That this article will be controversial.

What the terrorist organization, Hamas and their supporters in Iran, and Syria have discovered is how to defeat Western Societies which place high value on human life. Islamic terror organizations care little for civilian lives, note Dafur, Mumbai, Bali--all killings by Islamic terror cells, and all directed exclusively at civilians.

By putting Israel on the defensive over civilian casualties which happened because Hamas deliberately puts civilians in harms way. they have tied the Israeli military in knots, and opened the door for victory over the hated West.

By being so outrageously anti-Jew, he taints any legitimate complaint about Israel's actions with antisemitism. No one can reasonably say anything in this thread that is negative about Israel without his words echoing.

This helps support Israel's propaganda aims.

I believe that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of Israeli or Israeli-paid commenters trolling the message boards across the internet doing just that: Making comments that conflate legitimate objections with rampant antisemitism.

And look how well it works. Across the US average citizens shrug off the continued slaughter of innocent civilians by the IDF, while any such actions by any other foreign country would spark unending outrage.

Just in case some of you think this might be a serious commenter worthy of response.

Fuck YEAH they committed war crimes!

Israel has a legal obligation to protect the health and safety of the civilian population in the lands it is ILLEGALLY occupying. Thus the act of launching a military assault on these people is a war crime in itself. Of course, what is really getting my goat is the fact that this killing was done with my tax dollars. It is almost enough to cause me to swear a vow of poverty.

Phosphorous bombs in a densely populated area is a war crime. Attacking places where people take shelter like a U.N. building is a war crime. What's bizarre about this question is that the sense that Israeli war crimes are something new. They are not. They were committed in Jenin. They were committed in the Grapes of Wrath Operation in Lebanon. They were committed in Lebanon in 2006. There is literally nothing new here. Israel has committed war crimes before, it has done so in Gaza.

Each side must swap children. All of them. Then the land gets split down the middle, straight through Jerusalem.

There, done, next.

If it wasn't Israel, it wouldn't even merit a discussion. At this point Israel can stomp all Pal children to death and we'd be asking "is it too much? Is it a war crime? or is it self defense?"

"Does Israel have a right to defend herself?" is the favored distraction, I believe.

That's where certain parties would like to corral the debate. A more concrete question would be "Does Israel have a right to exist on stolen land with a ring through the nose of the USA?"

Remember, it's not a war crime when Israel does it. What are you, some kind of Nazi anti-semite or something?

Israel killed a lot of innocent people, apparently using weapons like white phosphorus. Sounds like war crimes to me. I doubt much will come of it.

What is the US going to say about what Israel did? "Hey, you committed war crimes against Muslims!" Join the club. Obama can say something like "We stopped doing that a week or so ago" but the US has little moral standing to make much of a fuss on the subject.

The US has killed at on the order of 100 times as many Iraqis as the Israelis killed Palestinians and for much less reason. The US dropped cluster bombs on civilian areas, tortured innocent people, drove an entire nation into anarchy, and let mercenaries run rampant all over Iraq practically without restraint. Worse, while the Israeli attacks actually stopped weapons from being fired at Israel, the carnage caused by the US did nothing to help our security. It was a pure waste of human life.

What can the US say to the Israelis? Not much. At least Hamas stopped shooting their goofy rockets.

A more concrete question would be "Does Israel have a right to exist on stolen land with a ring through the nose of the USA?"

All land is stolen. After you give yours back, your righteous indignation won't sound like hypocritical hot gas.

In fact, the history of the region is far more complex than that, and the only thing your concrete question shows is your bias.

Myself, I've become a lot less tolerant of Israel's tactics. I know they're between a rock and a hard place, but they are becoming a very sad nation. They're losing their souls.

To the Palestinians, I say, just as America is judged by its leaders, so are you, and yours make George Bush look like a saint.

All we have is propaganda...from both sides. This "number" of civilian casualites has not been confirmed by any reliable source. Obviously, it is in Hamas' interest to maximize the number of civilian casualties.

Let's wait for the facts before we gas all the Jews for war crimes.

Sixty-two (62) years of War Crimes, and counting. Obama will stop the $3,000,000,000.00 U.S. taxpayer-dollars which we send to these bastards each year; he will enforce the twin doctrine which he's consistently enforcing on all fronts: transparency and accountability. Simple. If they're accountable and are held accountable for their (mis)deeds, then Israel continues to receive OUR money. If they fail, then we fail to pay them, giving them that much less money to buy WHITE PHOSPHORUS BOMBS with OUR money. Any occupation will be fought, whether it is the Native Americans against the Europeans who founded the US, whether it is the Iraqis fighting us now, or whether it is the Palestinians, trying to get THEIR land back from the Israelis. It's just simple human nature. If someone occupied us, we would fight them, too. The only difference is that the poor Palestinians are called terrorists while others in their place are called freedom fighters & Pal boosters are call antisemitic