Mark Steel: Now we've all seen through the Israeli government's excuses

[DogPoundPup]

The worrying part about whether the ceasefire in Gaza can hold together will be whether the international community can stop the flow of arms to the terrorists. Because Israel's getting their planes and tanks and missiles from somewhere and until this supply is cut off there's every chance it could start up again.

The disregard for life from these terrorists and their supporters is shocking. For example Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, wrote that the purpose of the Israeli attack must be to "inflict a heavy death toll and heavy pain on the Gaza population".

Replace "Gaza" with "western", and that could have been written by al-Qa'ida. Maybe this is the problem: the Israelis are writing their policies by downloading statements from an Islamic Jihad website and just changing the place names. Also, if the Israelis think the Hamas rockets are as lethal as they say, why don't they swap their F-16 fighters and Apachehelicopters for a few of them?

These things are capable of terrorising a whole nation for years apparently, yet the Israelis have neglected to buy any, wasting their money on gunboats and stuff. Given that their annual arms budget is $7.2bn plus $2.2 bn in "aid", they'd save enough to buy a selection of banks in every country in the world.

The military advantages would be enormous because the Israelis' complaint about Hamas is the use of tunnels to smuggle arms. But if Israel gave Hamas a few planes and tanks and helicopters, they could probably be persuaded to shut down those tunnels that seem to be the cause of such bad feeling.

Whatever you say about Israel, at least it moves its weapons about legally – except for when it secretly built a nuclear arsenal against an array of international agreements. But they did it above ground and not in a tunnel and that's the main thing.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mark-steel/mark-steel-now-weve-all-seen-through-the-israeli-governments-excuses-1452234.html

[bemildred]

1. LOL.

Think of the money we could save ...
:thumbsup:

[Tripmann]

2. Very good. A bit of light sarcastic relief from the depths

of destruction.

[redqueen]

3. Brilliant.

Thanks for posting that.

[DogPoundPup]

4. You're welcome!

[zonmoy]

5. Or is it that the al queda statements are being written by the same israeli propagandists that the

israeli government is using to make their claims about needing to cut off the food tunnels for the gazans.

[azurnoir]

6. Maybe someone should forward this to President Obama

and to Hilary maybe Hilary most of all

[Idealism]

7. It would be hilarious if the violence wasn't so real

:cry: