Beit Hanoun: Shrouded in silence - Guardian

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People stayed up late last night watching whether Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum would carry the day in the USA, so they are not paying much attention to the massacre of Beit Hanoun... and if you believe that's a coincidence.... (words fail) . DS

Abstract: Last night, 18 people were killed in the Israeli bombing on Beit Hanoun, most of them women and children. The town in north Gaza has been swamped with blood for more than 10 days now, but this was the highest death toll for one night so far. The Israeli government seems to want to ensure that every child to survive the blitz on Beit Hanoun will want to be a suicide bomber when he or she grows up. It also seems to want to ensure that not that many children in Beit Hanoun will ever grow up. If anybody thinks Israel's new bloody policies contradict Ariel Sharon's vision, shared by Ehud Olmert, of disengagement, then it is time to think again. The promise to the Israeli voters, attached to the withdrawal from Gaza, was always that after withdrawal we could "hit them hard" without jeopardising the settlers or our soldiers. So here we go. Just like southern Lebanon, which for years was the place for Israel to take vengeance for its frustration, Gaza is now seen by Israel as fair game. The protest in Israel over the butchery in Gaza is still limited to the "far left". Labour party ministers, who stomached the admission of fascist leader Avigdor Lieberman into their cabinet, do not only back the blitz, they run it. The minister of defence, Amir Peretz, Labour's leader, is in charge of this gory operation too, as well as of the recent bloodbath in Lebanon.(...) The world, as the US and UK like to refer to themselves - and as Israel also likes to call them - will do little, this time, as in previous cases. The children of Beit Hanoun will not be saved by George Bush and Tony Blair. After all, the photos are all too similar to what we saw not long ago from Baghdad, where minor "accidents" like last night's surgical operation in Gaza prevailed. The so called "war on terror", like all major international conflicts before it, inspires local conflict, and US and UK practices send a clear message to Israel's leaders that it is all actually all right. In his moving poem about the Jewish children who died in the Holocaust, the Israeli unofficial poet laureate Nathan Altherman wrote that murderers would ask for children's blood, and so would those who kept quiet. This should be true for all children. Do not keep quiet. READ ALL