“Israel should be roundly criticized for not letting journalists into Gaza. Israel should also be held accountable for apparently reckless bombing campaigns that have slaughtered innocent Palestinians and children. Israel must provide evidence for these bombings as Hamas targets.”

When I read the stories and see the video/pictures that I have seen on the Gaza horrors, I don’t think saying that Israel should be held accountable outweighs all of the rationalizations and justifications you, our M$M and congress make on behalf of Israel. You, the M$M and congress should be outraged and mad as hell like me and others who are pleading for all of us to feel deep sadness and outrage. You toss off slaughtered innocents as just another price to pay for the fact that peace can’t be found. There is no excuse for the atrocities that have been done by Israeli forces. None. Zero.

As long as people want to say that I must have revenge or I must defend myself when I am already almost totally protected, this insanity will continue. How anyone can rationalize such horrors, especially for purely political reasons is obscene and beyond my understanding.

If they can't rule in Gaza and cease in their attacks on Israel how are they supposed to rule the westbank or any of the occupied territories!...

Killing all the officials will help this process, though.

... Palestinians have no right to statehood if the can't abide by the law of nations, primary among them being recognition of other states sovereignty....

True irony, considering the particulars. Israel has controlled and occupied Gaza and the West Bank (not to mention built their own settlements there in violation of international law) for decades. There there's southern Lebanon, the Golan, and the Sinai. Hamas/Palestine has never occupied Israel.

Cheers,

It's very clear that not allowing journalists into Gaza is designed to minimize the impact of the invasion. This is an old lesson now, if it is not on video, it didn't happen. The only reason anyone ever heard of Rodney King was because of the guy with the camera.

However, just because Israel is not allowing journalists into Gaza does not mean that there are any journalists in Gaza. Yesterday Heru-ur posted a link to livestation.com. I downloaded the file and up popped Al Jazeera -- and on the screen was a journalist reporting from inside Gaza, and reporting very professionally I might add! To anyone who has not done so please take advantage of this, watch AJ, they really are professional, and yes, you won't see this stuff anywhere else!

Maybe it's a good thing, Israeli is keeping the shills out, if they did let journalists in, wouldn't it be just a bunch of clowns and stenographers from AP, FOX or CNN? Yesterday Wolf Blitzer was just telling us that Joe the Plumber is on his way to report from what he called an extremely dangerous war zone or words to that effect. Really? Dangerous? For who Wolf? Not for the IDF, and certainly not for Joe the goddamn plumber, complete and total moron that he is.

. But when America does it, it's a "necessary cost in pursuing terrorism." When Israel does it, it's "TEH WAR CRIMES!"

You must, literally, be kidding. Please throw me the link to Glenn's post where he says killing innocents is a "necessary cost in pursuing terrorism," or any paraphrase thereof. I don't even think that rises to the level of "straw man." That's a foam man argument. Dust-bunny man.

If Glenn posts a diary on American war crimes in Iraq, it gets maybe 50-100 posts.

What planet do you live on, exactly? Do they have the Internet there? The throughput must suck ass...

As usual, the discussion of the Arab-Israeli dispute on this board breaks down to a chorus of rants by those who simply see Israel as illegitimate and must be destroyed. It is supported by simply false "facts", such as that a vast migration of European Jews forced out peaceful Arab farmers who lived on the land for thousands of years and, using Hitlerian tactics, forced them into ghettos in a final solution of genocide. While each of these ridiculous statements are debunked by the facts: (1)there has been a Jewish presence in Palestine since the Roman diaspora and a Jewish majority in Jerusalem almost unabated, (2) The population of Palestine, Jew and Arab, was tiny at the turn of the 20th Century, and there was a large Arab in-migration at that time based largely on Jewish farming and trade, (3) There were repeated anti-Jewish pogroms by the Arab population throughout the first half of the 20th Century, including the massacre of the Hebron Jewish community, (4) the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, among others, were ardent allies of Adolph Hitler and hoped to replicate the "Final Solution" in Palestine and would have done so, with the power and (5) the UN Partition Plan, which left 65% of the arable land of Palestine in Arab hands as well as most of Jerusalem, together with the rights of each group to live in peace with the other, was accepted by the Israelis and rejected by the Arabs in favor of all out war to drive out the Jewish population---something they did in all lands they controlled. Granted, there was a similar diaspora of Arabs forced out in areas controlled by the Israelis, but by no means universal (witnessed by the 20% Arab population of Israel) and this was due to the war imposed by the Arabs.

That is the history---and to replay it each time a discussion comes up how to make peace in the region shows why there is no peace. If, as Golda Meir accurately put it, there can be no peace until the Arabs love their children as much as they hate us, there can be no peace with the kind of thinking that seems to dominate here.

Israel is not going away. Meanwhile, Hamas rule in Gaza, which you conveniently blame on Israel, has been an utter failure. Hamas collects almost $100 million a year in revenue, mostly from wealthy Gulf Arabs. Does it use that money to improve the lives of its citizens? No, it buys missiles (and interestingly, no anti-aircraft weapons--what does that show you?), engages in gang rule in the streets---recently emptying jails and carrying out summary executions of people the UN observers deemed mostly innocent victims of clan violence, and starts a war with Israel simply to try and ratchet up its falling political star. If you believe Israel has overreacted, that is certainly arguable, but as I said earlier, war is hell and if you purposefully attack from civilian settings, you will cause civilian casualties. If you believe Israel must be destroyed for what it is, there is nothing to discuss. You demand war, and you then must accept the results of war. The Taba outline is the ONLY basis for peace---and that would entail the removal of the vast majority of settlements, a piece of Jerusalem and a right of way between Gaza and the West Bank. Destruction of the State of Israel is not on the table, and is simply hateful rhetoric.