Gaza commentary: sane and insane

The always-essential Ran HaCohen displays his usual acerbic perspicacity in a review of Israeli press coverage of the assault on Gaza:

Gadi Taub, an ultra-conservative young mainstreamer, wrote a column titled "Demagoguery, Anti-Semitism, Ignorance," with content too trivial to repeat, though fairly summarized by its first and last title-words. But Taub's demagoguery fades compared to Ben-Dror Yemini's (an Israeli Daniel Pipes) in Ma'ariv. In a column titled "The Most Justified Offensive Ever" (miraculously, the very words used by his Ha'aretz twin Ari Shavit for the Lebanon War just two years ago), Yemini draws a straight line from Hitler to Hamas (no coincidence they both start with an H, just like Hezbollah, Saddam Hussein, and Hemorrhoids), and explains that "Since the Nazi ideology […], no movement has been as dangerous to world peace as political Islam." My apologies for quoting this trash; we need an Israeli demagogue to instrumentalize the Holocaust, and Yemini was born for such dirty jobs.

And even Charles Krauthammer hits it right on the nose...:

Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating. ... At war today in Gaza, one combatant is committed to causing the most civilian pain and suffering ....

...if you read just what I've excerpted here, ignore the mendacious parity of "Israel-Gaza war," and forget everything you know about Charles Krauthammer.

Comments

[lover of jazz]

wow. the krauthammer piece is rather astonishing.
i honestly cannot imagine any sane human being writing that.

[KDelphi]

who thinks krauthammer is sane? The MSM has been especially disgustintg about this--the calls for Obama to "stay silent", pretending Rice will do something different, saying that we need "a lasting peace"--yes, when Israel is done killing people--I am not picking on Israel--the uS is just as much to blame (the UK less so)

And, if anyone thinks that it will not be seen as so in the Arab world, they are kidding themselves--we blocked action in the uN SC yesterday, and we (and our stuckass military ) will pay the price.

Israeli politick seems to not care for anyone but themselves..."they hate us for our fridom"

[Catherine]

Interesting posts. I debated writing a comment to Krauthammer saying, simply, "You are truly insane," and then thought, oh, why bother. People with power don't need to be worried about their sanity.

Thanks for your blog, Ocean.

[Versen]

Maybe Krauthammer sees himself as a patriotic American, telling us the noble lie we need to hear so we don't see how bloodily complicit our own hands are-- lest we suddenly question everything, gouge our eyes out and stop reading his column, like a distraught bunch of ex NYT-subscribing Oedipusses.

I don't actually believe this, but it would make a flimsy bit of sense.

[Versen]

or WaPo reading, as the case may be-- but I think this is a pronunciation of "tomato" kind of difference.

[SteveB]

The grievance? It cannot be occupation, military control or settlers. They were all removed in September 2005. There's only one grievance and Hamas is open about it. Israel's very existence.

So once Israel pulled out of Gaza, what other grievance could the Palestinians possibly have? Why can't those damn injuns shut up and stay on their reservation?

[KDelphi]

Obama will speak up on India, tax cuts for business,pre-appoint (and "dis-appoint") his nominees early--but there's "only one president on foreign policy"? What a coward...

So...Bush tax cuts, do not= Obama tax cuts--how??