Israel is the only country I can think of that is expected to take shelling with a smile and not return fire with equal or superior force.
I have broken my blood oath and read some ridiculous liberal bloggers who think that it is just inexplicable that Israel is using phosphorous based weapons against the poor, oppressed Palestinians in Gaza.
Can we have a moment of sanity?
If Gaza had not been shelling Israel, perhaps Israel wouldn't feel the need to shell Gaza? If Gaza didn't import every weapon it can get its hands on from other Israeli enemies across its border perhaps Israel wouldn't feel the need to control traffic across the border in much the same way that international borders are controlled everywhere.
If Mexico started shelling Houston, it is a safe bet that the United States would shell Mexico in return. And if it didn't, quite a few Texans would get the weapons to shell Mexico on its own. And the U.S. would use superior weapons to those possessed by Mexico.
Palestinians reported to Human Rights Watch, a group funded interestingly enough by money from the estates of Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammet and yet supported by self loathing Jew Noam Chomsky that Israel was using the phosphorus based weapons which are not considered chemical weapons by international law. The Palestinians have no reason to lie about Israel, do they? According to spokesmen for the Israelis, the IDF or Israeli Defense Forces do not use weapons that are banned by international law.
If Palestinians are shelling Israel out of UN facilities, the Israeli forces have every right to shell the UN facilities which stopped being neutral when Palestinians fired rockets out of them.
A two state solution is the only solution. But Israel has been out of Gaza for years and Gaza is supplied weapons across its borders that they fire at will across Israel's borders. This must stop. And children are always the innocent victims of war be they children in Gaza, children in Israel, children in Japan or Germany or Vietnam or Iraq. Is Hamas using its own as shields and targets for Israeli defense forces and then crying foul when Israel kills them? Is this the moral equivalent of human suicide bombers?
Many of you are too young to remember the days of dinner parties with Black Panthers and the radical chic of partying with bomb building anarchist and Weathermen (may be not that young since we have been revisiting the Weathermen of late) but this liberal support of Palestinians is beyond me. I don't get it just as I don't understand the desire to party with terrorist, homegrown or foreign. They cheered when the World Trade Center came down. Academics love the anti-Semites. I do not love walking into the faculty lounge and seeing Al Jazeera on every computer screen.
If the IDF has committed war crimes, they should be punished just as Americans who committed war crimes in Vietnam and most recently Iraq should be punished. These things happen on every side in every conflict. Will Hamas be punished? Is it really acceptable to the American left who can't get George Bush and Dick Cheney punished by a Democratic Congress for their war crimes that Hamas get a a free pass too.We let George Bush take us to war on a lie and then let him return to Texas with our blessings. We impeached a man for a sexual indiscretion but not for war crimes? And we feel comfortable in our own homes to criticize countries half way around the world that our own students cannot find with a map. Will Hamas come to an international court of law and act like civilized countries act? Or will they denounce international law, the rule of law, the community of nations as some "jewish trick?"
