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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Gary Kamiya demonstrates a firm grasp of the facts and an incisive analysis and yet he falls short on two fronts.
First of all, while the bombing campaign may produce more shocking images, the attempt to starve Gaza's population ("putting Gaza on a diet" as they called it) that preceded it is both a more serious and a more heinous crime. It was also a precipitating factor of the current crisis.
Secondly, Kamiya assumes that Israel is earnestly seeking to achieve peace with the indigenous population but its attempts are hamhanded. The facts belie that assumption. If that assumption were true, Israel would have sought to render Hamas less relevant by bolstering apolitical organizations (such as UNRWA) and improving their ability to provide food and basic services to the population. Israeli policies have been having the opposite effects by pushing the population into the arms of the Hamas smugglers.
By their actions the Israelis are deligitimizing the area's impotent governments in favor of fundamentalist organization such as Hezbollah and Hamas. This achieves the twin objectives of weakening the neighboring states and allowing Israel to present itself as a bulwark against America's current bogeyman: Islamic fundamentalism just as it presented itself as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism in an earlier era.
Israel's experiment in human despair has no goals other than the continued dispossession and depopulation of the Palestinians and the perpetuation of this conflict which greatly benefits Israel's military-industrial complex.
Moshe Dayan expressed it best: "We have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads"
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
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