From the Independent: Victorious, but vilified: Israel has 'destroyed its image and its soul'

[scarletwoman]

Victorious, but vilified: Israel has 'destroyed its image and its soul'

By Kim Sengupta in Jerusalem and Donald Macintyre on the Gaza-Egypt border
Sunday, 18 January 2009

After three weeks of carnage in Gaza, there were tentative signs of a ceasefire last night. But the bitter legacy of the past 22 days for Israel is that, while it declares victory on the battlefield, the country's reputation has rarely sunk so low.

Yesterday the United Nations called for a war crimes investigation after two children, aged five and seven, were killed when, it claimed, an Israeli tank shell hit a school sheltering some of the more than 40,000 internally displaced refugees.

<snip>

For many Israelis the cost of the war became clear when a Hebrew-speaking physician, Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish, who had been frequently interviewed on prime-time TV by a top reporter, Shlomi Eldar, phoned the journalist live on air to announce that his three daughters had been killed. "My God, my girls, Shlomi," viewers heard him say. "Can't anybody get to us, please?" As Mr Eldar got the authorities to allow rescue services to the stricken family, it was not lost on commentators that the same disaster was striking hundreds of other families without direct access to Israeli TV.

Ari Shavit, a leading columnist on the newspaper, 'Haaretz', was a fervent proponent of the "just war" at the outset. By Friday, he was writing: "Shelling a United Nations facility is something not to be done at any time, but doing it on the day when the UN Secretary-General is visiting Jerusalem is beyond lunacy. The level of pressure the Israel Defence Forces have been exerting on Gaza may be squeezing Hamas, but it is destroying Israel. Destroying its soul and its image. Destroying it on world television screens, destroying it in the living rooms of the international community... "

sw

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. IDF has gone too far

There is just so much retribution that makes sense to the general public. When UN facilities filled with refugees were bombed again and again, it was lunacy. I hear now that Bolivia, of all countries, is talking of taking the Israeli government to the Hague to the International Criminal Court. Bolivia is a long way from the Middle East and I don't recall ever hearing about it having an opinion on the Israel-Palestine matter before. But they want a trial for crimes against humanity--quite telling, I think.

[GoesTo11]

2. Crimes against humanity blah blah blah

Here's a list.

Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Tojo, Saddam, Mr H., Milosovic, Olmert, Livni, Barak.

Can you tell which three don't belong on that list?

This incessant over-the-topism makes people doubt legitimate criticism.

[shaayecanaan]

6. Milosevic

was indicted for genocide largely based on the slaughter of 5000 Bosnian Muslims by an irregular Bosnian-Serb militia that was both:-

(a) not under his control
(b) in another country, and in territory not controlled by him.

On the other hand, Ariel Sharon and the IDF presided over the Sabra/Shatila massacres in which 2500 Palestinians were slaughtered:-

(a) by an irregular militia that was armed and trained by the IDF
(b) in territory controlled by the IDF
(c) under the oversight of the IDF

If Milosevic deserves his name to be written in black, so does Ariel Sharon.

[cali]

3. nations don't have souls.

I hate that kind of hyperbole.

[scarletwoman]

4. It's a quote from an Israeli writer, maybe he DOES think of his country as having a soul to lose.

[PerfectSage]

5. Here's a link to the youtube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUh6xVlndhM