Gaza: When the Horror Returns

When I watched the news tonight I felt like running down to the beach in my pyjamas, climbing the tallest sand dune, and screaming at the crescent moon.

No...no...NOOOOO!!!!! Not that violence, not that horror, not Gaza. Again.

Israel's aerial bombardment of Gaza has intensified after it authorised the call-up of 30,000 army reservists, amid reports of a possible ground offensive... At least 18 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, including children, and three Israelis have been killed by Palestinian rocket fire into southern Israel.

Not more rockets and bombs, not more dead children...

Netanyahu, Harper, and the War on Obama

The other night I accused Stephen Harper of timing his decision to sever ties with Iran in order to ratchet up tensions, just before Benjamin Netanyahu went ballistic.

Why is he doing this? My guess is that he's saying what he's saying because he knows he can't attack, especially before the U.S. election, barring a yellow light from Obama, which he's not getting. Sheer frustration at what he sees as Obama's obtuseness is causing these undiplomatic outbursts.

By trying to create the sense that the crisis was reaching a critical point, that Israel could strike at any time, which could only put more pressure on Obama to surrender to Netanyahu's demands for a so-called red line. And give Mitt Romney fodder to claim that even Canada was doing more than Obama to contain the Iranian Threat.

Remembrance Day 2011

I belong to a family, and a clan, with a 300-year military tradition. I have attended more Remembrance Day ceremonies than I can count. And hated them all.

I shudder at the sounds of the guns. But the children's choir always makes me weep. As it did again today.

I share my life with a former soldier. When I think what might have happened to him, it stops my heart like a bullet.

I never forget my dead friend, or the wounded ones from the small town where I was born. Or my grandfathers who fought the Nazi bastards so bravely. But taught me that war is murder.

Gaza and the Dance of Death

I really didn't want to write about Gaza and the latest Dance of Death between Israelis and Palestinians. The world these days is depressing enough.

But how to ignore this horror?













It all seems so familiar.













So tragic and so crazy

Now I support Israel's right to exist, and its right to defend itself. And I know that the religious fanatics from Hamas would chop me to pieces with axes for being gay, and kill every Jew in Israel if they could. So I won't be shedding any tears for them.

But did the Israelis really have to bomb so many buildings or kill so many other Palestinians? Like those poor children.

Or even these young police cadets...












For the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. For the crime of living in a giant prison that is one of the poorest and most desperate places on earth. I don't think so.

So I can't help but feel like this Israeli blogger does.

The people with hammers, too proud to use anything but hammers, have now swung them at blasting caps. They will argue: We need to maintain a credible military option. They forget that a military option is not credible when it cannot produce the results you want (unless the only result you want is a body count). “What did you expect us to do?” they’ll say.

We expected you to think, to be smart enough to imagine how the other side would respond to your actions, to understand that they too are prisoners of pride and fury.

Or just remember the mistakes of the past. Like the Lebanon war of 1982.

Which is the subject of a new and awesome film by Israeli film maker Ari Folman.



Yup. We may forget the past, but it won't forget us.

And of course those who do forget it are condemned to make the same mistakes. So everybody loses. Again. The day of peace seems further away than ever.

And the Dance of Death goes on and on.

For the sake of Israeli and Palestinian children who deserve a better future without rockets and bombs.

When will this madness end?