Also, quit singling out Israel, among the many states currently using these techniques - it makes you look like a bigot. One easy example is the pounding that the Tigers and their supporters have taken in Sri Lanka over the past couple months. Far more damage and loss of life there on both sides.

When the U.S. starts massively funding, obediently arming and using its veto power to protect the aggressors in Sri Lanka, let me know and I'll consider those actions ones for which U.S. citizens are responsible.

Until then, the analogy is worthless.

Why don't you cut the shit and admit that you don't believe the US and its allies can use military force in any meaningful way and still maintain your version of "legality."

That's exactly the point. Since Korea, all US military action abroad has been precisely illegal according to accepted international law.

It wasn't just the perpetrators of war crimes who were punished at Nuremberg; Julius Streicher, an editor, was convicted and hung because he used journalism to support crimes against humanity. The Nuremberg Trials established the precedent that those who use their positions of influence to incite and justify the slaughter of innocent civilians are culpable for those crimes, too.

If there is any real justice in the world, Thomas "Suck. On. This." Friedman will someday find himself in a docket at the Hague.

You blur the distinction, Glenn. The question "What is Israel doing?" has been hanging in the air and Friedman is answering it. Your moral hair trigger is indispensable, but could use a slight calibration. "Analysis" can be misguided and wrong, and no one points that out better than you. "Cheerleading" is just a cheap insult, beneath you.

I have come to believe that Glenn doesn't simply bother to read even the text that he is quoting.

The term "terrorism" means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant (1) targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience. . .

And Friedman:

Israel’s counterstrategy was to use its Air Force to pummel Hezbollah and, while not directly targeting the Lebanese civilians with whom Hezbollah was intertwined, to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large.

Glenn, please, please, please:

while not directly targeting the Lebanese civilians

Maybe if I bold it, you'll read it?

while not directly targeting the Lebanese civilians

Italics?

while not directly targeting the Lebanese civilians

How about if I space it out, like Klytus, and make it rhyme:

Israel doesn't target Arab civilians

A fact that turns its detractors vermilion

Hamas may drink a keg of Killian's

And hide its rockets in high school pavilions

And dream of killing Jews by the thousands (if not millions)

but Israel does not target civilians

Maybe Glenn is trying to be a vaudevillian

Or sex up his blog (Israel-bashing = Brazilian?)

But as sure as Madoff made off with 50 billion

Israel does not target civilians.

That is one key difference between Israel and Hamas, and is but one reason why both US political parties line up behind Israel. Because they know that Israel's actions are in accord with the best American ideals in the worst possible situation.

I believe the desired psycological effect of not only the actual spilling of civilian blood but the humiliation and total control of Gaza, is quite the opposite than The Friedman Strategy. Right wing Israeli groups understand that as long as Palestinians in Gaza are viewed as barbarians and sub-human terrorists by the western world, anything Israel does to them will be tolerable at the end of the day. The best way to portray them as animals is to attempt to create animals......humiliate them, kill their loved ones, and remove every standard of humanity from their daily lives....slowly and gradually. Over time, effectively creating an aggressive, remorseless population almost unanimously supporting resistance against Israel of any kind, particularly resistance considered "terrorism" by the West. The mother of Luay Suboh is a great example of this strategy. She is now a supporter of terrorism right? How can Israel be excpected to make concessions to a population comprised solely of terrorists?

the British should have leveled Tel Aviv (where the bombing was planned) after the July 22, 1946 King David hotel bombing by Menachem Begin's terrorist Irgun. For those who don't know, the explosion, which occurred at 12:37, caused the collapse of the southwestern corner of the southern wing of the hotel. 91 people were killed, most of them being hotel staff. 46 people were injured. Some of the deaths and injuries occurred in the road outside the hotel and in adjacent buildings. No identifiable traces were found of thirteen of those killed.

Yes, thank you, Glenn for so clearly explaining how Friedman's despicable screed makes him an unambigious and unapologetic supporter of terrorism.

I started reading his column last night and had to stop when I got to his unabashed support for the intentional death and destruction of the civilian Gaza population. I was so incensed and angry and felt so helpless. Thank you for taking Friedman on. As Rachel Maddow would say "because somebody has to do it."

Of course they are paid.

You don't think anyone would support those Israeli Baby Killers without getting paid handsomely, do you?

Other than the fact that Friedman is advocating these actions for an actual state rather than a "subnational group," can anyone identify any differences between (a) what Friedman approvingly claims was done to the Lebanese and what he advocates be done to Palestinians and (b) what the State Department formally defines as "terrorism"? I doubt anyone can. Isn't Friedman's "logic" exactly the rationale used by Al Qaeda: we're going to inflict "civilian pain" on Americans so that they stop supporting their government's domination of our land and so their government thinks twice about bombing more Muslim countries? It's also exactly the same "logic" that fuels the rockets from Hezbollah and Hamas into Israel.

Thanks for taking the time to personify the Zionist war criminal mindset.

You need to look at your quotes, though. In English, ...while not directly targeting the Lebanese civilians...

means

... while indirectly targeting the Lebanese civilians.

Suck on that.