War and Peace

Khaled Abu Toameh says that things were getting better between Israel and the Palestinians until the Obama administration forced negotiations neither side was interested in, and now things are getting worse.

Robin Shepherd writes about the hypocrisy of Israel's critics who remain silent as ISAF's war in Afghanistan-Pakistan uses the same methods used by Israel. He tells that he's made this point to colleagues in the British bureaucracy, but sadly he doesn't tell how they respond.

The figures are rising fast. In September, the number of publicly admitted drone attacks was 22. And they are extremely deadly too. In 2009, more than 700 people were killed, many if not most of whom will have been civilian bystanders. By the end of this year, the death toll is likely to have far exceeded the 1,400 or so estimated to have died in Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

So where’s the Goldstone Report against the United States and its NATO allies? And where is the uproar against Obama’s policy of mass targeted assassinations? Of course, I’m not suggesting either course of action. And, to be fair, the Obama administration has been resolute in opposing Goldstone at the United Nations which is a lot more than can be said for the brazenly hypocritical Europeans.

With apologies to Abu Toameh and Shepherd for putting them in the same blogpost,  the other day I asked Juan Cole if he might wish to comment on Ahmedinejad's fiery anti-Israeli rhetoric while in Lebanon. Cole was one of the main people to invent and propagate the idea that Ahmedinejad never said he wishes Israel to be destroyed, an idea still often cited in the Mondowiess swamps, the CiF comments section and similar venues. His answer to me: Ahmedinajad merely wishes Zionism to disappear, as the Soviet regime once did, leaving everything else intact behind it. I have no idea what he bases this assertion on, and am reporting on it here merely for purposes of documentation.