"As for it being a move to benefit one party or another? I don't think you'd voice that opinion if you lived in Sderot and your children grew up in fear for eight years (and in truth, longer)."

I disagree, if anything I think I would be more angry if my son or daughter were being used as pawns in a game of politics.

Moderateman, old friend, it is your very reasoning above that answers your question about how Stalin can be regarded as Russia's hero. After all, most of the people that he killed were ethnic minorities, German POWs, you know: non-people. No one cared about them either.

What annoys me most, is that in the days leading up to the bombing by Israel, there was no public out cry for Hamas to stop sending rockets over into Israel, yet when Israel retaliaties there is uproar.

I often sympathise for the people in Palestine, but at the moment i think both sides are responsible for this and the actions of both need to be brought into question by the international community. 

I categorically reject the attitude that "Both are responsible" quoted by people who haven't learned the history (modern or ancient) and who are mimicing situations they 'think' are similar.

They aren't. Each is unique and one should learn about each before commenting.

Leauki, I agree: Where were these people when the school in Ma'alot was attacked and Jewish children slaughtered? etc., etc., etc.

The world makes it abundantly clear that human life is worth little and Jewish life even less.

I wish it could be different, but it isn't. No amount of wishing will help and no one can get at these terrorists but the Israelis.

Hamas must be stopped. Period.

I don't discriminate my concerns for people because of what side of the conflict they are on. If they innocent and involved in this then that's the main issue, regardless of your race or religion.

So the Palestinians are just shelling you because they have some unconditional hate for you, is that it Leauki?

WHile the truth is as easily seen as the sunrise, the appeasers refuse to see.  I have always said that ignorance is curable.  If you dont know, you can learn.  But those that have been given access to the facts, and still refuse to see, are stupid.

And criminally liable for the destruction their decision causes.

That's what they themselves say, anyway.

You can try it out: dress up as a Jew and walk through any Arab city.

In fact, when I was in Iraq and was stopped at a Peshmerga (Kurdish militia) checkpoint, I was told not to mention my religion to people further south. He also told me that to his knowledge all the Jews of the region had fled in the 1930s and 1940s (when Iraq became an ally of Germany).

It would also explain why the Arabs allied with Nazi Germany, why the political leader of Palestinian Arabs in the 1940s (back then they still called themselves "Syrians") called for the extermination of all Jews on Radio Berlin, and why the Arab world (except for Morocco and Tunisia) is essentially Jew-free.

But it's not just Jews. Try being a Berber in Algeria, or a Massalith (it's a black tribe) in Sudan. Want to be a Kurd in Iraq under Saddam or Syria now?

Is there a particular reason you have for doubting that hatred for Jews is real and alive among Arabs and has been for a long time? That such hatred also exists for other non-Arab groups living in "Arab land"? That it cannot be, that it must be Israel's fault that they hate us?

The Peshmerga lieutenant obviously overestimated Europe. He probably thought I would tell people in Europe all the time. And while I felt safe to tell a Kurdish official, I'd be an idiot to be an obvious Jew in many cities in Europe. Yes, the anti-Semites blame Israel for the anti-Semitism; but they also existed before and after Israel's founding and there are fewer of them now than before 1948. Shooting back actually reduced their number. Even Israel has more friends among Arab states now than before 1967. (Kurds are hated too, and they don't even have a state.)

What other reason could Gazans have to shell Jewish schools and residential areas? Are Jewish school children really such an immediate danger that they must be killed? Is a Jewish city in the neighbour really a legitimate reason to "resist" by killing women and children (and targeting them specifically)? Are Israel's "crimes" really to blame for everything the Arabs did, from allying with Hitler to starting wars against ALL non-Arab minorities in the middle east? (Heck, the Arabs also attacked Iran. I am sure we can blame Iran for that, or perhaps even Israel.)

For many, for some reason, the answer can be anything and everything, except Arab nationalism and a failed culture of violence among Arabs.

And most likely it's the Jews' fault.

Sorry, Israel's fault, because despite the fact that Israel is made up of Jews, mainly Jews that fled Arab countries (for some reason, because nobody hated them, right?), despite the fact that Israel consists of Jews, hatred for Israel has nothing to do with anti-Semitism and nobody who calls for the death of all Jews has any other reason to be violent than justified freedom-fighting or some such thing.

But you still refer to the place as "Palestine", despite the fact that there is no such place on the map and that the term is offensive to Jews.

(I always call Poland "Poland" but there are people in Germany who call it "eastern Germany.")

Did you know that the word "Palestine" is a Roman name? The Romans named the country after Israel's enemies. The Hebrew word for "invader" is "poles", "to invade" is "liplos". It the name given by Israelites to the (possibly Greek) invaders that attacked the country occasionally before the major Greek invasion with Alexander.

The Romans renamed "Israel" "Palestine" to insult the Jews. They named it after the "invaders", literally "invader-land".

The Bible and the Quran refer to the place and people only as "Israel". "Palestine" is the word the pagans used for the land. Why the Arab invaders (who would be the colonialist if Arabs could be colonialists) call themselves "invaders" is interesting, but not important.

The fact is that the country has been Israel for 3300 years and the Jews never left voluntarily.

Hevron and Jerusalem used to be the two major holdouts of Jews in Israel. Hevron was emptied of Jews in 1948.

What did I say?

Ho boy, here we go!

Before I address the immediate situation, please allow me to clarify a few things for the fine folks here:

1) Does Israel have a right to exist?

Yes, absolutely. Granted, their current borders -are- markedly different from the map drawn up by the UN partition plan in 1947, but that's a separate topic in and of itself!

2) Does Israel have the right to defend herself?

Yes, absolutely. All nations have the right to defend themselves when attacked. That does not however grant a carte blanche to use any and all force regardless of the 'collateral' damage it may cause. This, however, is a rule broken by just about everyone. The U.S broke it during WW2 when they flatenned Dresden (and again recently when they cleaned out Fallujah) The Russians broke this when they flatenned Grozny (and numerous other crimes against the Chechen people) The British broke this many times, but notably during the Boer wars when they basically put a large number of civillians in concentration camps to break spirit of the Boer fighters in the countryside. History is replete with countless examples all over the globe!

3) Is an attack against Israel automatically an attack against Jews and the Jewish religion?

No, not always. Quite often Israeli advocacy groups equate any and all attacks against the nation of Israel as motivated purely by anti-semitism by a group of people who are driven with the sole objective of wiping out the Jewish race. Any criticism of Israeli tactics is consequently seen as anti-semitic and siding with the enemy in their supposed goal of wiping out the jewish race. This is a key point. In order for unfettered military action to be justified, regardless of the casualties or long term rammifications it may have, the nation state of Israel and the Jewish faith must be seen (or be advertised) as one single unified entity that is under assault. Interestingly enough, some of the most ardent critics of Israeli policy such as Noam Chomsky, are themselves Jewish.

Okay, so now that we've gotten that out of the way, here's my position on Gaza;

Two wrongs don't make a right.

Is Hamas in the wrong for carrying out rocket attacks on Israel? Yes.

Is Israel justified in responding militarily to these attacks? Yes.

Are the current tactics and the nature of the strikes that Israel is carrying out the proper response? No.

What we see occuring today is proof that the IDF (or perhaps their political masters) did not learn from the Lebanese conflict in 2006.

What we are seeing is the same attempt at using shock and awe through a grossly disproportionate display of military power to unseat a political regime that Israel has deemed undesirable. This is nothing new.

This very same tactic was used on Serbia by NATO, and it worked in NATO's favor. It was used by the U.S with their aptly titled "shock and awe" bombardment at the beginning of gulf war 2 (or three or four or five depending on how you want to look at it) and it succeeded in nullifying resistance against the invasion. However the shock wore off, as it always does.

The IDF knows that the current bombardment will not remove Hamas or seriously hurt them. Organizations like Hamas are used to being targeted and are generally very good at dispersal and diffusion. This means that if Israel really does intend to remove Hamas through military firepower, mostly from air and artillery, realistically they would have to level most of Gaza or launch another prolonged ground occupation of the entire area. The real point of this bombardment is to punish the people of Gaza for allowing themselves to be led by a government that Israel finds undesirable. The proof of this will be found in the results; that Hamas will continue to exist and function despite the campaign. If this happens, it means one of two things

1) Israel knew that their campaign wouldn't seriously remove Hamas from the start, therefore indicating that they had an objective that was different from the one they publicly stated.

2) Israel failed in their objective.

Again, we hear the same line that Hamas is using human shields and hiding itself in the midst of a civillian populace.... well, seeing as Hamas IS the current government in Gaza, of course they're going to have buildings in the middle of civillian areas, just as the Israeli government has buildings in cities too.

I am not speaking in regards to the legitimacy of the Hamas government, although they were democratically elected, partially due to the fact that the populace was sick of years of corruption from their Fatah rulers and voted on an 'anything but Fatah' basis. Regardless, Hamas are the civil authorities in Gaza at the moment and should be seen as such, instead of merely being branded 'terrorists' or 'bandits'.

Furthermore, the nature of the terrain, in this case a very densely populated urban area, means that no matter how precise the IDF wants to be they will cause civillian casualties by launching airstrikes. Taking the path that they have chosen means civillian deaths are literally unavoidable.

As with all airstrikes on a densely populated urban environment, the majority of the casualties (casualties includes those wounded too, not just those killed) will be civillians and their wounds or fatalities will be from flying glass.

Every military organization on the planet knows this fact; that there is no such thing as a truly surgical strike in a densely packed city, as bombs create shockwaves that shatter windows and turn into flying shrapnel that injure or kill many people in buildings that can be up to several blocks away from the original target. And of course the flying shrapnel created from the initial blast which can be thrown great distances as well.

This is no great revelation, just basic physics which the IDF is well aware of.

So, this brings me back to my original point- two wrongs don't make a right.

Hamas is indeed in the wrong for their attacks on Israel.

Israel is in the wrong for carrying out their military response in a grossly disproportionate manner that will only create more martyrs and could ultimately strengthen Hamas, just as their campaign against Lebanon backfired and strengthened Hezbollah.

The current shock and awe being used against Gaza runs the risk of escalating things and widening the conflict in both it's scope and intensity. Already in arab countries across the globe there has been much talk of launching another intifada and Egypt is a big question mark- Hosni Mubarak is getting old and won't be capable of staying in power for very much longer simply by virute of his age. A moderate leader could take power, OR there is always the possibility that leadership more sympathetic to Hamas could be the result.

Only time will tell, but Israel has the power, ability and responsibility to expand their toolbox beyond large scale military action that ultimately strengthens their enemies.

And oddly enough, the large majority (85%) of casualties were militants.

Do you never notice that everything you state as fact is always wrong?

So, of the 1600 wounded and 390 killed (so far), that means that 1,360 Hamas members were wounded and 331 Hamas members have been killed?

But yet, Hamas says only 200 of their people have been killed.

Who do we believe? The whole place is now a closed military area after all so we really can't say with any certainty just exactly what the percentage of civillian vs. Hamas casualties are. Even so, that's missing the point. There's not a magical percentage of bad guys vs civillians killed which suddenly makes it all ok. If there is, what is the ratio? Is one innocent civillian killed as collateral damage ok if 10 bad guys die at the same time? And what gives us the moral right to make that call? 1 in 10 casualties a civy killed is ok, but 2 in 10 is unacceptable, or does it go higher?

As to the fact that you're disputing the statement that the majority of casualties in densely packed urban areas tend to be civillians when being subjected to indirect fire, this is actually very well known and I'm surprised you're disputing it. It's been proven time and again, but if you'd like, I can break it down and explain it for you:

In an urban environment, the combatants generally know what is coming and are prepared for it. This means they know to stay away from windows (or have already removed the windows) have a safe area they can go to where they will be mostly protected from flying debris and shrapnel, and are smart enough to choose areas which will give them multiple possible escape routes in the event of a building collapse and be in areas which are generally structurally sound.

On top of this, the combatants know that there is a good chance they could be wounded or cut off from supply so they tend to have a cache of medical supplies and food on hand, or have such a cache in relatively close proximity to their position.

Going another step further, they know that the other side will know about all of their official buildings- this is government buildings, police headquarters and depots and so on. Knowing this, they won't be sticking around in such a building when they know the other side has the ability to take out these places with ease.

Meanwhile, you have a whole bunch of people (this is civillians) just going about their daily lives when suddenly the shite hits the fan. Bombs create nice big shockwaves which blow out all of the windows in buildings in a wide radius far from the actual explosion. The blast itself tends to take nice big chunks of concrete and rebar and send that zooming around as shrapnel too.

The combatants know all of this and are prepared for it. The civillians always get caught in the crossfire, and this has been proven time and again in both small and large urban battles. Once you have actual boots on the ground, ie; squad, platoon and company level units fighting their way door to door and calling in fire support as necessary, THEN the dynamic changes quite a bit and the casualty ratio switches to being mostly combatants.

Well, actually yes I do. They're a major political force in Lebanon and have pretty much solidified their power base in the south. As to why they're not joining in, I'd imagine that it's because Nasrallah hasn't given the order to. Remember, Hezbollah never acts until it's leadership issues clear orders -and- they usually let folks know well in advance what they're going to do. For example, the cross border raids that precipitated the 2006 war were anounced well in advance- Nasrallah stated that if hostage negotiations broke down they would launch raids to get their own hostages. Lo and behold, when the negotiations broke down, that's exactly what they did. Who'da thunk it?

Show me once where I've said that anti-semitism doesn't exist. Of course it exists. I'm just putting forth the position that not every single attack and every single fighter out there is motivated by the desire to wipe out the Jewish race. Once Israel can admit that maybe, just maybe some of the folks out there might be fighting them because they have a legitimate beef over the death of a loved one killed by an Israeli bombing or raid, then the conflict can be seen in a different light. For example, let's say you have a child who's lost his father or mother as a "collateral" casualty civillian in this air bombardment, that child will probably grow up blaming Israel for the death of his parents, motivating him towards a desire for vengeance. And so it goes, and so it will go until maybe, we just might wipe each other out (the human race) lock stock and barrel

My late wife was born in Baghdad. Her brother was almost hanged because he believed in Israel. All their goods and home were taken (they were wealthy and lived in Korada). In Israel they lived in a tent, and then in a wooden 'Tzrif'. They routinely killed vipers in their new home.

The children grew up, and took care of the old and ailing parents (of blessed memory)...all ten children.

They were raised with love and respect and educated. They passed this love and respect on to others. When I was alone there, they took me into their home. My late wife's mother loved and regarded me as another son.

When the Gulf war happened and Saddam sent missles against Israel they sent their mother to us in America because she (on crippled knees) couldn't get to the shelter quickly. I took her into my home and treated her as my other mother. She was never a stranger or "mother-in-law".

Does this sound anything like mothers sending their children to be suicide bombers to get paid for that act?

Does any of this sound like people who would slaughter others indiscriminately?

Take your sophistry elsewhere. You have no heart. The Israelis have been embattled since forever. This time they need to end Hamas's hateful aims.

Hamas wants only by violence to take the land of Israel and kill the Israeli Jews.

Hamas is a bunch of shiftless, hateful, racist islamofascist killers. If you don't know that by now, give it up...