The de facto prime minister of Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, says that after 47 years of Occupation, the Big Guy in the Mohammadean sky woke up  and decided to scorch Israel for denying the Palestinians their rights. This reminds me of the American-based zealot who blamed Hurricane Katrina on the propensity of women to work and gay people to have fun.

I’m waiting for a well-placed source (“an aide to St. Peter,” or “sources close to the Prophet,” or at least, “a retired official familiar with God’s thinking”) to confirm this story. Otherwise, I refuse to believe it.

walled garden/wired world/who wins

People say the “walled gardens” of social media are more restrictive than the World Wide Web. But are you surprised at how ideologically agnostic Facebook is? I’m not.

Hamas’s military wing recently set up a Facebook page and which got  blocked,  prompting the group’s online allies in Turkey to complain.

But supporters of Hezollah and Hamas have a Facebook page. And so do allies of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Seems pretty open to me. And guess which group has more Friends?

With police investigations already underway in Australia, Ireland, and Germany, the Obama administration is going to deal with this. WashPost and NYT are still playing the story inside, appropriate  in light of the fact that there has been no official U.S. reaction, but that’s not going to last long.

For the Obama administration, this is where the rhetoric of the president’s Cairo address meets the realities of Middle East decisionmaking. Of course, Israel has the right to defend itself, and of course the U.S. assassinates al-Qaeda leaders every day. But the leaders and the publics of Arab countries (like the United Arab Emirates, where the hit took place) that are open to peace with Israel (and some of whom want U.S. help to deter Iran) are not going to be satisfied by the talking points that go over well in Washington and on cable TV.

The pro-American autocracies in the Middle East (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan) are especially helped by Israeli tactics. Vulnerable to accusations of being soft on Israel, they will posture about not allowing Israeli intelligence to operate on Arab soil with impunity. Democratic forces in the Arab world are undermined by Israeli’s assertion of its right to attack its foes anywhere. By enabling undemocratic Arab regimes to pander to public opinion without actually sharing power, Israeli actions actually force Obama to subordinate his goal of reaching out to the Muslim world to his consistent defense of Israel.

That’s fine with Israeli public opinion and it will probably go over well in the United States where cultural sympathies for the Jewish state run deep. But Jewish Israelis comprise less than 3 percent of the public in the Middle East. To the vast majority of the democratically inclined people in the Middle East, Obama will be seen as indulging the lawlessness that he denounces when Arabs engage in it.

Electronic Lebanon tamps it down:

Even through the threat of war with Israel is ever-present, neither Israel nor Hizballah seem to have the appetite for another war in the short term.

Analysis: If there is a war, Hamas doesn’t want to fight Israel alone as it got punished in the Gaza war. Meshaal said as much. The Lebanese prefer not to be testing ground for Israeli experiments in “deterrence,” which usually (not always) involve civilian casualties, said to be inadvertent.

None of which means there won’t be war.

Israels has not denied responsibility and there’s no denying extrajudicial summary justice  is a tool of U.S. and Israeli decisionmakers. Hamas says it is not effective.. DebkaFile, the voice of Zionist militarism, says 13 more Hamas leaders have been targeted. While Hamas debates whether it should get into the international assassination business, the group hopes the Dubai police will act.

Thus heavy moral burdens of the Washington reporter are eased. You don’t have to get familiar with the question of justice in Israel and Palestine. Just get your talking points and move on. On four key points, Kenner compares the South African jurist’s scathing report on Israeli Defense Forces actions during the Gaza war with Israel’s stout defense.

Guess who comes out ahead?

Use of white phosphorous: The IDF barely bothers to deny it used the deadly inflammatory that extinguished several Palestinian families in flames. If that isn’t a war crime, there’s no such thing. Advantage Goldstone.

Destruction of a flour mill. Israel says Hamas soldiers operated in the area. There’s little dispute about that. Do you need to destroy a source of food while pursuing armed combatants? If your war is just,  maybe. Advantage Israel.

Destruction of a water well. Israel says it had no knowledge that there was a key water source in the vicinity of Hamas command post. How likely is that? Not very. Advantage Goldstone.

Destruction of the House of Abu Askar and the Death of His Two Sons: Israel warned a Hamas commander to evacuate his house. He did and seven minutes later Israel bombed.. The family later returned to pick through the rubble; Israel bombed again. Two of the man’s sons, 13 and 19, were killed. Israel admits dropping high explosives in a crowded urban areas without a second warning to non-combatants. Israel says the two young men were legitimate targets. I am sure there are 13 year old Hamas militants who pose some kind of threat to Israeli Jewish civilians. I’m sure IDF commanders in Gaza hoped to kill them, knowing that non-combatants would likely be killed in the process. They didn’t care enough not to push the button. Advantage Goldstone.

Of course, Goldstone’s report deserves less cursory treatment than this crude scorecard, but Kenner has performed a public service. A complex and compehensive document, the Goldstone report poses that most poignant of questions for the contemporary journalist: if you can’t tweet about it, does it exist?