Letters posted here are associated with the following article:

208
Letters
Tuesday, January 13, 2009 12:00 AM

What "Waltz With Bashir" can teach us about Gaza

The stunning new Israeli film reveals painful parallels between one of Israel's darkest moments and the current conflict.

The letters thread is now closed.

View:
Monday, January 12, 2009 06:50 PM

http://zombietime.com/gaza_war_protest/

http://zombietime.com/gaza_war_protest/

Monday, January 12, 2009 06:53 PM

Aryan Guard at Gaza protest

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Aryan+Guard+Gaza+protest/1168132/story.html

A man is measured by his companions.

Monday, January 12, 2009 06:54 PM

Israel is a terrorist state

While the Israeli PR spin machine goes into overdrive to make us believe that Israel's vast destruction of Gaza is in self-defense, this analysis is typical of the thinking of Israel's elites. Note the cold reference to terrorizing the population as a political tool! The problem is that a regional superpower like Israel has infinitely more terror capacity than any terrorist organization.

Israel, meanwhile, can pressure Hamas and Egypt by terrorizing the population. In Operation Accountability in 1993, the IDF rained 24,000 shells on southern Lebanon, driving 300,000 civilians toward Beirut. The chief of staff during that operation was Ehud Barak.

Monday, January 12, 2009 06:55 PM

Red Army Faction rejects destroy Holocaust exhibit

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1226404730069&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

which is kinda weird because, there was no holocaust, right?

Monday, January 12, 2009 06:58 PM

Personal experience

that taught me how the average Israeli Jew perceives the Arabs. Many years ago I had volunteered to serve in the IDF. I made a friend in boot camp, a sabra from the Tel Aviv area. He had graciously invited me to spend a weekend furlough at his parents house. Since I came to Israel from California, I had no family to go to on breaks from military service. When we entered his house, his mother was listening to the radio attentively, a serious expression on her face. Since I hardly spoke Hebrew at the time, I asked her in English what she was listening to. She answered that there had been a terrible highway accident in which a taxi from the Gaza strip, transporting day workers back to Gaza, collided with an Israeli bus. Luckily, she said, no Jews were killed, only 5 Arabs, "so now we can all enjoy the weekend". She, by the way, was college educated and a Labor voter. Over time, I got to listen to Israeli right wingers, typical Likud voters and to their views of Arabs and their ideas regarding what to do with them and to them. Compared to them, she was a very compassionate woman.

Monday, January 12, 2009 07:00 PM

Gary Kamiya.

The "Waltz With Bashir" can teach us about Gaza. Yes.` Peace.

There is so much to ponder in your articles, and so I best shush.

If I was tempted to be abrasive, It's not be to do permanent harm.

If I was to hop on a airplane ... But no way... I'd ask a`Creeps This?

What's it like to anticipate a post-death-rebirth as a big tarantula?

In a airport before departure to fly to Gaza City a spider be abroad?

I'm just pondering karma, fools, and wondering when I can be Silent?

Monday, January 12, 2009 07:04 PM

@wallaby - Justifying genocide

The Jews who were murdered by the Nazis would be ashamed of you for justifying the genocide taking place in Gaza.

Monday, January 12, 2009 07:06 PM

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Aryan+Guard+Gaza+protest/1168132/story.html

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Aryan+Guard+Gaza+protest/1168132/story.html

Monday, January 12, 2009 07:07 PM

anti nazi exhibits destroyed by Palestinian protesters

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1226404730069&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

Monday, January 12, 2009 07:27 PM

@wallaby - Smearing the demonstrations that protest Israel's war crimes

You can always count on the Zionists to come out to silence any criticism of Israel by attempting to associate it with anti-semitism.

Well Wallaby, the cat is out of the bag. Most of the world realizes that Israel's leaders are war criminals (the US is still the exception due to the Israel Lobby) and will be eventually brought to justice in the Hague.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/13/gaza-israel-war-crimes

Monday, January 12, 2009 07:32 PM

Kamiya's Comparison of Israeli Invasions

To the Editor,

As a doctoral candidate in political science currently working on an article about Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, I would like to congratulate Gary Kamiya for his superbly written analysis of that particularly complex and bloody chapter in the Arab-Israeli conflict. His article is more illuminating than entire books I have read about that war! I share strongly Mr. Kamiya's opinion that Israel's addiction to using its military might as a foreign policy tool is likely once again to radicalize the Middle East and push the possibility of peace ever farther away.

Monday, January 12, 2009 07:58 PM

@dandouek - You may want to read Robert Fisk too

If you are interested in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Fisk is a great resource.

You may also want to read his latest article on Gaza. Quite illuminating.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-why-do-they-hate-the-west-so-much-we-will-ask-1230046.html

Monday, January 12, 2009 08:26 PM

Means, not will

The thing that separates Israel and Hamas in this and previous battles is means, not will. Had Hamas, Islamic Jihad and its supporters the means to prosecute as lopsided a campaign as Israel is currently engaged in, they would be feverishly doing so. It's easy to decry slaughter. This is a war that has been ongoing with fits and starts for 60 years in this era alone. In the present architecture, it would be occurring because of one impetus or another of Hamas' creation and Israel's predictable military reflex. A US resident, I have Israeli relatives and indeed many run the gamut between callous and racist in regards to Palestinians specifically and Arabs in general. But in this regard they are matched, indeed grossly overmatched, by racism from the other side of the conflict.

To my mind, "Waltz with Bashir" also reveals a distinguishing strength of national character: the deep and public struggle of conscience not only possible but lauded in Israel. I'm unaware of a comparable current flowing from the popular media in Palestine. Hamas, improving on doctrinaire public affairs strategy set in place by the old PLO, has encouraged a nihilism among young men that will inflict more lasting damage on Palestinians than will all the munitions in Israel -- it is the source of the tireless provocation that has again driven the militarily superior Israel to its last raw nerve.

Monday, January 12, 2009 08:38 PM

Thanks Gary

Thanks also to Salon's Andrew O' Hehir for his excellent review of "Waltz With Bashir."

Monday, January 12, 2009 08:54 PM

is there in fact any consensus that allowing the PLO state in Lebanon to continue it's activities unmolested

would have been a desirable or superior outcome. Obviously asking this does not imply that what was done was well done.

Monday, January 12, 2009 09:28 PM

Yes, Wallaby, a country is measured by their companions who massacre civilians

A Fascist group marching with an anti-Gaza war protest, huh? You don't say?

Guess what once-ruling European party the Phalangists were a franchise of?

Here's a big hint: they had pretty much the same name.

Monday, January 12, 2009 09:39 PM

Kamiya is incisive but naive

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"

Most Active Letters Threads

499

Everybody hates mommy

We're "stroller Nazis." We're whiny "breeders." Why is there so much contempt for mothers these days?
454

The Washington establishment suffers a serious defeat

Approval of the Paul/Grayson bill to audit the Fed is both rare and important in several ways
374

Rule-of-law extremism engulfs primitive Eastern Europe

Why would the new President of Lithuania demand investigations of CIA black sites in her country?
288

The extreme secrecy of the federal courts

Judges are not only permitted, but required, to conceal anything the government declares to be secret.
176

Climate-gate!

Climate skeptics claim hacked e-mails prove, once and for all, that global warming is a hoax

View all »

Letters Help

Currently in Salon