Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua explained to Haaretz regarding an article he recently wrote for the Italian newspaper La Stampa, “I had to explain to the Italians why the Israeli action was necessary.”

Barak, Olmert, Livni and Ashkenazi will one day have to answer to war crimes charges in an international court of justice, like other war criminals. Accordingly, our duty today is to document their acts and statements in order to be sure they will pay for the massacres they ordered and commit.
There is, however, a second category of criminals who may escape the tribunals. They do not dirty their hands with the blood of civilians, but instead provide the intellectual and pseudo-moral justifications for the murderers. They are the propaganda unit of the killer’s government and army. Israeli writers Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua are a typical example of such miserable intellectuals. And not for the first time! In every war they volunteer for the Israeli war effort, without even having been officially drafted. Their first function is to provide the justifications for the Israeli offensive, then, later on, they cry about their lost virginity while accusing the other side of having forced us to behave brutally.

The justification provided by Oz (Corriera de la Serra) and Yehoshua (La Stampa) is, of course, the need to react to the rockets on Sderot, as if everything started with these rockets. “I had to explain to the Italians”, said Yehoshua to Haaretz (December 30, 2008) "why the Israeli action was necessary.”

Both Yehoshua and Oz have forgotten the nineteen months of Israel’s brutal siege imposed on one and a half million human beings, depriving them of even the most basic supplies. They have forgotten the Israeli and international boycott of the democratically elected Palestinian government. They have forgotten the forced separation of Gaza and the West Bank, a separation made in order to isolate and punish the Gaza population for its incorrect democratic choice.

After having chosen to re-write the chronology of events, Oz and Yehoshua are using the symmetry argument: violence is used by both sides and there are innocent civilian victims in both Gaza and in Israel. Indeed, and every civilian killed is an innocent victim. Chronology and quantity, however, are not irrelevant: three Israeli civilians were killed in the south of Israel, but only after the Israeli Air Force committed its planned massacre in the center of Gaza city, killing over 300.

This position of Israel’s most prominent intellectuals serves as a moral justification to the Left-Zionist Meretz Party’s support for Minister of Defence Barak’s criminal aggression. Meretz too will, in due time, express its opposition to the killings, i.e., when the international community will express its concern regarding Israeli misdeeds. Right now, however, that international community is remaining silent and is even quite happy for the Israeli contribution to their holy crusade against the Islamic global threat.

In order to show concern, Europe is sending (symbolic) humanitarian assistance to the population of Gaza. While listening to French Foreign Affairs Minister Bernard Kouchner supporting the Israeli action, while simultaneously announcing the decision to send humanitarian supplies to Gaza, I could not but remember the broadcasted International Red Cross delegations coming to Nazi extermination camps with chocolate and cookies. I know, it is not at all the same, but no-one can control his mind’s associations…

Bernard Kouchner, however, has one extenuating circumstance: the Arab regimes, in particular Hosni Mubarak’s, are also supporting the Israeli aggression. And they also will send chocolate and cookies to the children of Gaza. Except, of course, to those lying dead in Shifa hospital.