Saturday, January 17, 2009
Not from the New York Times
"In the case of Israel, the self-image of its leading politicians is far more crazed and split than such common-sense reminders can hope to remedy. Tzipi Livni says in 2009 that the assault was necessary, that it is going according to design, that there is no humanitarian crisis, and that the invasion will be good for the Palestinians. Yet Ehud Barak in 1999, in answer to a question from the reporter Gideon Levy about what he would have done if he had been born Palestinian, replied without pause: "Joined a fighting organization." Ehud Olmert says in a daring interview in his penultimate season in office that there will have to be a two-state solution and that Israel will have to give up a large part of the settlements it now holds. Yet Olmert devotes his final weeks in power to the merciless waging of this war, and refuses to convene his cabinet to take up the encouragement of a cease-fire...From the imposition of state terror in one generation spring the soldiers of guerrilla terror in the next generation. Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return. Just as the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza brought on the Second Intifada, and just as both of these, together with the American footprint in Saudi Arabia, were a substantial motive in the making of the September 11 attacks, so the present attacks in Gaza, backed by America's financial and political support and America's F-16s and Apache helicopters, are nursing hatreds for a new round of terrorism to come. The assault on Gaza endangers the security of Israel, and it endangers the security of the United States."