Is ISRAEL A "Rogue State?"

Via Avedon's Sideshow, via CharlesII: A certain Israeli "old soldier," one Avi Schlaim thinks so, and wrote to that effect in The Guardian, the other day.

This brief review of Israel’s record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with “an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”. A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes.

Gee, that decription fits not only Israel, but Israel's great protector--NO, not Ywwh, but USofA. He descries three symptomatic facts:

#1: It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It did so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel’s objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza…

#2: Israel had the right to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally disproportionate….In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.

#3: And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

To which Charles, too, and I as well, add this conclusion:

# The brutality of Israel’s soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen.

The latter creates a serious problem when we are faced with reports that Israel may have used proscribed munitions and that it attacked without provocation civilians in the UN school. Long ago, we could almost assume that the Palestinians were lying and the Israelis were telling the truth. Now we have to assume they’re both lying.

Except for the penultimate statement, it is difficult to find fault with this analysis. Unless to suggest that it doesn't go far enough. It would be height of credulity to believe Israel harbored/harbors no territorial ambitions. Indeed, I think it has become obvious that they will now not stop short of whole-sale ethnic cleansing of Arabs from "eretz Israel." For nations as well as corporations: Grow or perish.