Glenn Greenwald: Marty Peretz and the American political consensus on Israel

[laststeamtrain]

Marty Peretz and the American political consensus on Israel
The New Republic Editor-in-Chief expresses anti-Arab hatred in the starkest terms possible, but are his policy views towards Israel any different from the standard American position?

Glenn Greenwald

Dec. 28, 2008 |

Opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute are so entrenched that any single outbreak of violence is automatically evaluated through a pre-existing lens, shaped by one's typically immovable beliefs about which side bears most of the blame for the conflict generally or "who started it." Still, any minimally decent human being -- even those who view the world through the most blindingly pro-Israeli lens possible, the ones who justify anything and everything Israel does, and who discuss these events with a bottomless emphasis on the primitive (though dangerous) rockets lobbed by Hamas into Southern Israel but without even mentioning the ongoing four-decades brutal occupation or the recent, grotesquely inhumane blockade of Gaza -- would find the slaughter of scores of innocent Palestinians to be a horrible and deeply lamentable event.

But not The New Republic's Marty Peretz. Here is his uniquely despicable view of the events of the last couple of days:

"So at 11:30 on Saturday morning, according to both the Jerusalem Post and Ha'aretz, as well as the New York Times, 50 fighter jets and attack helicopters demolished some 40 to 50 sites in just about three minutes, maybe five. Message: do not fuck with the Jews."

"Do not fuck with the Jews." And what of the several hundred Palestinian dead -- including numerous children -- and many hundreds more seriously wounded?

"Israeli intelligence reported 225 people dead, mostly Hamas military leaders with some functionaries, besides, and perhaps 400 wounded. The Palestinians announced 300 dead, probably as a reflex in order to begin their whining about disproportionate Israeli acts of war. And 600 wounded."

Objections to the Israeli attack are just "whining." Those are the words of a psychopath. And what to do now?

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http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/12/28/peretz/index.html

[babylonsister]

1. So 'mostly Hamas military leaders with some functionaries' were

specifically and accurately targeted, to the tune of 225 of them dead? Now why don't I believe that.

[cali]

2. Marty Peretz is a depicable man.

No doubt about it.