anything good is automatically from god and anything bad is automatically from the devil.

Is right on.

Israel has morphed into their own worst enemy.

Self-righteousness and hypocrisy run like water through out their smallest utterance... Anyone doing comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany yet?

"Second, my eyes are only rolling at the notion, implicit in your comment, that one must be Jewish to understand the importance of life's sacredness (you'll deny, probably, that you said anything of the kind, which is why I used the word implicit)."

You're right: I never said anything of the kind, nor would I ever say it. Moreover, I feel that killing anyone in these attacks diminishes the concept of Israel and Judaism, and I think most Israelis appreciate that, too. I personally find the militarism of Israeli society a terrible thing, and I wish I could change it. However, it is a natural outcome of being under attack from many directions for many years. I can assure you that Israelis consciously try to rise above human nature, but I don't suppose they always succeed.

Your filthy comment,

The six million did not die so that Jews could blow up houses with children inside them.

does not merit a reasoned reply.

What *is* worth noting is that survival is a moral imperative. And Israel is determined to survive, NO MATTER WHAT, and not just because of the six million.

Yes, Obama's silence is deafening...

Does he have the balls to take on the 60-million ton elephant in the middle east? There can't be meaningful peace without caging that beast...

Then it stands that I am a loss to understand the prompt for your previously silly comment ('liberal' PC correctness, however wrong and bone-headed at its height a decade and more ago, was never, ever the actual threat to public thought that Patriotic Correctness was and still is) or why it was occasioned on my post. Congratulations for having read the real Orwell, but, please, don't try to explain it to me.

It would be extraordinary if, for once, the focus could be on what Glenn actually wrote, rather than having the opportunity of Glenn having written be a mere foil for whatever ideological position a commenter cares to advance, in the general direction of the column's headline. Within the very first page I find myself wondering what habit of mind, allows people to go off without, apparently, even having read the column Glenn wrote.

By page five, the "bait and switch" commenters have rolled in. Those who read but then purposefully misrepresent what was written. A twist of a word here, eliding a word there, de-contextualizing a sentence or two, or claiming Glenn means to do something other than what he's done. The ultimate effect is to dismiss the entire column out of hand.

And, by page seven the apologists, for those who have done bait and switch, have arrived. The individuals who deploy their shopworn, previously challenged assertions, yet one more time. Presumably, they hope if they throw it at the wall once more, this time it will stick.

Chris Sinnard might as well post his new and improved apologist-talking-points score card so the rest of us can play Defense of Israel Bingo.

Glenn, it amazes me that you allow comments to these columns at all. Apart from the blinding truth of the effects of tribalism, and the effects of that blinding on truth itself, the dynamic by which reality is victimized is laid bare. Projection and propaganda. What a pair.

Glenn, the more you write about this topic, the more (I believe) you get at the fundamental social psychopathology underlying most/all of the world's seemingly intractable conflicts. I don't have the foggiest idea what potential solutions might look like. Discouraging.

But when you said this:

...society's weakest, most frightened, and most insecure individuals.

I was really hoping the linky was going to point to a picture of "Shartstain22%, King of Trolls!"

BTW, your attempts to apply reciprocal and equivalent moral standards to [everyone] - (including the U.S. and Israel, how DARE you!?) prompt me to offer a gentle reminder:

After you feel an appropriate period of time has passed, please revisit your conversation w/ Dr. Chomsky.

Are we back to stats, and stuff like that?

"That was a remarkably verbose way of avoiding even remotely addressing any part of my question."

I have visited Israel during my life. I have a strong appreciation for the basic goodness of the Israeli people, their initiative in creating something from nothing, and their attempts to set a good example even under physical (as well as rhetorical) attack.

And now you can go ahead and explain to the multitudes why they can comfortably discount any opinions I might have, rather than responding to them directly.

Israel can't 'survive' no matter what if there really are no limits to the depths of inhumanity they won't sink to.

Israel will become more of a pariah and will eventually be either a victim of their own stupidity or will be taken out by the rest of the world.

To say that fucking for virginity is worthwhile and will continue until the goal is reached is insane! The end costs might be justified to them but the rest of the world have to live with them and their caustic ideology and militarism and the continuous wreckage left in their wake. Other nations will tire of dealing with it.

The tide eventually turned against Apartheid South Africa and so it will turn against the Israeli government's reign of terror...

1. If the leaders of a neighboring territory are sending rockets into your territory, and refuse to stop, it is entirely within rights - indeed within responsibility - to kill them.

You mean that after 60 years of Jewish invasion, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, attempted genocide, and "Jim Crow laws on steroids" against the native Palestinians that you think it is their fault for fighting back even as you starve with a war crime blockade?

Dude, are you paid to say such stupid stuff?

2. Those leaders know you have cause to kill them.

Typo there; you mean to say that the invaded, tortured, and brutalized natives have a right to defend themselves.

3. Any adult members of their family who shelter with them are not innocent - are in fact complicit in their crimes for sheltering with them.

You mean all Jews in Israel are guilty of genocide? Hmmm. I see the logic.

4. Any children who they or other adults cause to be sheltered with them are being used as human shields, which is a war crime.

What a crock. Israel kills civilians as a matter of national policy. Just because you call a University a "symbol" does not make it a military target.

5. The prime responsibility for the deaths of these children in this case is with the Hamas leaders.

The guilty party is the invading murderers of Israel, plus the Americans who bought the weapons of civilian destruction for them.

6. Calling out those who understand this, and support Israel, as if there were something racist going on, is the worst sort of name calling - in fact, racist itself.

-- Runeberg

I call you a bloodthirsty murdering dog.