Right as ever.

Well, I'd been expecting to see it right along - the 1.000-word diatribe from Chuck Krauthammer in support of Israel's rampage in Gaza. And it did not disappoint... it contains all of the elements that make Krauthammer's screeds extra special: the hollow moralism, the chilling portraits of Palestinian depravity, the meticulous attention to select details coupled with a total neglect of even recent (i.e. the past year's) history. One brief example - he cited 6,464 rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza on southern Israel over the past three years. Since we're counting, I wonder if anyone has bothered to calculate the number of munitions expended by Israel on that sorry strip of land over the same period? No, I thought not. Never once does Krauthammer so much as suggest that Israel bears even minimal responsibility for the massive death and destruction now taking place in Gaza. Quite the contrary, it is Hamas that "is committed to causing the most civilian pain and suffering" while Israel is "committed to saving as many lives as possible." That fiendish Hamas - using those peace-loving Israeli tanks and warplanes as instruments of terror. Will they stop at nothing?

How, you may ask, does Israel demonstrate their commitment to protecting the innocent? Well, Krauthammer reminds us that they phone warnings to people prior to air strikes. It's like a wake-up call, except that the voice on the phone tells you your home and everything you value will be incinerated very soon - have a nice day! Of course, the notion that the Israeli government is somehow obsessed with the well-being of the people they bomb would almost be laughable were it not for the landscape of terror it is attempting to conceal - one noxious product of the decades-old policy of dispossession that Israel has pursued relentlessly and Krauthammer (along with most articulate opinion) chooses to ignore. He speaks of Israel as a charitable, enlightened, even somewhat over-indulgent neighbor that graciously allowed the man-beasts living in Gaza the opportunity for self-determination in 2005 when, after 40 years of brutal occupation, they pulled out - an opportunity they squandered, according to Krauthammer. He apparently feels as though Palestinians in Gaza should be grateful for Israel's largess, even as it kills them by the hundred.

The facts disagree. Israel still controls Gaza - any child can work that out. They control exit and entry on all sides. They control the sea and the air. They have veto power (regularly exercised) over electricity and water supplies, to say nothing of food and medicine. They have been applying that power with great effect over the past two years, since Hamas won legislative elections in 2006, then anticipated the coup Israel and the U.S. worked to foment through compliant elements in Fatah (i.e. Abbas and friends) and drove the Palestinian Authority from the strip. And yet Israel's apologists, from their ambassador to the U.S., to Krauthammer and his fellow pundits, to the Israel Project's Meagan Buren, talk as though a.) Israel is bending over backwards to give Gazans what they need, and b.) Gaza is an entity separate unto itself, totally divorced from the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. Israel is perpetrating collective punishment on nearly 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, but also on the balance of Palestinian society elsewhere in the territories. While its apologists speak of "peace", they provide cover for the encroachment of settlements that has taken place consistently over the past 40 years.

Israel - fully supported by the Bush administration - wants to knock Hamas out, not because of scattered rocket attacks on southern Israel, but because they will insist on real concessions from Israel. Krauthammer's job is obscuring that fact. Would that he were the only one on that beat.

luv u,

jp