The Harris School for Public Policy at the University of Chicago presumably thought it was quite “normal” and appropriate– perhaps, even a boon for fundraising!– to invite former Israeli p.m. Ehud Olmert to give a lecture.
Olmert, however, is not just any old former prime minister. He was also the prime author of the decision to launch two extremely inhumane wars of choice: against Lebanon in 2006 and against Gaza last winter.
Israel’s conduct of the latter war– as well as a lot of other Olmert-era policies like the prolonged and lethal siege of Gaza and the continued attacks on the Palestinian community in Jerusalem– rightly came under severe criticism from the UN’s Goldstone Commission.
Judge Richard Goldstone, an experienced international prosecutor and investigator (and also Jewish and a self-proclaimed Zionist) determined that many of Israel’s actions against Gaza constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity.
So why would the University of Chicago or any other university in the democratic world consider it appropriate or “normal” to give a podium to an accused war criminal like this?
Today, Ali Abunimah and numerous other supporters of the simple proposition that the rights of Palestinians should be protected just as much as anyone else’s rights were, as it happened, there in the lecture hall too.
You can see the series of exchanges that resulted in this great report on Electronic Intifada.
It’s also worth reading this piece of analysis by Aluf Benn in tomorrow’s Haaretz.
Benn writes,
- Operation Cast Lead in Gaza was perceived in Israel as a shining victory. Rocket fire from Gaza was brought to a halt almost completely… “The world” let the operation continue and did not impose a cease-fire. A wonderful war.
Ten months later, it seems the victory was a Pyrrhic one. Israel did not realize that the rules have changed with Barack Obama’s election as U.S. president.
He also noted this about last winter’s war:
- The defense minister, Ehud Barak, wanted to halt Cast Lead after two or three days, but was overruled by Olmert who wanted to keep the campaign going, and then going further.
It seems that the accused war criminal Olmert is planning to speak at other US universities, too.
The University of Arkansas on October 27, for example.
It is interesting what Palestinian activists do in the context of a free society when they do not have the power to silence opposition. Israel must make sure that they do not acquire the power to silence Israeli opposition to the destruction of Israel, and one of the most crucial elements in the judicial evolution of Israeli society will be how it handles freedom of speech issues when Israeli-Palestinians proceed to outright treason, incitement, and sedition.
As for the University of Chicago, it evidently cannot construct a civilized atmosphere and forum for free speech like that in the Knesset, where Azmi Bishara could say whatever he wanted with only a few minor interruptions.
The Israelis sure know how to pick ’em. Olmert’s 2006 Lebanon War served to roundly discredit the military. And Operation Cast Lead has had a damaging effect on its world image.
Then there’s the backdrop of political scandal.
All in all, a poor leader.
There’s so many more interesting folks to invite to speak. Why would the U of C pick this snake oil salesman? He isn’t going to tell us anything new.
Hey Eurosabra, I take it then that’s its okay for Ahmadinejad to come to the USA and be heard at speaking engagements in a civilized atmosphere? (Yeah, that’s what I thought)
A Season of war, A Season of Peace !
As GOD says in the Psalm that there is a season of war and a season of peace which Former Prime-Minister Yitzak Rabin quoted while signing the Oslo Accord with Yasser Arafat, I believe that it was the right way forward. Today President Shimon Peres says Peace is intangible unlike Land is not the right approach.How long can a nation and people live in a “State of Emergency”. The inflexible “Exceptionalism” of Israel must end.It was founded on the basis that it will be a Light unto nations.”Greater Israel” is a non-starter in a globalized world where the Diaspora is more than the natives.Today Inter-dependence not Independence is the key.We don’t make peace with Friends.Those who live in the stories of the past become a story themselves.
Eurosabra–
I’m not in favor of shouting down speakers (I’d wait until the question period and if the university administration filtered out the tough ones, then I’d be in favor of disrupting the event with cries of “War criminal”).
That said, there’s a difference between the ordinary Zionist speaker and the man in charge of a war that killed hundreds of civilians in criminal ways. Are those Arab speakers who don’t get shouted down personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israeli civilians? Somehow I doubt it.
As you say, why the h**l is a war criminal like Olmert being invited to give a speaking tour of the US anyway? And although this is still very much on the ‘fringes’, it could be the start of the unraveling of the absurd taboo on criticising Israel in the US. And that has to be a good thing.
Thinking about this some more, I came up with this analogy–Suppose that somehow a Hamas official allegedly responsible for terrorist attacks on US civilians was allowed into the US. That wouldn’t happen in the first place, but suppose somehow it did. Would the University of Chicago invite him to speak? If it did (it wouldn’t), there would be an explosion of protests and assuming the talk wasn’t cancelled, there’s not a chance it would go forward without disruption.
The difference is that Western war criminals like Olmert and Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld are “one of us” and so they aren’t seen as war criminals–that’s just the POV of, you know, those crazy Arabs and a handful of college students. Hell, I had to think about it to break out of my own Western biases.
…and there is, as suggested already, a fairly precise parallel in the famous Ahmedinejad speech at Columbia. The Iranian President was treated with shameful insolence born of racism and prompted by fears that University revenues might be lost.
Ohlmert appears to be, on the evidence adduced by a panel of distinguished jurists, an unindicted mass murderer. Those who would invite such a person to educate and inspire their young run the risk of being considered excessively liberal.
If one compares the insouciance with which this speaking tour is regarded with howling and screeching directed in Mr Polanski’s direction one is bound to conclude that we live in a society in which the rape of one young woman, three decades ago, is considered of enormously greater moment than the killing of hundreds of others, their parents and their brothers, last Christmas.
you may have your opinions about waterboarding, Gitmo, illegal wiretapping, the war in Iraq and offenses against human rights, the U.S. Constitution and international law.
I wonder if Helena tracing back her native peopel who orchestras for Iraq war, full of war crimes or crimes against humanity in Iraq.
Theses US war criminals not just speaking in the top US universities they were prized to be as academics to lecture in them.
Let See some names
Paul Wolfowitz – Visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
Douglas Feith – hired to teach at Georgetown for a two-year
Donald Rumsfeld – at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University as a visiting fellow
Condi Rice – the Stanford Athletic Dept.an assistant coach of the women’s golf team & a political science professor at Stanford
Eurosabra: … a free society when they do not have the power to silence opposition. .. and then a civilized atmosphere and forum for free speech like that in the Knesset, where Azmi Bishara could say whatever he wanted with only a few minor interruptions. Israel, persecuting Bishara with ridiculous, fabricated charges, preventing him from returning to Israel, forcing him to resign from the Knesset, is a model of a free society that doesn’t silence opposition? Really? Eurosabra, you seem basically sane and intelligent. Why believe in the stark-raving-mad, laughable ultraZionist narrative? Why not objectively look at history and see that all Israel needs to do to defend itself is to stop its policy of ceaseless aggression, end its addiction to violence, and abandon its culture of death? So the victim occasionally fights back against its deranged victimizer, usually futilely. What a surprise.
So a serial killer, a not-so-little Eichmann, who murdered thousands of his fellow human beings, just because he could, gets his feelings hurt by being shouted down. Deplorable, surely. But the tragedy is that he is not speaking freely from a war crimes dock.
Let’s hope for more treason, incitement and sedition (i.e. saying 2 + 2 = 4) from everyone in Israel and the USA too. What other hope is there for either country?
I’m curious.
How many here think Haniyyeh, al-Zahar and Meshaal are war criminals?
Let’s take a vote. How many can see past “taking sides” to the person’s actual behavior?
It is unfortunate, but all too predictable, that Helena supports discourse suppression.
Howard, if the ones you mention are responsible for ordering terrorist attacks, they are war criminals or murderers (I don’t know what the exact legal term would be). And if any member of Hamas, directly involved in terrorism or not, was invited to an American university to speak, you can bet they would be shouted down. Not that it would get that far. Non-western war criminals don’t have the privileges that western ones do.
When a respected judge Mr. Goldstone issued his report on his fact finding mission, he was labeled as a self hating Jew .
When a criminal such as Olmert talk, Jewish people come to his defence .
These two starking personalities and their supporters in the Jewish community is telling, one is a self hating Jew, a respectable South African and a Jewish man who loves Israel but see it erred to a point that is far worse than South African Apartheid, and closer to Nazi Germany.
And the latter a Jewish mayor, turned criminal by waging two massacres, the second massacre was on an under sieged population for 22 days day and night with no condemnation by his people or the civilized nation .He is a declared war criminal, yet he is still viewed by his people as war
hero!!!!!!
George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld who are war criminals, they do not have the audacity to face the world and make speeches. While Olmert whose unsurpassed audactiy and with the full support of his people is giving a speech in a university!
This is a new low, not in crimes, but in morality!
p.s. in terms of crimes there is no new lows
When the Jewish people in the Warsaw Ghetto were under siege and they uprise they were not considered war criminals, they were, and are freedom fighters, those responsible for confining and humiliating them because they were the “other”
were bought to justice and condemned forever .
Eurosabra
I enjoy your rational argument.
What you may have missed is the context of the incident.
I suspect that it is a signal of Obama’s displeasure at the continued Israeli intransigence on settlements and Netanyahu’s attempts to undermine him.
Would US Marshalls have arrested Olmert if there had been an extant warrant for his arrest, and dragged him off to Milosevich’ old cell at the Hague?
I wonder if Aluf Benn has missed the great shift in Global Power and its consequences for matters in the Arid Corner of the Great European Lake called Mediterranean.
Niall Ferguson gave the Dillon Lecture at Chatham House not long ago, on the transfer of power from West to East. “The Descent of Finance”
http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/files/14982_051009ferguson.pdf
To put it bluntly China is calling the shots and wants to buy gas and oil from all and sundry who have it. Iran, which is one of the few countries to speak out in support of the Palestinians, sells gas and oil to the Chinese oil companies might just whisper a suggestion in the ear of the buyers.
It might not just be a change of rules with the advent of Obama but a genuine shift of the tectonic plates in international affairs.
Hulagu Khan left 1000 men garrisoning Gaza the last time people from that part of the world came calling.
@World Peace, here is a history lesson for you.
1. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising occurred when the Nazis attempted to liquidate the remnant of Jews still living in the ghetto. The Nazis rounded up every single Jew in the ghetto – man, woman and child – deported some to the death camps and killed the rest that they could catch.
2. The Jews imprisoned in Warsaw Ghetto did not attack civilians outside the ghetto.
3. The Jews had been confined to ghettos and humiliated all over Europe and the middle east for hundreds of years. The authorized confinement of all Jews to ghettos had been the norm in much of Europe during most periods until roughly Napoleon’s time, and remained the norm in Arab countries thereafter. The crimes for which the Nazi leaders were punished were not “confinement and humiliation,” as you seem to think, but rather the methodical, continent-wide, genocidal mass slaughter of literally millions of ordinary civilians – men, women and children – as well as related crimes.
4. The Jews in the ghetto were never considered to be “freedom fighters.” They were literally fighting for their lives and the lives of all Jews in the ghetto, and not for freedom. They hoped that maybe the Poles would rise up in response, but that didn’t happen.
Your attempt to equate Hamas terrorists on the one hand, with Jews attempting to stave off the Nazis’ genocidal rampage a little bit longer, on the other, is ridiculous. Your attempt to equate the IDF with the Nazis in Warsaw Ghetto shows that you either understand nothing of the Shoah and nothing of the history of the Jewish people anywhere, or you simply don’t believe in intellectual honesty. Or both.
George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld who are war criminals, they do not have the audacity to face the world and make speeches.
Well, they do. Bush, Rumsfeld and many others like them can be hired here: WashingtonSpeaker Bureau ( washingtonspeaker.com)
Here is a newpaper report from an event in june this year, where Bush shared the stage with Bill Clinton:
http://bit.ly/gSli2
Athough looks most of people agree to accused war criminal former Israeli p.m. Ehud Olmert, let see another on here:
Helena did Quaker complained to UN about hiring war criminal Tony Blair?
Did any US institutions protesting against Tony Blair?
world peace,
Read here he is already appointed:
The appointment of Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, as a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution
Here Hoover Institution director explains, defends appointment of Rumsfeld
What goes around comes around it seems.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/richardspencer/100013980/has-downing-street-dropped-israel/
Howard,
Actually I do believe in intellectual honesty, and in INTERNATIONAL LAWS, equally, I believe in human equality .
1. The Zionist-led Israeli government did not learn anything from the atrocities committed by the Nazis on the Jews during World War II.
2. History books provide a lot of similarities between those in the Warsaw ghettos and those in Gaza and the West Bank.
“When Germany conquered Poland at the beginning of the Second World War, it issued a decree that required all Jewish residents of Warsaw to move into a designated area, which it then sealed off from the rest of the city in November 1940. The ghetto was enclosed by a wall that was over 10-feet high and topped with barbed wire and closely guarded to prevent movement between the ghetto and the rest of Warsaw.
“Unemployment was a major problem in the ghetto. Illegal workshops were set up to manufacture goods to be sold illegally on the outside and raw goods were smuggled in often by children. Smuggling was often the only source of subsistence for the ghetto inhabitants. Food allotments rationed were not sufficient to sustain life. Despite the grave hardships, life in the Warsaw ghetto was rich with educational and cultural activities conducted by its underground organizations… resisting deportation, some of them used small arms smuggled into the ghetto. They offered organized resistance in the first days of the operation, inflicting casualties on the well armed and equipped SS and police units.”
3.Had the US and Europe pressuring Israel to accept the various resolutions passed by the UN — there would not be Hamas, Islamic jihad, Al-Aqsa martyrs or Hezbollah today. Instead, there would be economic development and prosperity in Gaza and the West Bank, no refugee camps in Lebanon and no suicide bombers and rockets on the streets of Israel.
The Palestinians and Nations from around the world are still awaiting the majority of Jewish people will “rise up in response, that did not happen” .
Howard, there is an irony in your response, the majority who supportted the massacres in Lebanon and Gaza, had endured so much pain and wants the world to remember the Holocaust annually and yet continues to inflict unimaginable suffering on their neighbours . I await your conscious awakening, salaam .
1. Ridiculous BS assertion. The Israeli government has not killed off the Palestinians and has never had a plan to do so. The Nazis planned methodically to slaughter all of the Jews of Europe and eventually all of the Jews worldwide.
And today, *HAMAS and its allies* are the ones who believe in the necessity of slaughtering the Jews rather than simply finding a peaceful settlement. They talk about it on their children’s television programs. Their rhetoric has only gotten worse over time.
2. Only for people of shallow mind who don’t understand the history of the Shoah, and who attempt to assert nonsensical similarities between conditions that are completely and utterly unrelated based on text that they fail to understand.
Warsaw Ghetto: As a result of being born Jews, all Jewish men, women and children were forced into the ghetto where they could be used as slave labor and systematically starved, where typhoid and cholera would take its toll and eventually from which they would either be deported to death camps or murdered in place. Warsaw Ghetto was hermetically sealed off by the Nazis. Smuggling prevented mass starvation. Handguns were brought in as well. There was no smuggling of tons of explosives, nor did anyone steal sewage pipes and use them to create mortars to shoot at Poles or Germans. The Judenrat focused on trying to help people survive, rather than on trying to conquer Poland or Germany. In this, they had no significant help from the West, or the East. Despite there being no laws of war at the time, the Jews of the ghetto did not use hospitals as barracks or military bases.
Gaza: As a result of Hamas attacks on Israelis across the 1967 border, including 10,000 attempted attacks on civilians and the seizure of Gilad Shalit (being held without access by the ICRC), Israel closed its border with Gaza. Israel continues to provide fuel and electricity, continues to allow in humanitarian aid (daily). Israel does not control Egypt’s border with Gaza and can do nothing to control when that is opened or closed. Egypt keeps this border closed because of evidence of collusion between Hamas and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, its parent body, and more recently Hizballah. This is not Israel’s issue. Hamas leaders smuggle in thousands of tons of explosives and shoot thousands of rockets at civilians. Their openly stated goal is to destroy the country on the other side of the 1967 borders, killing as many Jews as possible. Hamas ideology is the one that resembles Nazi ideology. If Gazans are trapped, it is not by Israel but by their own psychotic leaders.
etc .etc.
And of course there’s the fact that while Gaza was under Israeli control, the population of Arabs in Gaza surged and the standard of living and life expectancy grew. Shifa Hospital opened (there was none under the Egyptians). A university was founded. Gaza was open until the leaders of the Palestinians decided that it is better to kill Israelis than to focus on building a state.
And finally 20% of Israelis are Arabs, who are not locked up in ghettos or concentration camps. So right there, any of your ridiculous analogies go right out the window. The Nazis had a totalitarian, genocidal ideology (like that of Hamas) that eventually prompted more and more extreme forms of slaughter; Israel is a democratic state that basically wants to be left alone and to have normal relations with its neighbors, in which an Israeli Arab can be an MK, acting president, cabinet minister, widely respected general in the IDF or leading research scientist.
Bishara’s main discursive problem is that he said things in Syria and Lebanon that would have been acceptable on the floor of the Knesset, and a lot of legislation was passed to fill in the gaps and make those trips and that speech abroad illegal for a Knesset member.
Again, along with the disturbances @ Concordia when Netanyahu was scheduled to speak, as well as the Erdogan-Peres tiff at Davos, it is fairly clear that it is representatives of the State of Israel who are being denied a forum, while Ahmedinajad, however problematic, gets one. So this is s specific tool leveled at representatives of the State of Israel, whereas–to the best of my knowledge–representatives of the PA are free to speak at US and Canadian universities.
If the litmus test has to be that heads of state ordering military interventions that result in civilian deaths or occupation have to be delegitimized, then no one in the Middle East gets a forum. Obviously no Cypriot was there at Davos to drown out Erdogan.
Do you really wish Israel ” to have normal relations with its neighbors, in which an Israeli Arab can be an MK, acting president, cabinet minister, widely respected general in the IDF or leading research scientist.” ?
If so, convince your democratic government to take the Arab offer, normalization= peace, ending the occupation of Palestine on the 1967 borders, East Jerusalem the capital of Palestine, and a just solution on the refugees issue .
It is simple because, ” There is a place for everyone at the rendez-vous of Victory”.
You need to educate yourself on current events that changed worldview . The Israel before the Gaza Massacres, and after . Your task is impossible. The pictures were horrific .
If you are a peace loving nation, you need to take significant steps, steps that will be historic and not destructive:” steps that will secure the rights of Palestinians, redress the wrongs done to Palestinians, all Palestinians, in the same way that Jews still demand redress for the wrongs done to them by the Nazis.”
Empathy, we all need it, specially when our might is not matched .
Good Evening .
Hello,
Since when has war been anything but inhumane.
Mentioned in the article about Mr Olmert of Israel.
And which country goes to war more than any other…….the U S.
The U S stayed in Vietnam way too long and at huge cost.
Same with iraq.
Now Afghanistan.
Any commentator from the U S who critisizes any other countries leadership who may start a war is a hypocrit.
Finally does the U S have rockets fired into its territory almost monthly.
@wp: Unfortunately, while the original Saudi plan had merit, the Saudis allowed the Syrians (at the Arab League) to add a poison pill that makes it absolutely impossible for Israel to accept the current “proposal.”
The current proposal does NOT call for a “just solution” to the Palestinian refugee issue. Instead, it calls for the solution to be based on UN res 194, which called for every last Palestinian to return to Israel. I’ve already explained before why this would lead to an absolute bloodbath that would make the Lebanese civil war look like a summer picnic. With this language, the Arab “proposal” – which is actually not a proposal, but rather an ultimatum – is Dead On Arrival as far as Israel is concerned. Or, if the Arab League were willing to amend that point along the lines you might favor – a just resolution (which could include reparations to refugees (perhaps on both sides), funding for third countries to grant citizenship, etc.) then you would see very different political dynamics in Israel. But an ultimatum that demands that Israel commit suicide or not have peace is useless.
The Saudis, despite having been suckered by Damascus, continue to refuse to consider amending that point. Oh well.
As for taking steps, Israel has taken many. When they have been reciprocated, both sides have benefitted. Israel and Jordan and Egypt have not fought a war in over 3 decades. That’s 30+ years of not having kids die and infrastructure blown up in senseless wars against each other.
Tell your friends in the Arab world that when they adopt the ideas of a guy like Salaam Fayyad, who prefers building a real Palestinian state over shoring up delusional dreams of blood-drenched vengeance against the Jews for existing, or a guy like Sari Nusseibeh, or a guy like Dr. Abu al-Aish, and stop listening to psychopaths like Khaled Meshaal, Bashar al-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, then they will find that not only is a Palestinian state quite easy to achieve, but that they’ll have a lot of Jewish supporters.
Regarding the “Gaza massacres,” I’m quite well educated, thanks. Start by asking which of the “civilian” victims were known al-Qassam Brigades fighters. The number is shockingly high.
I agree with your point about empathy.
OPEN LETTER TO THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT
Did you order the killing of the 900 civilians, in Gaza, in January, in self-defense or did you kill them to save others?
Did you kill these non-combatants in order to terrorize the civilian population?
Were you aware that to kill civilians, except in self-defense, is a war crime?
Did your troops use banned white phosphorus as a chemical weapon to injure and kill?
If your soldiers are alleged by an independent enquiry to be guilty of war crimes,will they be handed over voluntarily to the ICC for trial?
In which event, will Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, the ministers directly responsible, be voluntarily be handed over to the authorities in The Hague, or will it be left to other governments to arrest them ?
@Colindale
I can’t speak on behalf of the Israeli government, but
1. This is a ridiculous question. The Israeli government did not order the killing of 900 civilians in the first place. So both of your options are nonsense.
Your question neglects the fact the PCHR’s numbers are massively inflated, based on a methodology that assumed that anyone brought to the hospital without a gun or uniform was a civilian; pardon me, but that’s stupid. There is ample evidence, to which I have provided links in previous comments here, identifying literally hundreds of so-called “civilians” as Hamas gunmen. Your question also ignores the fact that in urban combat, civilians inevitably (tragically) die, no matter how careful both sides are to protect them. Some percentage of the deaths in Gaza were accidental; and any accusation or argument that does not attempt to distinguish accidents from purposeful killings is quite simply rhetorical garbage. Thirdly, you ignore Hamas’ behavior. When Hamas fires mortars at military forces, the military forces under fire are almost certain to respond. Mortars are typically used without line of sight; in an exchange of mortar fire, neither side can see the other. So when Hamas fired mortars from a position near civilians, Israelis were likely to fire back to protect their own lives. In this case, (a) the Israelis responding to Hamas fire could not see the civilians, and if the civilians died then it is a tragedy but not a deliberate killing by the Israelis; whereas (b) Hamas COULD see the civilians, and should either have ordered them to vacate the street before it initiated mortar fire against military forces, or avoided firing from the vicinity of civilians in the first place. Hamas, which DID know about the civilians, deliberately endangered them.
This situation occurred more than once. Your question is a false dichotomy.
2. See 1.
3. See 1.
4. No. The Israeli government has already responded to this one. The white phosphorous was used as a smoke screen to screen maneuvering troops, which is legal. See this document for more information.
5. Since Goldstone himself says openly that his report does not meet the requirements of judicial evidence, why do you pretend that it does?
Israel, as a democratic country with an independent judiciary that frequently rules against the government and military, over 80 outspoken human rights organizations, free press, etc., is carrying out its own investigations of the various incidents in the Gaza operation. If there is sufficient evidence for an unbiased judge or jury to find an Israeli soldier guilty of war crimes, the Israeli judicial system will throw him in jail. So far, the “evidence” that has emerged for “war crimes” has all been seriously flawed.
Did civilians die? Yes. Did Israelis kill some of them? Yes. Deliberately? There is still no credible evidence for this. The Goldstone report contains massive procedural errors, believes any testimony from Gazans regardless of even when they keep changing their stories, deliberately suppresses evidence in Israel’s favor, contains incredible distortions and misstatements of international law and has numerous other problems. I’ve cited some of them before, more specifically. Nobody here has made an effort to refute these specific points.
6. Why? Your earlier questions don’t constitute evidence of this, just ridiculous assertions.
And finally, have you written similar open letters to the governments of Sudan, the DR Congo, Sri Lanka and Yemen, not to mention the Hamas junta controlling Gaza and its leash-holders in Damascus and Tehran? In Sudan, 300,000 people have been slaughtered. In DR Congo, the number is in the millions. In Sri Lanka, 7000-8000 civilians were massacred a few months ago. In Yemen, thousands have died in the civil war and the government is refusing to let even basic aid in across the border. Where is the open letter to them?
Civilian blood is generally cheap in this comments section, unless it can be used as a hammer to attack Israel.