No doubt blowing off steam, and no public opinion surveys to cite, but I googled -Israel Arabs vermin– and came up with quite a few sites that suggest how widespread this sort of thing really is among Israelis:

http://www.israeluniverse.com/headlines-jan04.html

http://www.mombu.com/politics/iraq-war/t-israel-bombs-syrian-terrorist-vermin-sites-respect-right-wing-4105295.html

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Forum/Forum.aspx/t109391

Then there’s “drugged roaches” in a bottle:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/rafael-eitan-534569.html

1. I doubt that Grumpy Old Man actually believes what he wrote (“The Israelis regard Arabs as vermin”). Probably he’s just blowing off steam, as grumpy old men are wont to do. Lest anyone takes him seriously, though, let’s note that the evidence is against his claim – both public opinion surveys and anecdotal evidence. A significant minority of Israeli Jews do hate Arabs (as a group, not necessarily individually). I’d actually expect much more hatred than that in a war that’s been going on for a century. Even so, my impression is that even most Jews who do hate Arabs also respect them as human beings, and certainly don’t think of them as “vermin”.

2. For probably the first and perhaps the last time, I’m in agreement with Norwegian Shooter.

3. While I accept Gordianus’ statement that Israel is grabbing “Palestinian land”, the rest of the truth is that Israel has been withdrawing from big areas of “Palestinian land” as well, most notably from Gaza a couple years ago. That included withdrawing from “Palestinian” land which had been settled by Jews under the Palestine Mandate, which mandated “close settlement by Jews on the land”. So a more precise formulation would be that Israel is both grabbing and releasing Palestinian land.

4. As always I really respect Larison’s reality-based approach, even when I disagree with him. It’s a refreshing break from the paranoid style common at many right-wing websites, including this one.

At the risk of historical pedantry, it’s interesting how much this situation resembles the US – Mexican border situation during the 1880′s. The Mexicans deeply resented our desire to chase the Apaches into their territory but acquiesced because the Apaches were more damaging to them than us. There are parallels between the fight against al-Qaeda and the Indian wars, including litigation over indefinite detention and of course, military tribunals.

It is amazing what right-wingers will come up with for justification, but in this case I can see the reasoning. Trashing Cambodia to the point where something like the Khmer Rouge could come to power and wreck evil is something that the US right has been using for the past 30 years. Quite dishonestly, of course, blaming liberals for the Khmer Rouge, but quite successfully.

Regardless of the actual merits of our drone strategy, I’m a bit skeptical of attempts to justify it by referring to our bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The bombing was not a military success (at least, according to accounts I’ve read), killed many civilians, and to the extent that it helped the Khmer Rouge come to power, was a disaster for Cambodia.

When you fight people who live tribal, communal lives, you cannot avoid killing their relatives and other non-combatants. I’m sure that by now, even the dumbest locals in FATA know that if they invite Mullah Omar over for dinner they may get a missile for desert. Putting aside the wisdom of our being in Afghanistan, the legitimacy of attacking enemies across lawless borders is well established. We pursued Apaches and Poncho Villa into Mexico when Mexico could not control it’s own international boundary. And in some cases we did so with Mexican acquiescence.

The difference between our drone strikes and Israel’s extra judicial killings is that we think we are in a war with a discreet organization for limited purposes. Israel is just following its ancient custom of killing the leadership of the Palestinians while grabbing their land. Israelis and Palestinians are just two semitic tribes fighting over turf and the Israelis have the upper hand. We on the other hand are in the Middle East out of pure stupidity.

“These strikes violate Pakistani sovereignty, ignore the stated demands of Pakistani authorities” Regular joes like us really don’t know what the Pakistanis think privately about the strikes, it’s possible that they allow them or even favor them. There have been reports that there are Blackwater, CIA and/or JSOC personnel in Pakistan and possibly even a drone launch site within Pakistan. Like so much of internal Pakistani discussion/action, we just don’t know.

“Major European and Arab governments complain, and Israel cannot simply brush it off.” Admittedly, Israel will take PR actions to appear to not brush it off, but in truth, that’s what they will do, and the matter will go away with weeks.

“Al Qaeda is pretty much universally reviled in the West, so no one cares how or why their members are killed.” While true, drone strikes in Pakistan have killed how many Taliban (Af and Pak) and how many al-Qaeda? Again, hard to know exactly, but I don’t remember any Obama era al-Qaeda kills. I don’t think the public record shows very many at all since we started drone attacks in Pakistan.

“Israel’s government had to know the deteriorating international position it was in.” Only the US opinion has any real bearing on Israeli actions, and its position in the US is untouched by this incident.

“To order the assassination under the present circumstances showed at best poor judgment, and at worst a reckless disregard for the strategic interests of Israel.” Netanyahu’s settlement policy could be described exactly the same way, but that won’t stop him from his recklessness.

The assassins apparently used cloned passports from Israeli dual-citizens – from Brittan, France, etc. and one can wonder what ideas others might get.

Apparently Israel used New Zealand (finding disabled people, and getting passports for them but with Mossad pics) for a while and there was a big row which was mostly censored here.

Pakistan and Yemen might worry about their airspace, but there are a lot of people with Passports from the EU going into Dubai, or New York for that matter.

Although most is “security theatre”, consider that today there is no integrity in the passport from Brittan – it might be the person, or it might be an assassin, or terrorist.

Israel has blown up its enemies before (I forgot which religious leader in Lebanon – he was disabled). But it hasn’t crossed some lines.

Maybe this will end dual-citizenship.

Mike W: I’m not sure what you mean. Did you try to comment on my column at The Week, or did you try to submit a comment here? I don’t moderate the comments on my columns at The Week, so I do not control what does or does not get posted. If you submitted a comment here and it did not appear, I must have accidentally and mistakenly erased it when deleting spam. My apologies for any inconvenience.

I think the last sentence of this post should be the title of the post. I also think it should make its way into the discourse on Israel as much as possible.

Your personality is so very different from that of Andrew Sullivan. (Which is good!) If you were he, you would make “The yes-man is your enemy, but your friend will argue with you, Ctd.” the title of every post on Israel and its American yes-men for the next month or so.

Maybe he’ll read this post and do it anyway.

The Israelis regard Arabs as vermin, a corollary to the view that Israel is entitled to steal everything from them–their land, their water, their homes, and their livelihood.

The Americans think they are helping benighted, if somewhat inferior, human beings, who will remain after being suitably liberated and enlightened, at which time the Americans will go home and ship them Bibles and hamburgers.

Still, Yankee ingenuity has managed to create four million Iraqi refugees in 7 years, for their own good, of course. It has taken the Israelis a lot longer. The dispossession of the Palestinians will be completed during the next war, to be provoked by an aerial assault on Iran.

The “double standard” (actually a single standard, when you look below the surface) exists, as Larison says. But the Israeli government is well aware of that fact and tries to act accordingly public relations-wise, although it often screws up. There will be no serious lasting consequences for Israel as a result of this scandal. Netanyahu’s decision may have been ill-advised, but it’s not a danger to “the strategic interests of Israel”. Max Boot is one of the most tendentious defenders of Israel around, but he’s right that Israel can’t use the “double standard” as a veto on actions that will piss off the Western world.

Larison’s explanation for the “double standard” on Dubai and Pakistan may be right, but it doesn’t explain other instances of the “double standard” – for example during the Iraq War, when American methods were way more reckless and brutal than anything Israel did in Gaza or the West Bank.