While Israel continues to call the rockets from Gaza "intolerable," Gaza is subjected to sometimes daily or nightly attacks using warplanes, tanks and other sophisticated weaponry PAID FOR WITH MY TAXES. An occasional Israeli is injured; a rare Israeli is killed; hundreds of Gazans are killed or jailed every year. I find that intolerable, when Israel could create peace in the Middle East in five minutes by ending its illegal occupation and accepting the Arab plan for peace.

The US and Israel share this penchant for "getting" one terrorist (or resistance fighter) even though, in the process, his/her family and friends also die. In 2006, we paid Iraqis $19,000,000 in reparations for civilian family members we accidentally killed in 2005. Also in 2006, Iraq pleaded with the US to stop its raids on residences because we were killing so many civilians. But, no, we had A Job to Do, you see, the War on Terror, but were sure sorry about the collateral damage. We could create peace in Iraq by ending our occupation and getting the heck out of that poor, beleagured country. Only our absence will allow Iraq to heal.

In fact, if we gave up the War on Terror,and Israel gave up Zionism, and tried instead to be good neighbors to the world, we might do more to end terrorism (or resistance, depending on your point of view) in a week than continuing Bush's "War" until we hunt down and kill every terrorist in the world.

Israel is a barbaric terrorist state and it is supported by an equally barbaric administration in the United States. These two "rogue" countries have created more "terrorists" than they could ever hope to eliminate. Justice must come...but when.

I pray that in Middle-Eastern Geo-Politics there will be a reaction, equal and opposite to the action; as in physics, and that I will live to see it.

That sixty years of murder and baby-killing and child-torturing (Khiam) will be answered, avenged, and that I will live to see it.

I have buried a child. As have so many thousands and thousands of Palestinians at the hands of the Zionist-Killers.

Google Khiam if you have not. Israel TORTURES CHILDREN as well as killing, bombing families in their sleep.

Star of David...that's a Swastika. Google Khiam, anyone who disagrees.

For some comic relief Google, 'ISRAELI COMBAT PILOTS VIAGRA'

The painful truth that innocents suffer as a result of alleged counter-terrorist "surgical strikes" is easily nullified by the well-oiled cognitive dissonance employed by the Reich of Zion's homicidal ministers and their apologists.

The Reich spokespersons will readily express faux-dismay and regret for the loss of innocent life, but in the same breath follow up such sops to propriety by insisting that the blame, the moral onus, remains squarely with the Palestinian terrorists who committed unprovoked and unjustified violence against the Reich in the first place.

Wielding a veritable bouquet of fig leaves as old-time strippers once wielded fans during their provocative fan-dances, Zionist apologists will reject the suggestion that their angels of death should be in any way daunted or discouraged from their lethal strikes by considering the wanton slaughter, maiming, and destruction wrought by their attacks on the chosen target. The lexicon of warmongery and wholesale bloodshed has even given us the deliciously anasthetic term "collateral damage" to objectify and depersonalize such actions.

This philosophy, to dignify their base and self-serving rationalizations with the term, is remarkably similar to the extremist terrorist view that there really are no "innocents"-- that any enemy citizen is fair game, because anyone who is not with the terrorist is against him. Thus do extreme opposites ultimately meet, each claiming the moral high ground.

Only a Zionist sycophant would stomach the gag-inducing perfunctory "apologies" and "regrets" from Israeli officials after the latest atrocity that even sound ironic, at best. Translated, the Zionist Reich's position mirrors the approach of protection-racket goons in mobster films: "Those were some pretty nice civilians you had there-- it'd be a shame if they were wiped out because somebody wants to keep giving The Boss trouble!"

When George W Bush says "Israel is our ally, and we will do anything to defend our ally", what he and the US administration really mean, is that they will turn a blind eye to any of the atrocities which Israel is guilty of.

Genocide is genocide.

No other name for it.

"Collateral Damage" = genocide.

Israeli treatment of Palestinians = genocide.

US backing of Israel = complicity in genocide.

US War On Iraq = genocide.

These are NOT "mistakes" .. it is GENOCIDE.

One thing for certain:

US made bombs and missiles are being used in the same barbaric fashion in Gaza as well as Iraq and Afghanistan.

We did it in Panama as well.

This is one payback coming that I hope never to see here.

it has been said OVER and OVER, we must get RID of the Bush Insanity and Impeach the Bastard and his group of self serving money Mongers. then we tell Israel to take a hike and fend for itself. they won't last very long. There will Never be peace in the Middle East but we do not need to be part of the problem like we are now.

No, thats collateral damage when there is an unfortunate early termination of life function of indigenous humanoids.

I just got off the Ralph Nader letter to Bush thread and somebody said that he is running with the Greens again.

Nader will put an end to this madness and I am told he is the only legit candidate.

We are saved!

Don't worry everthing is connected.

Creating Israel was a mistake, but now that it exists, why does the US have to look away from every horrific thing it does? Is it because of the Bible or is it because Israel gives the US a good excuse to keep a military presence in the oil-rich Middle East, or is it both?

NRA: You are a victim of disinformation. Israel has placed its bases and weaponry in residential areas. This is not talked about. The resistance fights at home, so they go home at night. You want them to stand outside to be easier targets or what? They are occupied!! Think about it.

NRA, you must be a complete idiot! If a combatant is hiding in a school, hospital, church, or any other place, then he is hiding, not combating. If any soldier, gets fired upon from any school, church..., then that soldier has every right, and the responsibility to subdue, apprehend, or kill that person.
You, I am sure are, another right-wing nut job who uses excuses such as these to help you feel better about yourself for what you actually believe in. How many people do you think "allow combatants" to hide in their homes? I wonder how many combatants force their way into homes, hospitals, churches (in your case Mosques), to "hide". Oh yea, Society allows them!

Where is our HQ? D.C.!

This is really shocking. The brutality of the Israeli occupation, bankrolled by my taxdollars never ceases to revolt.

When societies allow combatants to hide in hospitals, mosques and schools, then patients, worshippers and students will die. And it is the society who allows this fault, no one elses.

So you're saying the 9/11 attacks were justified?

You know, NRA, if there's a bad guy holed up in a bank, holding a bunch of people hostage, the police don't blow up the bank to get the bad guy. Do they?

ticonderoga says:

"Creating Israel was a mistake, but now that it exists, why does the US have to look away from every horrific thing it does? Is it because of the Bible or is it because Israel gives the US a good excuse to keep a military presence in the oil-rich Middle East, or is it both?"

When enough "deals" are made among evil men/players, each and all having their own particular interests, it's as Ariel Sharon said before his stroke: We have America by the short hairs, the cohones, the ears, whatever.

This Bush Administration has been mouthing meaningless platitudes for a long time, post 9/11, about the treatment of the Palestinians, about renewing the peace negotiations, the whole nine yards. And then ... NOTHING. We send how many billions of dollars regularly to Israel as part of that nation's "allowance," paid for by U.S. taxpayers? We have supplied Israel with nuclear power up the ying-yang, 200-300-400 nuclear missiles. They want to control the region; we want the region controlled for the oil.

Israel also happens to have demolition experts that are referred to sometimes as the best in the world. Who are those Israeli men jumping up and down in glee next to that mysterious white van across the Hudson in New Jersey as the Twin Towers were first hit and later began exploding? Someone video-taped them. See the documentary "Loose Change" for a little bit of explanation. Deals, deals, deals and more deals ... mutually assured blackmail.

Similarly our do-nothing Houses of Congress winks and blinks as the unwritten Articles of Impeachment pile up ... High Treason and High Crimes and Misdemeanors have been committed by the Bush Administration for a little more than seven years ... with one to go, but, oh, there's no room on the table for IMPEACHMENT or The Constitution. Just room for deals, kick-back monies, assurance of re-election big-money help or substantive appointments or whatever, and mutually assured blackmail likely. Who's got what on whom to keep the key players in line?

Follow the money all the way to the top 1%; follow the network of deals, and the lies about the deals, and all the smarmy characters who have sold their souls. ... Mutually assured blackmail. That's the way I see it, ... pure evil.

******ticonderoga again says:
"You know, NRA, if there's a bad guy holed up in a bank, holding a bunch of people hostage, the police don't blow up the bank to get the bad guy. Do they?"

Sure they do, if they are cowards, and if they can exterminate more people of the wrong side or if pure evil begets more pure evil or if the evil intent is to incite a people to war, or break the will of a people the easier to plunder their land for its resources.

The games are as old as time. And when the true EVIL-DOERS cheated their way into power, the scenario changed from reasonable hope for a better world to shudders because of the huge, slimey things growing and flowing out of the sewers.

Just the vocabulary: wiping up, wiping out, taking out, mopping up, eradicating, erasing, exterminating, eliminating the people, towns, the cities, the region, and all those BAD GUYS. Brutality reigns. Civilization and civilized ways perish.

EVIL is a word I didn't used to use. But it is a fully appropriate word now in all it's cold- blooded heartlessness. Polka dot and shocking pink taser guns to wear with the latest Spring fashions.

What are we? Who are we?

And all of us talk about it here in all its many manifestations.

But it seems now to have a life of its own.

Here's a question for you, Cee: Why was Israel created in the first place? Was it because the world felt a collective guilt for the way the Jewish people were treated by Nazi Germany during World War II, or was it because the allies, especially the US and Britain, knew full well that if they created Israel they'd have an excuse to maintain a presence in the oil-rich Middle East?

That is, was the oil in the Middle East the reason for the creation of Israel, or did the creation of Israel turn out to simply be a convenient excuse for the US to maintain a presence in the Middle East? Chicken or the egg? Which came first?

My guess is that Israel was created for financial reasons to PROVIDE an excuse, instead of BECOMING an excuse after it was created for collective psychological reasons, but I'm wondering what you think about it.

Ticonderoga: You probably do not know what you should know about the creation of Israel. Google "Benjamin Freedman's Speech at the Willard Hotel in 1961" and when you have found a site with the text of that speech, read it. You will be a lot wiser man. Call me a nut case if you will, but in the same way the Bush Administration deliberately ALLOWED 9-11 to happen, probably not realizing how horrific it was going to be, and Roosevelt ALLOWED Pearl Harbor to happen, because he did not believe torpedoes could be dropped from planes and did not realize how horrific it was going to be, well, in the same way, the World Jewish Congress and its Zionist leaders deliberately PROVOKED the Holocaust, probably not realizing how horrific and eficient the German industrial killing machine was going to be. The Zionist motive was to provoke Germany to persecute Jews in order to drive the Jews to emigrate to Israel and populate it with Jews. It was nothing at all to do with oil. In those days the Middle East was a minor oil producer - the United States was the world's major oil producer of the time, and in the past 100 years the USA has produced many times more oil than Saudi Arabia ever will. The Zionists however never thought their provocation would result in attempted mass extermination of the entire race. Samuel Untermeyer returned from the World Jewish Congress in Amsterdam (I believe) in 1933 (note that date,) got off the ship in New York and announced to the waiting press that the Jews of the world hereby declared war on Hitler's Germany. Front-page banner headlines in newspapers around the world. You can find .pdf images of those newspapers in many places on the Web. The resulting Holocaust 9 years later was simply the law of unintended consequences in action. And Israel (or rather, the success of Israel, not just its existence) is the result of the Holocaust, which was fully intended by the World Jewish Congress' Zionists. A lot of Jews don't even know this, their own history. The creation of Israel had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with oil. It was a vision of the Zionists (as they came to be called) which was hatched way back in the late 1800's - their own homeland for the Jews of the world.

An F-16, eh? An American-built product, purchased with US military aid funds, and used to commit a war crime. You'd think that there would be laws to prevent just this sort of thing.

The article does not make clear that it has not been established in any way that it was a f-16 missile attack. Indeed, Hamas initially denied that it was, then warned people away from the debris as several unexploded rockets were feared to be in the debris. Local witnesses described parts of locally produced rockets in the debris. Seeing as how the leader that was killed was a rocket specialist, it seems at least as likely that he was storing rockets around his home and accidentally blew himself up. Witnesses are mixed, with some saying that they thought it was a missile attack while others say that no jets were seen at the time of the attack.

I suggest that judgement be withheld until an investigation is conducted. Unfortunatly, this may be difficult as Hamas has been reported as having cleaned the site.

If it was indeed a Israeli missile, there must be some evidence of rocket fragments found at the site.

Withholding judgement until more facts come in.

The world needs to call this what it is. This is the outright slaughter of the innocent! There is no excuse that is acceptable for this kind of butchery.
Israel must stand trial at the international level for her crimes. The hypocrisy of talking about truth and justice and democracy within the world community, but allowing Israel to continue to do this is rank. Absolutely rank. It stinks. Period.

Spartacus, I'm sorry but I can't sit and let such a canard as "the Jews caused their own destruction by the Nazi's" to go unremarked. The idea that the Nazi's did not have a beef with Jews until Mr. Untermyer called for a boycott of German goods is absurd. Hitler outlined his ideas about the jews very precisely in Mein Kampf in 1925, eight years before the boycott. Hitler took power in January 1933 with his Enabling laws taking effect in March 1933. In April he ordered a one day boycott of all Jewish shops in Germany. Untermyer did not call for a boycott of German goods until August.

Hitler did not need some sort of "retaliation" reason for exterminating the Gypsies, Slavs, ect. He needed NO reason to carry out his threats against the Jews, other than his own intense hatreds.

I am surprised that a site like Common Dreams, which is supposed to promote peace and understanding, has become a safe haven for every kind of ethnic hatred you can think of, as long as a particular political view is expressed.

Such obvious racism as expressed above is something that I would more expect from "Stormfront" or like kind sites.

P.S. I'm not Jewish or Pro-Israel so save your breath. It's just that "the jews caused their own destruction by their treachery" is exactly what they are saying in the Aryan Nations camps here in the states and elsewhere. And it is a demonstrable lie.

Israel has continually broken international law since 1967, by refusing to obey UN Security Council resolutions.

The US invaded Iraq to force them to obey Sec. Coun. resolutions
(P.L. 107-243), did you know? The US considered international law important enough to go to war over.

Why does the US ignore Israel's repeated law-breaking?
Is Israel special? When they break the law they are not criminals?

By international law, the Israelis are criminals.

Why would anyone support the criminals and not the victims in the Middle East?

From the very beginning these terrorists have been fleeing into crowded civilian areas and using them as cover, intentionally......... In the knowledge that attempts to pursue them will result in many innocent deaths, knowing also that if the "shield" doesn't work, the press value of so called "collateral damage" in which many innocents are killed is valuable. They are in effect sacrificing their own people for political gain. You do not torment bears and then run back into a schoolyard bringing an angry bear into the midst of children. One cannot expect Israel to simply stand by silently and tolerate attacks on their people. The terrorists are responsible for this...... not Israel which is taking the only option left to them to fight back..... the terrorists, and those who allow them to shelter amongst them are responsible here. No nation on earth could stand by passively and allow their people to be murdered by car bombs, suicide bombers, and rocket attacks and mount no response. Those who condemn Israel for this need to take a moment and place their own feet in Israeli shoes for a moment. Not one Israeli attack to my knowledge has ever been anything but a fairly specific response against those who attacked them and took shelter among innocents. Israeli warplanes do not simply go out and hammer refugee camps and such for the fun of it. The ball lies in the other court here.
Take a look if you will at American response to such things, and the Israeli response seems surgical and reasonable in the extreme by comparison. A single act of terrorism on our soil and we create a police state at home, as well broadly attacking an entire nation which was not in fact "responsible"for the attack, and overthrowing it's government. setting up another, killing many thousands of people.......and then move on and attack another nation that had no connection at all with the event...... total cost in lives probably exceeds half a million all told by a considerable amount so far.

Howard

When an Arab straps on a bomb and blows up some civilians in a coffee shop, it's a crime against humanity. When an Israeli drops a bomb on civilian neighborhood, it's collateral damage. Same intentions, same effects, but different interpretations. When they do it, they're evil. When we do it, it's justified. Hypocrisy gone murderously mad.

"Shelling a house in the middle of a residential district, inevitably killing and injuring children and women…this is evidence of their failings."

This is not evidence of their failings. Its actually evidence of their success in committing such terrorist acts and passing it off as collateral damage.

As for 'bligh', i wish you would feel the same outrage towards this wanton crime committed by israel as you feel towards some posters supposed racism. If you cannot tell the difference its time to revisit your conscience that you claim to relish so much.

Israel in it's backer, the US, should face international sanctions for massive hman rights abouses.

As for bligh, he's right. As much as I detest zionism I also know anti-semitism when I see it and unfortunately I see it all too often on supposedly progressive boards. We carry the diseases of our society and culture within us: racism, anti-semitism, national bigotry, sexism, materialism . . . Denial is part of the probelm, if you're an American, you're sick too. Recognizing it and fighting these deeply embedded tendancies is part of the struggle to shed the old and become the new, better person. Revolution doesn't just happen outside of us, we too must change who we are and how we relate to each other.

Gyptian, I'm very comfortable with my own conscience thank you. The jury is still out as to whether this is a "wanton crime" or a bombing by other factions, or an accident caused by storing rockets in a residence. If it turns out to be an Israeli attack, I will of course condemn it.

You, by contrast, apparently agree with the post that I had a problem with. ie the Nazi genocide of the jews was caused by the jews themselves. If this is the case, then I suggest you go to www.stormfront.org, where this exact idea is propounded and supported.

Sorry if my call for racial harmony offended your sensibilities.

least we forget, the so-called mentally ill and handicapped were the first groups to feel the heat of the Nazi extermination procedures. The larger project of extermining Jews, gay people and the Roma kicked in after they'd fine tuned the process.
Getting back to the above article... if you ask the commanders in charge of attacks on the Palistinian leadership they'll say that killing women and children and neighbours is just being THOROUGH.

And they were just following orders . . .

The mafia use to do that...kill the other guy, the other guy's family, and anyone else close to the other guy. It is called organized crime.

Tis a sad reality

The land grab in the middle east. Ocean front, extremely valuable property inhabited by 1.5 million 3rd world residents. It is natural human instinct to resist, and the worlds war machines are built upon the anticipation that an enemy will surface.

And when they do, considering the costs involved, collateral damage is justified in a mind of madness.

What baffles me it how intelligent people like most Jews can possibly think attacks like this are effective? It almost makes ME want to become a suicide bomber and I'm far away and very comfortable, I can only imagine how I would feel if I was right on top of it all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rD_rWcDRZQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O125hGt9qt4&feature=related

what a sesspool of hate this site is!!!! YECCCH!!! I feel defiled even reading these posts