Three points:

1. Israel has excellent intelligence on Hezbollah and its support infrastucture and is using it to destroy them with pinpoint laser-guided missiles.

2.Israel has no military or political interest in harming the people of Lebanon - only Hezbollah and its support infrastructure. It is disingenuous for Prothero to claim Israel is acting against its long-term interests.

3. There has been collateral damage. This happens in all wars. This is a war, remember?

Did Prothero and Salon's other rabid anti-Israel authors ever consider that an unstable Lebanon is actually in Hezbollah's and Iran's interest? That Hezbollah would like to create an Islamist state in Lebanon? A stable, democratic, economically vibrant Lebanon would make peace with Israel. Israel's agressive counter attack is a result of its weak geographic position in the Middle East. Israel is so small it is always backed into a proverbial geographic corner. Israel must win every war and take the fight to the enemy's soil to survive.

Israel has been within UN-approved borders with Lebanon since 2000. Hezbollah wants to wipe Israel off the map as does its sponsor Iran. Hezbollah attacked Israel within its 1967 borders. Israel wants peace, but it has no choice except to respond to this unwarranted aggression and escalation by Hezbollah. What has Hezbollah been fighting against/for? (The release of terrorists? To change the UN's decision on a strip of Syrian farmland? What are Hezbollah's objectives in attacking Israel? What should Hezbollah's future role be in Lebanon?

Israel withdraws and Hezbollah and Hamas attack. Israel cannot give up land for peace and not stongly defend its 1967 borders and the safety and security of its people. The only chance for peace between Israel and Lebanon is to remove or at least weaken Hezbollah. This requires the destuction of supply lines and support systems for Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a cancer that must be removed from Lebanon's body to ensure Israel's peaceful existance. Only Israel can do it.

Consider nonviolence as an option. I think most people misunderstand the nonviolence movement and its basic principles. Nonviolence does not mean being passive and doing nothing when somebody resorts to violence against us. It calls for active resistence. In fact submission is seen as worse than violence. However, to actively practice nonviolence, one must resist fear. This is the most crucial point. Letting go of your fear is the most important step. Nonviolence movement says that people resort to violence out of fear, and being nonviolent requires great bravery. You should be ready to die, not afraid to die or suffer, yet even in the face of death, you should never consider killing or hurting as an option.

Believers of nonviolence are routinely labeled as coward and unrealistic. What is unrealistic is the use of violence to solve problems. Show me one case where using violent policies resulted in peace, stability and security in the long term. Violence is self-perpetuating. It simply does not work. It is bad policy and it is unrealistic. When you bomb people, you will create more enemies. Every person who loses a beloved to a bomb or missile is a potential recruit against the "enemy" whether in an army or a terrorist organization.

Use of violence is not only unrealistic as a policy tool, it is also immoral. I do not think I should explain why it is immoral to kill people. So why are people using or supporting the use of violence? Because we get scared and angry and when scared and angry we stop thinking rationally. We do stupid things.

So there is only one realistic and moral stance in the face of violence: to reject it. But it is too difficult because we have succumbed to our fears. We say "but they will destroy us, but they will kill us, but we are in the right". Ironically, precisely because we resort to violence, our victims try to get revenge and inflict violence back on us, and when we resort to violence we cease to be right.

We have to stop. But we cannot stop because we are too scared. We are scared of them. They are scared of us. They will be even more scared when we attack them, which will lead them to attack back to us. There is no end. But violence is SO attractive. When we are enraged, furious, we seek revenge. It is easy. It is wrong. And again, it is unrealistic.

So, be brave. Reject violence. But not if you are a coward and if you are doing it just because you think it is easy. It is not easy. Rejecting violence, despite constant hateful propaganda, despite being attacked; despite losing a beloved one, or someone from your "side" to violence; despite risking injury requires courage. A lot of courage. It also requires a willingness to forgive, if not now, maybe later, in time.

Since violence is so popular, it also means you have to be brave enough to dissent despite people who blame you as nonpatriotic and cowardly among other things. It also requires ignoring the arguments about who is right and who is wrong in many cases. Violence is wrong and that is the principle to guide us. So why should you be the one to forgive and to stop attacking? No reason. Just somebody has to stop. Somebody has to be the rational, the grown-up. Somebody has to choose the moral thing to do. That should be you, don't you think?

I can guarantee that more bombs would not solve anything, but if enough Israelis or Arabs decided to walk out of their homes, walk to the street and make themselves the target of missiles and bombs from the other side, this madness would have to stop. But who has the courage to do that, when they can yell "revenge" from wherever they are hiding? While most Americans were supporting the war when it started some brave men and women went to Iraq to be living targets for bombs from their own governments. They showed they were willing to die to let others live. They were much more couregous than those putting yellow ribbon magnets on their cars. I do not blame them. I am just trying to say, how much more courage it requires to be nonviolent than nonviolent.

Before you dismiss nonviolence, consider for a second that every baby that has died in a conflict, could be your baby. There is a mother, whose baby died in front of her eyes. I know no baby who deserved to die. Babies don't know whether they are Jewish or Muslim. I know nothing that could justify the killing of a baby. Start there.