No shit! Looks like a lot things are news to you.

Like the fact the the IHT is published in Paris, not America.

Or that Tel Aviv is two hours ahead of GMT (that's Greenwich Mean Time, maureen).

...dumbass

Now Jonathan is getting nasty and rude, what a pity!

The truth of the matter is that, among heads of state, only the idiot of Crowford and his croonies are cherring for the Israeli brutal agression, not event the British. At that is a lot to say.

be thoroughly ashamed of you. Dumbass? Well, maybe. I haven't been scrutinising it lately but it's a good bit away from my brain. Your friend Amy, doctor of dullness, should inform you about simple anatomy. It's just after mid-day here and it's two hours ahead in Gaza/Israel, a fact of which I'm very much aware. Nevertheless, Jonathan in Tel Aviv, you were up long after midnight (in the M.E. time zone) disseminating all sorts of "fairy stories" about Goldilocks and the Three Bears (which have turned out to be Germany, Egypt and Saudi Arabia). Your stamina is amazing but the story of the goose that laid the golden eggs is even more relevant; the farmer got greedy and killed the goose to get at the golden eggs and we all know what happened then. America is, of course, the goose laying the golden eggs in the grotesque form of F-16s, tanks and field artillery against a shambolic rag-tag Hamas militancy. I hate to have to spell it out for you but Israel is the greedy farmer who kills that goose and there are no more "golden eggs" because Farmer Bibi-Barak-Olmert have lost the run of themselves. Now go and have a mid-day siesta and give up your oul' sins.

you wrote

"Amy Tuteur,

Your M.D. obviously stands for Much Denseness.

Why do people list their qualifications after their names?..."

In Ms. Tuteur's case, I think it has something to do with the fact that she has a blog under her own name on Open Salon, concerned primarily with medical matters.

(As for myself, I have no such excuse.)

I note that your comment, directed at her post on page 42, did not in any way address the content contained in her message.

so extensively. All the doctors I know can barely give 15 minutes to each patient and consultants are so busy that, even as a private patient, it takes about six weeks to get an appointment with one. I sincerely hope that Amy Tuteur (lovely French name) has never had anything to do with paediatrics ("ped" means feet, before you correct me) because her callous attitude to the children whose limbs have been severed in Gaza, to the brutal deaths of the innocent, shows that this woman would have a truer vocation in being a Managing Director of Halliburton, Mr. Cheney's pals.

It's so easy to bomb women and children

they hardly ever bomb you back

It's so easy to shoot women and children

they hardly ever shoot you back

It's so easy to starve women and children

they hardly ever will starve you back.

Oh you brave and mighty warriors

the very best killers on earth

Oh you brave and mighty warriors

the very best killers on earth

JonathanInTelAviv scribbled : "Screw you. Plain and simple...Israel doesn't need the support of the politically insignificant minority of Americans who don't and won't support us. Public opinion polls show consistent, long-term support of the US people, and the Congress and president-elect Obama are with us, not you, on the issue of Israel. The support we are getting from the major European countries, as well as Egypt & Saudia Arabia, is icing on the cake.-- JonathanInTelAviv"

Jonathan or Moshe or Zviv or whatever other name your Mossad handlers have given you to use on Salon...

Israel is a bully...plain and simple. From a disproportionate response to the Palestinians in Gaza to the complete disenfranchisement of neutral world journalists IN Gaza to crashing into yachts in international waters that were simply delivering medical aid to the people of Gaza to the deliberate killing/targeting of innocent Palestinian civilians to grabbing and occupying land that doesn't belong to you, Israel is a nasty bully.

How many nuclear devices do you have squirelled away out at Dimona...100? 120? How long before you feel so "threatened" by Palestinian women and children that you decide to nuke 'em all? You can possess nuclear devices but Iran needs to be bombed to keep them from acquiring them? R-i-i-ight...

Keep deluding yourself that most Americans agree with Israel's pogroms against Arabs/Palestinians. Those numbers are dropping precipitously. In time, you'll end up on the wrong side of history, pal.

The Gaza Palestinians need to find other methods of resistance.

As far as I can tell, that is going to entail them giving Hamas the boot. If they can, at this point.

The political leadership in Gaza needs to address the pressing needs of its people, first and foremost. It's incomprehensible to me that they feel they can mount a campaign of active armed hostilities against Israel while concommitantly demanding its solicitude in maintaining Gaza's continued near-total dependency on them for basic sustenance.

And somehow, it's apparently okay with Hamas that their attack strategy consist of the random unleashing of lethal violence that's simultaneuously foredoomed to be completely ineffectual in terms of accomplishing a military objective. It's as if they prefer the fact that it's so paltry, because it heightens the contradiction between their military might, and that of Israel (the "occupiers", who no longer occupy them- they merely sustain them.)

Exactly how is this preferential to organized, disciplined no-violent protest? Because it was tried for a few years a while back, and it "didn't work"? It's a new century, with new technology that puts the eyes of the world on the struggle.

But by all indications, the Hamas leaders are philosophically opposed to nonviolence. They wouldn't know how to act with the integrity required to accomplish it. I defy them to demonstrate otherwise.

Similarly, I think they're philosophically opposed to any other political organization for the Palestinian people other than an Islamic state- and one more totalist, militant, and radical than any other in the region, at that. They want a Jew-free Palestine. Read their charter.

I don't even see why the Iranians support Hamas. The latent potential for eventual "blowback" is an all too plausible possibility.