The bombardment of Gaza continues despite international calls to end it

As citizens of the US we must continue pressing for an immediate ceasefire.

Please contact your representatives in DC and ask them to ensure that a successful UN security council resolution is implemented. Urge your representatives to act by calling their offices at (202)225-3121 (or 1-800-828-0498) for the White House switchboard operator or email them.

. . . and you can go here Avaaz to sign a petition to the UN Security Council, the European Union, the Arab League and the USA.

Over 700 hundred Palestinians have been brutally slain by Israeli missiles launched from land, sea and air, and thousands more wounded. The conflict is about to enter day 15. This is indefensible, and happening before a mostly submissive world public. Act now - silence is complicity!

The Palestinian analyst Mouin Rabbani offers us some insightful political analysis:

It is true, as commonly observed, that Israel’s initial aerial campaign failed to decapitate either Hamas or Islamic Jihad, vanquish them militarily or even prevent the intensification of Palestinian rocket fire. But the observation misses the point. As in 2002, Israel’s first objective was to incapacitate public administration, sever the link between government and people, and isolate the leadership, rather than deal an immediate body blow to militant groups. And as in the West Bank at the height of the second uprising, Israel recognizes that smashing armed groups goes only so far; a sustainable victory requires that the population be cowed into submission and lose faith in its leaders and militants, with its energies redirected toward more mundane projects such as obtaining basic needs and services that the crippled government can no longer provide, and protecting itself from the ensuing chaos in an increasingly competitive environment.

In the case of Hamas, this goal has additionally meant dismantling -- with bombs and missiles launched from land, sea and air -- the network of Islamist social, religious and charitable institutions that preceded and laid the foundation for the emergence of the movement as a political and military force in the late 1980s, and have been vital to its ability to establish and maintain a support base in every sector of Palestinian society. Israel concluded that because the movement controls the PA in Gaza and has an autonomous web of institutions that can provide services independently of the government, both types of installation had to be destroyed.

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Dr. Juan Cole on Old World, err Israeli style, settler-colonialism:

When threatened by an indigenous population trying to expel it, settler colonialism is vicious. It is after all facing an existential threat. The US can withdraw from Iraq with no dire consequences to the US. In 1954-1962, the French killed at least half a million, and maybe as much as 800,000 Algerians, out of a population of 11 million. That is between nearly 5 percent and nearly 10 percent! The French military had been enlisted to fight for the interests of the colonists, who were in danger of losing everything. (In the end they did lose almost everything, being forced to return to Europe, or choosing to do so rather than face the prospect of living under independent Algerian rule).

The brutality with which the British put down the Mau-Mau revolt in Kenya in the 1950s is another example of massive human rights violations on behalf of a settler population.

This latest sanguinary episode is a further manifestation of Israel's insecure brand of settler colonialism, in which the lives of the indigenous population are viewed as worthless before the interests of the colonists. The Israelis have not killed on the French scale, but I would argue that they kill, and disregard civilian life, for much the same reasons as the French did in Algeria.

Settler colonialism is unstable in the contemporary world because of the facilities subject populations have for mobilization and resistance. Conflict between colonizer and colonized has only ended in one of three ways: 1) The expulsion of the colonists, as in Algeria; 2) the integration of the colonists into a nation that includes the indigenous population, as happened in South Africa; or 3) the expulsion of the indigenous population, as with the Trail of Tears in the nineteenth-century United States.

Bob Simon told Charlie Rose that the 'two-state solution' in Israel-Palestine is dead, which is likely correct. He suggested that the most likely outcome is Apartheid. However, I would argue that Apartheid is a phase and its itself an unstable situation, and that only one of the above three outcomes is actually permanent. Given that the Arabs are becoming more technologically sophisticated and wealthier over time, and given their demographic advantage, I do not expect a trasnferist or trail of tears policy to be implemented or succeed. In the long term, over several decades, I think either there will be a gradual outflow of Israeli emigrants that leaves Jews a plurality in Israel. Or there will eventually be a single state. The other possibilities, of either a century-long Apartheid or another expulsion of Palestinians a la 1948 seem to me less likely. The Gaza operation is intended to extend the life of an incipient Apartheid. But that is sort of like giving a heart transplant to a man diagnosed with terminal cancer.

New York Times reports on Palestinian children found clinging to mothers' corpses.

Hareetz reports: Red Cross: Israel breaking int'l law, letting children starve in Gaza.

"The ICRC believes that in this instance the Israeli military failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuated the wounded. It considers the delay in allowing rescue services access unacceptable," it said.

-mr