Israel, Detached from Reality, Devolves into a Neo-McCarthyite State

Update: Obama can't afford to continue Bush's Israel policy

Israel should know that reckless, neocon militarism will result in devastation for all concerned.

Perhaps the worst crime that a government or movement can commit today is to come forward with a peace proposal overwhelmingly supported by the world community.

Ask Hamas and Hezbollah.

Read Patrick Cockburn's Has Anything Changed Since Sabra and Chatila?
In Israel, Detachment From Reality is the Norm for another sober analysis of the sickness in domestic Israel.

At first I thought that little had changed since Sabra and Chatila. Once again there were the same tired and offensive excuses that Israel was somehow not to blame. Hamas was using civilians as human shields, and in any case – this argument produced more furtively –two-thirds of people in Gaza had voted for Hamas so they deserved whatever happened to them.

But on returning to Jerusalem 10 years after I was stationed here as The Independent's correspondent between 1995 and 1999 I find that Israel has changed significantly for the worse. There is far less dissent than there used to be and such dissent is more often treated as disloyalty. ...

Intolerance of dissent has grown and may soon get a great deal worse. Benjamin Netanyahu, who helped bury the Oslo accords with the Palestinians when he was last prime minister from 1996 to 1999, is likely to win the Israeli election on 10 February. The only issue still in doubt is the extent of the gains of the extreme right.

The views of these were on display this week as Avigdor Lieberman, the chairman of the Ysrael Beitenu party, which, according to the polls will do particularly well in the election, was supporting the isqualification of two Israeli Arab parties from standing in the election. 'For the first time we are examining the boundary between loyalty and disloyalty,' he threatened their representatives. 'We'll deal with you like we dealt with Hamas.'

Last year as the Free Gaza Movement was running the illegal Israili blockade to ship in humantiarian supplies, I read the comments in Haaretz. Comments like 'let them drown' and 'sink them" are common.

UN investigator Richard Falk is the focus of a piece today in Haaretz, UN human rights official: Gaza evokes memories of Warsaw Ghetto, and the comments are not much better.

But check out the piece:

There is evidence that Israel committed war crimes during its 22-day campaign in the Gaza Strip and there should be an independent inquiry, UN investigator Richard Falk said Thursday.

The mental anguish of the civilians who suffered the assault is so great that the entire population of Gaza could be seen as casualties, said Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Falk, speaking by phone from his home in California, said compelling evidence that Israel's actions in Gaza violated international humanitarian law required an independent investigation into whether they amounted to war crimes.

I believe that there is the prima facie case for reaching that conclusion,’ he told a Geneva news conference.

Falk said Israel had made no effort to allow civilians to escape the fighting.

‘To lock people into a war zone is something that evokes the worst kind of international memories of the Warsaw Ghetto, and sieges that occur unintentionally during a period of wartime,’ Falk, who is Jewish, said, referring to the starvation and murder of Warsaw's Jews by Nazi Germany in World War II.

Israel has approached the brink of insanity and President Obama must put a halt to this madness through action, specifically withholding American military, economic and diplomatic support until Israel, an outlaw actor now, joins the community of nations and begins reparations to the Palestinian people.

See also Soldiers kill father and 4-year-old son and wound other family members in their home, a-Zeitun neighborhood, Gaza City for a typical report from Gaza under Israeli occupation and attack.