The PCUSA’s Witherspoon Society, apparently acting on the principle that politics outweighs everything else, has put an essay on Gaza on its Web site from an unusual source. The writer is Starhawk, a self-proclaimed “witch” who is one of the leading lights of modern paganism. She’s also Jewish, which I guess is supposed to give her insights into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict extra heft. It doesn’t; if anything, it makes what she writes all the more ridiculous, if not pathetic. She starts by relating some of her (irrelevant) experiences in Gaza, and then goes on to the moral reasoning equivalent of a monkey playing with a watch:

And I just don’t get it. I mean, I get why suicide bombs and homemade rockets that kill innocent civilians are wrong. I just don’t get why bombs from F16s that kill far more innocent civilians are right. Why a kid from the ghetto who shoots a cop is a criminal, but a pilot who bombs a police station from the air is a hero.

Is it a distance thing? Does the air or the altitude confer a purifying effect? Or is it a matter of scale? Individual murder is vile, but mass murder, carried out by a state as an aspect of national policy, that’s a fine and noble thing?

OK, let me explain it to you. See, the suicide bombers and homemade rockets are designed to kill civilians. They are deliberately targeting innocents. The F-16, on the other hand, is trying to kill those who are trying to kill civilians. Sometimes others get hurt or killed in the process. That’s terrible, but while Hamas is all about killing that violates the Geneva Conventions, Israel has sent tens of thousands of messages to Gazans warning them in advance about attacks on Hamas, and pleading with them to leave the area.

“All we want is a return to calm,” the Israeli ambassador says. “All we want is peace.”

One way to get peace is to exterminate what threatens you. In fact, that may be the prime directive of the last few thousand years.

“Exterminate”? “Exterminate”? If Israel wanted to “exterminate” the Palestinians, why does she tell civilians in Gaza to evacuate before an attack? For that matter, if Israel considered Palestinians qua Palestinians as its enemy, why does it allow over a million of them to live, work, and vote in Israel itself? That’s an awfully sloppy way to conduct a Holocaust, don’t you think?

Hearing this kind of slanderous line come of a Damascus or Tehran propaganda ministry wouldn’t surprise. Seeing it on the Web site of a liberal Presbyterian caucus group is mind-boggling.

The harshness, the crackdowns, the border closings, the checkpoints, the assassinations, the incursions, the building of settlements deep into Palestinian territory, all the daily frustrations and humiliations of occupation, have been breeding the conditions for Hamas, or something like it, to thrive. If Israel truly wants peace, there’s a more subtle, a more intelligent and more effective strategy to pursue than simply trying to kill the enemy and anyone else who happens to be in the vicinity.

It’s this – instead of killing what threatens you, feed what you want to grow. Consider in what conditions peace can thrive, and create them, just as you would prepare the bed for the crops you want to plant. Find those among your opponents who also want peace, and support them. Make alliances. Offer your enemies incentives to change, and reward your friends.

This is one of the most common falsehoods that one sees in anti-Israel discussions of the conflict. The Israelis are making terrorists through the occupation. If they want peace, they should make nice. But consider this: 1) The PLO was founded in 1964, three years before Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza, and th Golan Heights. Terrorism has been the preferred policy of Palestinians since before the Six Day War. 2) Terrorist activity in the form of shelling civilian populations drastically increased after Israel’s occupation Gaza ended. 3) The Gaza border with Egypt is closed as well, yet Hamas fury is directed entirely at Israel. 4 ) In 2000, Israel offered the Palestinians the vast majority of what they wanted, but didn’t get an agreement out of Yasser Arafat, because they wouldn’t give him what he wanted most–the extinction of the Jewish state.

Does this mean that Israel has been perfect in its relations with the Palestinians? Hardly–I’ve said lots of times before that building the settlements was a huge mistake, for instance. But it does give a good idea of what Israel has had to deal with throughout its existence.

There’s more, but that’s all I feel like soiling myself with for now.

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