Israel and Palestine
Another great snippet from Progressive Talk:
As enraged as I (and millions of others around the world) am at the ongoing Israeli slaughter of the helpless, starving denizens of Gaza, under the pretext of stopping the launching of what are basically souped-up bottle rockets, since their launching was resumed in response to intentionally provocative, murderous Israeli raids into Gaza, after a long cease-fire, it is not Jews per se that we are angry at, but those Israelis and their US supporters who blindly follow their national leadership, in which each election cycle is a contest to see which candidate can out-hawk the others, in the name of Israeli security. It is only sloth and ignorance that permits these folks to believe that starving, bombing and maiming their Muslim neighbors will ever bring them increased security.
Many of those most active in opposing USraeli mad militarism, both here and in Israel, are Jews, like my friend Jeff Blankfort, a leading anti-Zionist writer and radio person. Just as I have contempt for the Americans who blindly supported Bush’s post-9/11 destruction of the US Constitution and international law in their panic over the perhaps mythical terrorist bogeyman, and would hate to be tarred with the same brush as them, I would hate to blame all Jews or all Israelis for what is apparently a solid majority of Israeli public opinion supporting their government’s almost perfect repetition of the crimes of the Nazis against them. At what point will the rest of the world do something about Israeli aggression? What if Israel were to decide that the only solution in Gaza is Final Solution; setting up gas ovens and simply putting the 1.5 million people of Gaza to death; would Rahm Emanuel or ‘Jingo Joe’ Lieberman utter a word of criticism? I wonder.
Despite everything, I’m still trying to maintain some optimism about the coming Obama government, though I’m sure we’re all going to have to protest and push as much as ever to get them to do the right thing.
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