I have to disagree that Israel (or at least the views you represent in Israel) is truly a friend of America, or the West, for the following reasons:

1) Western democracies are rooted in the universal concept of equal citizenship. In Israel, equal citizenship is not an option since Israel was created to be a Jewish state. In Israel, leaders openly discuss the Palestinian "demographic threat" (Palestinians constitute half the population under Israel's control) contemplating options that would leave the Palestinians as second class citizens, at best, or as a target for extermination and ethnic cleansing, at worst.

2) Israel, with the war of Gaza being the latest example, has shown a tendency to use indiscriminate and excessive force in its wars causing a horrendous civilian death toll. The pictures of dead children - which we are spared in North America - have inflamed public opinion in much of the world. Due to America's close relationship with Israel, America is viewed as a culprit in Israel's wars which creates ill will toward us in much of the world.

3) Israel and the neocons were instrumental in the deception that led to the Iraq war. They continue to push for endless war.

4) Your dismissive attitude toward the significance of Israel's colonies in the West Bank on the peace process - which has been shared by all of Israel's governments - shows that Israel is not ready for peace. When it comes to the peace process, Israeli leaders have been more interested in the process (as a delay tactic allowing them to create more facts on the ground ) than in peace.

With friends like you who needs enemies.

Contrary to what you would have us believe, people who criticize Israel's war crimes are not "anti-West, lefty wacko, and neo-Nazi".

These people include Desmund Tutu, Daniel Barenboim, the International Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and many more.

What BS! The war in Gaza has to do with Israel inflicting maximum damage on the Palestinian civilian population to apply pressure and as a form of collective punishment for having elected Hamas. Note that this war comes after a ceasefire - which largely held - but was violated by Israel. Israel kept 1.5 million people locked up, with no medicine and little food, in the open air concentration camp of Gaza for 2 years. Check the facts about the ceasefire on http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/sheets.html

For you to try to turn this into the clash of civilizations that Zionists and neocons are so fond of is utterly disgusting.

I guess the "heavy pain on the Gaza population" that Friedman cheers for includes the children who were left cowering next to their mothers' dead bodies to starve to death (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/08/gaza-israel-palestinian-territories) while Israeli soldiers prevented the Red Cross from rescuing them for 4 days. I wonder how Mr. Friedman would feel if his own family lived in Gaza!

It is amazing how members of the Israel Lobby, like Friedman, will go to any length to justify Israeli actions no matter how atrocious! They rationalize the intentional killing of civilians as a logical and acceptable tactic. We are all diminished, as human beings, when we put up with this kind of rationalization of murder as part of the main stream discourse in our society.

The problem is not just the level of interest in the Middle East. It is the fact that Israel's genocidal policies are financed by American taxpayers and executed using American-supplied weapons.

All the power to you man!

As I mentioned in a previous post:

"Rovera [Donatella Rovera, an Amnesty investigator in Israel] has also collected evidence that the Israeli army holds Palestinian families prisoner in their own homes as human shields. "It's standard practice for Israeli soldiers to go into a house, lock up the family in a room on the ground floor and use the rest of the house as a military base, as a sniper's position. That is the absolute textbook case of human shields.

"It has been practised by the Israeli army for many years and they are doing it again in Gaza now," she said."

- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/13/gaza-israel-war-crimes

None of Israel's claims about Palestinian factions using their own civilians as human shields have been corroborated by human rights organizations or foreign media (which is prohibited by Israel from going into Gaza so as they won't see what's going on there). Yet Israel continues to cynically use these claims to justify the wholesale slaughter of civilians.

"all the pro-Palestinian sentiment here leads the Palestinians to believe that targeting Israeli civilians with pitiful rockets is a good thing to do."

- shooter242

Thank you for enlightening us. I guess what the Palestinians really need is a bit of collective punishment (how about some white phosphorous to burn them while you're at it)!

Did you ever consider ending the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and allowing them to live free? (Sorry I forgot it is their fault the occupation hasn't ended because they always reject Israel's "generous" offers)