War is Politics

Here is an excellent article offering a summary of the Israeli assault on Gaza by William James Martin of the University of New Orleans.

War is Politics: The Israeli Invasion of Gaza. He makes several points:

It has little to do with rockets:

The Israeli assault on Gaza has little to do with defending itself against the rocket fire emanating from the Gaza Strip; what there was, was negligible. Israel's motivations are political, not strategic, though advertised as strategic self defense, as usual.

The strategy is to cause mass suffering:

Israel's strategy of killing large numbers of civilians and inducing mass suffering, is that same as its strategy in Lebanon in the 2006 Lebanon War, which was to make the civilian population pay a heavy price for it s support of Hezbollah, with Hamas in the role of Hezbollah, in the present case.

Israel's military strategy is to destroy Hamas, directly, by killing as many of its fighters as possible, and indirectly, by destroying the infrastructure of its social services, meaning clinics, food distribution centers, Hamas run schools and day care centers, and also, government offices, public schools, universities and collages, and the police force which provides the stable structure for the people of Gaza. Mosques, churches, schools, offices of the media, and of journalists, and virtually any building that is part of the social structure has been or is being destroyed. In addition, UN schools, and NGO food storage facilities have been bombed or shelled, in the latter case causing millions of dollars of lost food.

Of course, it is a good opportunity to test drive those new U.S. made and supplied military toys.