To be continued

The meaning, in words, that lies behind the televised record of one-sided death and destruction in Gaza is this: Israel has given itself over to atavistic impulses; no power is moving to stop them; and the blowback will last for generations.

Ibrahim Amin, writing in the Lebanese paper Al-Akhbar on Thursday, said one reason the Israeli public is so solidly behind the 2009 Gaza war--compared to the 2006 Lebanon war-- is that the crimes being committed here have somehow been given the aura of Old Testament or Torah heroics, and the thirst is for unequivocal images of victory like lines of enemy soldiers blindfolded holding up the white flag. AbdulBari Atwan likewise, in his Friday column, describes this as an Israeli thirst for blood and destruction that isn't yet satiated. He wonders how many more victims they will demand, and at the same time how long it will take the Arab leaders to take steps "to preserve their honor, or what is left of it, if there is any left". He wishes Ahmedinejad and his allies would take steps to help the Gazans, adding:

We realize that they themselves [Iran and its allies] are targeted, and that the attack on Gaza was a prelude to a future attack on them, and we do not wish for them to fall into the trap of Israeli provocation. Still, there must be cards they hold that they could use effectively to show which side they are on and to demonstrate their adherence to healthy nationalism, in support of the resistance and its many factions in this fateful war.

As for the America and the West, he says they understand only the language of interests, and they have only two, namely their own security and their pocketbooks. And regrettably no Arab or Muslim movement is in a position to affect those interests, neither among the "moderate" states or the others, all of them being equal in their contemptible impotence.

And so on. Again like Ibrahim Amin yeterday, Atwan concludes with an invocation of what the future holds:

Future Palestinian generations born out of the rubble of this destruction will certainly be different, and they will not accept what the present generation accepts. They will have revenge on all those who failed their fathers, and who collaborated in the attack. They will deal with them exactly as they deal with the attackers, if not more so. We should keep in mind the dream and the aspiration of Ytzak Rabin, that he would awake one day from sleep and find that Gaza had sunk into the sea and disappeared.