It is the 'need' for those who want to destroy others while also getting destroyed by others that the rest of us must try to survive.

These people never really think they will be personally involved in violent actions that will breed their deaths.

We would all be better off without Holy Sites that always seem to bring death and terror. Do Israel or Palestine really want for neither of them to live together in peace and prosperity. Is this the best they can muster? Aren't both admitting they are not caring of their own children enough to find a way to survive together. They bring shame to their communities and call it strength and pride.

David Gregory has learned nothing the past 8yrs about how badly our media has deteriorated. Rather than see it for what it and he is he too brings shame and calls it pride.

It has come to a point that the media darlings perform for each other and blame their performance on the people as if they are providing a service to them instead of each other. It's why their coverage and their opinions of issues and stories agree and imitate each other.

It's the same with our elected leaders. They legislate for each other rather than the people and policies that actually are what the people want are merely incidental.

We say we don't want telecom immunity...they vote telecom immunity. We say we want them to stop funding the war ...they add more money to the funding...we ask for impeachment or investigations and they are halted or denied. The list is endless. There is a clear disconnect between most of our elected leaders after they get elected and the people they

represent. They tell us they are acting for what is best for us when actually it is for the most part what is best for them.

WHAT KIND OF A DEMOCRACY IS IT WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE POWERLESS TO CONTAIN THE ACTIONS OF THEIR GOVERNMENT? It is David Gregory democracy, never being critical of the power brokers he is hired to protect and making sure all his watchers know how fortunate they are to have such leaders. He is paid well not to give a shit if our democracy crumbles. We would have such a better class of TV news personnel if their salaries were capped at $150k/yr.

btw...if the "bible" never mentioned Jews and Jesus had been born Palestinian... America would be pouring all their support into Palestine right now because for the majority of the Christian right, that is as much as they know about the current Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Now back to that camel and the eye of a needle story.

All of these bellicose, warmongering types would do well themselves to live on either side of the fence in Gaza for a while. Or anywhere else that truth, justice and the American way seems to be so cut and dried. It makes me think of the cartoons Franken included in "Lying Liars and the Lies They Tell", where Rush Limbaugh, Oliver North, Newt Gingrich and other Republicans appear in a lampooned Vietnam-style war setting. Franken imagines their true characters truly shining through.

The people suggesting innocent civilians in Gaza somehow deserve these bombardments, but die as dogs despite having absolutely no say whatsoever in who's firing rockets at Sderot or elsewhere in Israel, is beyong appalling. They should speak to actual Israelis about this. They'd find that vast scores of them are as appalled as the rest of the world, save America's elite political class of Israel fanatics. You can't precision strike what is perhaps the most densely populated area on earth without killing innocent civilians.

Olmert's government has shown Hamas how it wishes to negotiate with a democratically elected government - something as Americans we love to champion: with ultimatums and force. Some recipe for peace and understanding.

then we turn to the POETS!

Don't you HATE poets?

Nothing says progressive and liberal politics like CENSORSHIP!

Glenn, be careful the offending member you cut off is not you very own appendage.

Oh wait, too late, that ship already sailed.

Glenn, someday Gregory will retire, think about it . . .

/i understand your annoyance, just don't read them. Klytus does pretty good - for a 12 year old.

Norman Solomon:

...

The closing days of 2008 have heightened the Israeli government's stature as a mighty practitioner of the moral imbecility that Stone described.

Israel's air strikes"have killed at least 270 people so far, injured more than 1,000, many of them seriously, and many remain buried under the rubble so the death toll will likely rise," Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies pointed out on Sunday, two days into Israel's attack. "This catastrophic impact was known and inevitable, and far outweighs any claim of self-defense or protection of Israeli civilians." She mentioned that "the one Israeli killed by a Palestinian rocket attack on Saturday after the Israeli assault began was the first such casualty in more than a year."

Even if you set aside the magnitude of Israel's violations of the Geneva conventions and the long terrible history of its methodical collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, consider the vastly disproportionate carnage in the conflict.

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind," Gandhi said.

What about a hundred eyes for an eye?

...

I was raised to believe that God Almighty had put the Jews in Israel to fulfill his plan for the end of times. My entire family cheered any Israeli victory over the evil, sub-human A-rabs. Then about a quarter century ago, I started looking at the situation and how we all got to this point. I have spent nearly half my life looking at it.

I conclude that almost everything that Americans think they know about the middle east, its peoples, and its religions is false. We have been the target of a very large propaganda avalanche stretching back at least 2,000 years.

We must educate our neighbors on a few of the facts of the matter, but that will take a long, long time. In the meantime, we need to just look at the actions of the state of Israel in these present times. Would we not denounce, perhaps even go to war, actions of this nature if Iran was the guilty party? Or Russia? Or North Korea?

Bush is a war criminal. The leadership of Israel is also guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is time to stop all support of that terror state. (at the very least)