The New York Times reports today that Israel is pressing Egypt to use force against Palestinian civilians in order to restore the international border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt:
There were small clashes throughout the day, with short episodes of rock-throwing. Egyptians fired guns into the air and aimed water cannons above the heads of the those in the crowd to keep them back. The new breaches in the wall were large enough for cars and trucks to drive through, and some Egyptian guards then retreated.
Egypt is under pressure from Israel and the United States to restore the international border and regulate it, but does not want to use excessive force against the Gazans, whom the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, has insisted are starving under the pressure of Israeli restrictions on imports and travel.
Meanwhile, Mahatma Gandhi's grandson Arun has been forced to resign from the Nonviolence Institute he founded because he dared criticize Israeli militarism. Details on the flip.
According to Michelle Boorstein writing in the Washington Post, Arun Gandhi has been forced to resign from the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence -- which he had founded some twenty years ago in his grandfather's memory -- after writing comments critical of Israel on the Post's "On Faith" blog. Gandhi's January 7 comments noted that Jewish identity has become "locked into the holocaust experience," and that some Jews "overplay" that experience "to the point that it begins to repulse friends." His comment also included this passage:
Apparently, in the modern world, so determined to live by the bomb, this is an alien concept. You don't befriend anyone, you dominate them. We have created a culture of violence (Israel and the Jews are the biggest players) and that Culture of Violence is eventually going to destroy humanity
In keeping with his pacifism, Gandhi wrote that the Jewish nation is too reliant on bombs and weapons, and should instead seek to befriend its enemies.
As other critics of Israeli militarism have also learned recently (see for example the injustice visited upon Norman Finkelstein at DePaul University), the mechanisms of ideological control exercised by Israel's friends are quite extensive.
At the very moment Israel is subjecting an entire civilian population of 1.5 million people to a punishing blockade rather than engage in negotiations that might very well lead to a peaceful solution, an internationally recognized pacifist -- heir, indeed, to the greatest pacifist the world has ever known -- is humiliated by the directors of the very organization he founded to promote peace.
His crime? He spoke the truth.
Welcome to the machine.