If there ever were evidence of evil in this world it would be in the form of cluster bombs. Throw in also depleted uranium tipped munitions and land mines. Nerve gas, for good measure, followed up by nuclear weapons. The order doesn't really matter, the intent does.

Plenty of evil to go around. Who makes and sells this stuff?

Oh yeah, and then there's this:

"All these weapons systems are computerized and grid references are entered before the bombs drop. Not receiving the cluster bomb strike data from the Israelis remains our biggest obstacle to clearance" UNMACC spokeswomen Dahlia Farran told the IRIN news agency last week.

The message is clear from Israel.

If Hamas sends rockets into their villages they will respond with overwhelming random murder.

The reason they will not release the grid data that shows where they dropped the bombs is probably because they want the bombs there. The war is never over as long as these bombs remain. Innocent people pay the price for this. They do not care who the victim is. This is raw, brutal retribution.

It is ridiculous that the UN Mine Action Coordination Center (UNMACC) has to clean this up. This should come straight out of Israel's pocket. It was a despicable act, and one that goes unnoticed by the US media. Too boring, too much thought. No one cares about a farmers kid killed by an "old munitions explosion".

The reality is that these weapons that kill the generations that come later are extremely inhumane. This is the case with depleted uranium (which we drop all over Iraq) which causes deformities and cancers years later, as well as these cowardly mini bombs that stay planted in fields waiting for farmers too desperate for food to avoid the warnings not to plant in these fields.

Israel clearly wants to create an uninhabitable zone. This is not a reasonable defense of your territory. Do you think this will decrease support for Hamas? Seriously? What is the chance for peace, when the violence does not stop?

peaceveteran-

"The message is clear from Israel.

If Hamas sends rockets into their villages they will respond with overwhelming random murder."

As opposed to the underwhelming random murder committed by HAMAS?

I hope you a not justifying/rationalizing HAMAS rocket attacks. I agree that attacks on civilian populations are unjustified. I simply believe that this basic principle should be applied to both sides. I am so sick of HAMAS apologists, I could puke.

If one looks at the pattern of killings in Palestine and Israel, it certainly appears as if Israel's strategy is to randomly kill Palestinians with the intent of inciting Palestinian retaliation, in order to provide cover for stealing land. Why should Hamas and others wait until Israel kills 20 or 50 or 100 or 200 Palestinians before they kill an Israeli in response? The last major Israeli invasion of Gaza was supposedly caused by a Palestinian attack on Israeli soldiers, but over 140 Gazan people were killed by Israelis prior to the last fatal attack on Israel from Gaza.

Fewer people would be killed if Palestinians could kill Israelis 1 for 1.

Remember, few adult Jewish Israelis are innocent civilians, most have a history as violent criminals. To be a member of the Israeli "Defense" Forces is to participate in the killing of innocent people for the sake of greed. That is considered murder in m0ost civilized societies.

Thank you once again Israelis for killing and maiming people and economys.

What about the polluter pays principle ? Currently companies produce cluster bombs and make a profit. Owners profit and arms traders profit, shady people who own chalets in Switzerland or elsewhere. Then the European Union, NGOs and the UN pay the clean-up. Essentially it is me, the taxpayer, who pays to clean up after unscrupulous businessmen have made their profit. Can't they be made obliged to clean up the mess caused by their products ?

gde

"Remember, few adult Jewish Israelis are innocent civilians, most have a history as violent criminals. To be a member of the Israeli "Defense" Forces is to participate in the killing of innocent people for the sake of greed. That is considered murder in m0ost civilized societies."

So then, killing an Israeli is just like executing a condemned criminal. Let us assume for one moment that all you say is true. The IDF kills only innocents for the sake of money. The adult population of Israel are all guilty.

Then whay does HAMAS go out of its way to avoid battling their main tormentors, the IDF? Why do they make it a point to go after civilians - Women, children, babies. Innocents. The very thing you condemn the Israelis for. Doesn't that strike you as the least bit hypocritical?

I would also like to know why you think that if the rocket attacks from Gaza stopped, the Israelis would continue to attack the residents of Gaza. I see no basis for that argument.

PS. Your statement, "most have a history as violent criminals". Are you honestly, stupid enough to believe that?

kendpotter: One of the main activities of the IDF is killing people for the purposes of stealing land, and to maintain a state of war. It is undeniable Israel steals land, and kills in the process, and that such stealing is recognized as criminal in intent and deed by international law. Any killings in the process, either by the perpetrators or victims, is considered sufficient for a murder conviction in the US; it is called the felony murder principle. As to my statement that one of the main purposes of Israeli violence is to incite retaliatory violence, there is exceptionally strong evidence that the purpose is not to make Israel safer. Since the peace treaties with Israel and Jordan, Israel has not attacked either nation (as a nation) and has received no attacks as a nation in return. Killing an Israeli national (not on active military duty) who is a member of the criminal war machine (I exclude Arab Israelis and others who refuse to "serve", most in exchange for limitations on their civil rights, and children (although settlers are all, in effect combatants)) is the equivalent of killing a dangerous felon who will not surrender or a soldier (of a nation at war) on furlough.

As much as I abhor Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians, this is one of the few cases where it may result being that they may save a net number of lives. This makes the presumption that Israel has a target number of Israeli dead per year in mind, and adjusts its rate of killing Palestinians to achieve that effect. This is an extremely cynical view, of course, but there all simply far too many "incidents" where all or most of the dead are children.

As for Hamas not taking on the IDF directly, they do. In fact, they even attack tanks with small arms. They simply do not have the weapons to deal directly with attack helicopters and jet bombers, or to attack tanks with tanks, or to battle artillery with their own. I strongly suspect if Hamas had the weaponry and training, it would do a much better job of hitting military targets as opposed to civilian ones. The Israelis have precision weapons, but still hit a ratio of military to civilian targets that is not substantially different from that of Hamas. Remember, in the last major invasion of Lebanon, Hizbollah had a higher ratio of killing civilians to militants than the IDF did, despite have much less accurate weapons.

Palestinians and Israelis have both observed cease-fires this decade. However, in terms of fatalities, Palestinians have gone weeks and sometimes months without killing Israelis (at least those not waging war outside Israeli borders), Israelis rarely go a week without killing several multiple Palestinians outside Israel.

Willing participation in a war crime is a criminal act. It is one thing to use the word "alleged" with reference to a suspect that hasn't been tried, when a crime has occurred it is perfectly valid to refer to individually unnamed perpetrators as criminals. Joining the IDF while it is the process of committing capital crimes is to willingly participate in those crimes.

Related to this discussion, did you know that Israel is far safer than the US even with retaliatory attacks by peoples they are trying to kill? The total number of Israeli civilians killed by violence in Israel (not including soldiers and people illegally in foreign lands) is small compared to rates in the US.

And by the way, I do not absolve US and UK military involved in Iraq or Afghanistan; they can claim to have be duped in the past, but to much info is out here to claim they are not at least criminally negligent.