Most Jews I know get little pleasure from the existence of Israel; just the opposite. They feel disgusted by the behavior of their tribal kin toward Palestinians. This antipathy doesn’t concern Israel’s right to exist, a phony argument still maintained by hard line Zionists. Israel exists, period. Most of the world recognizes that. Anyone wanting to eliminate it belongs in the loony bin or prison.

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Ironically, in the name of all Jews, Foxman and colleagues in AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and other Israeli lobby groups along with right wing and centrist political parties in Israel invoke the Holocaust to justify the very behavior embodied by Holocaust initiators. Israel calls itself a Jewish state. Yet, one fifth of Israel’s population is non-Jewish. I don’t belong to that state and despise its policies of constant war and occupation.

Count Israel’s wars: 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, plus civil wars against two Intifadas in the 1980s and 2000, and finally the invasions of Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in late 2008, the latter leaving in its wake 1,300 plus dead Palestinians, most of them civilians and less than 20 Israelis, some from “friendly fire.”

Condemned by the Red Cross, Amnesty International and a host of organizations for violating human rights of Gaza’s people, Israel’s new government will almost certainly continue or even harden the policies. They don’t care what others say.

Dr. Erik Fosse, a Norwegian cardiologist, working in Gaza hospitals during the Israeli invasion described his patients’ wounds. “It was as if they had stepped on a mine,” he says of certain Palestinian. “But there was no shrapnel in the wound. Some had lost their legs. It looked as though they had been sliced off. I have been to war zones for 30 years, but I have never seen such injuries before.”

The “focused lethality” weapon, to which Fosse referred does minimal damage to buildings, but catastrophic harm to humans. The United States supplied these to Israel.

Israeli Defense Forces have also used white phosphorus in Beirut in 1982 and again in Gaza. The intense heat of the metal inflicts appalling damage. The IDF knows international law prohibits its use near populated areas. Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International labeled as “a war crime” the use of phosphorous “in Gaza’s densely-populated residential neighborhoods.” (Guardian, January 21, 2009)

Israel initially denied using the chemical. On January 13, Israeli Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi solemnly declared: “The IDF acts only in accordance with what is permitted by international law and does not use white phosphorus.” Gazans and Israelis, however, saw the material and the victims of it. On January 20, the IDF admitted using phosphorus artillery and mortar shells on “Hamas fighters and rocket launching crews in northern Gaza.” ...