Minutes after Tel Aviv terror attack, Glenn Greenwald praises Seumas Milne’s defense of ‘armed resistance’

At a little past noon today a terrorist attacked Israeli civilians on a bus traveling through Central Tel Aviv, injuring 21.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. 

Here are a few highlights from Glenn Greenwald’s latest post, ‘The “both-sides-are-awful” dismissal of Gaza ignores the key role of the US government‘, Nov. 21, published roughly 20 minutes after the attack.

“Israel has turned Gaza “into an open-air prison that is designed to collectively punish hundreds of thousands of human beings.“

the US government is doing nothing of the sort. It is fueling, funding and feeding the Israeli war machine, and, with its own militaristic conduct, is legitimizing the premises of Israeli aggression.”

Greenwald also praises the recent essay by Seumas Milne:

“As my Guardian colleague Seumas Milne superbly detailed in his column Tuesday night, the overarching fact of this conflict is that the Palestinians, for decades now, have been brutally occupied, blockaded, humiliated, deprived of the most basic human rights of statehood and autonomy though the continuous application of brute, lawless force (for that reason, those who like to righteously condemn Hamas’ rockets (Pierce, defending Obama; “he happened to be correct the other day. No country can tolerate the bombing of its citizens”) have the obligation to state what form of legitimate resistance Palestinians have to all of this). [emphasis added]

…

That one should vehemently condemn rocket attacks on civilians and bombs on Tel Aviv buses outside of an Israeli military facility does not mean sanctioning the years-long fueling of the Israeli side of this conflict by the US government.” [emphasis added]

First, what significance does Greenwald place in the fact that the civilian bus happened to be near an Israeli military facility?

The military facility wasn’t targeted – innocent men, women and children were.

More importantly, however, here’s the key passage from the piece by Milne ‘It’s Palestinians who have the right to defend themselves” - an essay which Greenwald praised as superb.

“So Gazans are an occupied people and have the right to resist, including by armed force (though not to target civilians), while Israel is an occupying power that has an obligation to withdraw – not a right to defend territories it controls or is colonising by dint of military power.”

Milne is, in effect, defending Palestinian terrorism while arguing that Israel has no right to defend itself.

Greenwald’s own vitriol evokes a crude caricature of a villainous Israel, suggests there is no moral difference between Islamic extremists and a Jewish democracy, and he also evidently sympathizes with the moral logic of those who champion the “right” of Palestinians to murder Israelis.

Hamas simply couldn’t ask for more effective hasbara.

http://cifwatch.com/2012/11/21/minutes-after-tel-aviv-terror-attack-glenn-greenwald-praises-seumas-milnes-defense-of-armed-resistance/