Israel is making a huge mistake. The world is outraged and watches in horror as caged Palestinians are forced from their homes and shelters yet have nowhere to run. It's Israel's version of the canned quail hunts that Cheney is so fond of.

This action by Israel has secured nothing but it's inevitable downfall, it's just a matter of time.

Disgusting that 90% of Israelis support the government's war. They are even coming out to peer at the depravity of it all, smiling and giggling at the air strikes.

The Israeli Soul,

"The Earth continues to go round, whether it's the man who kills the tiger or the tiger who eats the man. The stronger asserts his will, it's the Law of Nature. The world doesn't change. It's Laws are eternal."

The Israeli Soul.

Those look like WP shells.

Those like myself who do not wish Israel well can take some small consolation in the certainty that Israel is likely, in its typically inverted strategy, to achieve the opposite of its stated goal of disarming Hamas. Hamas desperately needs not only more weapons but better weapons. If they can stay in existence and continue to fight with rocks and tin can rockets, imagine the damage they could inflict with decent sniper rifles and grenade launchers and surface to air missiles. Bullies are cowards at heart, and Israel will be contained and deterred in its militant piracy only by fear, which is why they do not occupy Lebanon today. They are surrounded by millions of people who cheer the courage and tenacity of Hamas and who would love to get a few thunderbolts smuggled into their hands. Nature and the law of supply and demand are not on Israel's side. Their sole banker and armorer might just go belly up soon. It might be wise for the average Israeli to hang up his beanie and move the family to Long Island.

Facts to refresh everyone's memory can be found in this great review of Joe Kovel's book "Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine" (London and Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2007), by Michael Steven Smith:

"Joel Kovel has given us an impressive and important book. Its first printing sold out without a single review, major or otherwise. Nevertheless word of this extraordinary work is spreading. The taboo in the United States (not Israel) against seriously discussing and criticizing Zionist Israel has been broken with the publication of Jimmy Carter's bold book labeling the situation in the Occupied Territories “apartheid” and with the exposure by prestigious professors Mearsheimer and Walt – in the London Review of Books after rejection by the Atlantic Monthly – of the power of the Israeli lobby. Kovel, by focusing squarely on how to “overcome” Zionism, takes the discussion exactly where it needs to go from there. He writes beautifully, even poetically, not just on Zionism's sordid history, but on its ideology, its ethics, and even on the terrible ecological devastation in Israel itself, where every river is polluted, some to lethal levels. And he writes with courage and hope.

Kovel believes that the creation of Israel in l948, as a colony of settlers who established an exclusively Jewish and discriminatory state, has created a multi-faceted disaster – “a dreadful mistake” – that should be undone, with Israel de-Zionized and integrated into the Middle East. His solution is stated in the book's subtitle and restated in the title of the last chapter: “Palesrael: A Secular and Universal Democracy for Israel/Palestine.” This is an elegant solution, and he lays out an action program to accomplish it.

How did Kovel, a Jew from Brooklyn, the oldest son of Ukrainian immigrants who did well – moving with Joel to “the purgatory of Baldwin, Long Island” – come to this radical critique and equally radical solution? Joel graduated from Yale and became a successful psychiatrist. He taught at medical school before switching careers and taking a social science professorship at Bard, where for a time he held the Alger Hiss chair. He is still there, the only Marxist on the faculty. This book is not going to further his career.

“What kind of Jew am I?” he asks, and answers “a very bad one.” More accurately, he defines himself as what Isaac Deutscher called “a non-Jewish Jew.” Not that he is not spiritual; he writes of reaching for the infinite. But he is not religious. Being part of a sect is too narrowing and confining. He identifies with the Jewish heretics who transcended Jewry, but who are nonetheless part of the Jewish tradition – he lists Spinoza, Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Kafka, Wittgenstein, and Luxemburg – and for whom “the true glory” of being Jewish is to live “on the margin and across boundaries.”

Kovel writes that the ethical reference point for Jews is the tribal unit. Since ancient times they set themselves off as “a people apart,” chosen by Jehovah, with whom they have a covenant. In Kovel's view, “Zionism's dynamic was drawn from the most tribal and particularistic stratum of Judaism, and its destiny became the restoration of tribalism in the guise of a modern, highly militarized and aggressive state,” which they implanted in the center if Islam. Herein lies the tragedy.

At the turn of the 20th century, a Zionist conference in Vienna delegated several rabbis to travel to Palestine on a fact-finding mission. The rabbis cabled back, “the bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man.” Kovel writes incisively of what ensued. The “tremendous struggle” to dislodge Palestine’s inhabitants would involve three great difficulties:

the resistance of those who stood in the way and would have to be displaced; the exigencies of geo-politics; and one's own inner being, which would have to be retooled from the self-image of an ethical victim to that of a ruthless conqueror. All of these obstacles could be dealt with by signing onto Western imperialism and capitalism.

Jewish suffering and persecution became justification for aggression in asserting the “outlandish claim to a territory controlled 2500 years ago by one's putative ancestors.”

The Israelis took 78% of the territory in l948 and the remaining 22% in l967. The logic of Zionism – to create an ethnically pure Jewish state – led to organized terrorism; “the essentials had been put in place by the mid-1930s” and the opportunity came in l948. The leaders of Zionism, Chaim Arlosoroff, Vladimir Jabotinsky, and especially David Ben Gurion, quietly articulated the need to drive the Arabs out. South African Prime Minister Henrik Verwoerd said in l96l something the liberals wouldn't: that the Zionists “took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. In that, I agree with them, Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.” When the smoke lifted in l948, 531 Arab villages had been destroyed, some 750,000 Palestinians driven out. In l948 Menachem Begin (later Prime Minister of Israel) organized the dynamiting of the British headquarters in Jerusalem, killing 88 persons, including 15 Jews. That year also saw the terrorizing of the village of Deir Yassin. With Begin in command, Yitzhak Shamir – who was also to become a PM and whose frankly fascist organization the Stern Gang had actually made overtures to the Nazis to create a Jewish state along totalitarian lines – took part in the operation. The terror at Deir Yassin was a decisive factor in the Arab exodus. The ethnic cleansing had been clearly planned by the Zionist leadership, as Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has documented. Thus the Zionists established Israel with a crime against humanity."

For the remainder of the review, go to http://www.codz.org/node/12

www.gazatalk.com

One need only compare the Euro-originating Israeli's in the post war years to abused children to see a parallel with the abused victims becoming the abusers.
More constructive is to think about ways to STOP the cycle of abuse. One way is to look at how we do it in domestic violence cases.
We certainly don't expect an abusive husband or wife, in the midst of a fight, to sit down and negotiate.
What happens is the intervention by police authorities and both fighting parties are separated for their own safety. Only when some space and time have intervened might a NEUTRAL party attempt to reconcile the two OR mediate a divorce. If an amicable divorce is not possible, again, the properly constituted institutions of the law take over (e.g. the courts).
Not hard to apply the same model in the case of Israel/Palestine.
One issue is making sure that the "in-laws" are not allowed to be intervenors. Neither the U.S. nor Iran (or Syria, or Egypt) has any place at the table. None of those parties is trusted by the other side. They are not neutral and none has clean hands.
The "police force" has to be credible and authoritative - legally constituted under the U.N. and strong enough to separate the dangerous, volotile situation.

In the case of domestic violence, even if the husband and wife doesn't "invite" or wish for police interference, in the interest of the community good, the police may intervene. Likewise, neither Israel nor Hamas seems to be willing to have a peacekeeping force brought in.

I say why give them the choice? For the good of the wider community of humankind - INTERVENE.

This is about the US Military Junta, established during the Dallas Coup of 1963, who is now using Israel to debut new Super Weapon technologies in the field. We're putting on a Super Weapon Side Show aimed at sending an ominous message to Russia, China, Venezuela, North Korea and Iran.

"Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian war surgery specialist working in Gaza, told The Times that he had seen injuries believed to have resulted from Israel's use of a new "dense inert metal explosive" that caused "extreme explosions". He said: "Those inside the perimeter of this weapon's power zone will be torn completely apart." the Times Online/UK

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein

Well, I know of five weapons with which WWIII is currently being fought- WHITE PHOSPHOROUS, DENSE METAL SUPER WEAPONS, NUCLEAR STICK UP, MISSILE DEFENSE, AND PROPAGANDA!!!!!

Sorry folks, I thought i was posting this at the peopes voice web... http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/pastnews.php/2006/09/27/israelis_inadvertently_admit_complicity about 9/11 and Mossad agents but I will leave it for your pleasure or for whatever.

I think the world knows that most intel agencies knew that the attack was coming.
Of course Mossad would know even more than most and the attack was good for their policy of Ethnic Cleansing.

In fact when Cheney was claiming Atta was meeting with Saddam's agents, Atta was down here in Florida getting flying lessons at a school where he needed security clearance at a CIA/Drug connected airfield. He even tried to buy a used car from my good friend at that time. I advised her to tell the FBI what she knew. She is fine now.

I don't think however that the Towers were wired for demolition and after studying this issue for years I came to the conclusion that this theory is backed only by half truths all of which can be debunked.

The demolition theory does tend to keep away any serious investigation of 9/11 because it puts us in a conspiracy nut mold.... it was a conspiracy but not a programed demolition... that would be stupid and leave a million points of discovery.
Most all of the questions that the demolition proponents think is proof can be studied in detail at http://www.debunking911.com/

Most of you may disagree, but I feel the Truth 9/11 movement has been bad for the peace movement because it focuses on the false theory of demolition rather than getting a real investigation of what the intel agencies knew and how the hijackers were able with Bush's help to get all their training in the USA and plans kept semi-secret.

Shalom

I have some questions for the author:
1) Does the indiscriminant launching of rockets into another country count as a war crime?
2) Does the using innocent civilians as human shields count as a war crime?
3) Does the storage of weapons in houses of worship count as a war crime?
4) Does the confiscation of UN provided ambulances for the transport of combatants count as war crimes?

When the author treats these questions seriously, then I'll treat his accusations of Israelis war crimes seriously.

Reference in Article: "Israeli public opinion still strongly favours the war. One poll of Jewish Israelis yesterday, by the War and Peace Index, said 90% of the population supported continuing the operation until Israel achieved all its goals."

So don't the 20% of Arabs that live in Israel count in the Israeli public opinion poll?

Religion poisons everything. I wish I could turn the sun into a hypno-coin and remove all religious thought from the Earth. I wish I could bring back all of the millions of lives lost to mythology. I just read Sam Harris' THE END OF FAITH and Dawkins GOD DELUSION and Hitchens' GOD IS NOT GREAT, back to back. Whew. I've done my homework on this. If you are reading this and you have religious convictions, please try for a few moments to imagine that you don't actually know anything for sure. Put aside your indoctrination and reassess this assanine tribal conflict. There is a robotic rover on Mars. We know how life really began. The universe is more than 6000 years old. People are all the same, except some can think clearly and some have been victimized by their parents and by parasitic churches into a state of archaic tribal ignorance. Don't be one of them. Fight your mind, not your brother.