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A New Year......with a powerful message!

This past week has seen the release of the UN report on the Gaza War. Both Hamas and the Israelis are the subject of criticism - although, for perhaps rather obvious reasons, Israel attracts the greater condemnation for a variety of breaches of humanitarian and international law.

Predictably, the Israelis have gone into over-drive to attack the Report and its authors and counter the serious allegations levelled against it.

As Israelis and Jews around the world celebrate their New Year - followed by the Day of Atonement in 10 days time - they may do well to reflect on this more than timely and powerful piece by Gideon Levy in Haaretz:

"There's a name on every bullet, and there's someone responsible for every crime. The Teflon cloak Israel has wrapped around itself since Operation Cast Lead has been ripped off, once and for all, and now the difficult questions must be faced. It has become superfluous to ask whether war crimes were committed in Gaza, because authoritative and clear-cut answers have already been given. So the follow-up question has to be addressed: Who's to blame? If war crimes were committed in Gaza, it follows that there are war criminals at large among us. They must be held accountable and punished. This is the harsh conclusion to be drawn from the detailed United Nations report.

For almost a year, Israel has been trying to argue that the blood spilled in Gaza was merely water. One report followed the other, with horrifyingly identical results: siege, white phosphorous, harm of innocent civilians, infrastructure destroyed - war crimes in each and every report. Now, after the publication of the most important and damning report of all, compiled by the commission led by Judge Richard Goldstone, Israel's attempts to discredit them look ludicrous, and the empty bluster of its spokespersons sound pathetic."

Continue reading here. Israelis, as indeed those one-eyed supporters of Israel who neither see nor hear any negatives on the part of Israel, might take careful heed of Levy's concluding words:

"On the eve of the Jewish New Year, Israel, deservedly, is becoming an outcast and detested country. We must not forget it for a minute."

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