Brian Eno on the Israel-Gaza crisis: How can you justify images such as this?

[4now]

When the musician Brian Eno saw a picture of a Palestinian man carrying the remains of his dead son in a plastic bag, he was moved to write a cri de coeur to his American friends, asking them to explain their country’s unconditional support for Israel.

Today I saw a picture of a weeping Palestinian man holding a plastic carrier bag of meat. It was his son. He’d been shredded (the hospital’s word) by an Israeli missile attack – apparently using their fab new weapon, fléchette bombs. You probably know what those are – hundreds of small steel darts packed around explosive which tear the flesh off humans. The boy was Mohammed Khalaf al-Nawasra. He was four years old.
I suddenly found myself thinking that it could have been one of my kids in that bag, and that thought upset me more than anything has for a long time.
I was in Israel last year with Mary . Her sister works for UNRWA in Jerusalem. Showing us round were a Palestinian – Shadi, who is her sister’s husband and a professional guide – and Oren Jacobovitch, an Israeli Jew, an ex-major from the IDF who left the service under a cloud for refusing to beat up Palestinians. Between the two of them we got to see some harrowing things – Palestinian houses hemmed in by wire mesh and boards to prevent settlers throwing shit and piss and used sanitary towels at the inhabitants; Palestinian kids on their way to school being beaten by Israeli kids with baseball bats to parental applause and laughter; a whole village evicted and living in caves while three settler families moved on to their land; an Israeli settlement on top of a hill diverting its sewage directly down on to Palestinian farmland below; The Wall; the checkpoints… and all the endless daily humiliations. I kept thinking, “Do Americans really condone this? Do they really think this is OK? Or do they just not know about it?”

more at the link.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/brian-eno-on-the-israelgaza-crisis-how-can-you-justify-images-such-as-this-9643916.html

Do we really think this is OK? Or do we just not know about it?

[Marrah_G]

1. Ceasefire just ended- f-16 in the sky and people are reporting strikes on twitter

[emsimon33]

2. K&R

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. It is NOT OK. Anyone who thinks it is OK is no friend of freedom.

[Scuba]

10. + Eighty Gazillion

[arikara]

4. Anybody that thinks its ok is sick

really really sick in the head.

[4now]

5. I really don't know how anyone could justify this

Like you said "really really sick in the head"

[DeSwiss]

6. Hell no!

- There are two people who can end this right now. And damn them for every second that they don't:



K&R

[AgingAmerican]

7. Flechette Bombs

[alarimer]

12. Using this should be a crime against humanity

I'm pretty sure it at least violates the Geneva Convention.

[4now]

14. Horrifying To think about those being used against civilians

Looks like a modern day version of the cluster bombs that we used by the thousands in Viet Nam.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

8. I'm sick of hearing people blame the victims.

[bluesbassman]

9. There are 112 photos at the Independent link...

I just viewed all of them and shake my head in disbelief that anyone who does the same would still defend what Israel has done in Gaza.

[Delphinus]

11. I don't have the fortitude

to view them, but one of Brian's paragraphs reads:
As for the Peace Process: Israel wants the Process but not the Peace. While “the process” is going on, the settlers continue grabbing land and building their settlements… and then when the Palestinians finally erupt with their pathetic fireworks they get hammered and shredded with state-of-the-art missiles and depleted uranium shells because Israel “has a right to defend itself” (whereas Palestine clearly doesn’t). And the settler militias are always happy to lend a fist or rip up someone’s olive grove while the army looks the other way. By the way, most of them are not ethnic Israelis – they’re “right of return” Jews from Russia and Ukraine and Moravia and South Africa and Brooklyn who came to Israel recently with the notion that they had an inviolable (God-given!) right to the land, and that “Arab” equates with “vermin” – straightforward old-school racism. That is the culture our taxes are defending. It’s like sending money to the Klan.

I grew up believing Israel could do no wrong - and left that fairy tale many years ago.

[fujiyama]

15. I got through about half of the photos. I could not keep going.

It's a reminder of how inherently dysfunctional our foreign policy is. I mean, how can the US condone what the Israelis are doing but condemn the horrors of Iraq? I say this as someone that has for many years supported Israel more than most on the left (and of course like any nation they have a right to defend themselves), but this callous disregard for civilians is very disturbing. If the humiliation and degradation of the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank weren't bad enough, this latest round of violence is just heartbreaking and horrifying.

The US is the only country in the world to have some influence over Israel's actions. How long does this mindless orgy of destruction go on? Even if they finish their supposed mission of destroying the tunnels and rocket stockpiles, will the Israelis end the blockade and dismantle the settlements and give the people of Gaza and the West Bank an opportunity at a dignified life? I'm somehow very doubtful.

[d_b]

13. well brian

some asshole from hamas (or something) fired an acme rocket into israel, and it crashed into a field.

[Spider Jerusalem]

16. Americans really think it's okay, for the most part.

Israel is a peaceful country that's savagely attacked by irrational and hateful extremists and must defend itself lest the result be another Holocaust. That's the narrative, in the American mind.

Never mind that the Palestinians are not, for the most part, acting out of anti-Semitism, or religious fanaticism, but resistance to nearly fifty years of Israeli occupation. Never mind that Israel has a powerful military, fighter jets, precision artillery and nuclear weapons and the Palestinians have crude rockets that rarely hit anything. Never mind that Israel has imposed a blockade on Gaza and that the Israeli government "put the Palestinians on a diet", calculating daily calorie requirements and allowing in just enough food to maintain the population above malnutrition level. Never mind that Israel has imposed a system of de facto apartheid on the West Bank, where Israelis in the illegal settlements enjoy the full rights of citizens and the full protection of the military while the stateless Palestinians are subject to security checkpoints, made to drive on separate roads, denied access to water. Never mind that Israel carves up the occupied territory with illegal settlements and an illegal security barrier. Never mind any of that, because Israel is always the victim.