MARTIN PERETZ ON GAZA:

You don’t hear much about these bewildering social formations until a long-festering inter-family (or intra-family) feud suddenly erupts and blood is shed, as it has recently with special regularity in Gaza. Journalists and academics somehow think it patronizing to recognize these antiquarian kinship groups with their raw emotions as political actors when their rhetoric strains so pompously to modernity. It would be especially insulting since their Jewish antagonists are the quintessential carriers of progress in the Middle East, those damned Zionists with their advanced science-based economy, independent judiciary, free press, hi-tech military in which individual soldiers still take responsibility and command respect, and promotion in the ranks by competence and ingenuity in the defense activities of the state.

Damn them!