In the International Herald-Tribune, Patrick Seale (pictured) looks at IDF security operations in Gaza and screams bloody murder:
The killing continues on a daily basis – by tank and sniper fire, by air and sea bombardment, and by undercover teams in civilian clothes sent into Arab territory to ambush and murder, an Israeli specialty perfected over the past several decades.
How long will the “international community” allow the slaughter to continue? The cruel repression of the occupied territories, and of Gaza in particular, is one of the most scandalous in the world today. It is the blackest stain on Israel’s patchy record as a would-be democratic state….
The situation is all the more urgent because, according to reports from Israel, something bigger and still more lethal is in prospect. Fresh from the indiscriminate slaughter they unleashed on Lebanon this summer – and no doubt eager to efface the memory of that fiasco – Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, and the chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, are said to be about to mount a military offensive against Gaza, on a far larger scale than the bombardments and armored incursions of recent months.
Seale, lately known for hobnobbing with Hamas and Hezbollah, doesn’t so much as acknowledge Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip, or that the Palestinians are responsible for Gaza’s sorry state of affairs. Since 2005, more Palestinians were killed by other Palestinians than by Israel.
