Do Israelis Glory At Killing Civilians?

Defense Minister Ehud Barak (the Hebrew surname means "lightning," German "Blitz") did it again: a historic record of over 200 Palestinians killed in a single Sabbath's blitz (Dec. 27). Polls now predict five additional Knesset seats for his Labor Party in the coming February general election. That's 40 Palestinian corpses per seat. No wonder he promises it's just the beginning: at this pace, it will take Labor just about two thousand additional corpses to go from rags to riches, from a dead political party to an absolute majority in parliament like in the good old days. For Barak, then, the Gaza obituaries are a matter of political survival: they are pasted up on his party's obituary. A similar sickening logic sent former Prime Minister Shimon Peres (Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, etc., etc.) back in 1996 to devastate southern Lebanon and solve the problem of Hezbollah once-and-for-all in Operation Gs of Wrath, just weeks before the general election – in which he was defeated by Netanyahu. When the so-called doves behave like hawks, the voters prefer the real hawks, following the Talmudic saying "Whatever looks like an egg, a true egg is always better." But warriors like Barak never learn.