The nightmare in Gaza

There is an interesting post and subsequent discussion on the Crooked Timber blog-collective about the relative lack of punditry, either of the institutional or freelance variety, on yesterday's civilian deaths in Gaza, apparently from the use of heavy weapons by the Israeli military on a civilian demonstration. From our own perspective, the problem in commenting on this latest loss of life is the futility of the rounds of condemnation that occur after events like this in the face of complete impotence to do anything about it. Everyone knows that Ariel Sharon has the nod and wink from Dubya to be ultra-repressive in the Occupied Territories, and anyway the civilian casualties in Iraq undercut much of the moral authority of the US to complain about civilian casualties in Gaza -- the US being the only critic that Ariel would take remotely seriously.

One of the followup comments to the CT post draws on the Irish history of the march gone wrong:

...whilst leaving a great deal of room for nasty possibilities in between [that Israeli military deliberately targets civilians versus it being scrupulously careful not to]. To take an example from another conflict: did the British Army have a deliberate policy of killing civilians back in 1972? No. Were most British soldiers decent people who would not knowing fire into an unarmed crowd? Yes, most of them probably were. Did soldiers from the Parachute Regiment kill thirteen people on Bloody Sunday? They sure did.

Indeed, we had used a Bloody Sunday reference to highlight the bad historical predecent for the US Army's killing of civilians last year in Fallujah -- and we all know how well things in Fallujah turned out since.

But we also have one addition to the "Where's the Outrage?" -- where are the Arab governments? Playing the condemnation game of course, getting a rare UN Security Council resolution, and surfing as best they can the wave of popular outrage in their domestic media. But is it really plausible that Israel is running a massive military operation within a stone's throw of Egypt without some acquiescence from Cairo? And is Prince Bandar using his access to the White House to air Arab grievances in this case? We can sit in Blogistan and condemn Israel all we want. But with absolutely no mechanism to make such criticism effective, it'd be a better use of our time to just stare at the Sleeping Beckham video for a while.