Restraining Israel.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Comment - Viewpoint essay

What a way to end 2008 and to begin 2009. Even in the largely antiseptic coverage by the U.S. corporate media, the brutality and senselessness of Israel's attack came through. But if you accessed the coverage from alternative media sources or from overseas, you saw the horrors in full color: babies killed, schoolchildren massacred from the air, families devastated, the dead rotting among the living, ambulances and relief trucks attacked, essential supplies cut off from the trapped population.

By the end of the second week, Israel had killed more than 750 Palestinians, many of them women and children. Another 3,100 were wounded, half of them women and children, according to the United Nations.

On the Israeli side, seven soldiers and three civilians had died.

This is the very definition of disproportionality--a Palestinian eye for every Israeli eyelash, a Palestinian set of teeth for every Israeli chipped tooth.

Israel's actions violated the Geneva Conventions by not sufficiently protecting civilian life and by engaging in collective punishment. Yet Israel pleaded necessity. Its stated goal was to end the illegal and immoral rocket attacks by Hamas, which terrorized civilian areas but took few lives.

Israel said Hamas broke the six-month cease-fire. But that depends on how far you set the clock back.

"The cease-fire did not collapse, because there was no real cease-fire to start with," said Uri Avnery of the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom. "The main requirement for any cease-fire in the Gaza Strip must be the opening of the border crossings. There can be no life in Gaza without a steady flow of supplies. But the crossings were not, opened, except for a few hours now and again. The blockade on land, on sea, and in the air against a million and a half human beings is an act of war, as much as any dropping of bombs or launching of rockets."

On top of that, said Avnery, there were Israeli "provocations which were designed to get Hamas to react. After several months, in which hardly any Qassam rockets were launched, an army unit was sent into the Strip. . . . The aim was to find a pretext for the termination of the cease-fire, in a way that made it plausible to put the blame on the Palestinians. And indeed, after several such small actions, in which Hamas fighters were killed, Hamas retaliated with a massive launch of rockets, and--lo and behold--the cease-fire was at an end."

Israel had its pretext. And its main goal was to topple Hamas.

But it...