crime against humanity

Israeli media revealed ... that one of the first acts of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister elected in 2006, was to send a message to the Bush White House offering a long-term truce in return for an end to Israeli occupation. His offer was not even acknowledged.

Instead, according to the daily Jerusalem Post, Israeli policymakers have sought to reinforce the impression that “it would be pointless for Israel to topple Hamas because the population [of Gaza] is Hamas”. On this thinking, collective punishment is warranted because there are no true civilians in Gaza.

During Operation Rolling Thunder, which lasted from 1965 until 1968, the four southern provinces of North Vietnam had more bombs dropped on them than any other area in history...

Two years later, in May 1972, President Nixon ordered the launching of Operation Linebacker, a six-month campaign that virtually destroyed the remaining industrial centres of the North... Designed to cover the withdrawal of front-line troops from the South, and to bolster the morale of the abandoned South Vietnamese army based in Saigon, it was perhaps the most cynical of the innumerable criminal acts of a filthy war.

“We're gonna level that goddam country," Nixon was recorded as saying in June 1971. "We're gonna hit 'em, bomb the livin' bejesus out of 'em." To which Henry Kissinger replied: "Mr President, I will enthusiastically support that, and I think it's the right thing to do."