Oh Dear...

Take a look at this letter over at the Concord Monitor:

In a May 17 Monitor opinion piece the conservative Charles Krauthammer said, "Look at Gaza today. No Israeli occupation, no settlements, not a single Jew left. The Palestinian response? Unremitting rocket fire killing and maiming Israeli civilians."

Krauthammer's comments are disingenuous and misleading. Israel has long followed a policy of ethnic cleansing in Palestine. In doubt? Go to Youtube.com, type in "Gaza," and see what turns up. Or take a look at occupation101.com. Krauthammer is part of a massive disinformation campaign that supports current U.S. policy in the Middle East.

No computer? Take a look at Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilization. Conflicts in the Middle East date back before the First World War, when the Middle East was divided up by the European powers. Palestine - and Israel - were and continue to be the victims of colonial policy.

Israel's policy of dispossessing Palestinians and occupying land legally deeded to Palestinians, and Israel's continued policy of cleansing settlement land by firing on civilians, has sown the seeds of its own destruction. This is a people made mad by its own sad history. Now it is visiting sorrow on another people.

This has nothing to do with Jew and non-Jew. There are thousands of Jews opposed to Israel's policy. It has to do with those tired but still appropriate clichés: colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, militarism, racism.

Unfortunately for David Levine of Hopkinton, pretty much everything he says here is utterly wrong. In fact, the "conservative" writer he quotes at the beginning is most correct. See here for the truth about that "illegal occupation". It is also interesting that he refers to a book by Robert Fisk - the man whose bias and fact-free arguments actually led to the invention of the term "fisking an argument" - i.e. tearing it to shreds and exposing the falsity of it.

And what about that "policy of cleansing settlement land by firing on civilians"? Utter rubbish. Civilians have been killed by the Israelis, but only because the Palestinians deliberately withdraw into civilian areas during shootouts in the knowledge that any collateral damage on the part of the Israelis can be used for propaganda purposes.