Prime Minister Olmert Threatens Gaza with the "Israeli Iron Fist."

Iron fist? To paraphrase the line from a popular motion picture, I have heard that expression, but never before from Israel. One would think that such a term, referring to the uncompromising way that Hitler dealt with domestic dissent, would be anathema in Israeli rhetoric. But as Niccolo Machiavelli pointed out, conscience runs counter to the aims of rulers, and the State of Israel is no exception. At the State level conscience breaks down and all that was evil when it was done to us becomes necessary when dealing with an occupied people, especially one that has a sense of its own statehood. Hence, their efforts at resistance and punitive attacks on the occupying people are called "terrorism," because "resistance" is reserved for those polities that the West is sympathetic to.

The experimentation of Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME) on Gazans and use of white phosphorus is reminiscent of the Hitlerian Guernica massacre, in which a Basque village was used to test the Nazi blitzkrieg (lightning war). These were the sorts of things that the Bushies accused Saddam Hussein of to justify invading a nation (something that nations allegedly never do in the 21st century).

DIME was developed by the U.S. Air Force in 2006. It is a small, powerfull explosive that explodes with such force that it rips the flesh from the body, but allegedly leaves no shrapnel, only particle metals. The Internet Edition of Dawn quoted one Norweigian medic as saying, “We have not seen the casualties affected directly by the bomb because they are normally torn to pieces and do not survive, but we have seen a number of very brutal amputations . . . without shrapnel injuries which we strongly suspect must have been caused by the DIME weapons,”

White phosphorus was developed as an obscurant to prevent enemies from using guided missile systems or tracking troop movements. White phosphorus can burn away human flesh, all the way to the bone. Al Jazeera English has reported that, according to Human Rights watch, white phosphorus is only legal if "all feasible precautions [are taken] to avoid civilian injury and loss of life." Humanitarian Rights watch has said that it believes Israel violated this tenet of international law, because Gaza is such a densely populated area. According to the Los Angeles Times, the "obscurant" destroyed a UN refugee school and more than twenty homes. "Dozens" were injured and one woman was killed; her son watched her die as the home she was in was struck by a projectile and burst into flames.

Israel is using U.S.weaponry to slaughter civilians with full U.S. backing. This isn't the fault of the Jews as the anti-Semites would have you believe, nor does it wash the blood from the hands of Hamas: their guilt for continuing rocket fire into southern Israel amid the rising deaths of Palestinian civilians is monolith. But to excuse Israel's war crimes, far in excess of the cumulative acts of terror committed previously by Hamas, because it has committed these atrocities under the guise of "fighting terrorism"is to say that we will not hold Israel and the United States to the same standard that the United States imposed on Germany at Nuremberg in 1945. But rather than expressing outrage (whether at me or at U.S. complicity in war crimes) write your senators and congressperson and demand the massacre of Gazans be stopped at once. Then paste the text of one of them as a comment.

I leave you with the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller:

In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me —
and by that time no one was left to speak up.