It was.

Just ignore the elephant in the room.

JD, if the UN is not willing to help get Hamas to stop sending rockets into Israel, peace treaties are not kept by Hamas.  Please tell me what diplomatic route they have?  There is a long list of countries that have tried to build peace treaties but the rockets STILL continue to come into Israel.  In your opinion where exactly is the point where you say enough?

The UN doesn't do anything eventhough Hamas is commiting war crimes!

I would love to hear a diplomatic solution that hasn't already been suggested and/or failed!

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. 

Indeed.

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!

Dont forget how the fight genocide - they redefine it out of existance (except if it is Israel is the aggressor).

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.

Maybe it has something to do with the death count? estimated ~400 women+children vs 3 israeli civilians (and that's assuming every male killed isn't a civilian, which is pretty unlikely!). Maybe if Isreal were a little better at not slaughtering a ton of kids they wouldn't receive such bad press - bombing a UN school wasn't exactly the best PR move the Israeli's have made, for example.

I think Israel has a right to defend itself, but it should be proportionate in it's response. Undertaking operations that result in the sort of death counts mentioned before in response to a few of them being killed isn't proportionate IMO, and certainly doesn't suggest that extreme care is taken to avoid such casualties. Yes there may be a problem with Hamas using human shields, but when ~1/3 of the dead are thought to be children, there's only so much that can be excused with that.

Another possible reason for the lack of outcry is I expect there are a higher % of palestinians (and people with very strong sympathies towards them) outside of gaza/in other countries than there are Israelis. I've no idea if that really is the case (since I cant be bothered to look up all the statistics), but if it is, it would also suggest why you're more likely to see palestinians+supporters demonstrating against israeli agression than israelis demonstrating against Hamas agression.

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.

Adding a thought to my above quote, How does proportionate response end war? What constitutes proportionate response? You kill one, I kill one? Two for two? Three...etc.?

No....the rules of are clear, and dictate that you must kill the enemy; I'm sure that's the ideal to which Hamas is clinging, in its declaration to erase Israel. Should Israel allow it, then?

This is the new PC.  You kill 10 so I'm allowed to kill 10.  You kill 50 so I'm allowed to kill 50.....as long as it's even it's ok.  This is crap and the new  modern way of war propelled by the media . 

This is exactly right RW.  You shouldn't be worried about numbers when you go to war.  War is war. The objective needs to be to stop the enemy from destroying you and yours.   And sad to say, innocents do sometimes get caught in the crosshairs.  

If Israel had done what they needed to do back then we wouldn't be having this conversation.  But because of the intense pressure over the years for Israel to back off their enemies it's dragging on and on and on.  Let them fight their fight and let us stay out of it.  They don't need any backseat drivers telling them how many they are allowed to kill in a war.   A few of  the surrounding countries are not saying much like Jordan, Saudia Arabia and Egypt.  In fact they are uncharacteristically silent  about Israel fighting back because they want Hamas gone just as much as Israel does.  For Hamas to gain any foothold in the Middle East spells trouble for the whole area.

Actually Israel seems to be arguing 'you kill 10 so I'm allowed to kill 1000'...

A third of deaths being children is "sometimes"?! And thats before you even include the innocent men+women.

I know, how about Israel just kills the entire population of gaza? It'd stop the attacks from gaza afterall.

So you're supporting a stance where the US (and other countries) no longer support Israel, supply them with arms etc., then? (or if we do supply them with arms, then similarly that we should supply Hamas with arms so that we're not taking sides/are staying out of the fight).

And how many innocent Israeli children has Hamas and other terrorist groups murdered over the last 61 years? Or don't they count in your tally? If I were Israel, firebombing of the entire region would definitely be a carefully considered option.

We've supported Israel from the very beginning, and will until Doomsday; we have to. What we also should do, and have in the past, is to look the other way when they finally take serious steps to defend themselves. And shed no tears when people like you (no offense, but c'mon) wring their hands and cry for the ones who started it in the beginning.

Maudlin27, depends on how you calculate it.  Since Israel went on the offensive you could suggest such statistics.  Why didn't you include the number of civilians Hamas has killed during the cease fire, peace time, while Israel didn't strike back?  Why haven't I see you condemn Hamas' action of TARGETING Israeli civilians?  You recognized Hamas 'possibly' using civilians as human shields, yet you didn't condemn these war crimes (which we know they are doing)? 

Why aren't you complaining about Hamas' rockets being pointed at Sderot being unproportionate to Israeli attacks?  100% civlians in Sderot vs Israel targeting Hamas militia hiding behind civilians. 

Afterall, let's be 'fair?'