Photo on the right of bombed out home in Rafa, Gaza, dated Aug. 21, 2014, is by Wissam Nassar / The New York Times.
The other day on Facebook I ran across a post calling Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “the Butcher of Tel Aviv” after he had launched a revenge assault on Gaza when a Gaza mortar round accidentally killed an Israeli child. I think the title “Butcher of Tel Aviv” is a fitting title, given the hundreds of Palestinian children who have been killed by Israeli forces on Mr. Netanyahu’s orders. “Hundreds?” Yes, hundreds, perhaps into the thousands if we go back far enough. All one has to do is add up the figures from Operation Cast Lead (December, 2008 – January, 2009) and the current Israeli invasion of Gaza, add them up, add Palestinian children killed in the Occupied Territories (mainly the West Bank), and the figures add up to more than 1,000 (2,026 since 2000). That is more than 1,000 children, and this doesn’t include the number arrested, detained, harassed, and otherwise mistreated, from as young as 4 and 5 years old. How many Israeli children have been killed? Four, if you included the three teenagers who were recently kidnapped and murdered. Go back to the year 2000, 135 Israeli children have been killed, most of them within the first few years of this century.
Who is doing most of the killing, brutalizing, harassing, terrifying and abusing children and their parents? Clearly it is Mr. Netanyahu’s Israel. Who is the Butcher? It isn’t Hamas, it’s Mr. Netanyahu and his merry band of close associates, like Moshe Feiglin and the delightful Ms. Ayalet Shaked, who advocates killing Palestinian mothers so they won’t bring new “little snakes” into the world to annoy the “righteous” (and “legitimate”) people of the Jewish State of Israel.
If I didn’t know better (by checking my calendar), I’d think that this whole ugly, myopic, dystopian and just plain evil drama is right out of the annals of Adolf Hitler’s Germany and its psychopathic philosophy and leadership. Instead, it comes from the self-righteous State of Israel reprising Hitlers demonic, disastrous enterprise. Now the truth is out for all to see. The Butcher of Berlin has reappeared in Israel as the Butcher of Tel Aviv. Interesting, isn’t it, how well abusive behavior mimics abusive behavior from the past and, looking at North Korea’s Kim Jong-un for a moment, the present. Birds of a feather, these two.
If you want peace for your people, Mr. Netanyahu, you have to change your behavior, and to do that, you have to change your beliefs. Will you? Frankly, I doubt it.
Musings by George Polley 
Funnily enough, I’ve just published a post about the rise of Hitler, and the mind-set in the middle east. It is a chilling parallel we are not alone on drawing. I am full of admiration for the courage and honesty you show in raising this topic. I am a writer of fairly light fiction, and have that reputation, but even I cannot remain silent in the face of this appalling barbarity. The more people speak out, perhaps the greater the chance that someone will at least pause to think before thousands more are killed
Thank you, Peter. That’s a fine post you’ve just published, too, which I have read and shared.
Again with the stupid outrageous bull crap..the real butchers here are the mega maniac leaders in Palestine…making war with a superior power building no civilian shelters ,only for themselves to hide in…looking for maximum civilian damage for propaganda ..fireing rockets from the midst of civilians…fact is folks as yourself have bought into their propaganda…to such a degree that you are encouraging these madmen to continue their abuse of their constituents
Are you saying Gerry that the Israelis are guiltless? Are you putting all the blame on the heads of the Palestinians? Have they no cause at all for complaint in the way they have been treated from the beginning? If you are, where is your evidence? Would you be willing to go and live as a Palestinian in Israel, the Occupied Territories or Gaza? If not, why not? Just asking.