Israel: the perfect murder machine

Neither the UN's call for an immediate ceasefire, nor even the US's surprise decision not to veto this call but to abstain, was enough to stop Israel from its attacks. Israel continues to commit the most repugnant murders recorded in human history.

With the stubborn insistence of its uninterrupted attacks, it seems to be trying to prove something, to cross a threshold it has set for itself, many thresholds...

Israel crossed the threshold of criminality long ago. It has long since found the most wretched depth that humanity can sink to. It has already given the most unparalleled examples recorded so far of the greatest evils, the greatest atrocities that one human being can do to another. While scolding the US for not vetoing the UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire but abstaining, the Israeli representative says "we do not need a lesson in morality from anyone". After all, the beginning of ethics is responsibility for the "other". That is, the other human. Israel feels no responsibility toward anyone outside itself. That is why Foreign Minister Livni says "there is no humanitarian problem in Gaza", because as far as she is concerned there are no humans in Gaza to begin with.

It proves that, so that no Israeli citizen's nose bleeds, so that no Israeli loses sleep or gets an itch in the ear, it can, if necessary, subject all the world's babies and all of humanity to its repugnant massacres. Truly, those who think this way no longer need any lesson. For Israel, the lesson in humanity and the lesson in morality are over. It reached long ago the limit at which no lesson is of any benefit.

Israel is steeped in the lust, which strips one of humanity, for the physical power, the power to kill and destroy, that the technology in its hands gives it. In the words of Leyla İpekçi in the newspaper Taraf, "To destroy everything that moves, and even to entrust this to a computer program, is the point to which humanity has fallen. Those who see destroying without any distinction as self-defense (despite massacring babies in abundance, in the end) increasingly sanctify their own massacres" (Taraf, 10 January 2009).

Prof. Samir Salha, a Middle East expert from Kocaeli University, whom we hosted this week on the program Tersi ve Yüzü ("The Reverse and the Obverse"), which I present with Ferhat Kentel on Mehtap TV, pointed to an interesting matter that sheds light on the question of what Israel is trying to show and what it is trying to see with these efforts of its, beyond ethics and miles beyond every threshold of humanity. In Israel, which in 2006 at the end of a 34-day occupation of Lebanon had to flee in defeat, a study known as the Winograd Report was prepared on the instructions of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and concluded in January last year.

The purpose of this 600-page report was to examine all the actions of the political and military leadership during the 34-day Second Lebanon War and, within that framework, to uncover the causes that led to the defeat. Besides the military-tactical or technological causes that led to the defeat, flaws in the preparatory measures that paved the way for this defeat at the national or international level were also assessed. The most important question concentrated on the causes of Israeli soldiers' deaths. But it is much better understood today that the aim was not merely the assessment of a past war, and that through this report the probable measures for a war to be waged were in fact being determined.

Israel's ongoing Gaza attack is nothing but a trial of the war machine that is thought to have been repaired after all the flaws in the Lebanon defeat set out by the Winograd Report were analyzed. Israel is checking whether this slaughter machine works well enough.

It is trying to make sure enough to see where this machine may falter. It is trying to see how many people it can kill without suffering any losses. It is testing what international conscience can bear and how far patience can hold out. As it attacks, it is accustoming humanity to the images of incredible massacre it causes.

That is why before attacking it both develops extremely complex technologies and, in line with the lessons drawn from the report, completes, or thinks it has completed, the political opposition, the reflections in the media and the international diplomatic operations that could weaken the state and the army in this aggression.

Exactly what the neo-modernists call "reflexivity" it is trying out on its own war apparatus as a murder machine. In this way it is trying to create a death machine that is flawless, leaves no gaps and gives no openings. With the highest use of reason and technology, Israel reaches the lowest and most wretched rank that a human being can fall to.

However, at this rank too it cannot free itself of its fears. The possibility that it may still have a weak point suffices to rob it of all its sleep. It knows the story of David and Goliath very well, and, looking at its position against the stones thrown by the dark-skinned children of the Intifada, it sees that it has lost the role of David and goes mad.

However full of technology and however full of reason this aggression may be, one side of it also rests on a desperate fear of death.

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THE RALLY AGAINST THE ISRAELI MURDERER PILOTS AND PLANES, IN KONYA

The people of Turkey are on their feet against Israeli oppression. One of the meaningful rallies held every day all over Turkey took place on Saturday in Konya. At the rally, held near the air base where Israeli pilots are trained, with the participation of thousands of people from all over Turkey, the message of the participants was directly to the government. It was stated that with its pilots trained in Turkey, by dropping cluster bombs on children and bombing hospitals and civilian targets and causing the deaths of hundreds of people, Israel is committing both a war crime and a crime against humanity. Turkey should not be a party to this crime any longer. While it becomes harder with each passing day to bear the burden of sin for this agreement, what is the government still waiting for to cancel it?