One final note: the fact that all sorts of prior wars, including ones waged by Western powers, contain events that could comfortably fit the definition of "terrorism" isn't a refutation of the point I'm making.

Yes it is. It's a fairly obvious rejoinder to the entire emotion-based, logic free, premise of this rant. Punishing civilian populations as an ancillary result of a military attack is the war strategy used in every war on record. We bombed Hiroshima, Nagaski, razed Dresden, bombed villages in Vietnam and half of Iraq.

I'm not justifying these actions. Simply pointing out that for Glenn to call what is obviously a part of every war on record, "terrorism," is to once again betray his fairly obvious biases in his rants.

And the call for a pro-Hamas editorial to "balance" the anti-Hamas editorials is exactly the type of nonsensical false equivalencies that Glenn, you so often decry in the shouting TV media world.

Is the moon made out of green cheese? Some people say yes. Some people say no.

Why are their no pro-green-cheese editorials in our national papers?

This once-great blog continues to swirl down the drain of the now unhinged Glenn Greenwald.

Hey Glenn, check out how Matt Yglesias writes about the conflict. You might learn something.

Aimlessly shooting rockets towards civilians (as Hamas and Hezbollah do) and dropping bombs from 35,000 feet that you know will slaughter many civilians while viewing that slaughter as a strategic benefit (as Friedman advocates) are acts that have far more in common with each other than differences.

Left unmentioned by the dispassionate and objective Glenn Greenwald, who is not a slave to his emotional biases, that Hamas practices, as strategy, the deliberate hiding in civilian areas.

This action is done in the hopes that Israel will slaughter innocents and therefore draw global condemnation from the likes of Glenn Greenwald.

Yet to GG, Hamas is not complict in these deaths, and the false equivalency of Hamas rockets and Israeli relatiation cements itself just as the Neo-Cons made our invasion of Iraq the "natural" reaction to Saddam Hussein "gassing his own people" (20 years earlier).

It's amazing what propaganda tricks you can achieve if you remove chronology from the discussion.

What a disgrace Glenn's post is. The only nugget of truth is that the right wing chickenhawks are, as usual, unhinged. But this is no more proof of the justification of the inherent actions than is Osama Bin Laden supporting Glenn's sympathies that the people of Gaza are under attack from an America-Israel "war on Gaza."

Punishing civilian populatins is a war crime. It is a war crime when the U.S. does it, it was a war crime when Nazi Germany did it. The Roman Empire was also guilty of war crimes.

The fact that others also did similar things does not exonerate Israel.

This is a "fairly obvious refutation," WinSmith.

Uhm, no it's not. I wasn't talking about "war crimes," I was talking about "terrorism" as Glenn (re)defines it in his bid for false equivalencies between Hamas and Israel.

But since you bring up the term "War Crimes," which you clearly don't know anything about, here's an actual, clearly provable, war crime:

Serb "Human Shield" Ploys Are War Crimes, U.S. Envoy Says

By Linda D. Kozaryn

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 19, 1999 – The Serbs have taken the war crime of using human shields to new extremes in Kosovo, a senior U.S. official told reporters May 18 at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has a history of putting civilians and other noncombatants in harm's way, said David Scheffer, U.S. ambassador-at-large for War Crimes Issues. In Bosnia between 1992 and 1995, Serb forces put hundreds of hostage U.N. peacekeepers and civilians at key military locations to deter attacks.

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=42058

I can think of an easily provable war crime that's taken place in this whole mess. Can you?

Don't worry friend, soon you'll drive out all voices of dissent and you can have you own little mirror of the right wing echo chamber over here, where your dittoheads will nod as you rant away about Israel, and your credibility on the FISA and punditry class become seen as valid as when Lyndon Larouche makes a cogent point on taxation.

You are rendering yourself a raging clown, burying important critiques of frauds like Friedman under your own blizzard of selective outrage for the poor people of Gaza, as well as your pathetic conflation of the American and Israeli governments, about as reductive a simplicity since "Iraq=Al Qaeda because they both look Arab."

Don't worry, GG. You're not the first to fall victim to Israel-hatred pathology, and judging by history, you won't be the last.

There is much to criticize Israel for in this war. But making false equivalencies between the terrorist Hamas thugs, who brutalize their own people and hide in schools, and the Israeli response to their years of provocation, no matter how reckless, simply renders you a clown.

I'll be around because when you get back to things you can speak authoritatively about -- FISA, NSA, lawbreaking, accountability, Gonzo, the justice department -- you're the best in the business.

Rantings about the grand conspiracy for our media to shut out sober, serious voices such as yourself on this issue places you firmly in the loon camp.

No one is silencing your position, Glenn. It's that no one, outside of your 6 dittoheads, agrees with its simplistic false equivalencies.

While you're advocating hearing from only one side of a war, do you also have good things to say about Israel's banning of Arab political parties? The two go hand and hand.

I think it's atrocious. Israel falls short of many ideals of democracy, and they can and should be critiqued for this. However if you'd read Matt Yglesias, he provides the actual sober and serious contemplation on this issue that your one-sided rants sorely lack.