Howard Jacobson,
Yours is a shamefully dishonest article.
You are playing word games with mass murder, and truly, in the end, your circumlocutions restate the same disgusting tactic used by the defenders of Israel's bloody excesses: you are anti-Semitic if you criticize Israel.
Is Israel a country like any other or is it not? That truly is the heart of the matter.
If it is a country like any other, then its savage behavior in Lebanon and in Gaza and in the West Bank is completely unacceptable.
It has nothing to do with any "ism."
But if Israel is somehow to be considered by different standards than other countries, if it is to have special rules and allowances, then the real "ism" involved here is Israeli exceptionalism.
You cannot have it both ways, try as you might.
Israel does not talk to its opponents ever. It makes only public show of talking to a pathetic man like Abbas. The others it either assassinates - and there have been many bloody assassinations - or labels as "terrorists."
These are the techniques of tyrants, not states which respect human rights and democratic values.
Just because Israel is technically a democracy does not mean it cannot act as a tyrant.
A prejudiced majority can keep a technically democratic state behaving like a gang of thugs. We saw this in the American South. We saw this in apartheid South Africa. We saw this with France in Algeria. And we see this in Israel.
Even as Israel went about the business of killing, among others, 400 kids in Gaza, in the West Bank more of other people's land and homes was being seized.
How can anyone possibly regard this in a positive light?
If Israel would start treating its opponents with decency and respect and agree to return to its 1967 borders, we could have peace, genuine peace.
It is not Hamas that prevents this happening. Hamas has shown readiness to talk and reach a modus vivendi more than once. It kept the previous truce agreement scrupulously, which Israel broke.
The leaders of Hamas are intelligent, educated professionals, elected cleanly.
They represent for Palestinians the same yearning for clean government that Obamas does for America.
But Israel will not even talk. Ridiculous.
IT'S ANTI-SEMITIC TO BE REVULSED BY THIS?
