Israel’s deadly air campaign is paring down Hamas’s ability to function effectively as the ruler of Gaza. It is undermining Hamas’s political power bases. The lesson is not that Hamas can be destroyed militarily but that it that can be weakened domestically. Israel apparently hopes to persuade the Hamas leadership, as it did Arafat for a while, that its best interests are served by cooperating with Israel. The message is: forget about your popular mandate to resist the occupation and concentrate instead on remaining in power with our help. Jonathan Cook comments. Read more about The real goal of the slaughter in Gaza 

The UN’s complicity in Israel’s propaganda war is the latest, albeit hardly ever mentioned, dimension of the international organization’s utter failure in defending its principles, foremost among which are the prevention of war and the promotion of peace, when performing such a duty is expected to stir the wrath of the US master and the uniquely influential Israel lobby. Not only has the UN Secretary-General betrayed the very Charter of the UN and all relevant international law principles by failing to even condemn Israel’s massacre of civilians and targeting of civilian institutions and residential neighborhoods. Omar Barghouti comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Is the UN complicit in Israel's massacre in Gaza? 

No one can say with certainty what Israel’s new aggression will unleash, but one can point to some likely outcomes. The attack on Gaza will not destroy Hamas, and even if Israel kills every person who ever supported Hamas, the attack will not end resistance. On the contrary, resistance will be strengthened throughout the region, undermining the notion that resistance is outdated or impossible and that the only remaining “strategic choice” for the Arabs is negotiation from a position of weakness. The Gaza attack will weaken and discredit even further the so-called “moderates” who did their best to extinguish any form of resistance and bet heavily on the failed peace process and its sponsors. Hasan Abu Nimah comments. Read more about New birth pangs for the Middle East 

As the death toll in Gaza rises by the hour, and the few civic buildings still left are collapsing under the combined firepower of the Israeli air force, with its up-to-the-minute bombers and destructive armaments, we are again facing an incredible political phenomenon — the foretold disaster which surprises all political leaders as if they, unlike the rest of us, never see a newspaper or watch the television news channels. Haim Bresheeth comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Where peace is a problem 

It does Israelis no more good to control Palestinian land, exploit its resources, and inflict misery on its people than it did the US any good to do the same to Iraqis. Most of us know that the crimes our country committed in Iraq were detrimental to our future, so why would we support the Israeli government when it engages in the same self-destructive behavior. My question to Israel’s “friends” in US Congress would be, “is that what friends are for?” Titus North comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Falling into the moral abyss 

As a consequence of his foreign policy misadventures, Bush leaves the Middle East in flames and America’s reputation in tatters. Yet, one thing has remained constant for the aloof president: deference to an Israeli “show of strength” rather than diplomacy. Only a year ago, Bush hosted the Annapolis conference that “relaunched” the “peace process” and then predictably stood by as it stalled out. Unable to launch a war against Iran, capture Osama bin Laden, pacify Afghanistan or Iraq, or broker a Palestinian-Israeli peace, rather than ride into the sunset in the waning days of his presidency, Bush is determined to leave in a final blaze of malicious incompetence. As it has been so often over the past eight years, the site of his enmity is Gaza. Osamah Khalil comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about The dogs of war 

“I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing.” Those were the words, spoken on Al Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of Israel’s latest massacres were broadcast around the world. A short time earlier, US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more. Many of these locations were police stations located, like police stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas. The Electronic Intifada co-founder Ali Abunimah comments. Read more about Gaza massacres must spur us to action 

The United Nations Security Council passed its first resolution on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in almost five years, on 16 December. But far from marking a break with the Council’s abdication of responsibility for the fate of the Palestinian people, United States- and Russian-sponsored resolution 1850 is the final nail in the coffin for even the pretense that international law and institutions will play any serious role in ending 60 years of dispossession and occupation, and bringing about a just peace. Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah comment. Read more about Security Council undermines justice and UN Charter 

Barack Obama’s election victory has inspired a windfall of comment, most of it euphoric, with some grumbling from the political right and the small quarters of the left that remain unimpressed, so I am hesitant to contribute to the chatter. There is one element of Obama’s victory, however, that has received less attention than it deserves, and that is his profound commitment to an extreme form of Zionism. Steven Salaita comments. Read more about The pragmatism of ethnic cleansing