Originally Posted by roachboy

gee. loquitor, what gives you an inside track into what all palestinians are thinking?

among the patterns of thinking that seem to be reaching the end of their road---i hope---is this essentialist take on the israel-palestine matter. you know, there are two sides defined as identical to themselves internally--there are the israelis who all think one way---which is entirely, completely false---and then there are the palestinians who all think in exactly the opposite way---again entirely, completely false. what this does is to enable you to dodge thinking about this as political, dodge thinking about concrete policy choices and their implications.

there is an obvious, concrete, empirical historical and political trajectory that opened the space for hamas to win the elections in gaza, and another that led the israelis and bush people to refuse to recognize that election result---all of it is to blame for the resulting siege--that siege has failed to weaken hamas. what that siege has done is brutalize the civilian population in gaza. you may substitute a Hamas Bogeyman for this reality if you want, but i don't nor do i see the point of it. hamas chose to play a dangerous game with israel at the end of the last cease fire and in that they fucked up--but the reasons for that, too, are political. you know, actual choices made by discrete agents that have consequences in the world. the israelis made their choice based on a political calculation that was only secondarily about the famnous rockets you hear so much about so so much about. kadima faces elections, finds itself weakened politically and sees the end of the bush period of unconditional support for the brutal and self-defeating policies of the right rushing up against them. hamas knew it too, no doubt.

there are no heros here. there is nothing but idiocy amongst the political agents involved--the bush people, the israeli right, hamas.

but nothing---and i mean nothing---justifies what the israelis are not doing to the civilians in gaza, just as nothing---absolutely nothing---justifies the disastrous POLITICAL choice to refuse recognition of the jan 06 elections.

i think this has to be internationalized and quickly.
even the israeli right must see that everything about thier brutalize the palestinian people as a way to keep the political order weak has not worked.

i think everybody sees the endgame of this entire way of thinking except perhaps for the american supporters of the israeli right, who sit far away playing tedious little image subsitution games---o look at this anecdote about how horrible hamas is.

but that's a noin-sequitor. here, no-one is supporting hamas. but israel's approach of brutalizing the palestinians is no different and no better--except that there is an enormous assymetry of means---so to my mind, if anything it is worse. a military superpower pulverizing people who make rockets and throw fucking rocks.

it is obvious that the logic in place leads to nothing but carnage. internationalize the situation and move quickly toward a two-state solution. force israel to dismantle the existing settlements in the west bank. do it now. stop building new ones. create an international status for jerusalem. it's time to end this lunacy.