Amid growing international concern about the large number of civilians being killed by Israeli troops cracking down on protests in the Gaza Strip, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has declared that the killings are okay because there are “no innocent people” living in the Gaza Strip.
His argument, as far as it goes, is that Hamas is a terrorist organization, and the government of Gaza, so everyone who lives there is “connected to Hamas,” and therefore terrorists. He added that everyone protesting at the border is a member of Hamas’ military wing.
In practice, Lieberman’s stance boils down to the age-old position on the Israeli far-right that Palestinians are necessarily terrorists, and that anyone protesting the actions of the Israeli government are necessarily engaged in terror against them.
Which may play well within the far-right coalition, but even within Israel, the sight of a Palestinian wearing a vest that says “press” on it getting shot and killed by Israeli snipers is concerning, and uncomfortable. Lieberman’s argument that aid workers and journalists are known to be involved in “terror activities” isn’t a good argument, and doubly so as the Israeli military seemed concerned by the death of the journalist, and promised an investigation.
This was an inevitable political problem with Lieberman holding the Defense portfolio. As soon as the Israeli military starts racking up a body count, his knee-jerk militarism becomes the ministry’s official stance, and undercuts any effort to restore calm.
This attitude by Lieberman certainly predates the Israeli far right.
It’s called, genocide.
It’s not genocide if Israel does it.
What did the SS call it?
Huh?
I asked a simple question – when the Nazi Storm Troopers were killing the Jews, I am sure they had a more neutral term for their deeds rather than genocide (maybe defending the Fatherland, trying to anticipate what the fueher would want, etc.) – and that should be the term that Israelis use for killing the unarmed Palestinians. “Genocide” carries so much baggage.
Just remember Who the original funders of Hamas were………….MOSSAD!
What else could you expect from a convicted child molester [not sexual]. He beat to a pulp a Jewish kid, c. 10 years old, who got into a spat with his kid of a similar age. He is a brutish ape. He plead guilty. A society that elevates such a criminal to high office is the moral equivalent of that criminal.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/mar/25/avigdor-lieberman-binyamin-netanyahu-israel
But then that same society frequently has elevated terrorists to be Prime Minister – Begin, Shamir, Sharon et al. Aren’t they all?
I disagree with this attitude to all the helpless caught in the crossfire. However, if he is right, then the same thing is true of all Israelis, none being innocent because Lieberman and Netanyahu are their leaders.
Of course, since Israel is a democracy, all the voters are guilty.
Democracies have no innocent adults. Either by omission or comission all contribute to the crimes of the state, by bad votes, no votes & taxes used to pay for the criminal conduct & weapons. Dictatorship’s citizens tend to be more blameless…
He can only get away with this because the USA and all its “lawmakers” encourage this behavior. We pretend that somehow Russia is an enemy but Israel is an “ally” which we help and arm and accept as a normal destroyer of any hope of democracy in our elections as AIPAC decides who are our rulers.