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Two societies heading wrong in tandem

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At the highest levels, the connections between Sharon’s Israel and Bush’s America are being ever more tightly forged — and now both societies are heading for hell in tandem. For both, force has become the global problem-solver par excellence; the casualties of others ever easier to ignore; assassination a proud principle of state; the militarization of society a necessary byproduct; imprisonment beyond recall ever more normal; and terrorism a driving fear and a way of life. Increasingly, for Israelis and perhaps Americans, no other path seems conceivable, no other script imaginable.

A piece in today’s Guardian lays out in some detail the ways assassination by Hellfire missile as an enunciated policy of state has been passed from Israel to the US, and then the courageous columnist Gideon Levy of Israel’s daily newspaper Ha’aretz lays out who is being numbed to horror, what is being lost, and what denied in Israeli society. “No terrorist threat, however murderous,” he concludes, “is grounds for a wholesale annulment of values.”

Someone should do the same for us. Tom

The name of the game is assassination
By Tony Geraghty and David Leigh
Thursday December 19, 2002
The Guardian

Israeli hardliners had the pleasure this week of seeing their controversial tactic of “targeted killing” of their enemies vindicated by being imitated. For it has emerged that their close allies in the US administration have now drawn up a target list for a systematic policy of assassination against those they call terrorists.

Considering the closeness of the Israeli right and the hawks at the Pentagon, this development should come as no surprise. The US has borrowed not just their policy, but their techniques too. It was Israel that pioneered the use of the Hellfire missile for summary executions such as the US carried out last month in Yemen.

Developed as a tankbuster during the cold war, Hellfire hits its target at 950mph.

Israeli hardliners had the pleasure this week of seeing their controversial tactic of “targeted killing” of their enemies vindicated by being imitated. For it has emerged that their close allies in the US administration have now drawn up a target list for a systematic policy of assassination against those they call terrorists.

Considering the closeness of the Israeli right and the hawks at the Pentagon, this development should come as no surprise. The US has borrowed not just their policy, but their techniques too. It was Israel that pioneered the use of the Hellfire missile for summary executions such as the US carried out last month in Yemen.

Developed as a tankbuster during the cold war, Hellfire hits its target at 950mph.

To read more of this Guardian piece click here

Eyeless in Israel
By Gideon Levy
Ha’aretz
December 19, 2002

Is it too much to ask Israelis to take a look, even a glimpse, at what’s going on in their backyard? Are we even capable of dropping our relentless preoccupation with primaries and the battle between Tnuva and Strauss over cottage cheese, to pay attention to what is happening in the territories under our occupation?

A foreigner who happened to find himself here wouldn’t believe his eyes: A few weeks before the general elections – a period that is supposed to be marked by an airing and sharpening of views – Israel continues to close its eyes, not to see, not to hear and not to know what it is doing to three million people who live less than an hour from our homes.

To read more Levy click here