Glenn Greenwald: Orwell, blinding tribalism, selective Terrorism, and Israel/Gaza

[laststeamtrain]

Glenn Greenwald
Sunday Jan. 4, 2009 06:10 EST
Orwell, blinding tribalism, selective Terrorism, and Israel/Gaza

Former McCain-Palin campaign spokesman and current Weekly Standard editor Michael Goldfarb notes that Israel, a couple of days ago, dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on a Gazan home which killed a top Hamas leader . . . in addition to 18 others, including his four wives and nine of his children. About the killing of those innocent civilians, Goldfarb writes (h/t John Cole via email):

"The fight against Islamic radicals always seems to come around to whether or not they can, in fact, be deterred, because it's not clear that they are rational, at least not like us. But to wipe out a man's entire family, it's hard to imagine that doesn't give his colleagues at least a moment's pause. Perhaps it will make the leadership of Hamas rethink the wisdom of sparking an open confrontation with Israel under the current conditions."

That, of course, is just a slightly less profane version of Marty Peretz's chest-beating proclamation that the great value of the attack on Gaza is to teach those Arabs a lesson: "do not fuck with the Jews."

There are few concepts more elastic and subject to exploitation than "Terrorism," the all-purpose justifying and fear-mongering term. But if it means anything, it means exactly the mindset which Goldfarb is expressing: slaughtering innocent civilians in order to "send a message," to "deter" political actors by making them fear that continuing on the same course will result in the deaths of civilians and -- best of all, from the Terrorist's perspective -- even their own children and other family members.

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http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/04/terrorism/index.html

[Why Syzygy]

1. Was that Hamas leader an ELECTED official? nt

[ShortnFiery]

2. It now doesn't matter if they are "elected" if their enemy is more powerful = LABEL "terrorists".

And kill them all~ After all "terrorists" are not LIKE US (wink-wink) since the Bush Administration has, in essence, stated that The Geneva Conventions don't apply to those "evil doers." ... How can we conclude they are even HUMAN BEINGS? ... Pass the ammunition ... there's still a few more alive! :sarcasm:

[laststeamtrain]

3. I don't know.

Maybe, like a member of the Stern gang, he felt self-elected.

I just don't know.

Maybe he was like Paul Revere or one of his anti-British occupation loonies, I don't know.