Don't Miss These Brilliant Essays on Gaza By Jan Frel

Here's a quick guide to some of the best essays I've read on Gaza and the larger questions posed by the recent violence.

Israeli Uri Avnery in CounterPunch argues that after witnessing the events in Gaza, even through the distorted lens of televised mass media, "seared into the consciousness of the world will be the image of Israel as a bloodstained monster, ready at any moment to commit war crimes and not prepared to abide by any moral restraints. This will have severe consequences for [Israel's] long-term future, our standing in the world, our chance of achieving peace and quiet."

Chris Hedges has a sublime touch when it comes to writing about the insanity we are capable of when warmaking consumes a society. We all saw, and most of us, if you believe the polls, personally experienced this madness most recently during the onset of the U.S. invasion in Iraq. In his latest essay, in TruthDig, "The Language of Death," Hedges writes,

"[T[he assault on Gaza is about creating squalid, lawless and impoverished ghettos where life for Palestinians will be barely sustainable. It is about building ringed Palestinian enclaves where Israel will always have the ability to shut off movement, food, medicine and goods to perpetuate misery. The Israeli attack on Gaza is about building a hell on earth. This attack is the final Israeli push to extinguish a Palestinian state and crush or expel the Palestinian people. The images of dead Palestinian children, lined up as if asleep on the floor of the main hospital in Gaza, are a metaphor for the future. Israel will, from now on, speak to the Palestinians in the language of death. And the language of death is all the Palestinians will be able to speak back."

Naomi Klein makes the case in The Nation that Israel should become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to South Africa's apartheid, calling for boycotts......