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| A member of the media walks past the vehicle which was destroyed by an Israeli strike in Gaza City Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2706494/18- |
A thousand Hamas missiles cannot erase the stain of the murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir, nor can the murder of Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaar, and Naftali Fraenkel extenuate it. Introspection in a time of war is perhaps a lot to ask; people under attack are not inclined to guilt. But the burning of the Palestinian boy must not be eclipsed by the struggle against the aggressions of Hamas. There is no Iron Dome to intercept the conscience.
The day of the atrocity against Muhammad Abu Khdeir—a revenge killing in a society that mocks revenge killings in other societies—was a dark day in the history of the state and the religion in whose name it was, however falsely, perpetrated. The maniacs who perpetrated the crime did not, in their ideas and words, come from nowhere, from no politics, from no culture. The top-to-bottom revulsion in Israel at what was done in the forest near Jerusalem, a sincere revulsion, does not end the matter. Regret, if it is to be genuine, cannot be efficient. It certainly must not become another ground for the sensation of moral superiority. The makeshift monument in the forest that was erected to the memory of the Palestinian boy was defaced, and erected again, and defaced again. Even as it endures sirens and shelters, Israeli society must cultivate its revulsion, its sickened feeling, not least because the ruin of relations between peoples is even more dangerous than the ruin of relations between presidents and prime ministers.
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But this is not all that needs to be said. (Yes, the other shoe is about to drop. I have two feet.) Israel has not only demons, but also enemies. One of its enemies, according to Human Rights Watch, is committing war crimes by launching missiles indiscriminately against civilian targets. The Israeli campaign in Gaza is not an act of revenge for the slaying of three Jewish boys; it is an act of retaliation against the Gazan barrage of rockets at Israeli towns and cities. What is the difference between revenge and retaliation? It is a fair question. The difference lies in the legitimacy of self-defense.
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| An Israeli army officer gives explanations to journalists during an army organised tour in a tunnel said to be used by Palestinian militants for cross-border attacks, at the Israeli-Gaza border Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2705315/ |
Revenge protects nothing, except the maddened psyches of those who commit it. It is not an act of self-defense, it is an act of self-expression. It is certainly not a “response” in any rational sense. The Israelis who slaughtered the Palestinian boy were not provoked; they were pre-provoked.
Yet in the matter of the rocket attacks from Gaza, Israel was provoked. The security of its citizens was at risk; and security is assessed empirically, not ideologically; and security is no less fundamental, morally speaking, than peace. Israel is acting strategically, not emotionally, in Gaza. It is “degrading” an incontrovertible threat. This does not exempt it from the means-ends question, but the campaign to destroy an arsenal that is being hurled against one’s population is warranted by reason and dignity. It is not a political solution, but a missile in mid-air is not a political problem.
If Israel’s “knock on the roof” warnings to Gazans about the imminent dangers to them are to be deemed ethically insufficient, and they certainly have not prevented all civilian deaths, what are we to make of the Interior Ministry in Gaza, which has been exhorting them to return to their homes? Hamas has taken its own people hostage. On the West Bank, the killers of the Israeli boys were often celebrated. Introspection is not just a Jewish obligation. The other night, sunk in my customary (but still dovish!) hopelessness, I opened a book of poems by the Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish, recently published by New York Review Books. Poetry may give hope, no? I found a poem called “The Gas Chambers,” where I read this: “I don’t have a grandmother who died in the gas chambers . . . / How horrific was the Nakba? / How harrowing to be a refugee? / These are but small pains / for niggers like us / I amuse myself by writing this down / in the gas chamber.” Hope fled again.
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N.Y. Times
About 34 percent of the continental United States was in at least a state of moderate drought this week. California is one of the hardest hit states, along with northern Texas and Oklahoma, according to the Drought Monitor. As of this May, the situation peaked with about 40 percent of the country abnormally dry. It's one of the most sustained periods of drought ever recorded for the U.S.
Washington Post
For the casual observer (or enthusiastic partisan), a new poll from CNN / ORC International reveals a staggering point of data: one-third of the country, 33 percent, supports impeaching President Obama. That's 100 million people (if we extrapolate those attitudes to children and so on)! Can he survive?
Yes, he can. As CNN itself points out, that figure is in line with public support for impeachment of Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton during their time in office.