There are in place the instruments for the international community to seek redress on behalf of the Palestinian people. The world is witnessing one of the most outrageous events of inhuman and inhumane acts of state terror inflicted on a defenseless population by a world-class military power. The United Nations is the holder of such instruments: the Geneva Conventions, the International Court of Justice, The Crimes Against Humanity Court, etc. But, who would initiate action? The United Nations has been reduced to impotence by the veto power held among five others by the United States. The United States has vetoed nearly one hundred resolutions condemning Israel. As a moral and legal power the United States is totally discredited by its own unilateral behavior in Iraq, Chile, etc., etc. What is left for Civil Society around the world? Perhaps a boycott of the kind that brought the Apartheid regime down in South Africa.
The idea that there is a "war" between Israel and Hamas has been advanced by the Israeli government and echoed by the usual supporters: the US political elite and the media, most notably the New York Times. Hamas' rocket attacks are mostly symbolic, one can count with the fingers of one hand the number of casualties (killed and wounded) by such inept means, which are obviously bait for Israel's out proportion attacks utilizing top of the world mass destruction technology. Hamas stupidly plays the game that the Israelis want them to play. This is not a war, this is a case of occupation of territories that belong to a neighbor utilizing brutal repression to keep its people in line. The indifference of the Western powers is reminiscent of their acquiescence to the persecution of "inferior races" by the Fascists prior and during WWII. What brought down the Apartheid regime was the world-wide boycott and the isolation of South Africa from the rest of the world. That is unlikely to happen with respect to Israel, which is not only the advance military force of the US into the Middle East and Asia, but an extension of US domestic culture and politics.
The Israeli occupation of Palestine is far worse than South Africa's apartheid. The Afrikaners committed massacres, but nothing comparable to the scale that Israel has inflicted on the Palestinian people. The book by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, describes only the beginning of 70 years of brutal repression. How can one explain that the victims of the Holocaust should be the perpetrators of the same?
As a college professor for a long time I have admired the clarity, intelligence, honesty, integrity and ethics of Juan Cole and his writings. One wishes that people who guide this nation (and by implication the rest of the world) would borrow some of what this man has to offer, which they lack scandalously.
I value your perspective and the intellectual integrity that goes with it.
Please restore my name among your contributors/supporters.
There are in place the instruments for the international community to seek redress on behalf of the Palestinian people. The world is witnessing one of the most outrageous events of inhuman and inhumane acts of state terror inflicted on a defenseless population by a world-class military power. The United Nations is the holder of such instruments: the Geneva Conventions, the International Court of Justice, The Crimes Against Humanity Court, etc. But, who would initiate action? The United Nations has been reduced to impotence by the veto power held among five others by the United States. The United States has vetoed nearly one hundred resolutions condemning Israel. As a moral and legal power the United States is totally discredited by its own unilateral behavior in Iraq, Chile, etc., etc. What is left for Civil Society around the world? Perhaps a boycott of the kind that brought the Apartheid regime down in South Africa.
The idea that there is a "war" between Israel and Hamas has been advanced by the Israeli government and echoed by the usual supporters: the US political elite and the media, most notably the New York Times. Hamas' rocket attacks are mostly symbolic, one can count with the fingers of one hand the number of casualties (killed and wounded) by such inept means, which are obviously bait for Israel's out proportion attacks utilizing top of the world mass destruction technology. Hamas stupidly plays the game that the Israelis want them to play. This is not a war, this is a case of occupation of territories that belong to a neighbor utilizing brutal repression to keep its people in line. The indifference of the Western powers is reminiscent of their acquiescence to the persecution of "inferior races" by the Fascists prior and during WWII. What brought down the Apartheid regime was the world-wide boycott and the isolation of South Africa from the rest of the world. That is unlikely to happen with respect to Israel, which is not only the advance military force of the US into the Middle East and Asia, but an extension of US domestic culture and politics.
Thank you, Mark. I must read the Rokash book.
The Israeli occupation of Palestine is far worse than South Africa's apartheid. The Afrikaners committed massacres, but nothing comparable to the scale that Israel has inflicted on the Palestinian people. The book by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, describes only the beginning of 70 years of brutal repression. How can one explain that the victims of the Holocaust should be the perpetrators of the same?
As a college professor for a long time I have admired the clarity, intelligence, honesty, integrity and ethics of Juan Cole and his writings. One wishes that people who guide this nation (and by implication the rest of the world) would borrow some of what this man has to offer, which they lack scandalously.