Christ Stopped at Ramallah

"Like all forms of tribalism, Identity replaces shared truths with private property. The Politics of Identity are therefore ideal expressions of capitalist economics. They also serve, quite directly, to kill mass numbers of our fellow human beings. All in the name of my pain trumping your pain. The embrace of the Holocaust as the defining act of inhumanity to which nothing else can ever be compared blinds those embracing its sonorities to other kinds of oppression and carnage, creating a deep perversity of meaning: making the condemnation of this towering act of evil the reason to ignore the rest, or to derogate them as inferior to the full-on nightmare of Nazi genocide. Merry Christmas, Palestinians." --- Joan Clams Bodenheim

Gaza: Hotlinks & Commentary

From today's Media Fix on Greg Mitchell's blog at The Nation: NYT today assesses, gasp, some new sentiment in D.C. that, surprise, maybe Israel is hurting us these days...; IDF admits it doctored audio of boat capture to make passengers seems like anti-Semites. Max Blumenthal: Glenn Kessler of Wash Post must correct story...; Foreign Policy: Must-read account of effects of blockade in Gaza....; As usual, more tough analysis and critical opinion on Israel at Israeli paper Haaretz than in American media....; Horrid: AP interviews Portland, Maine, filmmaker who was on flotilla ship -- first-hand account of attack, then to prison and beatings there.