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What's depressing about some of the responses to this article is all the 'whataboutery' that just muddies the waters and obscures the major (and legitimate) grievances of the Palestinians, namely the continuing theft of Palestinian land by Israeli settlers, and the hugely disproportionate violence visited by Israel on a largely helpless populace.
I can understand that many Israelis feel embattled, and they have every right to defend themselves, but bombing and occupying Gaza is no way to go about it and is ultimately self-defeating as Gary Kamiya has pointed out.
It's this that Israel critics object to. It's not that we're 'anti-Israel' or 'pro-Palestinian' or, as has been suggested, use it as just another excuse for beating up Israelis, but that this is as barbaric (but more devastating) than any Palestinian suicide bombing.
Israel may be the only democracy in the region, and is inspiring in many ways. But it is overwhelmingly more powerful that the Palestinians and brutal and thuggish actions like these should be condemned loud and clear by everybody, including the US establishment, much as Russia's overreaction to recent Georgian and Chechnyan violence was deplored by the US.
