>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Do we need to make the correlating list of Muslim leaders who demonstrate just as much racism, and far more willingness to kill? As I said before - this is not a one sided issue. People like AL wouldn't be voted into power if Isreal wasn't being forced to discuss "peace" terms with guys like Arafat, Abbas, & other terrorists masquarading as politicians.

Agreed, not a one sided issue at all. Still talking with the butcher Sharon might not have been much fun for them either.


The Isreali's elected a guy do deal with the situation as it exists. I don't applaud it, but I can at least intellectually understand it and even sympathize to a degree. Isreal's security has improved tremendously by adopting hard-line positions. Before they were getting bombings regularly. Once they built walls and established buffer zones in Gaza, the Palestinians were reduced to blindly lobbing rockets at random. From the point of view of the average Isreali, the increase in security would be well worth it.

Is it possible these hardline policies have made Israel less safe in the long run?


Other nations take that kind of security for granted. Once it is obtained, then a society has the luxury of generating citizens who are safe enough to have the liesure and idleness required to stew in their own guilty consciences over the 'price' of security. What we have here are a bunch of buttinskys wagging their fingers at Isreal from the safety of their armchairs.

Ummm... more Americans have died in terrorist attacks in the last decade than Israelis.


The Palestinians have it tough - no question. Isreal is really turning the screws and it makes life hard for them. What are Isreal's options? 1. They can give the Palestinians what they want (which is never enough parenthetically) and go back to daily bombings.

To be fair, they never tried option 1. It's not that those mean palestinians always want more, Israel never conceded anything. Even when they did on paper, they never actually did it. They continually built more settlements, and annexed more territory. In fact your wall may just be the most egregious example.


2. They can maintain their stance and keep thier people safe. Hmmm - agree with the people who want to KILL us or defend ourselves...? Not a very tough choice really.

There were more attacks on Israeli soil under Sharon than under Rabin. Who's policies kept Israel safer?

The false premise here is that for some reason Isreal is always held 100% 'responsible' for the Palestinian plight. Uh uh. There are at least three seats at the table. The Pals need to be far more aggressive at stomping out their extremist factions and behaving like a peace-seeking people. Then Isreal will have cause to believe that providing them territory will not result in security comprimises.

So instead you are suggesting that the Palestinians are 100% responsible. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who need to show good faith here? The problem is that neither side trusts the other side to follow through on their promises... both with good reason. Hamas receives support because it is the only organization that actually provides infrastructure to the Palestinians. They are the only ones building roads, schools, hospitals, providing aid, etc... Perhaps if Israel showed some good faith by doing those things, Hamas would struggle to recruit.


And (most critically) the REST OF THE FREAKING ARAB WORLD needs to stop pretending they are innocent bystanders in all this mess. Yeah - it sucked that the Palestinians got shafted after WW2. But the Pals wouldn't be in so much trouble if guys like Egypt, Syria, Lybia, and everyone else was willing to cut them some slack as opposed to expecting Isreal to just go away.

Well, I'd just as soon the rest of the Arab world quit pursuing their present course of action, which is less innocent bystander, and more aspiring nuclear annihilator. I don't think the little border wall is going to protect anyone from that.

What about "get to the Chopaa! or " consider this a dahvorce" (to sharon Stone).

Tags for this video have been changed from 'budos, band, sharon, jones, daptone, dap, kings, funk, soul, rnb, party, groove' to 'budos band, sharon jones daptone, dap kings, funk, soul, rnb, party, groove' - edited by SlipperyPete

Wow, I do have to admit that is very impressive.

Edit: though on second view, I wish they would stop cutting to the judges... I don't need to see Sharon Ozbourn's reaction, I'd rather see what the guy was doing without interruption.

That's not funny, Sharon!

"Is Israel not simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by the States of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and Lebanon?"

The short answer is, no. Israel is a classic settler nation with all the existential attributes and brutality of a colonial ruler.

Sometimes an article deserves reprinting in full.

(copyfree)

Date : 2004-01-29
''Diagnosing Benny Morris: the mind of a European settler''

By Gabriel Ash - YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States)

Israeli historian Benny Morris crossed a new line of shame when he put his academic credentials and respectability in the service of outlining the "moral" justification for a future genocide against Palestinians.

Benny Morris is the Israeli historian most responsible for the vindication of the Palestinian narrative of 1948. The lives of about 700,000 people were shattered as they were driven from their homes by the Jewish militia (and, later, the Israeli army) between December 1947 and early 1950. Morris went through Israeli archives and wrote the day by day account of this expulsion, documenting every "ethnically cleansed" village and every recorded act of violence, and placing each in the context of the military goals and perceptions of the cleansers.

Israel's apologists tried in vain to attack Morris' professional credibility. From the opposite direction, since he maintained that the expulsion was not "by design," he was also accused of drawing excessively narrow conclusions from the documents and of being too naive a reader of dissimulating statements. Despite these limitations, Morris' "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugees Problem, 1947-1949" is an authoritative record of the expulsion.

In anticipation of the publication of the revised edition, Morris was interviewed in Haaretz - ( http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/380986.html,
Hebrew original at
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/objects/pages/PrintArticle.jhtml?itemNo=380119). The major new findings in the revised book, based on fresh documents, further darken the picture.

The new archival material, Morris reveals, records routine execution of civilians, twenty-four massacres, including one in Jaffa, and at least twelve cases of rape by military units, which Morris acknowledges are probably "the tip of the iceberg." Morris also says he found documents confirming the broader conclusions favored by his critics: the expulsion was pre-meditated; concrete expulsion orders were given in writing, some traceable directly to Ben Gurion.

Morris also found documentations for Arab High Command calls for evacuating women and children from certain villages, evidence he oddly claims strengthen the Zionist propaganda claim that Palestinians left because they were told to leave by the invading Arab states. Morris had already documented two dozen such cases in the first edition. It is hard to see how attempts by Arab commanders to protect civilians from anticipated rape and murder strengthen the Zionist fairy tale. But that failed attempt at evenhandedness is the least of Morris' problems. As the interview progresses, it emerges with growing clarity that, while Morris the historian is a professional and cautious presenter of facts, Morris the intellectual is a very sick person.

His sickness is of the mental-political kind. He lives in a world populated not by fellow human beings, but by racist abstractions and stereotypes. There is an over-abundance of quasi-poetic images in the interview, as if the mind is haunted by the task of grasping what ails it: "The Palestinian citizens of Israel are a time bomb," not fellow citizens. Islam is "a world in which human lives don't have the same value as in the West." Arabs are "barbarians" at the gate of the Roman Empire. Palestinian society is "a serial killer" that ought to be executed, and "a wild animal" that must be caged.

Morris' disease was diagnosed over forty years ago, by Frantz Fanon. Based on his experience in subjugated Africa, Fanon observed that "the colonial world is a Manichean world. It is not enough for the settler to delimit physically, that is to say, with the help of the army and the police, the place of the native. As if to show the totalitarian character of colonial exploitation, the settler paints the native as a sort of quintessence of evil … The native is declared insensitive to ethics … the enemy of values. … He is a corrosive element, destroying all that comes near it … the unconscious and irretrievable instrument of blind forces" (from "The Wretched of the Earth"). And further down, "the terms the settler uses when he mentions the native are zoological terms" (let's not forget to place Morris' metaphors in the context of so many other Israeli appellations for Palestinians: Begin's "two-legged beasts", Eitan's "drugged cockroaches" and Barak's ultra-delicate "salmon"). Morris is a case history in the psychopathology of colonialism.

Bad Genocide, Good Genocide

When the settler encounters natives who refuse to cast down their eyes, his disease advances to the next stage -- murderous sociopathy.

Morris, who knows the exact scale of the terror unleashed against Palestinians in 1948, considers it justified. First he suggests that the terror was justified because the alternative would have been a genocide of Jews by Palestinians. Raising the idea of genocide in this context is pure, and cheap, hysteria. Indeed, Morris moves immediately to a more plausible explanation: the expulsion was a precondition for creating a Jewish state, i.e. the establishment of a specific political preference, not self-defense.

This political explanation, namely that the expulsion was necessary to create the demographic conditions, a large Jewish majority, favored by the Zionist leadership, is the consensus of historians. But as affirmative defense, it is unsatisfactory. So the idea that Jews were in danger of genocide is repeated later, in a more honest way, as merely another racist, baseless generalization: "if it can, [Islamic society] will commit genocide."

But Morris sees no evil. Accusing Ben Gurion of failing to achieve an "Arabenrein Palestine," he recommends further ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, including those who are Israeli citizens. Not now, but soon, "within five or ten years," under "apocalyptic conditions" such as a regional war with unconventional weapons, a potentially nuclear war, which "is likely to happen within twenty years." For Morris, and it is difficult to overstate his madness at this point, the likelihood of a nuclear war within the foreseeable future is not the sorry end of a road better not taken, but merely a milestone, whose aftermath is still imaginable, and imaginable within the banal continuity of Zionist centennial policies: he foresees the exchange of unconventional missiles between Israel and unidentified regional states as a legitimate excuse for "finishing the job" of 1948.

Morris speaks explicitly of another expulsion, but, in groping for a moral apology for the past and the future expulsion of Palestinians, he presents a more general argument, one that justifies not only expulsion but also genocide. That statement ought to be repeated, for here is a crossing of a terrible and shameful line.

Morris, a respectable, Jewish, Israeli academic, is out in print in the respectable daily, Haaretz, justifying genocide as a legitimate tool of statecraft. It should be shocking. Yet anybody who interacts with American and Israeli Zionists knows that Morris is merely saying for the record what many think and even say unofficially. Morris, like most of Israel, lives in a temporality apart, an intellectual Galapagos Islands, a political Jurassic Park, where bizarre cousins of ideas elsewhere shamed into extinction still roam the mindscape proudly.

Nor should one think the slippage between expulsion, "transfer," and genocide without practical consequences. It is not difficult to imagine a planned expulsion turn into genocide under the stress of circumstances: The genocides of both European Jews and Armenians began as an expulsion. The expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 was the product of decades of thinking and imagining "transfer." We ought to pay attention: with Morris's statement, Zionist thinking crossed another threshold; what is now discussed has the potential to be actualized, if "apocalyptic conditions" materialize.

The march of civilization and the corpses of the uncivilized

It is instructive to look closer at the manner in which Morris uses racist thinking to justify genocide. Morris' interview, precisely because of its shamelessness, is a particularly good introductory text to Zionist thought.

Morris' racism isn't limited to Arabs. Genocide, according to Morris, is justified as long as it is done for "the final good." But what kind of good is worth the "forced extinction" of a whole people? Certainly, not the good of the latter. (Morris uses the word "Haqkhada," a Hebrew word usually associated with the extinction of animal species. Someone ought to inform Morris about the fact that Native Americans aren't extinct.)

According to Morris, the establishment of a more advanced society justifies genocide: "Yes, even the great American democracy couldn't come to be without the forced extinction of Native Americans. There are times the overall, final good justifies terrible, cruel deeds." Such hopeful comparisons between the future awaiting Palestinians and the fate of Native Americans are common to Israeli apologists. One delegation of American students was shocked and disgusted when it heard this analogy made by a spokesperson at the Israeli embassy in Washington.

Morris's supremacist view of "Western Civilization," that civilization values human life more than Islam, has its basis in the moral acceptance of genocide for the sake of "progress." Morris establishes the superiority of the West on both the universal respect for human life and the readiness to exterminate inferior races. The illogicalness of the cohabitation of a right to commit genocide together with a higher level of respect for human lives escapes him, and baffles us, at least until we grasp that the full weight of the concept of "human" is restricted, in the classic manner of Eurocentric racism, to dwellers of civilized (i.e. Western) nations.

This is the same logic that allowed early Zionists to describe Palestine as an empty land, despite the presence of a million inhabitants. In the end, it comes down to this: killing Arabs -- one dozen Arabs or one million Arabs, the difference is merely technical -- is acceptable if it is necessary in order to defend the political preferences of Jews because Jews belong to the superior West and Arabs are inferior. We must be thankful to Professor Morris for clarifying the core logic of Zionism so well.

The color of Jews

Morris assures us that his values are those of the civilized West, the values of universal morality, progress, etc. But then he also claims to hold the primacy of particular loyalties, a position for which he draws on Albert Camus. But to reconcile Morris' double loyalty to both Western universalism and to Jewish particularism, one must forget that these two identities were not always on the best of terms.

How can one explain Morris' knowledge that the ethnic Darwinism that was used to justify the murder of millions of non-whites, including Black African slaves, Native Americans, Arabs, and others, was also used to justify the attempt to exterminate Jews? How can Morris endorse the "civilizational" justification of genocide, which includes the genocide of Jews, even as he claims the holocaust as another justification for Zionism? Perhaps Morris' disjointed mind doesn't see the connection. Perhaps he thinks that there are "right" assertions of racist supremacy and "wrong" assertions of racist supremacy. Or perhaps Morris displays another facet of the psychopathologies of oppression, the victim's identification with the oppressor.

Perhaps in Morris' mind, one half tribalist and one half universalist, the Jews were murdered to make way for a superior, more purely Aryan, European civilization, and the Jews who are today serving in the Israeli army, both belong and do not belong to the same group. They belong when Morris invokes the totems of the tribe to justify loyalty. But when his attention turns to the universal principle of "superior civilization," these Jews are effaced, like poor relations one is ashamed to be associated with, sent back to the limbo they share with the great non-white mass of the dehumanized. In contrast, the Jews of Israel, self-identified as European, have turned white, dry-cleaned and bleached by Zionism, and with their whiteness they claim the privilege that Whites always had, the privilege to massacre members of "less advanced" races.

False testimony

It would be marvelous if Morris the historian could preserve his objective detachment while Morris the Zionist dances with the demons of Eurocentric racism. But the wall of professionalism -- and it is a very thick and impressive wall in Morris' case -- cannot hold against the torrent of hate.

For example, Morris lies about his understanding of the 2000 Camp David summit. In Haaretz, Morris says that, "when the Palestinians rejected Barak's proposal of July 2000 and Clinton's proposal of December 2000, I understood that they were not ready to accept a two state solution. They wanted everything. Lydda, and Akka and Jaffa."

But in his book "Righteous Victims," Morris explains the failure of the negotiations thus: "the PLO leadership had gradually accepted, or seemed to…Israel...keeping 78 percent of historical Palestine. But the PLO wanted the remaining 22 percent. … At Camp David, Barak had endorsed the establishment of a Palestinian state…[on only] 84-90 percent of that 22 percent. … Israel was also to control the territory between a greatly enlarged Jerusalem and Jericho, effectively cutting the core of the future Palestinian state into two…" Morris' chapter of "Righteous Victims" that deals with the '90s leaves a lot to be desired, but it still strives for some detached analysis. In contrast, in Haaretz Morris offers baseless claims he knows to be false.

If Morris lies about recent history, and even grossly misrepresents the danger Jews faced in Palestine in 1948, a period he is an expert on, his treatment of more general historical matters is all but ridiculous, an astounding mix of insinuations and cliches. For example, Morris reminds us that "the Arab nation won a big chunk of the Earth, not because of its intrinsic virtues and skills, but by conquering and murdering and forcing the conquered to convert." (What is Morris' point? Is the cleansing of Palestine attributable to Jewish virtues and skills, rather than to conquering and murdering?)

This is racist slander, not history. As an example, take Spain, which was conquered in essentially one battle in 711 A.D. by a band of North African Berbers who had just converted to Islam. Spain was completely Islamized and Arabized within two centuries with very little religious coercion, and certainly no ethnic cleansing. But after the last Islamic rulers were kicked out of Spain by the Christian army of Ferdinand and Isabel in 1492, a large section of the very same Spanish population that willingly adopted Islam centuries earlier refused to accept Christianity despite a century of persecution by the Spanish Inquisition. 600,000 Spanish Muslims were eventually expelled in 1608.

Obviously, Islamic civilization had its share of war and violence. But, as the above example hints, compared to the West, compared to the religious killing frenzy of sixteenth century Europe, compared to the serial genocides in Africa and America, and finally to the flesh-churning wars of the twentieth century, Islamic civilization looks positively benign. So why all this hatred? Where is all this fire and brimstone Islamophobia coming from?

Being elsewhere

From Europe, of course, but with a twist. Europe has always looked upon the East with condescension. In periods of tension, that condescension would escalate to fear and hate. But it was also mixed and tempered with a large dose of fascination and curiosity. The settler, however, does not have the luxury to be curious. The settler leaves the metropolis hoping to overcome his own marginal, often oppressed, status in metropolitan society. He goes to the colony motivated by the desire to recreate the metropolis with himself at the top.

For the settler, going to the colony is not a rejection of the metropolis, but a way to claim his due as a member. Therefore, the settler is always trying to be more metropolitan than the metropolis. When the people of the metropolis baulk at the bloodbath the settler wants to usher in the name of their values, the settler accuses them of "growing soft," and declares himself "the true metropolis." That is also why there is one crime of which the settler can never forgive the land he colonized -- its alien climate and geography, its recalcitrant otherness, the oddness of its inhabitants, in sum, the harsh truth of its being elsewhere. In the consciousness of the settler, condescension thus turns into loathing.

Israeli settler society, especially its European, Ashkenazi part, especially that Israel which calls itself "the peace camp," "the Zionist Left," etc., is predicated on the loathing of all things Eastern and Arab. (Now, of course, there is the religious, post-1967 settlers who relate to the Zionist Left the way the Zionist Left stands in relation to Europe, i.e. as settlers.) "Arab" is a term of abuse, one that can be applied to everything and everyone, including Jews. This loathing is a unifying theme. It connects Morris' latest interview in Haaretz with Ben Gurion's first impression of Jaffa in 1905; he found it filthy and depressing.

In another article, published in Tikkun Magazine, Morris blames the "ultra-nationalism, provincialism, fundamentalism and obscurantism" of Arab Jews in Israel for the sorry state of the country (although Begin, Shamir, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Barak, Sharon, and most of Israel's generals, leaders, and opinion makers of the last two decades are European Jews). For Morris, everything Eastern is corrupt and every corruption has an Eastern origin.

One shouldn't, therefore, doubt Morris when he proclaims himself a traditional Left Zionist. Most of what he says hasn't been said already by David Ben Gurion or Moshe Dayan. Loathing of the East and the decision to subdue it by unlimited force is the essence of Zionism.

Understanding the psycho-political sources of this loathing leads to some interesting observations about truisms that recur in Morris' (and much of Israel's) discourse. Morris blames Arafat for thinking that Israel is a "crusader state," a foreign element that will eventually be sent back to its port of departure. This is a common refrain of Israeli propaganda. It is also probably true. But it isn't Arafat's fault that Morris is a foreigner in the Middle East. Why shouldn't Arafat believe Israel is a crusader state when Morris himself says so? "We are the vulnerable extension of Europe in this place, exactly as the crusaders."

It is Morris -- like the greater part of Israel's elite -- who insists on being a foreigner, on loathing the Middle East and dreaming about mist-covered Europe, purified and deified by distance. If Israel is a crusader state, and therefore a state with shallow roots, likely to pack up and disappear, it is not the fault of those who make that observation. It is the fault of those Israelis, like Morris, who want to rule the Middle East from behind tall walls and barbed wire.

Morris is deeply pessimistic about Israel's future; this feeling is very attractive in Israel. The end of Israel is always felt to be one step away, hiding beneath every development, from the birthrate of Bedouins to the establishment of the International Court of Justice.

Naturally, every Palestinian demand is such a doomsday threat. This sense of existential precariousness can be traced back to 1948; it was encouraged by Israel's successive governments because it justified the continuous violence of the state and the hegemony of the military complex. It may eventually become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

But this existential fear goes deeper. It is rooted in the repressed understanding (which Morris both articulates and tries to displace) of the inherent illegitimacy of the Israeli political system and identity. "Israel" is brute force. In Morris' words: "The bottom line is that force is the only thing that will make them accept us." But brute force is precarious. Time gnaws at it. Fatigue corrodes it. And the more it is used, the more it destroys the very acceptance and legitimacy it seeks.

For Israel, the fundamental question of the future is, therefore, whether Israelis can transcend colonialism. The prognosis is far from positive. In a related article in The Guardian, Morris explains that accepting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees would mean forcing Israeli Jews into exile. But why would Jews have to leave Israel if Israel becomes a bi-national, democratic state? One cannot understand this without attention to the colonial loathing of the Middle East which Morris so eloquently expresses.

But taking that into account, I'm afraid Morris is right. Many Israeli Jews, especially European Jews who tend to possess alternative passports, would rather emigrate than live on equal terms with Palestine's natives in a bi-national state. It is to Frantz Fanon again that we turn for observing this first. "The settler, from the moment the colonial context disappears, has no longer an interest in remaining or in co-existing."

Gabriel Ash was born in Romania and grew up in Israel.

Wow. That was remarkably sucky. Spoco's comment is perfect. Sharon Osbourne is a terrible host and Dita didn't say anything interesting. In fact, she didn't really even answer some of the questions that were asked. Sharon asked her, "What do you think is the fascination?" and she starts talking about her female fans and how she's not the classic American girl? She obviously feels the need to make her profession seem "lady friendly" even when she isn't being asked about it.

only on a norm sift can we see sharon stone scratching her snatch

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
There's no spin. It's an accurate and fair assessment of the situation. There are more players in the game than just Israel and the Palestinians.

Oh blah blah blah, there is no point reading the rest of it.

You say the Arab world is supporting Palestinian efforts but don't acknowledge the large military and political help the Israelis receive from the US. Who they circumvent by attacking Palestinian areas anytime their big brother isn't looking. Note how vicious attacks got post 9/11 (under guise of fighting global terrorism not local oppression) and before transition of power in the US.

The Israels making concessions is a facade, the Road map to peace which I mentioned in my previous comments clearly was a progress to peace that Kadima's Sharon perused. The Palestinians at the time agreed to it, what happens next? Israel unilaterally imposes 'reservations' on the peace process and dismantles the no expansionary Israeli settlement clause in the articles. One of the key arguments Palestinians have with Israel.

Israeli demands and their concessions are out of balance, a 1% adjustment in Palestinian lands to Israelis remove all economic and political areas out of Palestinian lands. This is all while more lands in the West bank are criss crosses and ceded back into Israel with walls, towers and troops moving in to defend these new settlements from people whose homes just got bulldozed.

Israel doesn't want peace, all it wants is to keep the peace process in formaldehyde. The seeming appearance of perusing peace while it builds walls, sniper towers, blockades, and walls the Palestinians in further and further. That's why Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world do not really take their declarations of seeking peace seriously because it's always the same bullshit.

But you know I can see why you would think otherwise, Israel has AIPAC, WINEP, MEMRITV and a thousand other media apologists to fight the media perspective on how this conflict is read out in the rest of the world. I quote:

"Simultaneously, the Israeli media has been towing the government line to such a degree that no criticism of the war has been voiced on any of the three local television stations. Indeed, the situation has become so absurd that reporters and anchors are currently less critical of the war than the military spokespeople. In the absence of any critical analysis, it is not so surprising that 78% of Israelis, or about 98% of all Jewish Israelis, support the war."
http://www.counterpunch.org/gordon01162009.html

"The Immigrant Absorption Ministry announced on Sunday it was setting up an "army of bloggers," to be made up of Israelis who speak a second language, to represent Israel in "anti-Zionist blogs" in English, French, Spanish and German."
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1056648.html

""We used to hold signs at protests reading 'The occupation will corrupt'," she told me. "Now, we can see that it has [come to pass]. As a society, we have lost our ability to see clearly; we have let fear blind us. Once, calling someone a racist was the harshest accusation you could make. Later, you began to hear people say 'I know I'm a racist, but...'; nowadays [during Cast Lead], we heard 'I know I'm talking like a Nazi, but at least the Nazis knew how to deal with their enemies'."" Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know. But I don't like those analysis which refers to 1967 as the year when Israel "lost its soul"--whatever that means. It never had a soul to be begin with.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/21/gaza-protest

But most disturbing of all was the graffiti they daubed on the walls of the ground floor. Some was in Hebrew, but much was naively written in English: "Arabs need 2 die", "Die you all", "Make war not peace", "1 is down, 999,999 to go", and scrawled on an image of a gravestone the words: "Arabs 1948-2009".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/20/gaza-israel-samouni-family

"Estimates for the proportion of civilian deaths among the 1,360 Palestinians killed range from more than half to two-thirds. Politicians, diplomats and journalists are by and large shying away from the obvious, namely that Israel has been deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians and the very infrastructure of normal life, in order to – in the best colonial style – teach the natives a lesson."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/20/gaza-israelandthepalestinians

Furthermore we must remember the political time frame of these attacks in Israel, with the failure to form a coalition government Kadima leader Tzipi Livni informed President Peres in October, that general elections will have to take place on February 10th 2009.

Likud (Benjamin Netanyahu) and Kadmia (Tzipi Livni) are the major contenders to win over the Knesset, both are trying to replicate the momentum of change generated in the US elections. Both have the problem of seeming old and tired without the necessary 'change' aspect, Bibi had lead Israel before and Livni is number 2 in Olmert's office. Though Livni edges out being a woman and a new face.

One of the major striking points that Likud pushed forward was that Kadima being the Sharon party that imposed the Gazan withdrawal and is committed to the road map to peace would be too soft on Palestinians as a whole and endanger the Israeli national security. Likud also refuses to negotiate over Jerusalem.

With the recent military actions there is no longer a question of softness with regards to Kadima and the Palestinian people. This would work favorably towards assuring a victory in the Knesset for Livni.

But at what cost to the peace process?

However recent polls show that Likud is still in the lead with 29 seats. Not surprising since the Gaza pullout and the corruption charges leveled at Olmert. But we need to see how the international pressures that Livni is reaching out for will shape the public perceptions.

We shall see, there is disengagement taking place now, and truce has been declared with Israel withdrawing from Gaza soon.

>> ^Yehoshua:
Ok, so you added some good details to this unilateral plan for peace; the UN comes in and enforces it, the US and EU broker the agreements. At what point would Israel be justified in ending a peace in response to an attack?

This is a wrong way of looking at the situation as you are searching for some kind of allowance to when Israel can use it's military power in response to an attack when we are discussing a peace deal. Such terms can never be defined and have never formed any part of a peace deal. Cessation of terrorist activity yes but not a stipulation of when retaliation can occur. Its unrealistic.

I find it best to look at parallels in other conflicts and how the peace treaty was worked out, in Northern Ireland you had a concrete disengagement from both sides, an agreement to end hostilities, a firm declaration of no favored status from the UK which ultimately lead to peace. This is now the kind of situation we require in the Middle East peace process.

Previous peace engagements have failed due to forced concessionary actions by Israel towards Palestine. In the 2003 Road map for peace article 1 stipulated an end to settler expansions in the West Bank, this was refused by Sharon who claimed that settlements cannot stop in the West bank. Then we had numerous 'reservations' put in place by Israel towards the peace plan - http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=297230

One of which was a complete dismantlement of terrorist organizations before the implementation of the rest of the articles of the Road map to peace, something I always found an unrealistic expectation as its impossible to control the numerous groups that hold extremist views against Israel ranging from pure jihad against Jews to complete annihilation of the State of Israel. The Palestinian people do not have the refined policing force that could prevent and guarantee such action.

Furthermore it stipulated the complete need to disarm the Palestinian people, which is a completely unrealistic thing to ask towards a people that have been fighting a war against occupation. You cannot expect them to suddenly trust your 'word' that you will remain committed to the articles that relate Israeli concessions to Palestinian. All of which were laced with phrases like "Subject to security conditions, Israel will work to restore Palestinian life to normal: promote the economic situation, cultivation of commercial connections, encouragement and assistance for the activities of recognized humanitarian agencies."

This is not a peace process, this is forced concessions on the Palestinians. Bush left the region, the IDF entered Gaza and killed a Palestinian and the cycle of violence escalated again.

Suicide bombing or a rocket barrage, which has been accepted as a valid tactic by the vast majority of the Palestinian people.

Unfortunately the Palestinian people do not have the military assistance and help of the US to allow them to purchase F-16s, Apache attack helicopters, M-16s and other weapons. Israel launched countless rocket attacks over the areas designed to essentially assassinate leaders. What kind of impression does this create in the Palestinian people?

The Palestinians have, in my experience, more often had leadership interested in pursuing military action.

The Palestinians support these attacks because they exist under Israeli occupation, I find it fascinating that you do not look into the sheer conditions that Israel imposes on the Palestinian people which to me explain their armed resistance, from the separation wall, to check points, to arbitrary incursions, to open air prison, to blockades, to home bulldozing, to large scale bombings and destruction that we have witness over the last few weeks.

As I said again terrorist action is a symptom not a disease in Palestine, the Israelis gave no other option to many Palestinians who resist the occupational actions. To us this may seem like lunacy but then again we haven't lived most our lives under occupation.

I don't condone alot of their actions, I believe alot of it is counter productive, but am not living in those conditions and I cannot simply brush aside these attacks and claim that they are simply being stubborn, that they are all extremist or all are seeking martyrdom. Because we have seen such sacrifices and terrorist actions in previous conflicts.

Young Abdel Mahdi (Shahmay) was only 18 years old,
He was the youngest of nine children, never spent a night away from home.
And his mother held his photograph, opening the New York Times
To see the killing has intensified along the road to peace

There was a tall, thin boy with a whispy moustache disguised as an orthodox Jew
On a crowded bus in Jerusalem, some had survived World War Two
And the thunderous explosion blew out windows 200 yards away
With more retribution and seventeen dead along the road to peace

Now at King George Ave and Jaffa Road passengers boarded bus 14a
In the aisle next to the driver Abdel Mahdi (Shahmay)
And the last thing that he said on earth is "God is great and God is good"
And he blew them all to kingdom come upon the road to peace

Now in response to this another kiss of death was visited upon
Yasser Taha, Israel says is an Hamas senior militant
And Israel sent four choppers in, flames engulfed, tears wide open
And it killed his wife and his three year old child leaving only blackened skeletons

It's found his toddlers bottle and a pair of small shoes and they waved them in front of the cameras
But Israel says they did not know that his wife and child were in the car
There are roadblocks everywhere and only suffering on TV
Neither side will ever give up their smallest right along the road to peace

Israel launched it's latest campaign against Hamas on Tuesday
Two days later Hamas shot back and killed five Israeli soldiers
So thousands dead and wounded on both sides most of them middle eastern civilians
They fill the children full of hate to fight an old man's war and die upon the road to peace

"And this is our land we will fight with all our force" say the Palastinians and the Jews
Each side will cut off the hand of anyone who tries to stop the resistance
If the right eye offends thee then you must pluck it out
And Mahmoud Abbas said Sharon had been lost out along the road to peace

Once Kissinger said "we have no friends, America only has interests"
Now our president wants to be seen as a hero and he's hungry for re-election
But Bush is reluctant to risk his future in the fear of his political failures
So he plays chess at his desk and poses for the press 10,000 miles from the road to peace

In the video that they found at the home of Abdel Mahdi (Shahmay)
He held a Kalashnikov rifle and he spoke with a voice like a boy
He was an excellent student, he studied so hard, it was as if he had a future
He told his mother that he had a test that day out along the road to peace

The fundamentalist killing on both sides is standing in the path of peace
But tell me why are we arming the Israeli army with guns and tanks and bullets?
And if God is great and God is good why can't he change the hearts of men?
Well maybe God himself is lost and needs help
Maybe God himself he needs all of our help
Maybe God himself is lost and needs help
He's out upon the road to peace

Well maybe God himself is lost and needs help
Maybe God himself he needs all of our help
And he's lost upon the road to peace
And he's lost upon the road to peace
Out upon the road to peace.

In your face Sharon. That'll teach you to celebrate prematurely.

Kudos for Sharon's spin move after the actual retail price is revealed.

The Sharon Osbourne show has been cancelled for a fair amount of time, so it's pretty fair to say any interview on her show is going to be old.