Following on from the discussions regarding 'MLA draft guidelines on
managing controversial materials', which tended to focus on groups such as
Al Qaeda and Hamas, I have been wondering whether articles / websites /
materials that support the deliberate killing of innocent civilians in Gaza
by the Israelis have been equally censored or blocked?

One example of such extremism / support for terrorism is: 

"The fight against Islamic radicals always seems to come around to whether
or not they can, in fact, be deterred, because it's not clear that they are
rational, at least not like us. But to wipe out a man's entire family, it's
hard to imagine that doesn't give his colleagues at least a moment's pause.
Perhaps it will make the leadership of Hamas rethink the wisdom of sparking
an open confrontation with Israel under the current conditions."

Ruthless. Posted to the 'Weekly Standard Blog' by (Former McCain-Palin
campaign spokesman and current Weekly Standard editor) Michael Goldfarb on
January 2, 2009 11:36 AM
<http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/01/overkill.asp>

Glen Greenwald, writing in Salon, effectively critiques this viewpoint as
terrorism:

That, of course, is just a slightly less profane version of Marty Peretz's
chest-beating proclamation that the great value of the attack on Gaza is to
teach those Arabs a lesson:  "do not fuck with the Jews."

There are few concepts more elastic and subject to exploitation than
"Terrorism," the all-purpose justifying and fear-mongering term.  But if it
means anything, it means exactly the mindset which Goldfarb is expressing:
slaughtering innocent civilians in order to "send a message," to "deter"
political actors by making them fear that continuing on the same course will
result in the deaths of civilians and -- best of all, from the Terrorist's
perspective -- even their own children and other family members.

To the Terrorist, by definition, that innocent civilians and even children
are killed isn't a regrettable cost of taking military action.  It's not a
cost at all.  It's a benefit.   It has strategic value.  Goldfarb explicitly
says this:  "to wipe out a man's entire family, it's hard to imagine that
doesn't give his colleagues at least a moment's pause." 

That, of course, is the very same logic that leads Hamas to send suicide
bombers to slaughter Israeli teenagers in pizza parlors and on buses and to
shoot rockets into their homes.  It's the logic that leads Al Qaeda to fly
civilian-filled airplanes into civilian-filled office buildings.  And it's
the logic that leads infinitely weak and deranged people like Goldfarb and
Peretz to find value in the killing of innocent Palestinians, including --
one might say, at least in Goldfarb's case:  especially -- children.

--snip--

Still, there is a substantial difference between, on the one hand, basically
well-intentioned people who are guilty of excessive emotional and cultural
identification with one side of the dispute and, on the other, those who
adopt the Goldfarb/Peretz psychopathic derangement of belittling rage over
widespread civilian deaths as mere "whining" or even something to view as a
strategic asset.  The latter group is a subset of war supporters and evinces
every defining attribute of the Terrorist.

Those who giddily support not just civilian deaths in Gaza but every actual
and proposed attack on Arab/Muslim countries -- from the war in Iraq to the
Israeli invasion of Lebanon to the proposed attacks on Iran and Syria and
even continued escalation in Afghanistan -- are able to do so because they
don't really see the Muslims they want to kill as being fully human.  For
obvious reasons, one typically finds this full-scale version of sociopathic
indifference -- this perception of brutal war as a blood-pumping and
exciting instrument for feeling vicarious sensations of power and strength
from a safe distance -- in the society's weakest, most frightened, and most
insecure individuals.  

Here's right-wing blogger (and law professor) Glenn Reynolds revealing that
wretched mindset for all to see:

    "Cycles of violence" continue until one side wins decisively.
Personally, I'd rather that were the Israelis, since they're civilized
people and not barbarians.

Orwell, Blinding Tribalism, Selective Terrorism, and Israel/Gaza
<http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/04/terrorism/index.html>
by Glenn Greenwald. Published on Sunday, January 4, 2009 by Salon.com

----
Mark Perkins MLIS, MCLIP
www.markperkins.info

https://keyserver.pgp.com/