Shimon Peres loses his marbles
Shimon Peres, current occupant of the largely ceremonial role as Israel's president, father of Israel's atomic bomb, author of its disastrous and very damaging mini-war against Lebanon in 1996, and Nobel Peace Laureate (go figure), has finally lost his marbles.
He told reporters today that the goal of Israel's current assault against Gaza is " not just to stop the continuing rocket fire from Gaza, but to put a halt to terror worldwide."
Sadly, no-one in the media event he was speaking at (alongside IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi) seems to have asked Peres just how, precisely, Israel's current paroxysm of violence against Gaza might be expected to have the stated effect.
The tragic experience of the US's 2003 "shock and awe" assault against Iraq was that it fomented and incubated considerable additional levels of terrorism worldwide. Israel's current assault on Gaza can be expected to have an exactly similar effect.
But Israel's politicians and their many supporters in the US political elite all seem to live in their own little bubble-world of unreality, where the mere invocation of the word "terrorism" is enough to justify anything.
Luckily, the residents of that bubble-world are becoming less influential in world affairs with each day that passes.