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• Tuesday, January 6, 2009 12:15 PM

  @McFarland, an army is supposed to be held to some sort of "code of honour" and it's not

  honorable for the Israeli war-machine to pound a heavily-populated place like Gaza for the eleventh day when its commanders knew full well that innocent lives would be lost and that child amputees will have to grow up not only with the burden of poverty but also with extreme physical disability. You seem to be justifying the actions of a nation's army on the grounds that extremist hostile elements in Gaza haven't been playing to the rules of sportsmanship.

  This is an excerpt from Rabbi Michael Lerner's article in "The Times" of London, January 5 2009:

  "It breaks my heat to see Israel's stupidity. It has a right to respond to attacks, but will not achieve its ultimate aim - peace - until it stops thinking in military terms....". This is quite a long article, the Rabbi is editor of Tikkun magazine and finishes with "I remain in mourning for the Jewish people, for Israel and for the world". I haven't the time or the energy to exchange accusations with people who clearly have an axe to grind in this conflict but the rabbi is right in his understanding that the whole world could be embroiled in what the British colonialists would have described as "a little local difficulty". Why the USA is prepared to bring such opprobrium down on its head for supporting Israeli militarism is for American citizens to decide.

  Btw, it was Nicolas Sarkozy who described Israel's response to the Hamas rockets as "disproportionate". President Sarkozy is partly Jewish and there was pride in France that the son (grandson?) of a Jewish immigrant from Hungary was elected to the highest office in the land.

  —maureenodonnell Read maureenodonnell's other letters
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