Ending the occupation.

And giving back stolen land. Offering reparations. Dismantling the settlements. Removing blockades. Etc.

There's where you're mistaken, MMM- that is, if you're simply talking about returning to the 1967 borders (you're vague on that point.)

For Hamas, that isn't enough. They have an ironclad commitment to nothing less than the dissolution of Israel, and its replacement with an Islamic state throughout the entirety of Palestine (and beyond that, actually, but that's only hinted at.)

True, they don't want to kill all the Jews- they just want them to convert or leave- or perhaps, just to display their merciful nature, to dispossess their land holdings and assets and allow them to live in marginal communities, in submission to Islamic law, forever. Or else.

All the pronouncements I've seen seem to indicate that they want an Islamic state that's more theocratically totalitarian than Egypt, Syria, or Iran.

The possibility has crossed my mind that if the state of Israel has been trouble for the Middle East..imagine Arab Palestine ruled by the radical Islamists of Hamas.

I suspect that Syria would probably roll the tanks and take the place out before too long. Egypt has too many of the problems of a large country with an expanding population to take on a project of conquest like that- but Syria? They'd be up for it. Unless Hamas managed to somehow overthrow or "ally" with the government of Jordan. Etc, etc.

seem to think that Islamist groups like Hamas can help them facilitate the goal of world international socialism- or, at any rate, the wider general agenda of Leftism. That they can make common cause with them.

The Left needs to check their memories as to the fate of the Iranian Left when Ayatollah Khomeini took power. The Left thought they'd get a place at the table then, too. No dice, to understate the case. And Khomeini was a moderate, compared to these guys.

First of all theres the lie that one gets the high moral ground just from civilian death count. If this were true nazi germany would have had the moral high ground over both the uk and america during that war. Germany dropped rockets and bombs on london, yet did the british and americans have a "proportionate response"? What we did was turn german cities into rubble, similarly we turned japanese cities into burning cinders. Yet many in the west froth at the mouth over the supposed evils of israels rather restrained and targeted air strikes against hamas. Its a level of hypocrisy that is quite mind numbing, especially when one listens to the terms used to describe israel, from monsterous to war crimes, yet if this standard were applied to the west, the moral charts would simply break as you've gone off the scale set by todays judging of israel. It is rather strange how this works.

supporting israels right to defend its civilians against attack is perfectly in our national interests. sometimes it takes someone with a spine to stand up to the mob. and thats what the "international community" amounts to these days. they expect israeli civilians to huddle in bomb shelters and effectively condone hamas/palestinian tactics that legitimize targeting of civilians while apparently being blind to the fact that they lose the right to complain about civilian death when they condone intentional targeting of civilians by hamas and the palestinians.

Never mind in the arab world where the kurds have suffered 32,000 civilian casualties by the hand of the turkish army. yet this country barely gets any attention when such figures would cause moral outrage against israel on a scale no one could imagine. turkey is even considered for EU membership by the same folks who get apoplectic over israel.

the figures for deaths in the congo from earlier this year was that 40,000+ stil die there a month. there is similar suffernig in the sudan. a million starve under north korean dictatorship. these all get a fraction of a percents coverage compared to the fate of a few million in a tiny country. somethings out of kilter on the international level to let this happen, and so the moral outrage being spewed has to be looked at in this context. it doesn't add up, it is inconsistent to a level that defies reason.

Get real. Hamas exists to obliterate the State of Israel. That means killing every single person with Israeli citizenship. In the face of that threat, what should the good citizens of Israel do, sing Kum-Ba-Yah and die quietly?

When our country was attacked by Japan, our fathers (and mothers) responded by bombing Japan and Germany into smoldering heaps, killing thousands of civilians, until they quit fighting us. Our parents were completely correct in defending our country, and the people in Israel are absolutely correct in defending their country.

Terrorists kill scores of people almost daily in Iraq with suicide bombs, where are the horror and protest against those crimes? Are those victims less worthy because they are murdered by fellow Moslem's? I don't recall a Salon article expressing outrage over those bombings.

The residents of Gaza choose to shoot rockets at Israel, an act of war. It's high time that western people stood up to the murderers.

Kamiya wrote: “It (the US) would insist that the best and only way to undermine the radical rejectionists and the jihadists (who are not the same thing) is through a just peace.”

I must disagree with Kamiya’s naïve notion that it is possible to accommodate with one’s enemy whose sole purpose is your destruction. I must also disagree with Kamiya that the extreme Hamas militants have wide support among the Arab world.

The Palestinians are hostages of the Hamas extremists who are pawns of Iran. It is truly tragic. The Gaza saga will take years to play out with tragic consequences.

It would be interesting to see what will happen if the whole world blacks out all news from Gaza and ignore the Israel / Palestinian conflict.

I have to point out that this article starts with a false premise. Comparing Israel and the Palistinians to the US and Native Americans is ridiculous.

There have always been Jews in Israel. We are not foreign invaders.

The actual key point is this:

If the Arabs lay down their guns, there will be peace.

If the Israelis lay down their guns, they will be killed.