Roger Cohen's short piece in the NY Review of Books has a title that is a play on the old idea that an eye for an eye will end up leaving everybody blind. Actually, Cohen has an even better metaphor to describe the tragic and atrocious Israeli military campaign in Gaza: "
As Avi Shlaim, a professor of international relations and former soldier in the Israeli army, has observed, the Gaza offensive "seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash."
Cohen writes that:
Only in the Middle East do the dead rule. As Yehuda Amichai, the Israeli poet, once observed, the dead vote in Jerusalem. Their demand for blood is, it seems, inexhaustible. Their graves will not be quieted. Since 1948 and Israel's creation, retribution has reigned between the Jewish and Palestinian national movements.
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