Carrol Cox writes:
As much as I disagree with you I have always valued your posts as important contributions to debate. But this invoking of the Israeli need for security simply is beyond the pale.
==================== I still don't understand your objection. I'm not making a value judgement here.
I know of no situation where a nation state did not react to armed incursions on its territory, especially when it was the more powerful party. Can you cite any? This is NOT TO CONDONE the Israeli reaction which is not only "disproportionate", as even Israel's European friends have pointed out and the US has hinted at, but has to be considered and condemned politically within the context of its continued occupation of the West Bank and its attempts to precipitate the overthrow the Hamas government by starving the Palestinian people who elected it. That's the point. If the Israelis want to end these raids and rocket attacks, they wlll have to make an accomodation with Hamas and allow it to govern and engage it in negotiations about a viable Palestinian state. Otherwise, there can be no peace, even if the Israelis unilaterally withdraw behind their wall. Would you rather Ben-Ami would have written the standard Israeli boilerplate that the raids show the "terrorist nature" of the Palestinians, and justifies Israel's attempts to overthrow the Hamas government which "sponsors terror", and that there can be talks about a Palestinian state until Hamas first crawls to it by publicly "renouncing terrorism" and formally recongizing the Jewish state? I am sure there is not a single thing we would disagree on concerning the nature of Zionism and its history in the Middle East - including the replacement of Israel by a single binational Palestinian state, if the relationship of forces posed this as a current possibility.
