Slow Motion Vivisection

It's some sort of grotesque political laboratory experiment: slowly torture a community, dispose of its members one by one by one, until it disappears. Do it just below the threshold of international opprobrium but, when necessary, use the power of the press to squelch complaints. Thus it's important, and more than merely symbolic, when the Swiss government, acting as the depository country of the Geneva conventions, dares to object that Israel is flagrantly violating international law by its collective punishment of the Palestinians, in this particular case, in Gaza. The Swiss seem to recognize, though perhaps through a glass darkly, that such an unrelenting, invidious corruption of basic human rights and decency affects not merely those whose lives are battered or snuffed out but that it coarsens and contaminates all of us, everywhere. On the day after the fourth of July we might reflect on the fact that Israeli atrocities are not the sort of thing that George Washington had been willing to risk his life for... (Photo credit Xinhua/Reuters, for fair use)