WE Blog

CNN International’s coverage of Saturday’s fighting in Gaza included a rush of images: mangled civilians writhing in the rubble or primitive hospitals overflowing with the wounded. Missing from the montage was even a fleeting glimpse of the tens of thousands of Israelis who spent much of last week in bomb shelters, or any of the hundreds of rockets and other projectiles fired by Hamas. Over the past few weeks, as the “tahdia” (”period of calm” in Arabic) unwound, Israel’s policy has been to refrain from responding militarily to Hamas rocket fire. The purpose was to build a moral case for retaliating against a recalcitrant Hamas and limiting the international fallout that invariably follows any Israeli attempt at self-defense. But within minutes of the first Israeli airstrike, the Arabs were screaming “massacre” and the media had all but forgotten the serial assaults that provoked it. – Michael B. Oren, New Republic

Israel killed 280 people in Gaza on Saturday in retaliation against some rocket fire from Gaza into the Israeli neighborhood, which killed no one. Many of the 300 critically wounded will die in the days to come. The news of the outrage will spread and figure in the pronouncements of those carrying out acts of terrorism around the world in the name of Islam; and, tragically but understandably, their victim states and populations will speak in unison with them. The injustice of the past years is so stark that few will take into account that Palestine is divided, and that as long as this division remains, no peace negotiations with Israel can be fruitful. The Israeli policy of starving Gaza out through an economic siege since June 2007, when Hamas evicted the secular Fatah movement from the Strip, has actually forced the Gazans to resort to rocket fire on Israeli settlements. – Editorial, Daily Times, Pakistan