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On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 5:07 PM, Gregory Meyerson <gmeyerson at triad.rr.com>wr=
ote:

> when israel "effectively broke the truce" on nov. 4, was this thru
> the blockade or bombing and blockade?
>
>
> I don't recall and would like the info.
>
>
> g
> On Jan 3, 2009, at 2:30 PM, Sid Shniad wrote:
>
> >
> >    http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0102/p09s01-coop.html
> >    Christian Science Monitor January 2, 2009
> >    Israel's 'victories' in Gaza come at a steep price
> >    The Jewish ethical tradition means embracing Palestinians, too.
> >    By Sara Roy
> >    Cambridge, Mass. - I hear the voices of my friends in Gaza as
> > clearly
> >    as if we were still on the phone; their agony echoes inside me.
> > They
> >    weep and moan over the death of their children, some, little girls
> >    like mine, taken, their bodies burned and destroyed so senselessly.
> >    One Palestinian friend asked me, "Why did Israel attack when the
> >    children were leaving school and the women were in the markets?"
> > There
> >    are reports that some parents cannot find their dead children
> > and are
> >    desperately roaming overflowing hospitals.
> >    As Jews celebrated the last night of Hanukkah, the Jewish
> > festival of
> >    lights commemorating our resurgence as a people, I asked myself:
> > How
> >    am I to celebrate my Jewishness while Palestinians are being
> > killed?
> >    The religious scholar Marc Ellis challenges us further by asking
> >    whether the Jewish covenant with God is present or absent in the
> > face
> >    of Jewish oppression of Palestinians? Is the Jewish ethical
> > tradition
> >    still available to us? Is the promise of holiness =E2 so central
> > to our
> >    existence =E2 now beyond our ability to reclaim?
> >    The lucky ones in Gaza are locked in their homes living lives that
> >    have long been suspended =E2 hungry, thirsty, and without light but
> >    their children are alive.
> >    Since Nov. 4, when Israel effectively broke the truce with Hamas by
> >    attacking Gaza on a scale then unprecedented =E2 a fact now buried
> > with
> >    Gaza's dead =E2 the violence has escalated as Hamas responded by
> > sending
> >    hundreds of rockets into Israel to kill Israeli civilians. It is
> >    reported that Israel's strategy is to hit Hamas military
> > targets, but
> >    explain that difference to my Palestinian friends who must bury
> > their
> >    children.
> >    On Nov. 5, Israel sealed all crossing points into Gaza, vastly
> >    reducing and at times denying food supplies, medicines, fuel,
> > cooking
> >    gas, and parts for water and sanitation systems. A colleague of
> > mine
> >    in Jerusalem said, "this siege is in a league of its own. The
> > Israelis
> >    have not done something like this before."
> >    During November, an average of 4.6 trucks of food per day
> > entered Gaza
> >    from Israel compared with an average of 123 trucks per day in
> > October.
> >    Spare parts for the repair and maintenance of water-related
> > equipment
> >    have been denied entry for over a year. The World Health
> > Organization
> >    just reported that half of Gaza's ambulances are now out of order.
> >    According to the Associated Press, the three-day death toll rose
> > to at
> >    least 370 by Tuesday morning, with some 1,400 wounded. The UN
> > said at
> >    least 62 of the dead were civilians. A Palestinian health official
> >    said that at least 22 children under age 16 were killed and more
> > than
> >    235 children have been wounded.
> >    In nearly 25 years of involvement with Gaza and Palestinians, I
> > have
> >    not had to confront the horrific image of burned children =E2 until
> >    today.
> >    Yet for Palestinians it is more than an image, it is a reality, and
> >    because of that I fear something profound has changed that will not
> >    easily be undone. For how, in the context of Gaza today, does one
> >    speak of reconciliation as a path to liberation, of sympathy as a
> >    source of understanding? Where does one find or even begin to
> > create a
> >    common field of human undertaking (to borrow from the late,
> > acclaimed
> >    Palestinian scholar, Edward Said) so essential to coexistence?
> >    It is one thing to take an individual's land, his home, his
> >    livelihood, to denigrate his claims, or ignore his emotions. It is
> >    another to destroy his child. What happens to a society where
> > renewal
> >    is denied and all possibility has ended?
> >    And what will happen to Jews as a people whether we live in
> > Israel or
> >    not? Why have we been unable to accept the fundamental humanity of
> >    Palestinians and include them within our moral boundaries?
> > Rather, we
> >    reject any human connection with the people we are oppressing.
> >    Ultimately, our goal is to tribalize pain, narrowing the scope of
> >    human suffering to ourselves alone.
> >    Our rejection of "the other" will undo us. We must incorporate
> >    Palestinians and other Arab peoples into the Jewish
> > understanding of
> >    history, because they are a part of that history. We must
> > question our
> >    own narrative and the one we have given others, rather than
> > continue
> >    to cherish beliefs and sentiments that betray the Jewish ethical
> >    tradition.
> >    Jewish intellectuals oppose racism, repression, and injustice
> > almost
> >    everywhere in the world and yet it is still unacceptable =E2
> > indeed, for
> >    some, it's an act of heresy =E2 to oppose it when Israel is the
> >    oppressor. This double standard must end.
> >    Israel's victories are pyrrhic and reveal the limits of Israeli
> > power
> >    and our own limitations as a people: our inability to live a life
> >    without barriers. Are these the boundaries of our rebirth after the
> >    Holocaust?
> >    As Jews in a post-Holocaust world empowered by a Jewish state,
> > how do
> >    we as a people emerge from atrocity and abjection, empowered and
> > also
> >    humane? How do we move beyond fear to envision something different,
> >    even if uncertain?
> >    The answers will determine who we are and what, in the end, we
> > become.
> >    Sara Roy is a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle
> > Eastern
> >    Studies, Harvard University, and the author, most recently, of
> >    "Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict."
> > _______________________________________________
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