I believe

Today, Monday, is of course Martin Luther King day. To observe the day, I've decided to re-post what I wrote last year on the occasion with the idea that I might do this every year that this blog exists. You may recognize some bits and pieces from other posts; I have little shame about recycling my stuff if I think it makes the point. So with a slightly-truncated opening, this is it:

Instead of another session of grousing and griping, denouncing and decrying, I thought I would try to be positive for once, even if it required raiding some of my old writings. In my very first post here, a bit over four years ago, I referred to a conversation I'd just had with a friend in which I said

"The truth is, my hope is nearly gone. My anger is the only thing that keeps me going."

So now I have an outlet to express that anger, to discuss what I'm angry about, why I'm angry, and, in my calmer moments, to try to rediscover that hope and offer a different vision of what we as a people, a nation, a culture, might do, might be, might become.

I haven't done as much of that rediscovering as I should, at least not overtly. Still, as I said a long time ago,

[e]ven many professional grouches (like me) are actually unregenerate romantics whose sharp words are honed on the inexplicable, indefensible, yet utterly unshakable conviction that things not only can be but must be better than they are.

What's more, quoting yet another thing I wrote a long time ago and quoting as accurately as I can from memory, "our strongest, surest beliefs are those we don't even know we have until we find them within us." That is, our deepest, most abiding beliefs and commitments are not born consciously of careful philosophical argumentation and reasoned analysis but grow naturally from our root moral and ethical convictions. That argumentation, those analyses, can give form to those convictions, they can provide them with substance and weight, but they do not drive them - rather, they are driven by them.

So despite my tendency to intellectualization, to try to argue my points rationally with facts and figures and references, still it's important - for me if not for my listeners - to drop away on occasion from "here's the data, here's the logic, here's the conclusion" to the fundamental, baseline, radical place where I can say, simply, I believe.

I believe that life is our highest good and advancing life is our highest ideal. I believe whatever advances life, improves life, is an expression of that special crystal-glitter quality “human,” that self-awareness, that capacity for love, that reach for hope that separates us from other animals. I believe that which opposes life, which advances hunger, oppression, and violence, is a rejection of that quality, a rejection of our humanity. I believe that to be human is to reach for life, for our potential, to reject death and all that advances death.

I believe in family, a broad, deep sense of family, of family as based on commitment, not on ceremonies, based on ties the heart, not on ties of the blood. I believe we must reach beyond the personal to the public; beyond self to others; beyond us and them to we; beyond the individual to the community. I believe we have social obligations, moral commitments to a type of extended family that includes strangers, people who we'll never see, never meet, never have any contact with, but with who we share a mutual obligation, a mutual moral duty, a community extending even to the community of humanity.

I believe we must ultimately reject the right of so few to have so much when so many have so little, the power of so few to control so much when so many control so little. I believe in the right of every human being to a decent life free of hunger, fear, and oppression and in the duty of society to strive to guarantee that right. I believe that while we should have no desire to place a ceiling over anyone’s aspirations, we should desire to put a floor under everyone’s needs.

I believe, ultimately, in justice: not in perfection or idealized utopias, but in simple human justice, a justice that rejects the ascendancy of bombs over bread, of private greed over public good, of profits over people. A justice that centers on the preciousness of life and will fight to maintain and even expand that preciousness. A justice that embraces the economic, the social, and the political. And finally, I believe in the indivisibility of that justice: It must be justice for “them” as well as for “us,” for enemy the same as for friend, or it’s not justice at all but mere favoritism.

As for the application of all that, I'll quote a speech I gave when I ran for Congress - again, it was some years back.

Now I may sound like a philosopher, but the fact is that what I’m interested in is change: not slogans, not philosophies, but getting-the-job-done type change. That means being hard-nosed, practical, and factual in our programs. It was the Italian pacifist Danilo Dolci who said “Faith does not move mountains. Work, exacting work, moves mountains.”

But when I say “practical,” I don’t mean practical in the sense of the neoliberals, those people who lower their sights, harden their hearts, darken their vision, and then congratulate themselves on their “realism.” No, I mean something different. You know the saying “I dream dreams of things that never were and ask ‘Why not?’” What we have to do is dream dreams of things that never were and ask “How?” How? What are the practical steps we can take right now, today? We have to approach the world with steel in our eyes.

But at the same time we can’t let the steel in our eyes cloud the dream in our hearts. We have to hold to the vision of what we as a people, what we as a nation, can do, what we can be, and not settle, as so many do, for the mere hope that it will get no worse. So that’s what I call on you to be: steely-eyed dreamers, people who know the hard, factual work to be done but never forget just where that work is supposed to take them.

In that same speech I said that achieving wide-ranging justice "will not be easy, cheap, or convenient - but it is possible" and pledged I would never give up on that dream.

In the years since I've tried to be a steely-eyed dreamer with varying degrees of success; as I said in a different way at the top, usually it was if anything a little long on the steel and a little short on the dream, a position that makes unnecessary compromise a little too easy and risk a little too - well, risky.

I've come to a point in my life when I've begun to slow down; I know it, I can feel it. I haven't spent as much time on the streets as I did in earlier years (nor as much as I'd like to) and my energy level simply isn't what it was. I find it harder to keep my spirits up and many discouraged days I don't regret that I won't live to experience the world I see coming at such times.

But goddam it, despite it all, despite all logic, despite a mountain of evidence, and without any good damn reason, I still believe that things can be, must be, better than they are, that it is possible. I just do. And will.

In despero veritas

If someone want to correct my Latin, by all means go ahead. I'm sure I got some gender or tense or some other mistake there.

But the fact here is that I have tried to step away from this, I have tried to think about, post about, other things, but I keep coming back to it - and I'm not sure how much more my heart, my soul, can take. I can't even go into analysis, pretty much just simply listing some items is as much as I can bear right now.

- A neighborhood free health clinic in Gaza City run by the Near East Council of Churches was destroyed by Israeli bombing on Saturday.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of medical equipment was destroyed by the strike. ...

Nobody was injured in the attack, in part because the clinic was closed.

The NECC said security concerns had forced it to close the clinic on Tuesday. ...

The clinic was completely destroyed in the attack, along with valuable medical equipment, including ultrasound machines, laboratory apparatus, and computers, which are not freely available in Gaza.

This one can't be chalked up to a "mistake," either: The building's owners got a phone call giving them 15 mintues to evacuate. Which means not only did the Israelis deliberately bomb a building clearly marked with the insignia of the Red Cross and which had ambulances parked outside, it means there can be no excuse of "we were receiving fire" unless you believe Israel makes a practice of giving people shooting at them 15 minutes' warning they were going to shoot back.

- A coalition of nine Israeli civil rights groups has declared there is "a heavy suspicion," that needs investigation, that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza.

The groups spare no words, calling the level of deaths and injuries of civilians "unprecedented" and charging that "military forces are making wanton use of lethal force" that has resulted in the deaths of "hundreds of uninvolved civilians" and physical destruction "on an enormous scale." Chillingly, they say that

Israel is also hitting civilian objects, having defined them as "legitimate military targets" solely by virtue of their being "symbols of government."

Put more bluntly, in the Israeli government's view a "legitimate military target" is whatever the military targets.

- Israel has shelled UNRWA's central distribution facility in Gaza, setting buildings ablaze and threatening "hundreds of tons" of relief aid.

"This is a hub of the whole operation, the whole United Nations operation in Gaza, this is the hub, where it all comes to, gets distributed from,"

said John Ging, director of UNRWA in Gaza. As a result, the UN has had to suspend its operations in Gaza.

Ging charged that white phosphorus was used in the attack.

"It looks and smells like phosphorus and it's burning like phosphorus. That's all I can say. That's why I'm calling it phosphorus," said Ging.

Israeli officials earlier denied using white phosphorus, but by Monday, they would only say that ordnance used in Gaza is Israeli "in accordance with international law." It's legal to use white phosphorus as an "obscurant," that is, like a smoke bomb. I wonder what they were trying to obscure in this case.

After getting a furious protest from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Israeli officials offered semi-apologies: Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Ban the incident had been "a grave mistake," while Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said "I don't think it should have happened and I'm very sorry."

However, Olmert also insisted that "it is absolutely true that we were attacked from that place," which raises serious questions as to whether it really was a "mistake" or if the mistake was not anticipating the response. Particularly since in a later version of the story, Olmert was quoting as saying the militant fire was coming from near the compound, not in it. In either event,

Ging[, who was at the facility at the time,] denied there were any militants at the compound, and also said that at the time there was "no fighting in the vicinity of the compound."

- CARE International, said it too had been forced to suspend all deliveries of food and medical supplies due to heavy bombardment in and around its warehouses and distribution sites in Gaza City.

- The Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City was bombed twice on Thursday. The first attack, in the morning, was a direct hit that set the second floor on fire and left 500 people "huddled on the ground floor ... in fear for their lives and choking on dust and fumes," according to the International Red Cross.

The second came about 10:30pm,

leaving the facility in flames and forcing the staff and patients to evacuate to the streets.

The IRC and the Red Crescent Society, which operated the hospital, issued "an unusually sharply-worded statement" calling the situation in Gaza

completely and utterly unacceptable based on every known standard of international law and universal humanitarian principles and values.

- At least one Palestinian Red Crescent warehouse with relief supplies was set on fire by Israeli shelling Thursday morning. The ICRC accused Israeli soldiers of firing on volunteers to keep them from putting out the fire.

- Finally for now and also on Thursday, Israeli forces shelled offices of international news agencies, according to the Foreign Press Association.

If you have any strength left, you might read this from Juan Cole. In fact, you might do well to read him regularly.

I did not expect this

I admit it, I did not expect this.

Johannes Mehserle, the San Francisco police officer who shot Oscar Grant in the back, killing him, as Grant lay face down and handcuffed in a BART station on New Year's Day, has been arrested and charged with murder.

Mehserle, who had refused to explain his actions to investigators, was arrested in Nevada.

Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff said murder charges were filed

because at this point, what I feel the evidence indicates is an unlawful killing done by an intentional act, and from the evidence we have, there's nothing that would mitigate that to something lower than a murder.

Damn. While it remains to be seen what will happen at trial, it's hard to imagine that all the video evidence taken by people at the scene can be overcome. It remains possible, just possible, that, as some have speculated, Mehserle thought he was pulling out his taser rather than his gun. But even in that case, I don't see how he could be convicted of anything less than assault and manslaughter. (Would that use of the taser would be assault with a deadly weapon or at least aggravated assault, but that ain't gonna happen.)

One other good word for Orloff:

"I understand that there's a great deal of emotion in the community and I understand that this situation raises a lot of significant social issues in our community," he said. "I would hope that people would ... let the criminal justice system play this out.

"In terms of those that want to protest on the broader social issues, I think peaceful protest can be a very healthy thing."

A DA endorsing the idea of social protests. Will wonders never cease.

Think of the children!

It seems that with every new technology, indeed every social shift, there are those who will wave around a fistful of real but more usually imagined incidents to declare "Danger! Danger! Our children are at risk!" This is nothing new; when Meredith Wilson had Harold Hill panic a crowd with references to the corrupting influence of dime novels and "Captain Billy's Whiz Bang", he was not just making it up. And that's far from the only example.

A recent panic has been the looming specter of Facebook and its ilk, a web of dark, forbidding places where adult sexual predators seek their prey and danger lurks in every conversation.

Or not.

The Internet may not be such a dangerous place for children after all[, McClatchy reports on Wednesday].

A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there is not a significant problem.

The findings ran counter to popular perceptions of online dangers as reinforced by depictions in the news media like NBC's "To Catch a Predator" series and are the latest study to suggest that concerns about the Internet and sex abuse against children are overblown. ...

[An article about a study from last February can be found at this link.]

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force examined the extent of the threats children face on social networks like MySpace and Facebook, amid widespread fears that adults were using these popular Web sites to deceive and prey on children.

But the report cited research calling such fears a "moral panic," and concluded that the problem of bullying among children, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults. ...

The 39-page document was the result of a year of meetings between dozens of academics, childhood safety experts and executives of 30 companies, including Yahoo, AOL, MySpace and Facebook.

The task force, led by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, looked at scientific data on online sexual predators and found that children and teenagers are unlikely to be propositioned by adults online. In the cases that do occur, the report says, teenagers are typically willing participants and are already at risk because of poor home environments, substance abuse or other problems.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper[, who "aggressively pushed" for the study,] in a statement Tuesday criticized the report, saying it "relied on outdated and inadequate research to downplay the problem of child predators."

"Law enforcement officers across the country are telling attorneys general that children are being solicited every day and that technology companies must do more to keep children safer," Cooper said.

And of course if cops are saying it, it must be true. So, y'know, just forget the study, 'cause it's just dumb ol' facts 'n' shit.

After all, in the immortal words of Mary Whitehouse, "We've got to get away from this silly business of having to prove things."

Banning for democracy

In a move that The Guardian (UK) called "a sign of growing confrontation with the country's Arab minority," Israel's Central Elections Committee has banned two Arab parties - the United Arab List and Balad - from running in parliamentary elections scheduled for February 10.

The move was met with almost complete silence in the US media. But that's okay, according to some pro-Israel bloggers, who insisted that this really doesn't say anything about Israel's status as a true democracy and doesn't deserve any attention.

Matt Yglesias, who imagines there has been "relatively cordial relations between the country’s Jewish majority and the 'Israeli Arab' minority" dismisses it as simply "a poorly timed PR move" because, after all, Arabs can still vote for other parties.

Jonathan Singer, while allowing as how "this isn't to say that the move doesn't come off poorly, or that it is particularly wise," insists "this isn't the end of the story" because the parties are appealing to the Supreme Court, which could overturn the decision. Thus, "the country does not yet appear to have crossed the threshold many believe it to have already crossed with regards to the disenfranchisement of Israeli Arab political parties."

And James Kirchick, writing at The New Republic, compares the ban to the banning of Rabbi Meir Kahane's Kach party "for its racist and undemocratic platform," saying the Arab parties are being banned "for the same reason." What's more, he insists, "the standards for operating a legal political party in Israel are hardly unreasonable," and besides, echoing Yglesias, he says Arabs can always vote for someone else.

In the United States, if the Ku Klux Klan were to form a political party, advocating the dissolution of the American government and inciting violence from within and without, it would be banned, and rightly so,

he declared.

So, y'know, it doesn't mean anything, it's no reflection on democracy or anything like that, it's entirely just and reasonable and the US would do exactly the same, and stuff, and after all, the Israeli Supreme Court is likely to overturn the ban, just like it did a few years ago when the same thing was tried, so what's the big deal? But we're all three against it because, well, because it's bad PR.

What that is, is bad bullshit, a classic case of trying to have it both ways: A way to say you're against the decision without having to criticize it in any substantive way.

Of course it's a reflection on Israel's status as a democracy when it bans political parties. Saying "well, you can still vote for other parties" demonstrates an abysmal grasp of basic democratic principles. What kind of "democracy" is it when only officially-approved parties can participate? One is the old Soviet kind, where you could vote for anyone, provided they were a designated candidate of the Communist Party. Another is the Iranian kind, where the Guardian Council, composed of six clerics and six Islamic jurists, must approve candidates. I doubt Israel would like either of those comparisons (even though Iran actually does manage to maintain something within shouting distance of a democracy).

And yes, of course Israel has crossed a threshold. It did it when the idea of banning parties was instituted. It crossed another when these same parties were first banned. It has crossed a third by trying again to ban them despite having been shot down by the Supreme Court last time. And it is crossing a fourth by doing it despite the fact that, as Haaretz (Israel) reported,

[m]embers of the CEC conceded yesterday that the chance of the Supreme Court's upholding the ban on both parties was slim.

That is, it has undertaken an anti-democratic action in the expectation that someone else will undo what it has done.

But oh, comes the answer, there's still the example of the Kach party. This is just the same!

Except it's not. Kirchick himself says "the case for banning these two Arab parties may not be as strong as it was for the outlawing of the Kahane movement" and, tellingly, refers in the case of Kach to the party's platform but refers in the case of the Arab parties to statements by the party heads, not the parties' platforms. (He also calls the leader of Balad "disgraced" based apparently and solely on the fact that he's living in exile because Israeli officials were talking about filing charges of espionage against him - but never did.)

Still, maybe there's a case to be made that their platforms ran afoul of Israel's "hardly unreasonable" standards for being a legal party. According to Kirchick,

[t]he four offenses that could lead to possible banning are:

- Any rejection (in the party's goals or activities) of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish, democratic state.
- Any incitement to racism.
- Any support of the armed struggle of an enemy state or terrorist organization against the State of Israel.
- Any hint of a cover for illegal activity.

Since various Israeli leaders of major parties have referred to Palestinians as "beasts" and "two-legged animals" along with more colorful epithets, and there have been repeated questions raised about corruption, it would seem that on the second and fourth points, at least Labor and Likud could be tossed off the list of parties allowed to campaign. But leave that aside and consider the first and third.

So if you say you want Israel to become a multi-ethnic state, as Balad does, you can't be a legal party. If you opposed the invasion of Lebanon, if you now oppose the assault on Gaza, it could easily be argued that you are "supporting the armed struggle of an enemy," just as those here who opposed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were labeled "objectively pro-terrorist." So you can't be a legal party.

If your leaders even go to Lebanon or Syria - illegal without permission and one of Kirchick's charges against the head of the United Arab List - you are "supporting an enemy state" and can't be a legal party.

So is there a case to be made that the two parties violated the "hardly unreasonable" restrictions? Yes, there is - and that case is valid precisely to the same extent that Israel is not a democracy. If Israel is a democracy, if it is to be and to continue as a democracy, then the case against them is not valid - which is why the Supreme Court is likely to knock the ban down (again) and why it never should have been passed and why having passed it is an anti-democracy act.

Oh, one last thing: The US doesn't have a KKK Party, but there is an American Nazi Party, a neo-Nazi party called the National Socialist Movement, and the Christian Falangist Party of America - all legal, none banned.

Click here

"Digital marketer" Steve Rubel has declared that by January 2014, that is, five years from now,

almost all forms of tangible media will either be in sharp decline or completely extinct. I am not just talking about print, but all tangible forms of media - newspapers, magazines, books, DVDs, boxed software and video games. [Emphasis in original.]

A poll of his readers didn't support his optimism - and I use the word deliberately as he seems positively giddy at the future he sees, not surprising considering his job. Asked "In the US when will tangible media become extinct?" nearly 37% of those who responded said "Never, you're crazy." Only 15% agreed with his timetable. However, another 40% say while it won't happen by 2014, it will happen by 2040. (A final 8% answered "Not soon enough" which while indicating eagerness, says nothing about how long this process will take.)

The main objection of the naysayers was to the idea of books disappearing. Other forms, especially music and video, seemed more up for grabs.

Leaving those aside, it certainly is true that forms of print media other than books are facing difficulties. Indeed, what prompted this post was the fact that I was in a bookstore recently, looking at a reasonably good selection of magazines, when I noticed an announcement on the cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists saying that this issue was the last print issue - it was going strictly digital. A check of the inside front cover confirmed it: Due to the continuing rise in the Three Ps that are the bane of any publication - the costs of paper, printing, and postage - BAS would only be available online from now on. And that carries an implication that goes beyond the economic one.

That's not the only example: The Christian Science Monitor has announced plans to go all-digital come April for the same reasons: declining subscriptions and rising costs.

And last week came the news that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is being sold - and if there are no buyers within 60 days, the 145 year-old paper will either be shut down or go web-only.

"One thing is clear: at the end of the sale process, we do not see ourselves publishing in print," Steven Swartz, president of the Hearst Corp.'s newspaper division, said in a Web story.

Newspapers across the country are looking for ways to cut costs everywhere they can in attempts to stay afloat. Newspapers are entering into joint operating agreements, or JOAs, with other papers, where they have separate editorial staffs but operate production and distribution jointly. On another front, Jim Hightower notes that the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News are cutting back on home delivery to three days a week.

And while that is a serious concern, it also serves to bring me back to the point I wanted to make. In reporting on the Detroit papers' decision, CNN said the

[p]apers will be on newsstands every day, and the papers' online offerings will be expanded, [David Hunke, publisher of the Free Press and CEO of a JOA between the Free Press and the News] said. ...

Paying for delivery vehicles to cover 300,000 miles nightly, he said, did not make economic sense at a time when 63 percent of readers have broadband Internet access.

But if 63% of readers have broadband access, that means 37% - more than a third - do not. Nationwide, the figure is even higher. According to a July 2008 report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, some 55% of American adults have high-speed internet access. Which means that 45% do not. What's more,

for poor Americans, as well as African Americans, broadband adoption was slow or negative.

Among adults living in households with annual incomes of less than $20,000 annually, broadband adoption has actually regressed: the percentage dropped from 28 percent in March 2007 to 25 percent in April/May 2008, said the report.

Among African Americans, home broadband adoption stood at 43 percent in May 2008, versus 40 percent the previous year.

Look, let's face a simple fact: Without high-speed access, all these on-line services, all the digital magazines, all the "web only content," all the "expanded offerings," it's all crap. It's useless. Even with high-speed access, getting stuff sometimes can be an agonizingly slow process that gets bogged down in traffic and swamped with pop-ups, ads, and unnecessarily graphic-intensive sites. With dial-up, even trying to see a YouTube video is usually an exercise in futility and sysiphean frustration - or at least Zen-like patience.

The point is, as more and more information becomes available only on-line and as more and more of that information effectively becomes available only to those with high-speed access, more and more people are going to be left behind and out.

People have spoken in the past about a digital divide. I fear we are seeing the emergence of an information divide, one where people simply will not have access to what they will need to act as well-informed citizens, one where there will be an information elite just as now there is an economic elite. For all the people chirping about how "information wants to be free," that is, unrestricted, the fact is that while the information itself may be free in a philosophical sense, access to it is not in an economic one.

I remember when Al Gore was promoting what he called "the information superhighway." (Hey, I've been kicking around online long enough that I used Gopher regularly and a 28.8 modem is what you moved up to.) And certainly we've seen and continue to see the emergence of something at least similar to what he imagined. But just like cruising along on the interstate, as we fly down that digital superhighway we can become oblivious to the people traveling the potholed byways and dirt tracks that lie just a little beyond our route's shoulders - and, unlike the interstate, our highway is a toll road with tolls higher than a good number of folks can pay.

Footnote to the preceding, Did They or Didn't They? Div.

That is, did the Israeli leaders know this or didn't they?

The Pew Research Center said on Thursday that its 2008 Global Attitudes survey

found significant opposition to [Hamas] in several predominantly Muslim countries, not to mention considerable opposition to suicide bombing - a frequent tactic of Hamas in the past - as well as deep reservations about one of Hamas' chief sponsors, Iran. ...

Among the eight countries with sizeable Muslim populations surveyed by the Pew Global Attitudes Project in 2008, Hamas received a positive rating in only one, Jordan, where 55% voiced a favorable view of the organization while 37% expressed an unfavorable opinion. Still, Jordanian attitudes toward Hamas were less positive than in 2007, when 62% gave the group a favorable rating, and 36% a negative one.

Hamas' image also declined in neighboring Egypt. In 2007, Egyptians were split (49% favorable, 49% unfavorable). By 2008, however, only 42% had a favorable opinion, while 50% held a negative view.

Approval of Hamas remained steady in Lebanon - but at the low figure of 25%. And in Turkey, support dropped from the low 14% to the barely-detectable 6%. (In the other four countries with significant numbers of Muslims surveyed - Nigeria, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Tanzania - large numbers were not familiar enough with Hamas to render an opinion.)

Even more significantly, Pew reports that while in its 2007 survey, Palestinians held a favorable view of Hamas by 62 to 33 percent,

[a] Nov. 20-23, 2008 poll by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center found that 37% of Palestinians would vote for Fatah in legislative elections, compared with just 20% for Hamas. In the Fatah-controlled West Bank, Fatah led Hamas by a 35-18% margin. More interestingly, Fatah also led by a 40-22% margin in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. A poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, conducted December 3-5, 2008, also found that Fatah was more popular than Hamas in both the West Bank and Gaza.

However, tragically, Pew's results also showed attitudes in the surveyed countries to be highly negative toward Jews and revealed a good deal of pessimism about the chances for Israeli and Palestinian coexistence. So to the extent that Hamas becomes symbolic of Palestinian resistance to Israel, to that same extent it can attract solidified and increased support if it merely survives the Israeli attack - and even the IDF admits that eliminating Hamas is beyond its ability.

Now, the notion that the Israeli assault could potentially increase support for Hamas has been on most commentators' lips, but the changes indicated by these survey numbers was not. While Israeli officials would not have known about the Pew Research figures, which were just released, I simply cannot believe they were unaware of the results of the polling done in November and December about the popularity of Hamas versus Fatah.

Which means that Israel, while claiming it wants to undermine Hamas, undertook military action all but guaranteed to increase support for Hamas - and which in fact appears to have "galvanized" support for Hamas in the West bank - at the very time support for the group was declining.

This begs an obvious question. I think I've already made my answer clear.

War crimes

Updated There simply can be no doubt, no question. What Israel is doing in Gaza constitutes war crimes. Period.

Last Saturday night the Israeli military seized the Gaza City neighborhood of Zeitoun.

On Sunday morning soldiers forced about 100 members of the Samouni clan to gather in a single house, leaving them there without food, water, or heat.

And on Monday morning, Israeli forces shelled the house, killing perhaps 60 or 70 of the people inside.

Let me make sure this is clear: Israeli forces knowingly and deliberately shelled a house containing unarmed civilians and they unquestionably knew about them because they were the ones who put them there. And when ambulances after the first one tried to get to the scene to take away more survivors, they were driven away by Israeli gunfire while Israeli army bulldozers knocked down nearby houses.

That last charge is backed up by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which in an unusually strong statement labeled the Israeli military as having "failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded." It was not until four days later that the ICRC was able to get to the area - and when it got there, Israeli soldiers tried to force them to leave.

(A later account reduced the number killed in that event to 30. However, that did not keep Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, from saying the incident "appears to have all the elements of war crimes.")

That was hardly the only example. On Tuesday, to cite another case, Israeli forces shelled a well-known, clearly-marked, UN school, killing over 40 people and wounding 150 others. Israel defended the attack, saying that "there was hostile fire at one of our units from the UN facility," and that there were secondary explosions indicating the area was booby-trapped.

But by Thursday, the story had changed to there having been fire "from militants on or near the school grounds." (Emphasis added.) Christopher Gunness of UNRWA said he was "authorized to say" that the Israeli army had in private talks with diplomats retracted its claims of militant attacks coming from within school grounds - an admission it has yet to make publicly.

And then there's the issue of Israeli forces firing on UN and Red Cross trucks carrying relief supplies. Not to mention the entire illegal, inhumane, yes evil blockade that has generated

acute malnutrition in Gaza ... on the same scale as in the poorest nations in the southern Sahara, with more than half of all Palestinian families eating only one meal a day.

What's more, evidence is building that Israel never intended to achieve peace. In fact, it wanted the ceasefire to break down and never had any intention of fulfilling its obligations under it.

Haaretz (Israel) reported on Thursday that since March 2007 the Israeli army has been under orders to prepare for an attack on Gaza. In planning meetings, it was set forth that the "optimal situation" as the result of an attack would be the destruction or at least severe weakening of Hamas, including its removal from power, and - and no matter what you think one way or the other about the legitimacy of an attack focusing on Hamas, this is heinous - that

Israel should not be viewed as being responsible for the Palestinian population, but the role should go to a central Palestinian establishment created in Gaza, led by moderate, pragmatic officials.

That is, "We want to destroy your infrastructure, starve you, wreck your government, foist on you new leaders who meet our approval (the hell with if they meet yours) and then walk away from what we call a 'swamp,' washing our hands of the whole disaster we created, the pain and misery we caused, going 'it's not my problem.'" It doesn't get much more callously brutal than that.

You want to know how bad it got?

They also examined scenarios in which Israel's legitimacy for continuing the operation could be compromised: if, for example, a comprehensive cease-fire were attained with the Palestinians....

They were worried that there might be a comprehensive ceasefire! They were worried that a ceasefire would "compromise" the "legitimacy" of their attack! If you have any doubt that's the meaning, consider that

[t]he officials said an agreement with Hamas could improve prospects for a long-term lull in the fighting, but that reaching such an agreement would be inconsistent with both Israeli and international policies against negotiating with the militant group.

Better, you see, to continue the bloodshed, better to see the continuation of the very rocket fire that you claim stopping is your goal, than to gasp! negotiate with Hamas and get "a long-term lull." Better to leave your own people open to risk, better to desire rocket attacks, than risk having your "operation" be "compromised." Okay, maybe it did just get more callously brutal.

This goes a long way toward explaining Israel's patent insincerity about the ceasefire that ended in December, insincerity that was visible from the beginning.

In addition to a halt in all military actions by both sides, the agreement called on Israel to increase the level of goods entering Gaza by 30 percent over the pre-lull period within 72 hours and to open all border crossings and "allow the transfer of all goods that were banned and restricted to go into Gaza" within 13 days after the beginning of the ceasefire.

Nevertheless, Israeli officials freely acknowledged in interviews with ICG [the International Crisis Group] last June that they had no intention of opening the border crossings fully, even though they anticipated that this would be the source of serious conflict with Hamas.

And, in fact, the flow of goods reached only about one-fifth of normal levels.

That insincerity persisted at the end of the six months. In mid-December, Hamas officials told Egyptian officials that Hamas would stop firing rockets toward Israel and return to the ceasefire (which Israel, amusingly, insists on calling "the lull arrangement," apparently because "ceasefire" implies some kind of negotiation) in return for a signal from Israel that it would lift the blockade of Gaza. Informed by Egypt of the offer, Israel either rejected it or just didn't respond at all.

Did Israel know of the offer, or in any event of Hamas's desire? It certainly did:

The interest of Hamas in a ceasefire agreement that would actually open the border crossings was acknowledged at a Dec. 21 Israeli cabinet meeting - five days before the beginning of the Israeli military offensive - by Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel's internal security agency, Shin Bet. "Make no mistake, Hamas is interested in maintaining the truce," Diskin was quoted by Y-net News agency as saying.

Israel's rejection of the Hamas December proposal reflected its preference for maintaining Israel's primary leverage over Hamas and the Palestinian population of Gaza - its ability to choke off food and goods required for the viability of its economy - even at the cost of continued Palestinian rocket attacks.

I've said before that Israel has no interest in any settlement that does not involve continued Israeli domination of the Palestinians - even as, as the above makes clear, it denies any responsibility for their welfare. It is clearly prepared to commit war crimes toward that end.

What is newly clear to me is that it is also, as I said above, willing to have its own people subject to rocket fire in pursuit of that same goal. The phrase "shocks the conscience" hardly seems adequate.

And what is our - that is, our government's - response to this? On the Executive side, the US blocked a UN Security Council resolution on Gaza and then after it was re-written to reflect administration concerns, we abstained. The resolution, which called for

unimpeded provision throughout Gaza of food, fuel and medical treatment, as well as intensified international arrangements to prevent arms and ammunition smuggling,

passed 14-0.

The Legislative branch was even more shameful.

[T]he House of Representatives voted 390-5, with 22 legislators non-voting, for a resolution that explicitly blamed Hamas for both the breakdown in the ceasefire and the subsequent casualties in Gaza and called for all countries to do the same.

The Senate approved a similar resolution by voice vote Thursday.

If you want to know just how bad the House resolution was, you can read the full text at this link - but don't if you have eaten recently; it's an IDF wet dream that doesn't even make the standard perfunctory stab at a phony "balance." (The text of the Senate version, which was adopted by unanimous consent, doesn't seem to be available yet from the GPO. There is this version but as it lacks a number - and the source is AIPAC - I suspect it's a very early version which may be a little different from what was passed.)

I'd like to chalk those votes up to some combination of ignorance and political cowardice but the truth is I don't think even in combination they go far enough. I believe that outright anti-Palestinian bigotry, outright racism, is a significant contributor to that total.

Because the thing is, can anyone seriously, I mean seriously, can even the most strident pro-Israeli US politician seriously argue that everything, every death, is all the fault of Hamas? That when the Israelis bombed mosques, that was Hamas's fault? When Israel forces shelled the house in Zeitoun, when they attacked UN schools, when they shot the drivers of UN relief trucks, all that was Hamas's fault? When Israel engages in illegal collective punishment, that's Hamas's fault? When Israel ignores UN resolutions, that Hamas's fault? When Israel tries to starve a people into submission, that's Hamas's fault? Why? For refusing to be a quiet victim? Are we really supposed to look at the battered, bloody, hungry, cold, people of Gaza and tell them it's not the fault of those who battered and bloodied you, not the fault of those who denied you food and fuel, not the fault of those who have created a gulag, a concentration camp, not the fault of those who have created a wasteland with the intention of calling it peace?

Oh, but you say, oh, but if only Hamas didn't break ceasefires, all would be well. More bilge. In fact, it is not Hamas which usually breaks ceasefires, it is Israel, according to a study of all recent lulls in fighting between Hamas or other Gaza-based militants and Israel, done by Nancy Kanwisher, Johannes Haushofer, and Anat Biletzki and published in the Huffington Post.

They defined a breaking of the ceasefire as the first death. Which has its limitations but it likely the only objective, measurable way to define it - especially when, and this is my judgment, not theirs, that if you're really committed to a ceasefire you may well be able to ignore an incident which does not result in a death.

We analyzed the entire timeline of killings of Palestinians by Israelis, and killings of Israelis by Palestinians, in the Second Intifada[, they said], based on the data from the widely-respected Israeli Human Rights group B'Tselem (including all the data from September 2000 to October 2008).

We defined "conflict pauses" as periods of one or more days when no one is killed on either side, and we asked which side kills first after conflict pauses of different durations. ... [T]his analysis shows that it is overwhelmingly Israel that kills first after a pause in the conflict: 79% of all conflict pauses were interrupted when Israel killed a Palestinian, while only 8% were interrupted by Palestinian attacks (the remaining 13% were interrupted by both sides on the same day). In addition, we found that this pattern ... becomes more pronounced for longer conflict pauses. Indeed, of the 25 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than a week, Israel unilaterally interrupted 24, or 96%, and it unilaterally interrupted 100% of the 14 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than 9 days. ...

Thus, a systematic pattern does exist: it is overwhelmingly Israel, not Palestine, that kills first following a lull. Indeed, it is virtually always Israel that kills first after a lull lasting more than a week.

Which I suppose is only to be expected. Because, after all, ceasefires "compromise" the "legitimacy" of "operations" and plans for long-term domination. Plans which the civilized world - of which our own government seems to not be part - must reject.

Footnote: Israel indicated on Thursday that it was prepared to accept a ceasefire provided it contained two elements:

These are an arms embargo on Hamas, meaning international monitors on Gaza's Egyptian border to stop smuggling, and a complete end to the firing of rockets at Israel from Gaza.

Note that this does not involve any commitment by Israel to lift the blockade, to allow in adequate humanitarian aid (UNRWA officials say a three-hour truce is simply not long enough to make a difference), to recognize an elected government, to stop its own attacks in Gaza and the West Bank, to stop the oppression of and discrimination against Palestinians, to - well, to commit itself to doing a single freakin' thing.

So translating from PR speak, Israel grandly allowed as how it would accept Hamas's surrender. This is just another example of Israel making an offer it knows will not be accepted. The purpose is neither a ceasefire or a lasting settlement, it's to have an excuse for more war.

Another Footnote: You may want to read this.

Updated with the info about getting the texts of the resolutions.

Button, button

Just wanted to quickly mention that there are two recent additions to the things in the right-hand column.

The first, which has been up there a while now, is from Amnesty International and its "Irrepressible Info" campaign about the censorship and repression of blogs and other internet outlets in countries around the world.

The other, new today, is a link to a petition to Eric Holder, Obama's pick to be Attorney General, calling on him

to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute any and all government officials who have participated in War Crimes

with a specific focus on the use of torture.

Government shmoverment

In comments on the post "Justice. Compassion. Community." Chuck Butcher and I started to have an exchange about government. I was writing my second response, which I intended to be my last, but it got pretty long so I decided to move the whole exchange up here to a post so that maybe some other folks might throw their own thoughts in. In doing it, I've cleaned up Chuck's comments a little in terms of spelling and punctuation, which I hope he won't mind. They were obviously done as quick thoughts, not carefully thought out and corrected essays, and I wanted them to be clear.

I am also aware that because they were quick thoughts, this particular exchange may not do justice to Chuck's arguments. But hey, it's my blog and the idea is it's a place for my thoughts. So I'm doing it anyway. I will say that except for the cleaning up I mentioned, nothing has been changed or removed.

Chuck said:

One thing, it's not "their money." The money exists because the government provides services. Some services, like welfare, are considered moral services, strictly speaking that's hogwash. Such services are provided in the community interest in order, not out of morality.

Justice and community have a place in government, they aren't moral concepts which are beyond a government's realm, they are pragmatic concepts of order. Compassion is a real problem to ask a government for, especially one which is based on rules that are enforced (note always that 'force' is the root and root meaning).

One of the biggest obstacles to getting things done in America involves the misconception that morality has anything to do with government.

So I said:

it's not "their money."

Money is simply a medium of exchange that enables an economy to reach beyond direct barter. In itself, it has no value; rather, it represents value, value of goods or services that by being represented by the same amount of money as other goods and services are taken to have the same worth. (Which of course breaks down very quickly when social values rather than solely economic ones come into play, but taking that into account right now makes things unnecessarily arcane.)

In that sense, the money you receive in exchange for goods or labor is yours, it is the value of what you have provided, value that can be used to obtain something of equal value from others now or at some point in the future. If you lived in a barter economy and at the end of a workweek you got paid in food rather than money, would you say that food is not really yours?

The same applies even to the cases of charity and welfare. I received a "Jeopardy" desk calendar for Christmas. It was a gift. Is is not mine?

Justice and community have a place in government, they aren't moral concepts.... Compassion is a real problem to ask a government for....

I have a hard time coming up with a concept of justice that does not involve morality, that does not involve a concept of right and wrong. If it's, as you seem to imply, merely a matter of maintaining order, then isn't the most ordered society, the most restricted, regulated, controlled, repressive society the most just?

And I don't ask governments to be compassionate. I ask the people of the society (and the living, breathing people who actually make up the government, who fill its offices and carry out its functions) to be compassionate and to use the government as a means to act on that compassion.

Which brings me to my last response.

the misconception that morality has anything to do with government

I have heard that argued many times; the first time was in support of the Vietnam War on the grounds that the government had decided that was the most efficient way to advance national interests - which themselves were calculated strictly on gain/loss, or, if you will, profit/loss.

I rejected that idea then, I reject it now. You'll note that I said that I see government, at its best, as the vehicle through which a people act on their ideals. I can't conceive of ideals that don't involve morality.

Which had Chuck responding:

People act as though they earn money in a vacuum. They don't.

As soon as you show me a government of any sort that doesn't rule by force I'll buy some idea of morality in government. People may have morals, but the functioning of government doesn't.

The morality of Vietnam was whatever someone's moral set determined it to be, it was flatly stupid. That is something different. War is not moral, [but] it also doesn't have to be stupid. Iraq was stupid, Afghanistan was necessary. There's a difference. I don't pretend Afghanistan was moral.

And that leads to my long reply, posted here, not in comments:

I'm going to leave aside the question of if the Afghanistan war was "necessary" and restrict myself to the original point, which was about government. I'm also going to make this, unless you ask a question or raise an entirely new point, my last on this.

I'm trying to puzzle out exactly what you're arguing here. I gather that you are using "force" in the sense of "obtaining unwilling compliance" and regarding that as if not immoral at least amoral. (Which, I note, is itself a moral judgment, a mirror image of one version of "might makes right.")

At first I thought you were saying that government and morality never overlap because government involves the use of such "force" and therefore government cannot be moral. But that leaves you unable to apply moral standards to any society and so unavoidably leads you to a place marked not only by anarchy (which I mean in the political sense of no government, not the popular sense of destructive chaos) but an utterly atomized society because you have no way to have any general community standards of behavior, since even in an anarchic society there are still various standards enforced - I use the word deliberately - by community action of some sort. Deny any society, any culture, the right to such force and it becomes the cliché law of the jungle, everyone out for themselves. Fail to deny that right and there is no way to define force used by a society against what it views as miscreants as acceptable but that same force used by a government in that same society against those same miscreants as unacceptable. The result is that all societies, every society, the very idea of society, by definition become immoral. I don't think that's what you meant.

The alternative is that you're saying that because government inevitably involves (immoral) force, moral questions about government actions become meaningless and must be left aside and only issues such as effectiveness at pursuing interests and "pragmatic concepts of order" can be addressed. As I said, that is an argument I have heard before.

But the fact is, even in the cases you cite about Iraq and Afghanistan, there are judgments of right and wrong, good and bad, judgments about one type of person - American - being more valuable, more worthy of protection, than another type of person - Afghan. The very act of going to war makes a moral judgment about the relative value of lives and societies.

The only escape from this is simply to define the question out of existence by saying that perceived self-interest, either individually or nationally, has nothing to do with morality. But that's just a verbal dodge, an example of what I call "hand-waving," responding to a question by waving it off rather than answering it. Of course self-interest is related to morality. It is a morality, it is an ethical standard in that it affects what actions can and can't be justified. And no, you can't say "it's not based on ethics, it's based on logic" because under it all is still the foundation of "this is the way it should be, this is what is right, what is proper," a foundation not based on logic but on conviction. (Which, it is true, is no different from any other ethical standard, all of which can be stripped down to some point where "this is right because it just is." Indeed, a lot of what was in the post that started this was a re-write of what I believe "just is" right. But that only serves to confirm my point.)

Consider that some years ago, I had someone suggest - not entirely jokingly - that people on welfare be killed. And I mean, after all, why not? They cost the rest of us money via taxes not only in the form of public support but also in the costs of providing basic public services (police, fire, and the like) for which they don't pay or at least don't pay their share. The subsidies they receive distort the true market value of commodities such as housing. If we tried to resolve that by simply ending public aid entirely, we'd risk creating a large number of people who in their desperation would turn to crime, which certainly would threaten the self-interest of the rest of us and the order of society as a whole. Thus, making it a capital offense to be on welfare would be not only advance both the self-interest of everyone else and society's interest in order, it would be an efficient way to do it.

So why don't we do it? Because it's wrong. Why do we offer whatever (inadequate) level of help we do to those in need even if we see no immediate benefit to ourselves from doing so? Because it's right. Self-interest, standing alone, would drive a different course of action, one that, no matter how you may wish to deny it, makes a judgment, a moral judgment, about the value - the inherent, unrelated-to-calculations-of-self-interest value - of those human lives. There are places self-interest can't reach and times when by producing an obviously immoral result it becomes an immoral practice.

You may accuse me of arguing by extremes and to some extent I am, but as you are arguing by absolutes, I don't feel embarrassed.

The bottom line here is that government, as I said at the very beginning, is a mechanism. It's a tool. In and of itself, it is no more moral or immoral than a hammer and like a hammer, what matters is how it is used. Using a hammer to make a cabinet is good. Using a hammer to commit murder is bad. Using a hammer to painlessly kill a pig for slaughter is either good or bad depending on if you're a vegetarian or not. I don't expect governments to "be" moral any more than I expect them, as I said earlier, to "be" compassionate - or any more than I expect a hammer to "be" moral. What I want is for the people in and out of government to be moral - and compassionate - and to use the government as a means to act on the ideals related to those morals - and that compassion. Referring to a desire for "moral" or "compassionate" government is merely shorthand for that that.

(I'll note here since I assume it would prove necessary at some point that we're talking about the concept of government; this in no way means that I would necessarily approve of or agree with either the moral code involved or the actions taken as a result.)

So do governments involve force? Yes, they do. But unless it is agreed that

- only government involves force, or
- the use of force at any level from the individual up is inherently and invariably immoral and unacceptable, or
- placing different values on the lives of different people based on where they live or how much money they have is not a moral judgment, or
- not only is government free from moral judgment but even the effects of its actions are likewise exempt,

every one of which I would reject as either patently false or failing the challenge of logic or both, there is no basis to say that moral questions can't be addressed to government actions. Governments may not "be" moral but they can by virtue of how they are used act morally or immorally (or, I suppose if you want to be more precise, can be used for moral or immoral ends) and so morality does indeed have something to do with government.

Again, I intend to make this my last on this exchange unless I'm asked a question or an entirely new point (one that's not merely an expansion on a previous one) is raised. Still, I do hope others (including Chuck) will feel free to comment here about the ideas involved.

Several footnotes to the preceding

- The US branch of Amnesty International has sent a letter to US Secretary of State Can'tBe Right saying the group is

particularly dismayed at the lopsided response by the US government to the recent violence and its lackadaisical efforts to ameliorate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. ...

Without diminishing the responsibility of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups for indiscriminate and deliberate attacks on Israeli civilians, the US government must not ignore Israel's disproportionate response and the longstanding policies which have brought the Gaza Strip to the brink of humanitarian disaster.

Then again, maybe they're just being foolish: In response to a French proposal for a 48-hour "humanitarian cease-fire," Livni claimed that

[t]here is no humanitarian crisis, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce.

I guess the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) doesn't know what it's talking about.

- The bias in US media coverage continues as unabated as the violence. The NYT said that

[w]hile thousands of protesters marched in cities across Europe to demand a halt to the Israeli bombing, in Prague, a spokesman for the new Czech presidency of the European Union said Israel’s actions were “defensive, not offensive.”

Other European countries quickly distanced themselves from the Czech position. The French Foreign Ministry condemned both “the Israeli ground offensive against Gaza as it condemns the continuation of rocket firing.”

In London, Foreign Minister David Miliband urged both sides to accept an immediate cease-fire.

So they found one official to defend Israel while other European nations "distanced themselves" from him as tens of thousands marched in protest. This is what the Times described as a "mixed" reaction.

- The US continued its own "evenhanded" policy, blaming Hamas "thugs" for the violence by having "deliberately targeted innocent Israelis” in “an act of terror."

And indeed yes, targeting civilians is terrorism - let's make no bones about that and I'll take this opening to say for anyone out there so constrained in their thinking that they can't see the world in anything other than black and white, my condemnation of Israel does not mean I support Hamas and it does not mean I condone its shelling of civilians. But, still, haven't the Israelis also targeted civilians? Haven't they attacked mosques, homes, schools? On no, that's different. You see, Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak said

[w]e are not war hungry. ... We have no aggressive intentions.... ... We are peace seekers.

What's more, in a press release the IDF said it

wishes to reiterate that the residents of Gaza are not the target of the operation. Those who use civilians, the elderly, women and children as human shields are responsible for any and all injuries to the civilian population. Anyone who hides a terrorist or weapons in his house is considered a terrorist.

So it's simple. If Hamas kills civilians, it's Hamas's fault. If the IDF kills civilians, it's Hamas's fault. It reminds me of an abusive husband screaming at his bloodied wife, "Look at what you made me do!"

- Bush also claimed the US is

"leading diplomatic efforts to achieve a meaningful cease-fire that is fully respected.” Such a truce, he said, will require monitoring mechanisms to help ensure that the smuggling of weapons into Gaza ends.

The key to peace, it seems, is keeping weapons out of the hands of Palestinians while continuing to pour them into Israel. Which is, again, just so even-handed at to make one weep.

- Where is Obama? Keeping his head down, insisting through a spokeswoman. “There is one president at a time." Which is just as well, considering that in August he said

If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.

Now, there's change you can believe in. Isn't it?

- On Saturday, the UN Security Council was considering a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel and expressing concern at the escalation of violence between Israel and Hamas. The US blocked the resolution.

- This comes via A Tiny Revolution. The Israeli military released a video supposedly showing the destruction of a truck full of Grad missiles. However, the Israeli civil rights group B'Tselem investigated the case and supported the claim of the owner of the truck that what the Israelis claimed were missiles were actually gas canisters he was removing from his shop along with other pieces after the shop next door to his got bombed. In an al-Jazeera report, a member of the group noted that there were still canisters lying around the truck and that if they had been missiles ready for launch, the secondary explosion would have destroyed the vehicle - and as the correspondent noted, no one was carrying a weapon, which would seem to be unusual if the people were Hamas militants.

For myself, I admit to not being an expert intelligence analyst, but in watching the video I kept thinking that you could tell that some things heavy and cylindrical were being loaded but how you could tell exactly what they were is beyond me.

This is not the first time Israelis have made such false claims: In 2004, during an earlier attack into Gaza, the IDF accused the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) of allowing one of its ambulances to be used to transport a Kassem rocket, backed up by a video of a long, thin object being put in the back of the vehicle. It turned out to be a folded stretcher that was obviously too light and too thin to be a Kassem rocket. The IDF pulled the video from its website, but you can see it here.

- Finally, in scouring links related to this and the previous post, I came across an interesting person, one Avraham Burg. You can read more about him and his ideas about Israel at these various links. He recently became involved with a group called J Street, which calls itself "the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement."

And so it becomes clear

Updated As Israeli tanks and troops crash into Gaza, it becomes clear that what was suspected is true: The goal is not defense, it is destruction. Destruction of Hamas. Destruction not of Hamas as a "terrorist organization," but of Hamas as a government.

It was actually clear - it was admitted - days ago. On Wednesday, The Times (UK) was able to report that

"[t]he goal of the operation is to topple Hamas,” Haim Ramon, the deputy to Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister, said. ...

Brigadier-General Dan Harel, the Israeli deputy chief of staff, said that his forces would erase every trace of Hamas from Gaza’s crowded cities.

“After this operation there will not be a single Hamas building left standing in Gaza, and we plan to change the rules of the game,” the general said.

“We are hitting not only terrorists and launchers, but also the whole Hamas Government and all its wings. We are hitting government buildings, production factories, security wings and more.”

Sunday's New York Times added the information that

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of Israel said, “There is no doubt that as long as Hamas controls Gaza, it is a problem for Israel, a problem for the Palestinians and a problem for the entire region.”

Vice Premier Haim Ramon went even further Friday night in an interview on Israeli television, saying Israel must not end this operation with Hamas in charge of Gaza.

“What I think we need to do is to reach a situation in which we do not allow Hamas to govern,” Mr. Ramon said on Channel One. “That is the most important thing.” ...

Israel has not spared the trappings of Hamas sovereignty or limited itself to military targets. It says that the mosques it has destroyed were weapons storehouses and that the Islamic University, which it has hit repeatedly, housed explosives factories. But it has also reduced many government buildings to rubble without any claim that they were military in nature.

“The government buildings are a place where financial, logistical and human resources serve to support terror,” said Capt. Benjamin Rutland, a spokesman for the Israeli military. “Much of the government is involved in the active support and planning of terror.”

(That last, I'll note in passing, is an argument championed by the US in the 1991 Gulf War, when civilian targets like public roads and telephone switching stations were declared military targets because they "could help Iraq's military," a definition by which, I remarked at the time, "it becomes hard to think of anything that is not a 'military target.'")

But of course even in that face of that, the US media couldn't bring itself to acknowledging the fact. So the very same day, the NYT also said that

it remained an open question whether Israel would try to oust the Hamas government*

and ABC News was citing a conveniently anonymous Israeli "government official" who quoted Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as telling his inner Cabinet on Saturday that

Israel's objective was to bring quiet to southern Israel but "we don't want to topple Hamas."

The latter report, if true, brands Haim Ramon a liar but actually sounds a great deal more like an exercise in CYA, because, as the NYT noted,

while it may sound decisive to speak of taking Hamas out of power, almost no one familiar with Gaza and Palestinian politics considers it realistic.

So talk tough for international and domestic consumption, lay out the real goal, but knowing you may well fail, have the fallback that "the Prime Minister never said that."

But here's my real point in raising this: Deputy Prime Minister Ramon also said that

“We will stop firing immediately if someone takes the responsibility of this government, anyone but Hamas. ... We are favourable to any other government to take the place of Hamas.”

Mr. Ramon, you are a liar. A damned bold-faced liar.

First, "anyone?" Who else is there? Fatah? They're not only seen as corrupt but as collaborators because of the utter failure of their moderation to secure any genuine concessions from Israel; taking over Gaza in the wake of an Israeli attack would only confirm that judgment. A Fatah government wouldn't last a month and that's probably optimistic. Egypt? It's already said no to the possibility and it has no intention of taking up the burden of guaranteeing humanitarian conditions in Gaza, the same burden Israel has shamefully and illegally shunned. NATO, as some have suggested? The answer there is also no.

The fact is, there isn't anyone else. And I find it impossible to believe that Mr. Ramon doesn't know this. Again, as so many times before, Israel has set down conditions for progress toward a wider agreement which it knows can't be met.

And second, suppose, just suppose, there was someone else. Are we supposed to imagine for a single second that when Ramon said "any other government" he actually meant any other government rather than "a government acceptable to Israel," a government, let's be blunt, of either pro-Israel foreign occupiers or Quislings?

(I'm flashing on Phil Ochs' song "Cops of the World," specifically the lines "We'll spit through the streets of the cities we wreck/And we'll find you a leader that you can elect.")

Even that begs the question: What sort of government would be acceptable to Israel? We've been down this road before. Not that long ago the cry was "Anybody but Arafat." But the truth is, no Palestinian leader is acceptable to Israel. Even when they got the one they said they preferred - Mahmoud Abbas - they set about to downplay and undermine chances for a settlement, changing the rules, upping the ante, moving the goalposts, even before he was inaugurated.

Israel does not want a peace which does not include Israeli domination of the Palestinians. That is, except among those members of the Israeli rejectionist front who don't want to dominate the Palestinians, they want them tossed out of Gaza and the West Bank entirely so it can all become part of "greater Israel."

(That expulsionist impulse is not limited to the more extreme elements of Israeli society, either. In November 2007, Foreign Minister Livni said that a future Palestinian state

will not be a solution just for the Palestinians who live in the West Bank. It is designed to provide a comprehensive national solution - for those living in the West Bank, and the refugees camps, and even for the [Arab] citizens of Israel.

That is, she envisioned that the Palestinians now living in Israel proper would either leave or be kicked out.

By the way, the link is from a group of Orthodox Jews called True Torah Jews Against Zionism which claims that the existence of Israel as a Jewish political entity is actually contrary to the Torah. I would not even dare to pretend to be enough of a Biblical scholar to argue that point one way or the other.)

Always it's the same. A ceasefire starts with much fanfare and grandiose expressions of hope and progress. But no progress is made, no Israeli concessions appear, more settlements are built, more demands are made on Palestinian authorities to do for Israel what it has been unable to do for itself, repression continues, the taking of land continues, Palestinian anger builds, the ceasefire ends or breaks down, and that very ending becomes the excuse for continued, even increased, repression - until the next ceasefire.

It's time to stop. Period. End it. Now. And the best thing we as Americans can do to that end is to demand an end to US military aid and sales to Israel until and unless Israel reaches specific agreements - not promises, not more "if they stop, we can talk" bull because, again, we've gone that way too many times before to have any faith in it, but specific agreements - to lift the blockade of Gaza, to accept the results of democratic elections among Palestinians (which means accepting a government lead by Hamas), to tear down any part of its "separation fence" that extends beyond the so-called "Green Line" (the borders of Israel proper), to remove settlers from the West Bank (except for any prepared to live under Palestinian rule), to restore lands illegally taken from Palestinians, to allow a limited "right of return," and to establish a truly independent, truly self-governing, Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

Until then, there should be no aid except humanitarian assistance to both Israelis and Palestinians. We may not be able to stay the hangman's hand but we can at least stop paying for the rope.

*Interesting: A few hours later, with no indication the change was made, that phrase has disappeared from the online version of the story. In its place is a statement of the official Israeli position that "it is not their aim now to fully reoccupy Gaza," which of course is a completely separate issue from overthrowing the Hamas government.

Updated with the inclusion of the graphic, which reads "I, too, am against the war in Gaza." It apparently originated at a website in Israel, but unhappily for me, that site is in Hebrew, of which I can't read word one. I found it at The Magnes Zionist.

Justice. Compassion. Community.

Yesterday over at Hullabaloo, Dday had a piece about how in the wake of the election Congressional GOPpers are becoming convinced their problem is that they're not being reactionary enough and how they intend to scream and screech even more than they have. As part of that, he brought up how everything - including the financial bailout - became a basis for calling for tax cuts.

That lead to his making an observation which I thought required response, which I'm cross-posting here:

I don't think anyone has invalidated that "let the people have their own money" approach.

That's because they keep accepting the underlying premise of "private (unrestricted free-market capitalism) good, public (government) bad" instead of trying to construct an alternative narrative - or, if you prefer, frame. They persist in fighting on the right's turf, in the right's terms.

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that this very failure may be quite revealing of how the Dems as a group really think, I dug up and mixed together some stuff of mine from years ago to suggest some possible elements of an alternative narrative based around the underlying concepts of "justice" and "community."

We see government as the vehicle through which a people can act on their ideals. Our heritage as Americans includes a great many idealistic values - but conservatives are appealing to the worst in our heritage: to selfishness, to suspicion, to "what's-in-it-for-me."

In their bankruptcy of spirit they have sought to arouse a meanness of manner and selfishness of soul among the American people. They've tried to divide us against ourselves, empty us of compassion, and make what the British call "I'm all right Jack" our national motto. They want you to think of just yourselves in isolation: You're working, you're not hungry, your mortgage hasn't been foreclosed, so the hell with everybody else.

They've favored the rich, pampered Big Business, and sought to conceal the pain they've caused under a stream of claims, anecdotes, and figure-mongering that ranges from the merely clever to outright lies.

They are not political leaders, they're cult leaders, true believers in the classic sense of the term: They believe themselves to be in possession of certain ultimate truths that are not subject to rational argument and they isolate themselves from the contamination of non-believers. And, like all cults, it has its glorious vision eternally threatened by its ultimate demons.

That's why they speak of the personal but never of the public; of self but never others; of us and them but never we; of family but never of community. In fact, they're afraid to talk of community, because that means to talk of social obligations, of moral commitments to others, commitments which their selfish, circumscribed view can't comprehend, indeed rejects as, almost literally, heresy.

We think we as a people are better than they give us credit for, and it's time we had government that called us to the highest of our ideals instead of the lowest of our fears.

Because compassion is not a cliche; it's a requirement of our humanity. Decency isn't for case-by-case convenience but must be a basic social tenet. And justice is not a prerogative of the powerful but a basic human right and it must be protected as such.

What we ultimately reject is the right of so few to have so much when so many have so little. What we ultimately resist is the power of so few to control so much when so many control so little. What we ultimately affirm is the right of every human being to a decent life free of hunger, fear, and oppression. What we ultimately demand from our society is the effort to guarantee that right. We've no desire to place a ceiling over anyone's aspirations, but we do want to put a floor under everyone's needs.

That's the dream, a dream that reaches to the depths of the human dream. We don't dream of perfection, of idealized utopias, but of simple human justice. Justice in its truest sense: economic, social, and political. A justice that rejects the ascendancy of bombs over bread, of private greed over public good, or profits over people. A justice that centers on the preciousness of life and will fight to maintain and even expand that preciousness.

That dream is there for us, and if we can but have the courage to hold to that dream, to take risks for it, to look to the future, together we can do it. It won't be easy. It won't be cheap. And it won't be convenient. But it is possible - and, after all is said and done, it simply is the only right thing to do.

Just have to keep hammering it: Justice. Compassion. Community. Justice. Compassion. Community. Justice....

Yes, I realize that the body of that sounds more like a manifesto than a counter-narrative, which is why I included the coda. Those words should be part of, underlie, everything we say, every program we advocate. The real genius of the right, contrary to what some may say, does not truly lie in their ability to create a simple message but in their sheer stubbornness in advocating it, their determination to express their underlying notions at every opportunity until they become so ingrained, so suffused through our social and political discourse, that they no longer come to consciousness and so no longer get argued.

Which is why "invalidating" the "'let the people have their own money' approach" is completely the wrong way to fight. It can't be invalidated because in a basic philosophical sense, it is "their own money." The unspoken part, the part that underlies it and gives it its potency, the part that has penetrated the culture, is "keep your own money because no one cares about you so you don't have to care about anyone else." Without that unspoken call to isolation-driven selfishness, argument loses almost all its emotional power. Without that unspoken call to isolation-driven selfishness, people realize just who it is that is keeping what.

The counterweight, then, is not a challenge to the surface part, is not some version of "it's not really your money" (which I have seen argued) or, worse, acquiescing in the wingers' claim that we're saying "the government knows how to spend it better than you do." The counterweight is more along the lines of "as a member of a community, you have a responsibility to the other members of that community, as they do to you - and the more you have (and we're looking at you, rich people), the greater the responsibility." (The religiously-inclined can refer to Luke 12:48: "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.") The idea is to change the issue of taxes from the wingers version of "your own money" to one of community responsibility, to the justice of everyone paying their fair share.

The point is not the exact words or even the particular issue. The point is to keep referring to those basic principles insistently, repeatedly, stubbornly, unflinchingly, unashamedly, unhesitatingly, even in-your-facedly.

Oh my, how many times have I said this in some form or another: Stop trying to fight the wingers on their terms! The idea is not to see what we can wrangle within their rules, it's to change the rules! There is a counter-narrative to the wingers' paeans to selfishness. But - and this is where we so often fail - we have to be prepared to be every bit as stubborn as they are.

It remains to be seen if we're up to it.

Justice. Compassion. Community. Justice. Compassion. Community. Justice. Compassion....

We made it

It kinda feels like we barely made it, but we did. Got through 2008. It wasn't the best of years, what with various hassles including having to move again and various financial disasters, so I can't say I'm sorry to see it go, but go it did.

We greeted the New Year with cold, a car making funny noises, a cut in income, and no heat. (The latter of which turned out to be a minor problem easily fixed, happily.) So I can only assume it's gonna get better. Hooray!

The picture, by the way, has nothing to do with the rest of this post, it should have gone up a week ago, and doesn't even really relate to the New Year, but I wanted to post it anyway. It's the first-ever picture of Earthrise, as seen by Apollo 8 astronauts on December 24, 1968, 40 years ago this past Christmas Eve. If you want to make the stretch, you could say posting it symbolizes my intent to keep having geek posts in 2009.

Start the year with a little trivia, which actually does have to do with the New Year: Why are the months we just passed through, September through December, named as they are?

Answer: The old Roman calendar started the year on March 25; the idea was the year started with the arrival of spring. Supposedly it was Julius Caesar who changed it to January 1, but a lot of countries later on used the original calendar; some changed as they adopted the Gregorian calendar in the late 1500s but others didn't follow suit until the 1700s.

Why is that relevant? Because those calendars also used the Roman names for several of the months, as we do now. And if the year starts in March, making March the first month of the year, then December is the tenth month - reflected in its prefix "dec," referring to ten, as in "decade."

And so for November (from "novern," nine), October ("octo," eight), and September ("septem," seven). That is, they are so named because they were the seventh through the tenth months of the year.

On a side note, for the second year Jon Swift invited bloggers on his blogroll (plus some selected others) to submit a link to what they thought was their best post of the year. He has put up his compilation of them here. It makes for some really interesting reading.

Yes, I did make a submission. I admit to having had a hard time picking among about a half-dozen of my own finalists, but I finally settled one this one from November. Which I think I chose partly because I didn't want to admit that my best post for the entire year came in January.

I noticed in the course of making my selection that I was preferring those written with passion rather than those that were more analytical. Which is likely why, had it not been written too late to be a submission, the post immediately preceding this one would have been in the running.