Inside the mind of Tzipi Livni

Here's Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni discussing the situation in Gaza:

"A [military] response is important; even if it doesn't automatically end the Palestinian rocket fire, there is something important in the impression, and Israel's deterrence ability," she said during a conference in Tel Aviv. ...

"If Hamas knows that Israel won't be quiet when missiles fall on Ashkelon, they will feel the responsibility on their shoulders," she said, adding that she is "ashamed to call what is currently happening a ceasefire."

And just what is Israel doing in Gaza?

The former high commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson has said that in Gaza, nothing short of a "civilisation" is being destroyed. Desmond Tutu has called it "an abomination". The humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory, Maxwell Gaylard, said that in Gaza there was a "massive assault" on human rights. Most recently, the European commissioner, Louis Michel, described the blockade of Gaza as a "form of collective punishment against Palestinian civilians, which is a violation of international humanitarian law".

To which we can add the UN Special Rapporteur's accurate characterization of Israel's actions as a "crime against humanity."

So to recap, things that make Tzipi Livni feel ashamed: Israel's cease-fire with Hamas.  Things that don't make Tzipi Livni feel ashamed: practicing vicious siege warfare on 1.4 million men, women, and children.

A guy who has the uncanny ability to express my innermost thoughts once wrote something that seems particularly appropriate in this case:

[O]ne of the worst things about Israel is the corrosive effect it has on those who claim to support it (both Jewish and otherwise).  It exerts an irresistible magnetic pull on the moral compass of those who embrace its self-aggrandizing mythology, rendering them capable of depths of ethical blindness or outright malevolence that are all the more repellent for the self-righteousness in which they're so typically couched.

SHAME BONUS: Ehud Olmert talks about rampaging Israeli colonists in Hebron:

[Olmert] went on to say, "We are the children of a people whose historic ethos is built on the memory of pogroms. The sight of Jews firing at innocent Palestinians has no other name than pogrom. Even when Jews do this, it is a pogrom. As a Jew, I am ashamed that Jews could do such a thing."

Which qualifies him as slightly more of a human being than Livni.  But here's Olmert on Gaza:

"We haven't done anything in Gaza that we should be ashamed of. If anything, Hamas should be ashamed. There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza."

If only the Jews had an historic ethos built on the memory of collective punishment, so he could also feel ashamed about what he's inflicting on innocent Palestinians in Gaza—you know, something that could make him see why threatening an entire people with a bigger holocaust is wrong.  But without this critical historical referent, Olmert is sadly incapable of feeling any shame for turning Gaza into a huge "ghetto."

Comments

[Erin]

I saw this on a CNN scroll this a.m. and thought you might want to know:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081211/ts_nm/us_usa_israel_iran