Months after the cessation of hostilities, even as foreign correspondents marvel at the "quiet" that has prevailed along Gaza's borders, the Israeli leadership is ramping up its bloody imprecations. At a conference this May sponsored by Shurat HaDin, a legal organization dedicated to defending Israel from war crimes charges, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon warned that another crushing assault was inevitable, either in Gaza, southern Lebanon, or both. After threatening to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran, Yaalon pledged that "we are going to hurt Lebanese civilians to include kids of the family. We went through a very long deep discussion... we did it then, we did it in [the] Gaza Strip, we are going to do it in any round of hostilities in the future."
Yaalon went on to boast to his audience about how one year before Operation Protective Edge, he furnished his commanders with maps of "certain neighborhoods in Gaza" to hit. They included Shujaiya, an area east of Gaza City where over 120 civilians were killed in a matter of hours, and which now lies in utter ruin. Gaza still reels from last summer's assault, yet there is no reason to doubt that the Israeli military will fulfill Yaalon's terrifying vow -- perhaps sooner than anyone expects.
For Israel, war is no longer an option. It is a way of life.
Max Blumenthal, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of the bestselling Republican Gomorrah and of Goliath , the winner of the Lannan Foundational Cultural Freedom Notable Book Award. He is a senior writer for Alternet . His new book is The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza (Nation Books). Follow him on Twitter @maxblumenthal.
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Copyright 2015 Max Blumenthal
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