A Palestinian was killed, apparently as revenge for the deaths of three Israeli teenagers who were abducted and killed.

At first, Tzipi Livni said it was atrocious and condemned the death of the Palestinian youth. Here is a quote from this web page:

“This is the difference between Israel and a terrorist organization,” she said, vowing “zero tolerance” for acts those who take the law into their own hands.

Those of us with longer memories may beg to differ. When the UN Observer Post in Beirut, Lebanon, came under increasing fire from Israeli sources, they sent their GPS coordinates to Israel asking them to cease and desist. They were killed by Israeli cruise missiles. In another similar situation the result was this:

Peacekeepers from Austria, China, Finland and Canada were killed in an Israeli air strike on a UN observation post in southern Lebanon.

You can check this claim here. The earlier atrocity seems to have vanished from the Internet.

Let’s go into Gaza (metaphorically only, eh? It’s not safe there). Here you will find one of many bad things that happened in Gaza. Tank shells fired into tents (this link). Tank shells fired into occupied houses (my memory). Snipers killing grandma as she leaves the house (my memory).

Back to Tzipi Livni. Here you will find an israelnationalnews article on how her condemnation of the killing of an Arab youth turned out to be crocodile tears, soon retracted. I quote this article here:

Apparently a little too “quick on the trigger,” Justice Minister Tzipi Livni retracted a Twitter post she wrote condemning the “murderers of an Arab child who seek to turn us into a society of killers,” after the abduction and murder of an Arab youth Wednesday.

Calling the killing of an Arab youth “shocking,” Livni wrote that “the murderers must be found and tried immediately. Nothing must stop us. This is the difference between the State of Israel and a terror organization.”

You may note that I have omitted a lot of potential stuff here. The ongoing encroachment of settlements ‘which Israel disputes’ are illegal. The ongoing theft of Palestinian homes and land. The ongoing enforcement of checkpoints throughout Palestine. The ongoing control of Palestinian tax money. The ongoing embargo of ‘dual use’ materials, such as rebars and cement, making repairs difficult. The limitations on fuel for generators, and on batteries. The ongoing use of Palestinians as crop labourers (which Israel probably cannot, any more than the Southern US States, versus Mexicans) afford to stop using.

A terrorist organization is one because the United States says it is. Simple as that.

Since I generally end with a dumb question or two, those of you scrolling this far shall be rewarded (more or less) with these:

By any moral definition, does Israel’s actions in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank, qualify it as a terrorist organization?

Does the UN’s universal condemnation of such actions matter a soft white damn? (to quote e.e.cummings)

Given that Israeli news outlets condemn, in a few cases I can read in English, these actions, can we assume that Israel is not uniformly united in these ‘non’terrorist actions?

Comments? usual rules apply. Sense, and a real eMail address.