Israel's Malice

Pierre's Latest:

There is fair retaliation, then there’s malice: the destruction of the Qasmiyeh bridge on Lebanon’s coastal north-south highway by the Israeli army on Wednesday dispels any notion that the July 12 attack was motivated purely by Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers. Malice, the kind of malice that’s been uprooting Palestinians’ olive trees purely as expressions of vindictive power for years (“terrorists” don’t grow on trees, nor have olives been known to be used as particularly effective projectiles by Palestinian insurgents) was at play in this latest “incursion,” the first serious one in six years. Not that the attack itself was justified retaliation: countries don’t generally invade other countries with tanks and bombing runs when a few of their men are captured. But we’re in the Middle East, where nut-mongering is the rule and the laws of war a punch line to something Cheneyesque. Invasions are Mideast history’s commutes. Israel's Malice in full...


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