Olmert has blood on his hands

Israel is threatening to deepen and widen it's campaign into the Gaza strip, mobilizing ground troops for a possible occupation. According to the New York Times, this bombing campaign is Israel's most massive in decades.

What precipitated such a massive retaliation?

Rocket attacks from Gaza into nearby Israeli towns apparently prompted the conservative administration of Ehud Olmert to respond, though those attacks yielded ZERO civilian casualties and few injuries.

Israel's military response has caused the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians and prompted Egypt to open its border to help evacuate the wounded.

Here is how the NYT rounds up the international response:

A number of governments and international officials, including leaders of Russia, Egypt, the European Union and the United Nations, condemned Israel’s use of force and also called on Hamas to end the rocket fire. But in strong terms, the Bush administration blamed Hamas for the violence and demanded that it stop firing rockets.

Early Sunday morning in New York, the United Nations Security Council issued a statement expressing concern about the escalation of the conflict and calling on both parties for an immediate end to all violence. The statement came after envoys of the 15-member council met for over four hours in a closed session, Reuters reported.

Just to reiterate, the EU and the UN have condemned Israel's action. Only George Bush stands in solidarity with Mr. Olmert, who resigned this past summer after a disastrous conflict with Lebanon in 2006 and rampant accusation of graft and corruption. (sort of familiar, no?)

Prime Minister Olmert, in another striking similarity to his ally President Bush, will be leaving office shortly. Israeli elections are scheduled for February 10th. It was only one month ago that his own foreign minister called on him to step down immediately.

When Bush leaves Washington DC three weeks from now, Olmert will be deprived of his most loyal friend. While I have no doubt that Barack Obama will maintain partnership with Israel, I do not expect that the Obama administration will signal the same blind approval for such wantonly violent retaliations as President Bush has.

Given that Israel is responding to attacks that caused ZERO casualties, it seems way too reasonable to conclude that Prime Minister Olmert is waging war out of selfish political consideration, manufacturing a conflict crisis that might sandbag foreign minister Livni's chances against hardliner Netanyahu in February's election.

When mainstream American Jews like me immediately leap to conclusions like that, doesn't Israel have a public relations disaster on its hands?

Israeli war hawks have cultivated an alliance with neoconservative Christianists in the United States. That approach has contributed to the inhumane policy that has increasingly placed at risk the sympathies of the 75% of American Jews that have voted liberal in every single election dating back to the 1920s.

That's sad.

From the NYT:

JERUSALEM — When Hamas blew large holes in Gaza’s border with Egypt, allowing thousands of Palestinians a chance to stock up on medicines, food and consumer goods, it also blew a large hole in the Israeli policy, backed by Washington, of squeezing the population of Gaza in the hope that they would turn actively against Hamas.

As Israeli leaders pushed Egypt to close the border and fumbled for an effective response, the apparent Hamas success put Egypt into a bind and further undermined the chances that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Fatah faction could succeed in negotiating a peace treaty — let alone by the time President Bush leaves office.



I generally believe that hardliners are the ones most capable of working together.

Great Job.

I Hate The Way Israel Makes Me Feel

I want to just love it forever and ever.

But the hard-liners there, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, they make me sick.

I know in my heart that my family comes from a people of wisdom and empathy.

From the Toronto Star:

"As far as I'm concerned, the residents of Gaza can walk," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said yesterday, after his government decided last week to shut off all fuel supplies to the impoverished territory and to close all border crossings. "And they will not get gasoline because they have a murderous, terrorist regime that does not allow the residents of southern Israel to live in peace."

Today, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip blew up part of the border with Egypt and tens of thousands streamed South to buy food and supplies. From the NPR story:

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said that he had ordered his troops to allow the Palestinians to cross into Egypt from the Gaza Strip because they were starving.

Mubarak told reporters at the Cairo International Book fair that when Palestinians began breaking through border in force, he told his men to let them in to buy food before escorting them out.

"I told them to let them come in and eat and buy food and then return them later as long as they were not carrying weapons," he said.

It makes Mr. Mubarak, usually a jerk, sound like a humanitarian.

It makes the leader of Israel seem like a callous fool. His commentary is shameful and his consistent decisions to equate ordinary Palestinians with a minute percentage of terrorists are counterproductive and hateful.

I wish more people would consider the implications of evangelical, neoconservative support for a hard line stance by the Israelis. It is a stupid, fantastical, anti-semitic foreign policy.

They wish to eradicate Palestine so that Jesus will eradicate the Jews.

Really. In 2008, this is how we base our foreign policy. The world is round and I have an iPod.

Unfortunately, those that criticize that policy are too often the ones that are labeled as anti-semitic.

Human beings should not be denied access to food supplies under any circumstance. That this is lost on the Israeli leadership is beyond my comprehension this morning.

I want to be filled with pride, I really do. Prime Minister Olmert makes this impossible.