CONSORTIUM NEWS (11/16/2012):
Likening Palestinians to Blades of Grass
Israeli hardliners joke about the periodic need to decimate each new generation of Palestinian militants as mowing the grass, a process underway again in new bombardments of Gaza. This ugly metaphor has also penetrated the think-tank world of Official Washington, as ex-CIA analyst Elizabeth Murray learned.
Elizabeth Murray: “In early 2010, one of Washington DC’s most prestigious think tanks was holding a seminar on the Middle East which included a discussion of Israel’s December 2008-January 2009 assault on Gaza which killed about 1,300 Palestinians. When the death toll was mentioned, one expert on the panel smiled enigmatically and intoned: ‘It’s unfortunate, but every once in a while you have to mow the lawn.'”
