The American government is alarmed. Sharon told his hawkish cabinet on Monday: "You're all big heroes with all your advice. At the end of the day, the responsibility is mine. This region is not going to war." That was Monday. The entire leadership is deeply split on this -- from top to bottom. According to the excellent report in the Oakland Tribune one Israeli commentator, Haim Hanegbi, (who I don't know) "warned Israel's leaders that if the ordered an invasion the could eventually face the same fate as Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav President now facing a war crimes trial in The Hague." More: "The Israeli media has taken to treating the possibility of a serious escalation -- even a reoccupation of the West Bank and perhaps Gaza -- as something of an inevitability, set to be triggered by the next major terrorist attack. 'An unusal consensus has taken hold (and) all roads are leading to a catastrophe (quoting Chemi Shalev in Maariv) . 'A few days after the war breaks out , suddenly everyone will remember how horrible war is . . . when it will be too late.'" About all of this nothing in the NY Times or the electronic media as far as I know. Add to this the disgrace of the absence of protest with notable exceptions about the onslaught on the Palestinians. Silence. The Israeli right (and their friends in the American Jewish leadershp ("mainstream") are undoubtedly thinking about the Jordanian option -- i.e., the expulsion of the Palestinians to Jordan. See the Likudnik "Flame" ads. Silence and indifference no doubt in part because of the fear generated by tactics reminiscent of the way in which the Stalinists tried to silence those who drew attention to their crimes with the "fascist" label -- in this case smears of anti-semitism. (See the ads in the NYTimes by the ADL for example.)
The case in Brookline may not be connected but I suspect it is. Read that email and respond to the local Brookline paper. Silence about the Palestinians akin to silence about the Warsaw Ghetto. Pressure on the American government is the key and efforts of Jews for Justice and Michael Lerner in Tikkun should be supported by all - especially Jews who want to demonstrates that the official Jewish leadership does not speak for all Jews in America any more than does the Israeli government speak for all Jews -- the great myth of Zionism. And of course a war against the Palestinians (added tothe policy of state assasination) can lead to a wider war -- e.g., Sharon's bombing of Lebanon. What a calamity for everyone in the region - Palestinians as well as ordinary Israelis and for Jews everywhere for the anti-Semitism (real) it will feed.