From The Problem with Sharon, in the Guardian Unlimited:

Israel is using one of the finest military machines on earth to exterminate dirt-poor Palestinians who have little more than rocks to throw at the advancing tanks.  Israel would have us think that the only way to stop suicide bombers is to eliminate their enemies—exterminate them. 

I once viewed Israel as a just state, a people with a dignity born of horrors survived, who posessed such enviable strength of resolve and determination of will that I began to expect miracles in whatever they chose to do.  I expected justice from a people who had risen above unspeakable injustice, and I trusted that love and unselfish compassion underpinned their fearsome power.  Maybe it was a misperception, a fantasy—a myth.  But it was a comely myth, and in that land of Israel, which I apparently saw so unclearly from this far, dwelt justice, and around it arose conflict, as it always does wherever justice dwells.  And I trusted the powerful, just state—the state that showed astounding restraint when the scuds flew by not obliterating Baghdad, which it could easily have done—I trusted Israel to use its power, its strength, and its dominance to counter enmity with forgiveness, to nurture goodness and kindness while banishing brutality and hatred from its land.  In a world of competing, petty, self-centered states, I trusted the State of Israel to be not a state, but to be Israel. 

Now Israel has shed its raiments divine, and beneath, is indistinguishable from her enemies, both past and present.  This may be the greatest tragedy I have ever known.