Never Forget. Never Again.

I missed a grim anniversary: the bombing of Hiroshima, but 65 years ago today we dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki, and that shouldn't be forgotten, either. 

Opinions differ as to the severity of the war crime and whether or not it was necessary for America to drop nuclear weapons on two cities filled with civilians.  I used to be in the "horrifying but necessary" camp before The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb moved me into the "horrifying and unnecessary" camp.  Then I found out about about the firebombings that came before it, and all of the other brutalities that get swept under various rugs, and learned just how brutal humans, even my own exalted countrymen, could be.  It doesn't matter to me that other nations perpetrated horrors.  Tit-for-tat is never an excuse.  Preventing a worse horror is, but only just.

From what I've learned, my country could have avoided becoming the first (and, so far, thankfully, the only) country to drop atomic weapons on cities full of civilians.  We didn't have to set that precedent.  There was this word, "unconditional," we stuck in front of "surrender," though, and somehow our leaders at the time didn't think it worth enemy lives to negotiate something that would have ended the war just as effectively.  Maybe it's because I'm young and wasn't there, but I can't see how allowing Japan to retain some dignity could be such a sticking point that we decided it was better to drop nukes instead.

And maybe something good came of it, because the horror of those images has certainly given others pause.  It has made quite a lot of people, powerful and common alike, pull back from the abyss, recoil in horror, swear these terrible weapons will not be used.  Not today.  Not for this.  (Of course, MAD helped.)

War, of course, is brutal, and brutal decisions are made in the fog of it.  That doesn't mean we get to excuse what we have done.  Explain it, perhaps, certainly swear, "Never again."  There will never be a perfect war, a perfectly just war, a perfect application of the minimum necessary force, but that reality doesn't excuse and cannot be used to condone atrocity.  It should never allow us to blithely apply the maximum force we're capable of.  It should not allow us to forgive and forget our own sins.

When I think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I feel sadness, horror and outrage.  But I also remember an experience Joseph Campbell related in Transformations of Myth Through Time:

I was in Japan and was taken to Nagasaki, where the second atom bomb was dropped.  I was with a group of Japanese, and I must say I felt mortified, being an American, and responsible - remotely - for this horrific act.  The extent of the devastation was still evident.  They have an enormous image just pointing up, exactly to the place from which the bomb came.  My Japanese friends felt no malice, no sense of my being to blame.  We had been enemies, pairs of opposites, two aspects of the same thing - beautiful.

So forgiveness is possible, on both sides.  But never forget.

Never again.

Nagasaki Memorial

(This post is timed to appear at 11:01am, August 9th, Nagasaki time.)

So You Say Your Friends Got Blown To Bits...

...half your face got blown off, and now you have inescapable nightmares, flashbacks, and all the other symptoms of PTSD?  No sweat!  Just think positive, man!

I mentioned before that they were looking at this "positive thinking" program for vets with PTSD - something that seems like a way to cut costs rather than treat vets' trauma.

Now psychologist Bryant Welch says the program has no scientific validity:

Johnny had been with his platoon when they were attacked by enemy fire and pinned down for the better part of two days. Much of his face was blown off. His two closest buddies died gruesome and agonizing deaths while lying on top of him.

As a psychologist, my work with him was not medical. It was to address the psychological trauma, then newly labeled as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD], that haunted him and to help him "grieve" that much of his life had been blown away along with his face.

The pain of his surgeries was nothing compared to the night terrors that undercut his every attempt at sleep. The flashbacks that occurred daily put him back in the jungles of Viet Nam and the noises in the hallways became the sounds of advancing Viet Cong. Nurses and doctors could suddenly become menacing figures who he believed had captured him and were about to torture him. He was terrified to take his medications and unexpected noises could leave him shaken for hours.

Emotionally, on the best of days Johnny fluctuated between agitated depression and complete numbness in which he was unable to feel at all. He felt cut off from his family and felt enraged and misunderstood when they tried to "cheer him up." Johnny was not actively homicidal, like some of the PTSD vets on his psychiatry ward, but he was consumed with thoughts of suicide.

[snip]

As a psychologist who has treated many serious cases of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, it was a jaw dropping experience to learn that under a new $119 million military program these young men and women who have sacrificed so much will have their PTSD addressed with a superficial, psychological treatment based loosely on Norman Vincent Peale's Power of Positive Thinking, known in this generation's iteration as "positive psychology" or the "psychology of optimism.

There is no evidence that the techniques of positive psychology can prevent or ameliorate the effects of PTSD. When its adherents' attempt to extrapolate simplistic studies done on normal junior high students to military combat troops struggling with military traumas they are misleading the military, the public, and, most importantly, the troops.

You have got to be fucking kidding me.  As someone who suffered a mild case of PTSD many years ago, I can assure you that the power of positive thinking isn't what got me through.  You can't use optimism and positive thinking to haul you up from those depths.  Oh, I'm sure there are very rare exceptions - there's a freak in every bunch - but for fuck's sake, telling someone who goes through a horrific trauma to be optimistic and have a positive outlook is the most ridiculous fucking thing I've ever heard.

If our government pulls this shit on the troops, they deserve to be prosecuted for intentional infliction of extreme emotional distress.

Pearl Harbor Day

Sinking of the USS Arizona

It's been 68 years since Pearl Harbor.  Raise a glass to the memory of those who served, my darlings.

Neocons Desperate for Yet Another War

So, Obama has a chat with Iran and comes away with all sorts of goodies.  It looks like diplomacy will do quite well dealing with any nuclear threat on that front.

This is the neocons' worst nightmare, and they are now busily trying to drum up another war.  Here's Lindsey Graham and his good buddy Saxby, working themselves to orgasm over the idea of total war:

Sen. Lindsey Graham believes the US should shoulder the responsibility of attacking Iran if an attack is necessary. An attack by the US is preferable to an an attack by Israel, according to Graham.

"I think an Israeli attack on Iran is a nightmare for the world, because it will rally the Arab world around Iran and they're not aligned now. It's too much pressure to put on Israel," Graham told Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday.

He continued, "Military action should be the last resort anyone looks at, and I would rather our allies and us take military action if it's necessary."

But Graham doesn't think an attack should be limited to airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. "If we use military action against Iran, we should not only go after their nuclear facilities. We should destroy their ability to make conventional war. They should have no planes that can fly and no ships that can float," said Graham.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss agrees. "The problem with military action also is that you're probably not going to be able to stop the production of uranium by just a simple airstrike. Lindsey's right. It's an all or nothing deal. And is it worth that at this point in time when we know they have the capability. We can slow them down, but a full-out military strike is what it would take," said Chambliss.

I'm surprised they didn't just suggest dropping enough nuclear weapons on the place to wipe everybody out.  Maybe they're afraid that wouldn't be enough fun.

Well, the neocons can't allow us to have peace through that icky touchy-feely diplomacy stuff, so nothing for it but to try to replay the run-up to the Iraq war:

Helene Cooper typed up the fears of anonymous officials wondering if the agreements in the first round of talks, including a deal where Iran would ship its enriched uranium to Russia to ensure that it would be used for peaceful purposes, were just a tactic by the Iranians to "buy time." Practically the same article popped up in the LA Times, as "experts and government officials" questioned whether the timeline for IAEA inspectors to visit the recently revealed facility at Qom represented another stall tactic. Amid this suspicion, neocon emeritus Elliott Abrams surmised that Iranians would not oppose a military attack on their own country, because there's nothing dissidents enjoy more than bombs raining on their heads (the reformers don't want sanctions either, it will hurt ordinary Iranians rather than the ruling regime). And today, this bombshell is splashed across the New York Times:

Senior staff members of the United Nations nuclear agency have concluded in a confidential analysis that Iran has acquired “sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” atom bomb.

[snip]

They even had to go to Canada to drop one rumor:

Iran has tried to acquire materials for a nuclear weapon in Canada, according to a top official in Canada's Border Services Agency.

George Webb, head of the agency's Counter Proliferation Section, says customs officers have seized centrifuge parts (centrifuges are used to enrich uranium) and electronic components for bombs and guidance systems.

Webb made the claims in a story published Thursday in Canada's National Post [...]

The article, however, offers nothing to corroborate Webb's claims and reports them without even a hint of skepticism, except to say that "The devices can be used in peaceful nuclear plants but are also required to produce nuclear weapons" and to note that there have been few arrests and no convictions in connection with Webb's far-reaching claims.

But skepticism is merited. The government claims and breathless media reporting – without adequate evidence – that Iran is a grave and looming threat is reminiscent of the same claims and media coverage in the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as several commentators have pointed out. Remember Saddam Hussein's horde of yellowcake uranium?

Indeed.

Don't forget, America: we've heard this bullshit before. Fool us once...

Let's not let it happen again.

Sick, Twisted Fucktards

Since the right likes to bash liberals as freedom-hating fascists, since they love to moan about how cruel and mean and what a blight on the national discourse we are, I'd like to know how they explain this:

Here is some rightwing loon named Ralph Peters:

Pretending to be impartial, the self-segregating personalities drawn to media careers overwhelmingly take a side, and that side is rarely ours. Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media.

Sounds crazy, right? Beyond the pale, right? Deliberately killing journalists? That's something we would never do, that's NoKo/Saddam-level totalitarianism, plain and simple.

Well, Mr. and Ms. America, I got some news for you. It's already happened.

No one will be surprised to learn it's the Bush regime that killed journalists. And no one will be surprised that Ralph Peters is the kind of whackaloon, murderous fuckhead that Faux News loves to parade around as an august figure of authority:

Update: from digby

This wasn't the only wacko thing the sick piece of work Ralph Peters said today on Fox. Get this:

"We're dealing with people who aren't human anymore. They're monsters. And monsters deserve to die."

So, advocating wholesale murder of journalists and the dehumanization and murder of Gitmo detainees isn't beyond the pale in the right's opinion. Something we should keep in mind come election season. If America puts the right back in charge of the country, what little moral authority we have left is dead.

They have no moral authority. None.

Memorial Day Roundup

A lot of bloggers had good Memorial Day posts up today. Just in case you missed them, here they are.

Think Progress has stats showing that America's failing her vets.

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars reminds us: For Every Death, A Hole in the World

DarkSyde at Daily Kos takes us Beyond Memorial Day, and reminds us that there are all too many veterans we're forgetting.

And Digby celebrates the moral Heroes, who deserve just as much praise as the physical variety.

We may not always support the war these men and women are sent to fight. But we will always support them.

Holy War

So, I'm assuming most of you have seen that delicious GQ article that takes Rummy apart from tip to toe. If not, go read. It's definitely an education.

One of Rummy's favorite tricks was putting Bible verses on fancy war pictures to whet Monkey Boy George's appetite for playing Holy War President. Here's one of those cover sheets, which disgraced the President's daily intelligence briefing:



Tristero puts this together with a few choice Bush quotes and comes to the logical conclusion:

Genuinely sickening. It makes you realize that this remark from September '01 was no idle slip of the tongue:

On Sunday, Bush warned Americans that "this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile."

And also:

In the programmeElusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, which starts on Monday, the former Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath says Mr Bush told him and Mahmoud Abbas, former prime minister and now Palestinian President: "I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.' And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George go and end the tyranny in Iraq,' and I did."

We must never, ever forget: for eight long years, this country was run by delusional, paranoid idiots. Whenever they took a break from the hard work of lining the plush coffers of their already-wealthy pals, they thought they were on a mission from God.

He's right. We must remember. And we must remind our fellow voters that this is the kind of shit that happens when you let a hyper-religious fucktard with an entitlement complex and delusions of world domination take the reins of the world's biggest spender on military toys.

Let's not make that mistake again.

Why Do Cons Hate Our Troops?

Remember the old days, when every time Democrats attempted to place limits on the firehose of money for Bush's endless war, they got painted as troop-hating cowards? Well, sez I, turnabout's fair play. If playing games with Iraq War supplementals is the height of irresponsible troop-hating, well, Cons are irresponsible troop-haters:

Rumblings up on Capitol Hill: Democratic leadership is worried they might not have the votes to pass the war supplemental. The House is due to vote on the emergency $96.7 billion dollar supplemental, which would fund the war in Afghanistan and Iraq through the next year, later this week. But opposition is possible from an unlikely place, House Republicans:

Republicans might attempt to provoke a partisan fight during floor debate over the future of the 241 detainees held at the military's detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. However, Democratic leaders could thwart GOP efforts to thrust Guantanamo into the spotlight by opting for a closed rule.

The bill does not contain the $80 million needed to close Guantanamo Bay, but Republicans are disconcerted because they tried several times without success to insert language into the bill which would keep detainees from being transferred to US soil.

Maybe I should call Rep. Dave Reichert (R - Parts of King County Dumb Enough to Vote for a Con) and ask him why he hates the troops. That would be fun.

For those of you going "Supplemental? What fucking supplemental?", David Waldman has an explanation for that:

Oh yeah, another thing. I'm sure many of you are wondering what ever happened to the whole, "we're not gonna do supplementals for the war anymore" thing. The wheels turn slowly in Washington. This is a supplemental for fiscal year 2009 (FY09), the regular appropriations bills for which were passed last year in the 110th Congress and under George W. Bush. The FY10 Defense Appropriations (and others which might include other bits of war-related funding) haven't been passed yet. So technically, we're still kind of operating under Bush budgeting until October 1, 2009, when the new fiscal year begins.

I know, I know.

And finally, for those of you looking for some sport: Remember that $870 million in flu pandemic preparedness the Senate "moderates" were so intent on cutting out of the stimulus (right before we confronted... a flu pandemic)?

This supplemental has $2 billion for it. Ha ha!

Gives you ideas, doesn't it? Every time the Cons cut funding for important stuff, include nearly three times that amount in an emergency war supplemental. Then distract them by trying to include money for closing Guantanamo. Brilliant. Especially since, if they try to cut this one, we now have a ready-made retort, inspired by their own bullshit: "Why do you want our troops to die of pandemic flu?"

I shall enjoy this entirely too much.

The Wisdom of Readers

Last December, inspired by George at Decrepit Old Fool, I wrote about cluster bombs and worldviews. Tonight, I received an incredibly insightful comment from Longo05. I'm reprinting it here in full, because it deserves an audience:

Hey, I literally stumbled onto this blog via stumbledupon and thought I would articulate with you on this issue.

Background: I am a current college student and former Marine Sergeant. I helped facilitate communication for combat operations in an infantry regiment. I am generally liberal and a fierce individualist. I don’t believe in nationalism, but do believe in military service. I say this mostly because I feel that the speaker is as integral to what is spoken, and whom it is spoken to.

I couldn’t agree more with you about accountability, and the individual accountability that a person is responsible when he or she fires a weapon. I think that the same goes for any munitions fired, generally. How can you not qualify a statement like that?

When it comes to cluster bombs, they are indeed force multipliers, but were also designed for a certain type of warfare. It is important to clarify that cluster bombs were not designed for urban operations; they were designed to engage large-scale, regular forces on a field of battle. These weapons are used in what we typically call a ‘force-centric’ battle, meaning that the battle is fought in an attempt to reduce the number of enemy combatants. This is also known as conventional warfare, if there are such things as conventions on a battlefield. I am afraid this is an oxymoronic term.

The current operations in Afghanistan are considered non-conventional in nature, or asymmetric, or ‘population-centric.’ These are terms generally used to describe counter-insurgency, or COIN operations. It is the goal, ideally, to subordinate ‘hard power’ (military operations) to ‘soft power’ operations, such as: political means, stability operations, reconstruction, or any other operations that help to secure the local population and make the populations feel secure and safe. (A significant portion of these concepts and terms are explained in the U.S. Army Counter-Insurgency Manual, or can be found in a historical and contextual book called “Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife” by John Nagal )

The best way to achieve these operational goals is to place enough security on the ground to achieve an overt and trustworthy relationship among the local populace. This is why most people agree that the ‘surge’ in troops, which Gen. Petraeus instituted, in Iraq was instrumental in quelling, at least the last portion, of the insurgency.

These operations call for exactly the opposite of what the person you cited described. In fact, the best way to attempt to achieve victory in Afghanistan is too indeed place more troops in potential danger and then to place them in more danger by subordinating military operations to stability operations. In fact, tying our, if I may, hands is exactly what needs to be done.

As a matter of fact, many NYTimes article actually attributed a significant number of Afghani civilian deaths to targets of opportunity, i.e. unplanned missions on suspected combatants, and most notably to a lack of proper ground troops to monitor and ensure enemy status. This is something that military commanders are realizing more and more every day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/world/asia/23military.html?pagewanted=print

There are countless articles that show that Defense Secretary Gates wants to reduce the military operations and budget in order to generate more Dept. of State responsibility and personnel, to better facilitate the ‘soft power’ function.

I think that whoever may have said that information that you cited was misinformed and had no right to speak on the matter. I also think that the term collateral damage is a term popularized by under sensitive and over stimulated Hollywood commandos ravaged by an antiquated machismo, bravado culture. I have never heard the term collateral damage in any military operation. I have heard civilian casualties and accidental, but I will note that they are usually attached to unfortunate, and senseless.

I think you might be surprised in how much caution is taken, how much regard for human life is honored, as it rightfully should. A friend, and subordinate, of mine was in Iraq during Operation Phantom Fury during OIF III, when they surrounded Fallujah and after a forced evacuation, considered anything left in the city a combatant. During house-to-house sweeps, they discovered a family that had not evacuated, and under those military parameters were within their jurisdiction to fire upon them.

Rightfully so, they identified the family and took the initiative to facilitate the families evacuation. They even ensured that they were attended by a medical staff and properly fed and hydrated (as they were under blockade-type siege for days). This situation cost them time and resources that were taken away from the conflict, but they did the right thing. They didn’t just level houses to save their own Asses.

I don’t think that service members go out and dehumanize their enemies. It has been my experience that we don’t dehumanize the enemy because we don’t want to take lightly our responsibility. It’s easy to picture service members as systematic robots, if you watch enough bullshit television. I hope that people don’t, just as I have always explained to my Marines that the people we face are brothers, fathers, and sons as well. I explain that we need to treat the enemy as humanly as possible when they surrender, just as I was explained to and honored. I think it commonly known that service members, on both sides, are just trying to do right by our respective countries. We’re just trying to get home too, and will willingly get enemy combatants home as best we can, especially if they don’t want to fight.

I would also disagree that war is sometimes necessary. I think that it is intelligently agreeable that war is the worse possible event and the biggest tragedy of politics. War is not a sport, it is not a pastime, it is not romantic, and it is not necessary. No one person’s life is more valuable than another’s. No one country’s troops are more valuable than another’s. We’re all equal, and equally fucked and wrong when war is declared (or not in this instance).

I think that if we are going to blame people, we should start with our democratic constituency, politicians, and the media, every American that started the war, or sat by idly as it began. Militaries are coercive tools of diplomacy; so much as guns are tools of shooters. We believe that a shooter is responsible for the rounds they fire, and I believe that politicians are responsible for militaries they deploy. There is nothing natural about killing, and nothing normal about dehumanizing killing, not even for glittering generalities, like Democracy and Freedom.

I have heard that ‘it is better to fight them over there, than over here’ and that ‘with us or against us’ rhetoric too and I think that all those generalities are as idiotic as the people they work on. Generalities on subject matter as multifaceted and complex as these issues are cannon fodder for the simple-minded and should be dismissed with equally generalized sayings, with starkly opposing views such as: “Fighting for peace, is as productive as screwing for virginity.”

It's going to take some time, and more than one reading, before I've absorbed all the lessons Longo05 managed to pack in here. And I hope he starts a blog of his own. I've got a lot to learn from him. I think we'd all benefit.

Muchas gracias, mi amigo. And the same to all of my wonderfully wise readers. You guys make this all worthwhile.

(An extra tip o' the shot glass to whoever it was put me up on Stumbleupon. Thankee kindly! Welcomes to all those who dropped by for the cluster bombs and stuck around for the rest.)

Where Are They Now? The Mercenaries Formerly Known As Blackwater Edition

Blackwater's stock hasn't been rising. The company's come under fire for firing on Iraqi civilians, and both Iraq and the State Department planted a judicious boot up their arses. What's a band of murderous mercenaries to do but change their name? Because, like Cons, Blackwater - um, excuse me, Xe - thinks it's all about branding rather than the product.

They maybe shoulda researched the name first:

Over at my home blog of Mercury Rising, one of my co-bloggers, MEC, noticed something a wee bit interesting about Blackwater's name change (and, they apparently hoped, reputation change) to "Xe" -- namely, that there's already an "XE" out there and they care about their copyright:

"XE”, “XE.COM”, “UNIVERSAL CURRENCY CONVERTER”, the XE logo, the spinning currency logo, and other identifying marks of XE are and shall remain the trade-marks and trade names and exclusive property of XE CORPORATION, and any unauthorized use of these marks is unlawful.

Deary, deary me. Looks like the corporate lawyers shall be rolling up their sleeves and deploying the cease-and-desist letters. And in a battle between an army of lawyers and an army of mercs, I know who my money's on.

If anyone wants to float some potential names for Blackwater now they've lost their first choice, I'll be happy to pass them along.

Gaza: Israel Withdraws

Even in the afterglow of Inauguration Day, we're keeping up on the news from Gaza, my darlings. It wouldn't do to get distracted by shiny things. Considering how the ongoing crisis between Israel and the Palestinians destabilizes the Middle East, it's worth keeping a close eye on.

The news is mixed. On the good side, Israel has withdrawn its forces:

The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday said it had withdrawn all of its soldiers from Gaza, three and a half weeks after launching Operation Cast Lead against Hamas in the coastal territory.

"As of this morning, the last of the Israel Defence Forces soldiers have left the Gaza Strip and the forces have deployed outside of Gaza and are prepared for any occurrences," an army spokesman said.

On the bad side, there's been mortar fire and some shootings:

Israel reported mortar shelling from Gaza on Tuesday. The Palestinians have said Israeli troops shot to death two farmers since the truce took hold.

[snip]

The Israel Air Force on Tuesday attacked areas in the Gaza Strip from which Palestinians fired mortar shells. The Israel Defense Forces said that about eight mortar shells were shot from near a central Gaza refugee camp, apparently by Hamas. Two of the shells landed in the Strip and the rest fell in open territory in the western Negev near the border.

At this stage, the IDF is holding its fire after its attack at around 6 P.M. Tuesday.

The Palestinians also fired light weapons into Israel on Tuesday, from both north and south of the Kissufim crossing. An explosive charge was also apparently set off.

Not good.

The reporting's too sketchy to determine what exactly is happening - after the lies Israel told during the invasion, I'm disinclined to believe their claims that it's all Hamas's fault. But I'm also not going to be shocked in the least if some pissed-off Palestinians have ignored the cease-fire in the interest of extracting a pound or two of flesh.

After all, there's plenty to be pissed about:

As outside observers enter Gaza, we’re learning more about what has happened during the Israeli attack. What they are seeing is devastating - and is leading to accusations of Israeli war crimes.

[snip]

Amnesty International reported Monday on the findings of a four-person fact-finding team who have just been allowed to Gaza. The team included a weapons expert who said:

"Yesterday, we saw streets and alleyways littered with evidence of the use of white phosphorus, including still burning wedges and the remnants of the shells and canisters fired by the Israeli army…White phosphorus is a weapon intended to provide a smokescreen for troop movements on the battlefield. It is highly incendiary, air burst and its spread effect is such that it that should never be used on civilian areas".

And their conclusion is that the Israeli use in Gaza “is a war crime:”

"Such extensive use of this weapon in Gaza's densely populated residential neighbourhoods is inherently indiscriminate. Its repeated use in this manner, despite evidence of its indiscriminate effects and its toll on civilians, is a war crime," said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty's researcher on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

They've left behind plenty of outrage, and there's that small matter of having destroyed the very security forces that might have enforced a cease-fire.

It's not over. Not by any means.

Gaza: What Israel Gained

For now, the fighting has stopped. Bombs aren't falling, rockets aren't firing. It may seem to a naive observer that Israel met its objectives.

But look deeper, and you see that all they've done is make a horrible situation worse.

The threat of imminent violence is still there:

The 22-day war ended without surrender. Neither Israel nor Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls Gaza, made any concessions, except to stop fighting temporarily.

"The essence of this is you have two completely separate cease-fires, with no underpinnings in them of agreement or understanding, and no resolution of the original causes of the conflict," said Alistair Crooke, a former British intelligence officer and former European Union adviser on Palestinian issues. "On one level, it's back to square one, and all of the elements of the situation are back to where they were before the war."

Although Hamas sustained the heavier losses, by a lopsided margin, Israeli officials acknowledged that the movement could quickly rebuild its political and military wings and that it still posed a potent long-term threat to Israel.

The chance of enduring peace is further away than ever, especially since right-wing hawks are poised to poison Israeli politics still further:

And prospects for the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and Syria that have been central to Kadima's platform look shakier than ever.

Many believe the Israeli operation has further weakened the legitimacy of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the negotiating partner on the Palestinian side.

"I don't think we have a peace agenda now - Syria doesn't want to talk any more, the Palestinians are in a very delicate situation," says David Nachmias, Professor of Government at the Interdisciplinary Center, an academic institute north of Tel Aviv.

[snip]

And Prof Doron points out that an electorate that was already right-leaning has moved further right, as evident in gains for the Yisrael Beiteinu party of far-right Avigdor Lieberman.

They've earned a reputation for senseless brutality:

"We walked at the head of a group of women and we waved white flags. We managed to pass three houses on the street and then I saw an Israeli soldier 40 meters away aiming his weapon at us," said Yasmin A-Najar. "I thought he wanted us to come closer. Ruwahiya and I continued to walk and suddenly the soldier shot at us."

Yasmin was wounded in her right leg and Ruwahiya fell on the street with her head bleeding. The rest of the women panicked and scattered, hiding while the shooting continued.

Yasmin said she tried to return and help Ruwahiya but the soldiers fired at her. They also shot at the ambulance driver who arrived and he was forced to turn back, she said. When Ruwahiya was finally evacuated at 8 P.M., she was already dead.

And Hamas is not broken:

The top Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, said Israel had "failed to achieve its goals".

In a speech broadcast on Hamas TV, he said: "God has granted us a great victory, not for one faction, or party, or area, but for our entire people."

Hamas said it would hold fire for a week to give Israel time to withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip.

A spokesman for Hamas' military wing, Abu Ubaida, said its rocket capabilities had not been affected by the conflict.

"We hereby stress that our rockets are being developed and are piling up, and that the enemy will receive more rockets and God willing, our rockets will hit more targets," he said in a news conference broadcast live on Hamas' al-Aqsa TV.

I fail to see how this insanity served Israel's long-term interests. All they've done is created sympathy for the Palestinians and broken fertile ground for extremism and terrorism.

Gaza: Returning to Devastation

Hamas has turned the tables on Israel by declaring its own cease-fire and reiterating its demands:

Hamas announced an immediate cease-fire by its militants and allied groups in Gaza on Sunday, giving Israel a week to pull out its troops from the coastal territory.

Israel, which mounted an offensive against Hamas three weeks ago to halt years of rocket attacks, agreed to silence its guns and ground its aircraft early Sunday.

"We the Palestinian resistance factions declare a cease-fire from our side in Gaza and we confirm our stance that the enemy's troops must withdraw from Gaza within a week," said Damascus-based Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk.

Ayman Taha, a Hamas official in Cairo for talks with Egypt on a truce deal, demanded that Israel open all of Gaza'sw border crossings to allow in food and other goods to meet the "basic needs for our people."

This is a brilliant move on their part. It shows they're willing to play the diplomacy game, and takes back the initiative. Hamas is bruised, battered and bloody, but refuses to back down. I think this is a signal to the rest of the world that, despite attempts to declare them nothing more than a terrorist group, they're a duly-elected government that intends to govern. And they're going to have to be treated as such.

I'm not sure about the borders, but it looks like Israeli troops may soon be leaving Palestinian soil:

Olmert told European leaders visiting Jerusalem on Sunday evening that in the wake of the cease-fire, Israel planned to withdraw all of its troops as soon as possible. He said that such a move would come when the situation between Israel and Gaza was "stable."

That stability may be a wee bit hard to achieve:

Meanwhile, although Hamas's leadership said they'd stop firing missiles, the missiles have kept firing. Why? Well, at a guess "Hamas's leadership" is a lot less powerful than it used to be since the Israelis assassinated most of it. And the security forces who used to make sure that missiles didn't get fired if Hamas's Leadership didn't want them to be fired, well they were the first and main target of Israel's strikes. It's almost as if Israel wanted to make sure that Hamas's leadership couldn't control their military wing.

That's a recipe for catastrophe, and Israel won't have anyone to blame but themselves. Hamas showed itself capable of controlling other militant groups' activities during the six-month cease-fire. With their security forces destroyed, angry Palestinians with access to rockets won't have much standing in their way. Just the excuse Israel will need for yet another invasion.

Of course, invading under indictments may prove a little tricky:

Israel is preparing for a wave of lawsuits by pro-Palestinian organizations overseas against Israelis involved in the Gaza fighting, claiming they were responsible for war crimes due to the harsh results stemming from the IDF's actions against Palestinian civilians and their property.

Senior Israeli ministers have expressed serious fears during the past few days about the possibility that Israel will be pressed to agree to an international investigation of the losses among non-combatants during Operation Cast Lead; or alternately, that Israelis will be faced with personal suits, such as happened to Israeli officers who were accused of war crimes in Britain for their actions during the second intifada.

It wouldn't sadden me a bit to see Olmert and a few other of Israel's hawks stuffed in the Hague with our own war criminals. Should we all splurge to buy them a vacation in Amsterdam?

Israel's doing its best, now that the true extent of the destruction will be revealed, to craft its alibi:

With this in mind, Israel is reportedly “readying a new offensive — the battle for public opinion.” AFP reports Israel has begun compiling information to try to prove that many of the 4,000 residential buildings, 51 government buildings, and 20 mosques it hit during the offensive were legitimate targets used by Hamas militants. At least six Israeli ministers will be “fanning out to different countries to press home Israel’s view of the conduct of the war.” Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog said Israel is aiming to prevent an ‘over-dramatization‘ of the facts.”

I'm not quite sure how you can over-dramatize facts that are dramatic enough in and of themselves.

First, an illustration:


That was the death toll before the war even ended. That's a hell of a lot of dead women and children to have to explain.

Then there's the evidence of new weapons used:

Some Palestinian casualties in the Gaza Strip were wounded by a new type of weapon that even doctors with previous experience in war zones do not recognize, according to Dr. Erik Fosse, a Norwegian cardiologist who worked at Gaza's Shifa Hospital for 11 days, during Operation Cast Lead.

However, he added in a telephone conversation from Oslo, most casualties were people hit by shrapnel from conventional explosives.

Fosse, a department head at a university hospital in Oslo, worked in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation and several times in Lebanon, also in 2006. That was when he first heard about the new kind of weapon, but did not see any such wounds with his own eyes.

The unknown weapon appears to mainly affect the body's lower part, he said. It severs the legs, leaving burns around the stump, small punctures in the skin and internal bleeding.

[snip]

Fosse and a Norwegian colleague, Mads Gilbert, arrived in Gaza on December 31 and remained until January 10. They were financed by the Norwegian government.

On his return, Fosse submitted a report to his government in which he accused the IDF of deliberately targeting civilians. Fosse said he believes Israel deliberately chose to attack while Westerners working for international organizations were back home for the Christmas vacation.

"The Palestinian witnesses, as medical workers, are very accurate in their reports, but if we hadn't been there to confirm their testimony, it would all have been presented as Hamas propaganda," he said.

Remember that, when Israel starts presenting its case and dismisses horror after horror as "Hamas propaganda."

Palestinians are left to assess the rubble and try to put their shattered lives back together. This is what they're coming back to:

All day, thousands of Gazans have been rushing back to their neighbourhoods to see what is left after Israel's campaign of bombing and shelling.

Gaping holes and fire-blackened cars litter the streets in the areas hit hardest by the fighting.

I have spoken to some people who say they have not even been able to find their way round their bomb-damaged neighbourhoods, never mind find the remains of their homes.

Many simply turned round and returned to the UN-run schools they fled to amid the fighting.

But for some Gazans even attempting to return home is virtually unimaginable.

Amira al-Girim, 15, lies in a hospital bed with her leg in traction.

She was found alone, bleeding in a house, about four days after she saw her father killed by an Israeli tank shell in front of her.

Her brother and sister died - she thinks in an air strike - as they ran to get help.

Her remaining family thought she too had died, and had already buried the scraps of flesh they thought were her remains in a box.

Let those images sear themselves into your mind. Don't forget. This is what happens when a country responds with disproportionate force to a threat. America did it on a far greater scale than Israel, and for less reason. The war in Iraq and the war in Gaza are inextricably entwined.

We must not forget:

As we wait to see what happens next, it’s important to remember what we’ve just seen. So often we are encouraged to sink into a comfortable amnesia designed to wipe away the news of civilian deaths and the war crimes - whether our own in Iraq and Afghanistan – or now those of our allies and best arms customers in Israel. So let’s recap and remember – and insist on international action.

Last March, Israeli officials met with Condi Rice and then approved a plan for a war on Gaza. By their own admission, Israel signed onto the June 19 cease-fire in order to buy time for preparing for that war – and while Hamas honored the cease-fire, Israel used the world’s focus on the Obama election on November 4 to launch an incursion into Gaza, killing 6 Palestinians – knowing this would provoke a Hamas reaction since it was an act of war. That reaction was then used as an excuse for further Israeli incursions and as the justification of a siege of Gaza, blocking all shipments of food, medicine and fuel to the residents who live in a virtual prison, unable to leave, unable to live with no electricity, starvation level food supplies and a compromised water supply since the fuel needed for the water sanitation plants was not let in. The people of Gaza were reduced to eating bread made from animal feed – and when that ran out, grass. Even with this continuous collective punishment of the people of Gaza, their elected government announced – multiple times – that they would agree to a new cease-fire on the condition that the blockade of supplies be lifted.

Instead, Israel – with its massive PR campaign – claimed that Hamas refused a new cease-fire – and then launched a vicious attack on Gaza.

Over 1300 Gazans have been killed, over 5,000 wounded – one third of those children - and the casualties included medics trying to rescue wounded families, journalists, and more than 50 Gazans who had fled to UN schools for refuge from the fighting. The UN warehouse and all the humanitarian aid in it were destroyed when Israel bombed it– apparently using white phosphorus, setting the building on fire.

There can be no real peace for the people of Gaza until they are allowed self-determination – in the meantime, at least we can insist that Israel open the borders and allow in the humanitarian aid they so desperately need. Let’s not forget them while the world shifts its attention t the celebrations in Washington this week.

We have this chance to take a new direction. With Obama in office, we'll be leaving Iraq to determine its own way forward. We've failed to learn a harsh lesson from the wars of the past several years: we cannot solve terrorism with bombs. We cannot bring peace by raining down destruction. America tried and failed. Israel tried, and I guarantee you that they will also fail.

Peace, if it comes, will be brought about by tough compromises. We cannot call every government we do not like a "terrorist organization." We cannot continue starving populations in order to bend them to our will. We have to start building up rather than tearing down. And we have to grant these people the same rights we hold precious: the right to self-determination, to live without threat of annihilation, to be able to work hard and raise families, to eat and drink and live another day.

We need a Marshall Plan for the Middle East. More will be accomplished by helping them build strong economies and functioning societies than would ever be accomplished at the point of a gun. We need to give aid, help them find a path to peace, but not impose our will on them. We need to give them the tools and the room to discover their own solutions to their internal problems. We need to find ways to work together, and we need to be patient, because the wounds we've inflicting will be a long time healing. Our whole attitude to the region will have to change, or the bombs will fall again.

It's time to give Palestinians and Iraqis the most precious gift of all: a future.

Gaza: Unilateral Cease-Fire

It's nice that the bombs have (mostly) stopped falling, but I call bullshit:

JERUSALEM – Israel declared a unilateral cease-fire in the Gaza Strip on Sunday meant to end three devastating weeks of war against Hamas militants, but just hours later militants fired a volley of rockets into southern Israel, officials said, threatening to reignite the violence.

No one was injured in the assault in which five rockets were fired and four landed. But shortly afterward, security sources in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun reported an airstrike that wounded a woman and her child. The Israeli military had no comment.

In another incident after the truce took hold, militants fired small arms at an infantry patrol, which directed artillery and aircraft to strike back, the military said.

"Israel will only act in response to attacks by Hamas, either rockets into Israel or firing upon our forces," government spokesman Mark Regev said. "If Hamas does deliberately torpedo this cease-fire, they are exposing themselves before the entire international community as a group of cynical extremists that have absolutely no interest in the well-being of the people of Gaza."

Regev would not say what level of violence would provoke Israel to call off the truce.

So, Israel unilaterally declares the war over - for now. Why unilaterally? Because they don't want to deal with Hamas. A bilateral agreement would mean that Israel has to make concessions it doesn't want to make, and would take a few days longer. So hey, presto! temporary peace, unless of course they break it.

Hamas isn't terribly impressed with the whole idea:

In a televised address, Mr Olmert warned militants in Gaza that if they "decide the blows they've been dealt are not sufficient and they are interested in continuing the fight, Israel will be prepared for such and feel free to continue to react with force".

The ceasefire came into effect at 0200.

Hamas has rejected the move, saying any continued Israeli presence in Gaza would be regarded as an act of war.

"The occupier must halt his fire immediately and withdraw from our land and lift his blockade and open all crossings and we will not accept any one Zionist soldier on our land, regardless of the price that it costs," Hamas spokesman Farzi Barhoum said, shortly before the ceasefire began.

I can guarantee you Israel knew that's precisely what Hamas would say. This, my darlings, is a publicity stunt. Listen to what Olmert says and it shouldn't leave you in doubt:

Israel's "goals have been achieved, and even more", Mr Olmert said.

Hamas was badly damaged both militarily and in terms of government infrastructure; rocket factories and dozens of smuggling tunnels had been destroyed, he said.

But the success of the ceasefire depended on Hamas, he said.

Troops would remain in Gaza for the time being and if Hamas held fire, the military would "consider pulling out of Gaza at a time that befits us".

Note the studious ignoring of one of Hamas's major conditions: Israel will pull out of Gaza when it damned well feels like it. Which is guaranteed to provoke Hamas into continuing its attacks, as we've already seen. On top of this, Olmert's claim that Israel made all of its goals and more is utter, unvarnished bullshit. Observe:

Israel stopped its offensive before reaching a long-term solution to the problem of arms smuggling into Gaza, one of the war's declared aims.

And furthermore:

Israel succeeded in hurting Hamas and in creating an international awareness of the need to prevent weapons from being smuggled into the Gaza Strip, but not all the operation's objectives were accomplished. Rocket fire from the Strip into Israel continued throughout, and it will take a few weeks to determine whether they will stop. A humanitarian crisis in Gaza was not averted and it is not clear whether the likelihood of securing the release of abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit has increased.

[snip]

But Hamas' gains cannot be ignored: It has won international legitimacy and sympathy, and its forces still control the Gaza Strip.

So I agree with those observers who believe that Israel stopped bombing at this moment because they want no dead children distracting from Obama's inauguration, which may rather get up Obama's nose at a time when they need to ingratiate him. They stopped bombing in such a way as to almost guarantee Hamas keeps firing rockets at Israel, which will allow Israel to play the victim once more. "See? We wanted peace. We stopped hitting them, all we were doing was everything that led to this conflict in the first place - minor little things like trying to starve Gaza into submission, trying to force a puppet government on them, destroying what little economy and infrastructure they have left."

If the Palestinians resist hitting out after all of the suffering they've endured and will continue to endure under the Israelis, they'll be candidates for sainthood.

These are some of the pieces they're left to pick up.

The group of boys gather defiantly to play soccer each day, war-weary after three weeks of near-constant shelling and dearly in need of some childhood release.

This border town of a couple hundred thousand people has been especially hard hit during the 22-day Israeli assault against Hamas militants in Gaza as Israel seeks to destroy hundreds of tunnels used to smuggle in weapons — but which also provide an economic lifeline for destitute Gazans.

[snip]

The children, along with much of the population, have grown indifferent to the roaring fighter jets overhead and the all-powerful thuds of explosions nearby.

"We're not afraid of the bombs anymore, we play football everyday," 13-year-old Mohammed Gheiss said Saturday. Gheiss is the goalkeeper for the small team of boys playing in a relatively safe wasteland about a mile from the more dangerous border area.

"What's sad is that we're not as many as before," he said, pointing at the improvised tent nearby for the wake of his friend, Eissa Ermallat.

Eissa, 12, died a day earlier, hit by an unmanned Israeli warplane attack while collecting firewood, said his father, Mohammed Ermallat, who led the group of mourners.

Eissa's friend, 12-year-old Amir Jeradat, was unable to attend the wake, laid up in an-Najar hospital just 100 yards away with a fractured arm from the same attack.

"We heard the drone but we didn't see it until it fell a meter from us," the boy said. "We were just playing, it was calm, I don't understand."

How do you explain such things to children? How will they grow up remembering anything other than bombs falling senselessly as they try to play?

There's so much that's inexplicable:

Being from Gaza these days is a burden. Everyone who knows me is asking about my family. And all I can answer is how they were four days ago when I could reach them last. They have no electricity now, and I can only hope they are alright.

I can tell you how they were when I last checked on them.

My cousin Rabah's house was hit directly by an Israeli strike. This is tragic irony. Rabah opposes Hamas deeply. But missiles do not care about such things.

His brother Yehia, also a critic of Hamas, is a local journalist. His office was hit.

[snip]

Until seven days ago, Beit Lahia, our town, had been relatively safer. My family's five-story home suffered substantial damage. In addition, my family's neighborhood mosque was one of the 70 hit by Israel. Seventeen worshipers lost their lives as they were praying. Abu Mazin, my father, is probably not surprised by the worsening situation. He often said, "The past is the good part. At least we know how painful it was. The future is scary because it always gets worse for us Palestinians." He also told me that our town has been hit by what he can only describe as a time machine that took them 50 years backward.

[snip]

Three days ago, I read my cousin's name on the internet, Amal (Arabic for Hope). She was 22 years old. Standing at the kitchen sink, she was fatally wounded. A sniper shot her in the head and she fell to the ground on Omar, my nephew who told me the story, was mortified. Amal passed away when her heart gave up.

Why seventy mosques bombed? Why was a young woman shot in the head by a sniper doing no more than standing at her own kitchen sink? What explains violence this senseless?

Apologists for Israel try. They try to explain (h/t):

Your unit, on the edges of the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya, has taken mortar fire from the crowded refugee camp nearby. You prepare to return fire, and perhaps you notice -- or perhaps you don't, even though it's on your map -- that there is a United Nations school just there, full of displaced Gazans. You know that international law allows you to protect your soldiers and return fire, but also demands that you ensure that there is no excessive harm to civilians. Do you remember all that in the chaos?

This was the Steven Erlanger's lead on a front page story in the New York Times today that went on at great length rationalizing Israeli conduct during their assault on Gaza. It ran the same day that Israel hit a fourth UN school. Four of them. The Times cannot even publish its rationalization of the last UN school bombing before a new one is hit.

Reading it made me physically ill. Move the context to, say, Bosnia. Imagine a front page story in the Times sympathizing with the tough calls that had to be made by those poor Serb gunners bearing down on the besieged city. Or better, to the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War. You know, the place where those sneaky Jewish irregulars refused to come out and fight like a legitimate army and instead hid among the civilian population.

Four UN schools. Seventy mosques. Countless houses where civilians had been told they should gather for safety. All bombed. And sometimes, yes, there were Hamas militants fighting and then fading away. But not in the vast majority of cases. In most, witnesses, including international observers (in case you're one of those who doesn't believe a word those self-serving Palestinians say), advised there had been no rockets fired, no bullets shot. Just sudden and catastrophic death unleashed by an Israeli tank or warplane, for no reason anyone could discern.

And now we have a unilateral cease-fire that does nothing to address any concerns for Israel's. Somehow, some way, the Palestinians are supposed to accept this as their lot. Their fault their children were maimed and killed. Their fault they have lost nearly everything. Their fault they are penned in like cattle, denied food and fuel and a scrap of human dignity.

Israel promises that things will be better if the Palestinians just stop shooting their rockets, but that's been tried and failed. They have no trust left:

And Abu Moustafa does not trust the Israelis to provide for people in Gaza.

"We depended on the tunnels for all our supplies," he said.

"They were our lifeline. Now we are totally cut off from the outside world. The Israelis promise to open the crossings - but they have made those promises before."

So for the moment, while the rockets may have stopped, many of the same uncertainties remain.

There is only temporary relief here. The longer-term future of the Gaza people is as precarious as ever.

Israel believes it gained something with this war. I don't see it. All I see is loss:

But with this latest ceasefire, the town of Rafah is now counting its losses.

Every family has been touched by this war.

At the morgue they were still queuing on Saturday for the bodies. In the corner of the room a small boy wept - a son without a father.

And there are plenty of fathers without sons.

Ziad Al Absi lost three of his boys. A rocket attack on his house destroyed his bedroom, where his children were sleeping around him.

But neighbours say Mr Absi is nothing to do with Hamas.

"I only support Palestinians who kills Israelis," said Mr Absi. "Because the Israelis believe all our children are terrorists."

Deeper hatred

And therein lies the dangerous legacy of this war. The hatred runs deeper than ever, with the next generation of Palestinians already vowing revenge.

There may be a cease-fire. It might even hold for a day, ten days, a few months. But after all of the destruction, lasting peace seems to be among the casualties.

Gaza: What Will Change When the Bombs Stop Falling?

Israel may stop dropping bombs on Gaza as early as today:

Israel’s security cabinet is expected to meet Saturday night to declare a cease-fire in Gaza and will keep its forces there in the short term while the next stage of an agreement with Egypt is worked out.

“It looks as if all the pieces of the puzzle are coming together,” Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said Friday. “There will be discussions tomorrow morning, and it looks like a cabinet meeting will take place tomorrow night. Everyone is very upbeat.”

What amazing timing. I wonder why Israel is suddenly all joyous over the prospect of a cease-fire, when just a few weeks ago they were so anxious to begin this war and haven't shown any signs of letting up since? Surely this wasn't a cynical war of opportunity:

The Israelis attacked now because of two non-military cycles: the news cycle and the presidential cycle. This was like a war by an astrologer: the stars had to be in exactly the right position before the Apaches could start blasting and the Merkavas could roll.

The most important cycle of all is the news cycle. This war happened during international media dead week, between Christmas and New Year. Ordinary people are drunk or hungover or snowed in, and the people who matter, the media players, are off in Cancun and Phuket, soaking up rum and sun with their blackberries turned off. They’re not going to bum out their call girls watching the news from Gaza.

And the Israelis wanted a time when everybody was distracted for a simple reason: asymmetrical war isn’t pretty.

[snip]

The other cycle is more of a gamble: the presidential cycle. I can’t believe nobody’s saying the obvious here: the Israelis want to do this now, once and for all, while Bush is still in office. They know that Bush will let them do whatever they want. Bush and Cheney are literally more extreme than about half of the Israeli electorate.

And on Tuesday, America inaugurates its first African-American president. Barack Obama is something of an unknown quantity. This war is proving costly in the goodwill-toward-Israel category. Forgive me for thinking that the Israeli rulers are thinking along those lines, and deciding that now would be a good time to hammer through a cease-fire. Let a couple of days pass without a fresh atrocity, let the world get distracted by Obama's inauguration, and maybe all of those pictures of dead kids won't be so heavy on everyone's minds.

Is that it, Israel? Is that why everyone's so "upbeat"?

Some people aren't likely to forget so soon:

The medical director of al-Quds hospital has not wept since he helped evacuate several hundred people from the blazing Palestinian Red Crescent (PRC) compound on Thursday night, but he says: "My heart is crying."

He says he is standing next to the smouldering remains of a pharmacy filled with bandages, medicines and other medical supplies, describing the chaos as intensive care patients and premature babies were wheeled onto the street.

The compound was hit twice during heavy fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants in the Tel al-Hawa district in the west of Gaza City.

[snip]

Staff from the hospital say they do not know exactly what hit the building, but the UN has said Israeli tank shells struck three hospitals, including al-Quds, in Thursday's fighting.

When you've targeted UN buildings, family homes, hospitals and countless civilians, simply declaring a cease-fire won't allow people to forget the relentless horror visited upon them.

Some people aren't likely to forgive so soon:

The Palestinian doctor provided Israeli TV viewers with regular updates on Gaza fighting's human toll. But Friday's report was different — with sobs he told how his three daughters and a niece were killed by an Israeli shell.

"I want to know why my daughters were harmed," Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish said on Channel 10. "This should haunt (Israeli Ehud Prime Minister) Olmert his entire life."

Throughout the 21-day war, Abu al-Aish has brought accounts of war's tragedy to Israeli living rooms, making him for many the voice of Palestinian suffering.

[snip]

Gazan officials identified Abu Al-Aish's slain daughters as 22-year-old Bisan, 15-year-old Mayer and 14-year old Aya. His niece was identified as 14-year-old Nour Abu al-Aish.

At least two other daughters were injured.

[snip]

Abu al-Aish, a 55-year-old gynecologist, is a rarity among Palestinians, a Hebrew speaker who trained in two Israeli hospitals. He is also is a known peace activist who was involved in promoting joint Israeli-Palestinian projects, and an academic who studied the affects of war on Gazan and Israeli children. He works at Gaza's main Shifa Hospital.

[snip]

"Everyone knew we were home. Suddenly we were bombed. How can we talk to Olmert and (Foreign Minister) Tzipi Livni after this?" Abu al-Aish told television reporters at the border crossing.

"Suddenly, today when there was hope for a cease-fire, on the last day ... I was speaking with my children, suddenly they bombed us. The doctor who treats Israeli patients."

Israel, you murdered a peace activist's daughters. Listen to him: "How can we talk... after this?" If what you wanted was to hammer the Palestianians until they were soft and pliable, you failed.

Let's take a look at what you wanted, and what, despite your pretty propaganda, you have failed to gain:

Nobody could have anticipated that Israel couldn't bomb its way to peace with Palestine.

Israel hoped that the war in Gaza would not only cripple Hamas, but eventually strengthen its secular rival, the Palestinian Authority, and even allow it to claw its way back into Gaza.

But with each day, the authority, its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and its leading party, Fatah, seem increasingly beleaguered and marginalized, even in the Palestinian cities of the West Bank, which they control. Protesters accuse Mr. Abbas of not doing enough to stop the carnage in Gaza — indeed, his own police officers have used clubs and tear gas against those same protesters.

The more bombs in Gaza, the more Hamas’s support seems to be growing at the expense of the Palestinian Authority, already considered corrupt and distant from average Palestinians.

[snip]

This is a pretty familiar outcome - what rises from the ashes of an attack like this is typically not more moderate or agreeable to the offensive power. Fatah was already disliked and now they are seen to be cooperating, either directly or indirectly, with the bombing of civilians.

And mothers change their minds (h/t):

Luay Suboh, 10, from Beit Lahiya, lost his eyesight and some skin on his face Saturday when, his mother said, a fiery substance clung to him as he darted home from a shelter where his family was staying to pick up clothes.

The substance smelled like burned trash, said Ms. Jaawanah, the mother who fled her home in Zeitoun, who had experienced it too. She had no affection for Hamas, but her sufferings were changing that. “Do you think I’m against them firing rockets now?” she asked, referring to Hamas. “No. I was against it before. Not anymore.”

There are a lot of mothers, Israel, who because of your actions are going to send their surviving children to become suicide bombers. Because they've learned they can't trust you. Because all they've seen from you is a determination to utterly destroy them:

In October of this year, Haaretz published a report regarding the strategies the IDF intended to use to fight "the next war." The article's title: "IDF plans to use disproportionate force in next war":

In an interview Friday with the daily Yedioth Ahronoth, [GOC Northern Command Gadi] Eisenkot presented his "Dahiyah Doctrine," under which the IDF would expand its destructive power beyond what it demonstrated two years ago against the Beirut suburb of Dahiyah, considered a Hezbollah stronghold.

"We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases," he said. "This isn't a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized" . . . .

What can the Palestinian people do, in the face of that? When you impose a "peace" on them that continues to starve, impoverish and humilate them? The kindness and compassion of Israeli dissenters won't be enough to overcome the horrors of what they've seen.

You say you had to defend yourselves. But even reporters who covered the towns that suffered the fear and uncertainty, the occasional injury and even more rare death from Hamas's rocket fire, are realizing the truth:

For the first time I turned on an Arab channel, al-Jazeera, to get an update on what was going on. And then I knew it was impossible to give any equivalency between the situation in the Israeli towns in the south with the tragedy that was unfolding in Gaza.

That night I felt sick, I couldn't sleep – I could only see images of children, and children, and more children. The ones who had been blinded, the ones who had lost their limbs, or just that picture of the small girl's head, her eyes wide open. It was only her head, nothing else.

Are those images likely to make people turn to the puppets you install for salvation, or will they be looking at the fighters who stood against you despite the odds? Do you really think the people will turn against those fighters, or turn to them? I think all of us but the war-blind bastards who started this slaughter know the answer. But let's try a thought experiment, just to see what the outcome might be:

Nearly seventy ago, in the course of World War II, a heinous crime was committed in the city of Leningrad. For more than a thousand days, a gang of extremists called “the Red Army” held the millions of the town’s inhabitants hostage and provoked retaliation from the German Wehrmacht from inside the population centers. The Germans had no alternative but to bomb and shell the population and to impose a total blockade, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands.

Some time before that, a similar crime was committed in England. The Churchill gang hid among the population of London, misusing the millions of citizens as a human shield. The Germans were compelled to send their Luftwaffe and reluctantly reduce the city to ruins. They called it the Blitz.

This is the description that would now appear in the history books – if the Germans had won the war.

Absurd? No more than the daily descriptions in our media, which are being repeated ad nauseam: the Hamas terrorists use the inhabitants of Gaza as “hostages” and exploit the women and children as “human shields”, they leave us no alternative but to carry out massive bombardments, in which, to our deep sorrow, thousands of women, children and unarmed men are killed and injured.

[snip]

From the point of view of the population, the Hamas fighters are not a foreign body, but the sons of every family in the Strip and the other Palestinian regions. They do not “hide behind the population”, the population views them as their only defenders.

Therefore, the whole operation is based on erroneous assumptions. Turning life into living hell does not cause the population to rise up against Hamas, but on the contrary, it unites behind Hamas and reinforces its determination not to surrender. The population of Leningrad did not rise up against Stalin, any more than the Londoners rose up against Churchill.

Israel. You knew this. The history of countless countries is filled with praise for those who faced impossible odds and did not give in, who faced imminent destruction and did not flinch. So many times when relentless attacks did not crush people's will, but reinforced it. And when the people you are fighting have absolutely nothing left to lose, when you've taken from them their sons and daughters and offered them no peace, no security, and no dignity, when you've given them every reason to believe that what you want is nothing more than their utter annihilation, they won't turn to your puppets for their salvation. They will turn to those who refuse to give in.

It didn't have to be this way. You could have given the Palestinians reasons to turn away from Hamas, by making sure they weren't starving, sick and desperate. By treating them as human beings with rights and dreams of nationhood instead of as a despicable underclass needing to be cast out and subjugated.

How much different it might have been if, instead of trying to beat the Palestinians down, you had instead lifted them up.