Antiwar.com Blog

Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni announced today that the Palestinian civilians killed by the IDF in Gaza were “a product of circumstance.”

Livni recognizes that the carnage may present a public relations problem for the Israeli government: “These matters will present us with a complicated task … The consequences, in the context of civilians casualties, are something we have to deal with, among ourselves and in facing the world.”

Livni need worry little about either the U.S. Congress or the bulk of the American media. Her “product of circumstance” explanation will be taken as sufficient absolution regardless of how many hundreds of corpses of dead women and children are uncovered in Gaza in the coming days and weeks.

And whatever Rules of Engagement the IDF used will be irrelevant. It wouldn’t be fair to blame the Israeli military for “circumstances,” after all.

Israeli TV was in the middle of an interview with foreign minister Tzipi Livni when they interrupted for a phone call from Dr. Aboul Aish, a Palestinian doctor who is a regular fixture on Israeli TV.

The in-studio correspondent didn’t realize the extent of what he was about to report. As he began to question Dr. Aish, he heard the doctor’s agony.

A warning, the following is heart-wrenching.

[audio:http://www.lewrockwell.com/podcast/download.php?filename=2009-01-13_090_is_gaza_the_revenge_of_bush_cheney.mp3]

Lew Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and proprietor of LewRockwell.com, and syndicated columnist/reporter/author Eric Margolis, discuss Bush and Cheney’s bloodletting in Gaza, the war crime of blockading civilians, the dangers of Obama’s plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan, Hosni Mubarak and Egypt’s future as America’s client dictatorship, the proverbial “stupid or the plan” conundrum, the continued danger of war with Iran and some decent media from around the world.

MP3 here. (18:22)

It can often be difficult being a Jew and a proponent of individual rights for all when that clashes with the actions of the Jewish state that claims to represent and defend you. For years I have fought to just educate my family members on some basic facts on the founding of Israel and what happened to its original inhabitants — facts that were created before Palestinian terrorism was a concern. British “ethnic Ashkenazi” artist Mike Marcus has taken this to another, more active level in actually moving to Israel, experiencing the occupation himself, and then expressing his outrage through art projects. He was in my neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn recently, pasting up one of his pieces, and one of my neighbors interviewed him for a local art publication. Check out my blurb on local website BushwickBK.com for more info on Mike Marcus, the man who gassed himself (so he could cry).

Washington Times columnist and former editor Tony Blankley is calling for bringing back the military draft.

He says a draft would have prevented so many American deaths in Iraq, and would allow us to escalate in Afghanistan and possibly invade Pakistan.

Blankley is saying that the problem with US foreign policy is that Americans don’t support it. They must be forced into supporting it, via slavery and coercive taxation.