Excellent point.

The problem is that they cant even prove it to themselves .... not only that ... they dont even learn from their past actions. They launched these kinds of attacks and demolition countless times ... and it has never achieved their stated objective. ... i.e. inner and/or outer peace.

as they say ... you cant keep doing the same thing by the same method and expect a different result.

They have and continue to totally ignore simple facts of life and history. You cant occupy people's lands and expect to have inner and/or outer peace .... Iraq, as you mentioned, is a clear proof of that even though they hated the regime we dismantled.

the way to peace is clear to all and known since time immorial ... no need to even mention it here. we all know it .... but some think they can defy history and proven human nature.

In the Op-Ed article you refered to ... he mentioned that someone in the Israeli military leadership said "The palestenians must be convinced down to their most inner subconcious that they are a defeated people".

In a way, he is right since this is the only way Israel thinks it can achieve its inner/outer peace ...

The problem is ... that will never ever happen ... never in the history of mankind is there such a thing as that which he is asking the palestenians to do. it is a pipe dream ....

peace will be achieved when Israel wakes up from that pipe dream.

Trust me, I am not an Israel hater. I just don't see how what they are doing now will lead to peace. They should have taken a more diplomatic route. Thier current course of action just does not SOLVE anything. That was my point. They are proviong to themselves that they can still kick ass.

I agree their actions will not actually solve anything, however I do not think they should take the diplomatic route either.  Israel is doing what will be more effective, because you can't reason with people who simply hate you.  There is no diplomatic solution, at least for now.

JD they have tried time and time again and all that happens is it gets broke after some time and rockets just keep coming. There is no way you can have a diplimatic solution to something when one group would love nothing better to see Isreal not exist any more.

You cannot be diplomatic with someone who will move heaven and earth to kill you even willing to die as a martyr to do so.  The only way to deal with them is by brute force.  It's the only option.  One has to overpower the other.  That's a fact.  It's not ideal but it is realistic.  Look at history.  WW1 WW2 etc.  It's only when one comes completely on top can there be true peace. 

The problem today is the media is calling the shots.  Alot in the name of war has changed as a result of Vietnam.  War is fought via the media where everything is scruntintzed and played over and over again.  Everything has to be even....if they kill 10 guys then the other side can kill 10 guys, but if one kills too many then the world turns on the top dog.  Lord help if any civilians get hurt....remember Nagasaki?  Hiroshima?  It's war.  War is not pretty but as long as we have humans cloaked in human flesh we will always have one who wants to rule another. 

It's important to remember that Hamas, not Israel broke a negotiated six-month cease-fire by lobbing rockets into Israeli towns in order to provoke retaliation.  Hamas has once again demonstrated that they care nothing of the Palestinians whom they profess to represent. 

There's a reason why Egypt, Jordan and Saudia Arabia are being uncharacteristically silent.  They have no use for Hamas and are silently wishing well for Israel to overpower Hamas. 

Besides I think this whole thing is just a distraction by Iran who is funding Hamas anyhow.  Once Iran has nuclear capabilities (and they are moving in that direction) the whole world changes. 

really?  And I thought that's how we got Hitler. 

If it wasn't for war, Hitler would be owning quite a bit of Real Estate by now. 

You wage war to remove the capability of the enemy to threaten you.  The Allies did not accept any conditional surrender of either Japan or Germany (they remembered WWI).  They did not stop the war until the ability of the enemy to wage war was eliminated.

IN that, Israel is still threatened.  Peace is easy.  Stop threatening them.  Israel did not make the first move, but they will make the last move.  Their enemies know this truth, and until their ability to wage war and inflict damage is eliminated, no overtures of peace are going to do anything except waste hot air and time.

Israel has all rights to defend it self and attack the hamas in gaza , but they aren't doing themselves a favour by pissing of the Red Cross and not caring about civilian losses or at least really pretend to care about civilian losses. They will have a few months rest after the attack and then it will start again, like it did dozen times before.

The Problem is that any military action which would minimize civilian losses would increase the short-time losses on side of the israel army and therefore is no real option for a democratic elected government which wants to stay in power; but in the long run those civilian losses will cause more bloodshed on both sides than taking out the hamas with lots of surgical operations with special forces and precision air strikes.

It was.

Just ignore the elephant in the room.

exactly.  What needs to done is ALL THE NATIONS need to surround wicked groups like Hamas and say ENOUGH!  That will put a stop to it directly.  None of this pussyfooting around.

I had three boys.  When one waged war on another, I, as the dictator in my home, put a stop to it!   If the offender didn't comply I made his life miserable until he got the clear message. So we didn't have too many wars.  In fact it was very rare.    Sounds tough but sometimes you have to be tough to get the job done. 

Plain and simple.  Make the punishment worse than the crime. 

UN get a backbone????? LOL your funny. If there is any one area in politics that is such a pushover more than the UN please point it out.... because the UN is nothing but wimps....for crying out loud they got nations that put fricken padding on polls in public so unintentive cell phone users wont hurt themselves!

One thing I've often wondered is this: why is there never an outcry until Israel starts shooting back? Unprovoked attacks on Israel are a commonplace event, and Israel will take alot, really. But the world will avert its eyes, whistling and twiddling its thumbs, until the eventual counter-attack opens. That's when they'll angrily hit the streets in Paris, London, NYC, etc., burning Israeli flags and essentially calling for Israel to stop defending itself; to be more tolerant. Tolerant?

They've been "at war" since 1948. the Arabs long, long ago declared their opposition to Israel, and their intention to destroy it. From everything I've ever seen and heard, the Israelis would happily live in peace and cooperation with their Palestinian Arab (Muslim) neighbors. Problem is, of  course, the Arabs as a people hate them, and won't allow it, much less want it, and they keep stirring the pot, making hatred of the Jews and their nation an official policy of governments, saturating everything from  education to entertainment. The Nazis, the Klan, and their ideological kin, are reviled for this, yet the Arabs are permitted their views. Why?                                                                                                                                                                                  I've seen many examples of (Muslim) propaganda from that part of the world, and none of it proposes tolerant acceptance of Israel, or its existence, or even the existence of the Jews as a people. Indeed, it paints them as apes, dogs, pigs; it insists that they're pathologically, irredeemably evil, and should all be killed.

Until this view is dismissed, crushed, by the Arab people, there will never really be peace in the region. But there is no indication of this happening any time soon. They indoctrinate their children with Jew-hatred.

Israel, the one civilized, democratic nation in the region (except for Iraq now, of course, heh-heh-heh) has every right to defend itself, by any means at their disposal, the collateral damage and Palestinian body counts be damned; they should have thought of that before they hit "launch". Of course, I'm sure they did; it adds to the anti-Israeli propaganda.

The one bright spot in this, however, is that Israeli missles hit a UN compound. Every cloud, indeed, has a silver lining.

Tell it to Harry Truman, circa 8/6/45; I'm sure the Japanese feel the same way you do.

Thank you for your reply, but I don't think Israel has ever considered itself to be at the mercy of PR; if they did, they probably would have been wiped out long ago. Israel has always had to be very practical in its reaction to its circumstances, and is probably the one nation in the world that still possesses that practicality as concerning its national defense.

Why should the Israelis be "proportionate" in their response? After decades of killings by suicide bombers (some known to jump on school buses, BTW), car/truck bombers, shootings, war, threats of war, barbaric, anti-Israeli propaganda, etc., I see no reason why they should do anything but whatever needs done to destroy the enemy. They're surrounded by nations that literally want them exterminated; not just as a nation, but as a people, as well.

Those enemy nations are not civilized and tolerant, as we Westerners are encouraged, even coerced, to be. Otherwise, they would long ago have learned to live with the Israelis and this topic wouldn't even be an issue. But, that's not the case.