Stephen Lendman

State terror is official Israeli policy. It's longstanding. It's war without mercy on Palestine. It’s against any nation, group or individual Israel targets.

Operation Protective Edge is the latest example. It was well-planned premeditated aggression. It was cold-blooded murder. It had nothing to do with Hamas rockets. It was about preventing Palestinian self-determination. It was to sabotage Palestinian unity. It was to maintain occupation harshness. It was to keep stealing Palestinian land. It showed Palestinians they're defenseless against overpowering Israeli might. It proved Israel can commit genocidal high crimes against peace with impunity. It can do it whenever it wishes. It can do it for any reason or none at all. It can blame Palestinian victims for its crimes.

Nora Barrows-Friedman is an Electronic Intifada editor and contributor. On Monday, she headlined "Dr. Mona El-Farra on mass trauma and destruction in Gaza." Dr. El-Farra is prominent Palestinian physician. She chairs Gaza's Palestinian Red Crescent Society. She directs Gazan projects for the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA). During Operation Protective Edge, she lost nine family members. They included five children. Palestinians are aggrieved victims. Justice remains denied. A rocket or missile hit the El-Farra family home. Survivors fled in panic. A second Israeli attack struck them as they did so. It was clear, cold calculated murder. Israel murdered them in cold blood. It's standard Israeli practice. It's longstanding Israeli policy. Rogue states operate this way.

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Sam Kriss

What happened to the English that turned them into the most evil people on the planet? There’s not much in their national prehistory to explain the horrors that would come later: the English are, even according to their own national mythology, a supremely wimpy tribe. When the other Germanic peoples were pushed from their homes by the constant westward pressure of the Huns they went off on grand adventures, pouring through the cracks of the rotting Roman empire, sacking the great cities of Africa, tearing Europe down and building it up again. The Anglo-Saxons, meanwhile, settled for a few damp and undefended islands on the surf-softened periphery of the continent. They could have had Byzantium; they settled for Basildon. Most historians now conclude that they didn’t even have the guts to conquer the place outright, but just slowly assimilated its existing residents into what passed for their culture. No classic primal scene, just a miserable clump of soil in the middle of a grey sea, where the English festered, waiting to erupt. Maybe there was. Maybe they saw something on their journey, those first witlessly seasick Saxons, tactically chundering over the sides of the Britannia-bound banter boat. Some primordial nymph or siren lurking in the chilly waters of the North Sea, all blue tits and seaweed-strewn limbs and timeless malice, who emerged wreathed by storms and lighting before the bedraggled ancestors of our modern hell, saw a bunch of easy marks, and told them: accept my evil, and I will let you conquer the world. Something that struck madness and bloodlust into their hearts and those of their children even unto the hundredth generation. For centuries the promise went unfulfilled: the English had to stay cooped up in their island-prison, being periodically humiliated by the other dregs of Europe (such as the Normans, an utterly wretched gang of lost Vikings led by the walking embodiment of preening insecurity) and using their spare time to compose tediously alliterative poetry. But when it finally came to pass, it did so with raging hatred; four centuries of unrelenting revenge against the world.

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