The Israelis cannot claim that they are not targeting non-combatants when they fire white phosphorous into crowded cities. The number of "collateral casualties" is inevitably high. When that is the case, "War is Hell" or "I fired only at the buildings" are not valid responses. I believe it is a war crime to kill and maim civilians so casually and dismissively.

(And, thank you for using the term collateral casualties instead of collateral damage when referring to people -- it was always that way when I served my 25 years. The frequent use of collateral damage in these cases is very regrettable. It is a euphemism for violent, illegal and largely avoidable civilian death.)

You said, Who eggs on the Palestinians to fight and die in an everlasting war? Glenn and the Bittoheads.

What does your list have to do with that? Much of what you suggest may be true; most of it is irrelevant or disingenuous. Yes, I expect the Palestinians will always rebel in their situation; I expect anyone would.

Show us evidence that we have taken the above position---not negative evidence of a position not taken.

Cheers. I hope I can take a joke without needing a telegram first (ok, immediately after, but ykwim)

I find it interesting that Glenn and others have mentioned the lockstep positions of Senate and Congress but haven't perhaps noticed that the entire western world (and large parts of the rest of it) have been in lockstep for some time, and glaringly repulsively so since 9/11.

John Howard is the most poisonous toad I've ever encountered (I lived in Melbourne while he was PM of Oz). Tony Blair, known "affectionately" in his own country as Tony Bliar, is also an authoritarian disaster for western civilisation and our historic common law norms. I don't know if the UK will ever recover from what he did to it in the name of compassion.

It's difficult to imagine that our near-total abandonment of our political processes to the far right authoritarians in the West hasn't been some encouragement to what is euphemistically known as the "hard-liners" in Israel.

But ultimately all the discussion is moot if we cannot agree on a simple ideat such as that epitomised at Nuremburg that some things are just wrong, under all and any circumstances.

After 60 pages of comments, I can't see much recognition of that. Always there is the "historical context" or the bla bla bla ...

What is being done to a population of whom the majority are CHILDREN (for Gods sake) is just WRONG. It is evil and has no justification.

But ... you know ... I could be wrong.

I'm done with this stupid Turd [the T is capitalized as it is his ethnicity].

You see, you are a racist. Tsk.

Heh.

Ooh, Palestinians dying on CNN! Must go watch!

I basically, reiterated your logic. Your rationale for giving Gaza to Israel is that Gazans can't go to the West Bank because Israel won't let them.

No. My point is that from a simple geographic standpoint, it makes no sense for the future Palestinian State to be composed of a huge swath of land and a tiny sliver of land miles away. Countries should be unified land masses, in my opinion.

(If you bring up Alaska and Hawaii, you'll be opening an interesting can of worms, but I think it would distract from the topic here).

You make one good and one not so good point.

Good one first.

2. That you can't be critical of Palestenian before they have a state. OK, I sympathize with that, but the reality is they have lots of proxy states. First it was Egypt, than Iraq, now Iran. While none of them have ever really had the best interest of the Palestinian people at heart, it doesn't change the fact that the Palestinians have used them. Also, they have been in fairly autonomous control of Gaza for the last two years (hence the problem). Also, most revolutions require a purge of the radical elements prior to real leadership. Isael did this prior to statehood by the founder of the Likud party. That is the responsibility of leadership. The Palestinians continue to love the revolution and not it's purpose (as do most of Isreal's critics-ironically not Friedman).

Now, for the bad one.

1. The fact that the US media is ussually unanimously in support of Israel does not make it wrong, or require a contrary view. We can all agree that is slavery wrong, can't we. No need for any contrary views!

The reality is that Mr. Greenwald's article, and almost anything written by Gary Kamiya (he wrote one trying to argue that PBS is controlled by Jews) is not advances Palestinian statehood, but faning the flames of anti-semitism.

GG. I found your column to be unfair to Friedman. He was discussing Israeli thinking and strategy, not his own beliefs. Although he has done some war mongering in the recent past, he wasn't this time. Actually I found his piece to be helpful in trying to figure what the Israelis are thinking in this whole, ungodly mess.

Another post that entirely ignores the impact on American citizens of 100% support of Israel.

Why do you have such blatant disregard for the security of the citizens of the United States, shooter?

Let me guess, Israel firebombing a ghetto is protecting us from the Islamofascists under your bed?

The overwhelming majority of human rights group, Israeli ones included, are of the opinion that Israel targets civilians. All UN bodies excluding the US-dominated Security Council agree. So does the ICRC. I am reminded in particular of a Physicians for Human Rights study in which experts studied the pattern of gunshot wounds in Palestinian children, determining that the very high percentage of fatal head wounds showed that these children were deliberately targeted by Israeli soldiers (among other unflattering conclusions). Every investigation that has ever bothered to check, as far as I know, has concluded that Israel targets civilians (as one more example, Qana). The vast majority of deaths the IDF has inflicted in every war after 1973 have been civilian, numbering in the tens of thousands, and the percentages compare unfavorably to terrorist groups like Hezbollah (which killed 3 soldiers for every 1 civilian in the most recent war; compared to 1 soldier/"terrorist" for every 5 civilians for the IDF).

There are two possible explanations. Either Israel is being unfairly persecuted and demonized, or they really target civilians. I would suggest that the proof is in the pudding. The IDF, with vastly superior armaments, targeting technology, and training, is killing huge numbers of civilians. The onus would be on Israel and its supporters to explain, in analytical detail (not the usual unsupported claim that Hamas, or whoever they happen to be supposedly trying to kill, is hiding behind civilians), how an army that doesn't target civilians can kill so damn many of them. The Physicians for Human Rights study and the Qana investigation show, using careful investigative techniques and forensics that Israel indeed appears to have targeted civilians on at least some occasions. Israel, absent a comparable report that can be verified by independent investigators, should and is fairly assumed to be targeting civilians.

Finally, one can take a pseudo-scientific approach and test the hypothesis that Israel targets civilians by making predictions based on the hypothesis. One would predict that, if Israel did indeed target civilians, they would die in huge numbers, the Israeli government would attempt to prevent journalists from reaching the area if possible, independent bodies would accuse Israel of targeting civilians, in specific instances where the IDF is confronted they would lie about the circumstances (the UN school attack recently is a perfect example of this), and so on. All the standard predictions one would make based on that simple hypothesis are consistent with Israel targeting civilians. I don't see how there can be a doubt that the IDF purposely targets civilians.