniel Ash

If they were smart, if they were practical and informed, the people of Gaza would recognize that they would be much better off if they expelled Hamas from within. But that would not be easy, of course, becuase as brutal as Hamas is in exporting its particular brand of terrorism to southern Israel in the form of rocket attacks, Hamas is even more brutal in its control over internal affairs in Gaza, with gangland-style control of an economic kleptocracy, summary executions of "collaborators," etc.

Of those who vote for Hamas, the explanation is likely one of "pathology," exactly as Glenn Greenwald so wrongly accused the supporters of democratic Israel's right of self-defense. If there is a "pathology" to be treated, it is the Arab world's fever-swamp of humiliation and self-victimization with all sources of evil somehow rooted in disputes with Israel.

Greenwald:

But this Sunday's New York Times article -- reporting on unconfirmed claims that Israel was using white phosphorus on the civilian population (a claim the IDF expressly refused to deny)

BBC, 1/6/09

Israeli military spokesmen deny that their forces have used phosphorus in Gaza, despite photographs and film of munitions showing similar characteristics to the potentially lethal shells.

The Israelis have not said what kind of munitions they have been using, other than saying that their use is permitted under international law.

Phosphorous shells are not illegal if they are used to create a smokescreen or to illuminate targets, rather than as a weapon against people, military experts and human rights campaigners said yesterday.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/gaza-israel-palestine-munitions

Would have been helpful if BBC had a direct quote, but this is how they reported it a week ago.

See also: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5d26190c-db60-11dd-be53-000077b07658.html

Numerous news sources have reported explicit denial, by Israel, of use of WP in Gaza. The denials begin around 1/5 it appears. Would be good to find a story where a specific spokesman has issued the denial, quoted.

"If Israel nuked Gaza with a homegrown bomb it would be OK. Like it's OK for Palestinians to kill Israelis with homegrown bombs of their own."

Usually, your dim observations have at least a tenuous relationship to the work you are critiquing. I'd take double your dose of ridalin today, if I were you.

Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

[...]

It's far easier to imagine a population subjected to this treatment becoming increasingly radicalized and belligerent rather than submissive and compliant, as Friedman intends.

I agree that this strategy is fundamentally flawed. Two people who would seem to agree that this is a mistake:

Patrick Henry: "[G]ive me liberty, or give me death!"

George W. Bush: "I believe that God has planted in every heart the desire to live in freedom."

Supporters of Israel's military actions perhaps dont realize what is plainly obvious -- the primary obstacle to freedom that most Gazans currently see is not Hamas, but Israel. Thus, they will fight back against this perceived obstacle to their freedom.

To think that most Gazans will look at Israel's attacks and place primary blame on Hamas is ridiculous. Did most Americans place primary blame regarding the 9/11 attacks on their own government? Of course not, nor should they have. The primary blame goes to the attackers.

The inability of some people to see things through other people's eyes is stunning. And dangerous.