It's OK as long as those rockets are ineffective fireworks. Who is supplying these Chinese made rockets and why are not not supplying them with anti-aircraft missiles? What sort of mysterious workings are behind this? 10 manpads would produce results far more impressive than a 1000 of these toy rockets.

It's OK as long as those rockets are ineffective fireworks. Who is supplying these Chinese made rockets and why are they not supplying them with anti-aircraft missiles? What sort of mysterious workings are behind this? 10 manpads would produce results far more impressive than a 1000 of these toy rockets.

"I could go into a long history of the Palestinian problem and all most all fault would lie at the Palestinians feet."

Not without lying you couldn't.

The funny thing is, I've met few Palestinian who don't accept some form of responsibility for the mistakes their leadership has made, or express sorrow for the deaths on the other side. There are so many supporters of Israel who expect people to believe that Israel is completely innocent and always justified; most people understand that's unlikely.

Glenn, our congress could take a lesson in courage from you.

They are evil people shaking in their boots with fear of the zionists and AIPAC. What a bunch of soul-less babies, what a bunch of wimps, what a bunch of greedy ass-kissers, what a bunch of enablers of murder in our names! We need to get rid of them all and vote in people who will take a more humane and balanced stance with respect to conflict in the mideast and elsewhere. Out with McConnell, out with Reid, out with Schumer, out with them all. These new representatives will have to be more 'antisemitic' in order to protect the people of our nation.

If we don't do this we can expect more deaths on America's soil and more deaths of the zionist terrorists, jailers and squatters. The cycle will not end until we elect people with a sense of morality, the courage to tell it like it is and then act on these moral principles. Until we do this we continue to participate in these oppressions and we continue to become the targets of people who have lost hope and are beaten down.

It gives me hope that the workers at J Street will be able to counter the AIPAC scourge.

Does it make you wonder why this cowardly voice-vote support for the war on Gaza is not a story in the MSM? Do you ever wonder who is really in charge in the good old U.S. of A.?

This from a fellow 'antisemite'.

"They are SO bad even Egypt doesn't want to do anything with them"

40+ years of occupation, oppression and control does that to a population.

"what you've always cared about: The welfare of the people of Palestine."

What I care about first and foremost about here is the welfare of the people of the United States. And our bankrolling of Israeli settlement expansion doesn't only continue and inflame the conflict - it undermines U.S. security.

"I'm not going to do research when I know perfectly well"

Indeed, Shooter, this has been your problem all along.

I'm not going to do research when I know perfectly well...

Of course not. Why start now? Why bother doing "research"? Why waste valuable time consulting "resources", searching for "facts" to support your arguments, that could instead be used sitting around, sulking and fulminating, hardening those self-righteous, indignant, untainted-by-research views of yours?

Now I feel like a total chump for spending and half hour during my lunch break Wednesday mucking around in the DOJ on-line guidebook consulting use of immunity in federal criminal prosecutions before posting here about Thomas Tamm. Why didn't I just consult my inner bile and spout a whole bunch of uninformed righteous indignation? That way I might of had time left over to hit the gym or something.

And that sysprog guy? With all those "links" and "articles"? What a schmuck.

Show us the way, shoots!

"If that figure is correct it would mean on average 2.5 Israeli deaths per annum over the passed eight years.

That's probably about the same number of Israelis who have died over the same time through being stung by bees.-- LondonLad

I'd say this qualifies as someone saying it's OK to kill Israelis

As ever shooter your line of reasoning is impeccable. But although from what he says the wretched LondonLad so obviously desires with a passion that knows no bounds for Israelis to die, he insidiously wishes that the act of murder is committed only by bees. This, the odious fellow so obviously believes would enable Hamas to escape the scene of the crime whilst at the same time appear to have played no part whatsoever in their deaths.

But me and you, we are on to him aren't we shooter?

Keep it up son and we'll soon be able to nail the bastard's balls to the floor for this one.

P.S. E mail Greenwald immediately. The poor fellow is still puzzled how Dr Irwing could get to Princetown, post the Anthrax and get back in time for tea, toast and rumpy pumpy. Suggest you inform the equally wretched Greenwald that Irwing probably got the bees to post the damned stuff all along.

* Israel does have the right to defend itself. The question here is one of proportionality and response.

* Hamas does use civilians and schools as human shields for their mortar fire. To automatically assume Israel is just "targeting civilians" without waiting to learn more about whether Hamas was firing mortars and rockets from these locations is wilfully ignorant.

* Hamas is a terrorist organization.

On your first point, neither Israel nor Hamas has been completely forthcoming about the events that led up to this crisis. But the right to defend gets called into question when Israel turns out to have brought the cease fire to an end, not Hamas. I don't think Glenn or very much anybody is saying that the end result doesn't have to include stopping the rocket launches. It does.

On your second point, the UNRWA was maintaining the school as a shelter. Have you ever worked in a shelter? The agency that controls the shelter generally screens access. And if we must wait for more information before assuming Israel is to blame, then the IDF should wait to confirm where the shelling is coming from before firing on a protected civilian target. That's what they did. The onus of responsibility is on the IDF for proving it is a valid target, just as it would be on the U.S. military, on the Chechyen rebels, or anybody else, under international humanitarian law.

On your third point, what Hamas has been designated or not designated has no effect on Israel's obligations under IHL. Israel must follow all 4 of the Geneva Conventions it signed and ratified, and all the human rights covenants it signed and ratified. If Hamas fighters commit infractions of Geneva, those are war crimes too. But no human being is without protections under Geneva, those protections may vary, but no one is without them totally. And no one can designate an entire group to be without protections, the conventions require this to be done on a case by case basis. And the treatment of the sick and wounded, even wounded Hamas 'terrorists', is dictated by the First Geneva Convention. You have to let the designated parties collect them and get them medical aid, without exception.

Too often, the label 'terrorist' is being used as a designation of a person without any rights, an 'outlaw' in 19th century parlance. All combatants and civilians all have rights under the laws of war in the 21st century. Too often, 'terrorist' is also used to muddy the distinction between military and police and between war and crime fighting. If anything must be learned out of the disaster of the Bush administration's policies, it must be that selective application of criminal law and the laws of war to construct ways of abrogating the rights of human beings is dead wrong. Even the worst enemy has rights. If you don't give them their rights, as we have seen at Guantanamo, you don't even know if you've targeted the right person.

Israel is in the sights of the world's human rights and humanitarian organizations right now for availing itself of that faulty logic on terrorists. But to say it only happens when it's Israel isn't true. America ends up in those sights, Russia ends up in those sights, China, India, Pakistan, everybody runs afoul of those organizations when they use 'terrorist' as a license to act with impunity. And Israel's civilian leadership has done exactly what causes war crimes to happen. It was pretty much a given that armed soldiers would act this way given the way their civilian superiors acted. That's why I pleaded yesterday not to make monsters out of soldiers. When you train someone to solve problems with force, you have an obligation to that person to be circumspect about the orders you give them and the social pressures you put them under. That isn't just IHL, it's basic human decency. There are going to be more war crimes in Gaza, we can count on it at this point. The civilians need to change their tune to stop them.

I don't know why there aren't as many comments on torture or rule of law as there are when Israel gets mentioned. I not the only one here who wishes there were.