I don’t know why the Gazans are viewed as so ”innocent?” They knowingly elected Hamas, an organization who’s stated goal is the destruction of Israel and to make war on Israel. After their popularly elected government began attacking Israel, who is really to blame for the counterattack? Just Hamas or the majority of Gazans? I would think, the majority of Gazans. So please stop thinking of them as so ”innocent.”

They are innocent.

The Palestinians did not vote for Hamas because of the organization’s reputation for ”terrorism,” but they voted for Hamas because it is an un-corrupt party as opposed to the very corrupt Fatah. In the elections, the Palestinians did not vote for Hamas vs. Fatah, but, rather, they voted for Candidate A who is clean vs. Candidate B who is dirty. It just so happens that most Candidate As are Hamas. So they were not voting for rockets into Israel, but were voting for a clean government.

And as for the rockets. Who’s engaging in aggression against whom? The state of Israel refused to recognize the democratic choice of the Palestinian people, and, instead, has maintained a three-year long economic blockade against the entire 1.5 million civilian population in Gaza. Such collective punishment is not only cruel and immoral, but is illegal under international law. Israel controls Gaza’s borders, air and water space. It energy too. Israel may no longer have illegal settlements in Gaza, but it has maintained an occupation under a new mutation. Hamas is just resisting against that cruelty.

The people of Palestine are innocent, not just in this conflict but in the history of the entire conflict. Read the history of the conflict, you will find that the Zionist movement started all of this due to their use of violence and ethnic cleansing to establish a Jewish state on Arab/Palestinian land. I recommend you visit the site http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
and learn about what’s really happening.

The fact is that Gazans knew they were voting for an organization whose stated aim was the destruction of Israel. Whether they could achieve their goals ”with less corruption” is really irrelevant to us.
Then the shelling from Hamas started. What if Mexico were shelling the US to get California back? Should the US just capitulate?
I also strongly disagree with your characterization of the Palestinians being this peace-loving group subject to ”ethnic cleansing” by the ”evil” Zionists. You seem extremely prejudiced against Jews trying to get their ancestral homeland back. The fact is that Jews always lived in Palestine since over 2000 years ago. More started returning to their ancestral homeland in the 20th century, in numbers that started to alarm local Arabs. This finally led to
armed conflicts when Arabs would raid and attack Jewish communities there.
See the following, quoted from the Mufti of Jerusalem:
“Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: ’The Jews are yours.’” - Former Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini in his post-WWII memoirs.

”The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan... He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures.” - Adolf Eichmann’s deputy Dieter Wisliceny (subsequently executed as a war criminal) in his Nuremburg Trials testimony.

The end of World War I brought an end to the Ottoman colonization of Palestine. Towards the end of the war, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration supporting the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people . . . .” The original reaction of the Arabs was mixed. While many Arabs opposed the Zionists, Emir Faisal – who was the son of former Mecca ruler Sherif Hussein and later King of Iraq – signed in 1919 a declaration in support of the Balfour Declaration, even supporting all necessary measures “...to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale, and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil.”

you have a point, they knowing voted for terrorist so they are to blame just as we voted for a war monger ”TWICE” so we are also to blame.

Your reasoning that the Palestinians deserved the bombs falling over their heads is akin to Bin Ladin’s justification of terrorism against Americans. Bin Ladin simply employs your logic. After all, the American people ”voted” for successive governments that stationed American troops in Saudi Arabia, enacted sanctions against Iraq that killed over 500,000 people, and sided with Israel over the Palestinians. If you truly believe that civilians are proper targets if they voted for a government that pursued damaging policies, then do not cry foul when that logic is turned against you and your country. Bin Ladin justifies terrorism under the exact same pretext.

Civilians are never to be targeted. Terrorism is terrorism, there isn’t one standard for one people and another for others.

Marco,

It’s strange that in your vehemence, you equate defending Israel and justifying it’s retaliation against Hamas to ”Bin Laden’s terrorism against Americans.” Anyone with any sense and decency sees through your specious logic. Defending yourself from aggression, i.e. rockets falling on your head, is not the same as being angry that someone else (Israel) has land that you think belongs to you (Palestinians). If you take up arms to try to get it back by terrorizing your opponent, don’t expect them to take it lying down.
Also, I never said that civilians should be targeted, although you implied this. All I’m saying is Gaza’s problem is of its own making, and I don’t see why we should fund the rebuilding (and re-arming) of our avowed enemies and the enemies of our friends.
This is the mistake we made in Kosovo. The bleeding heart liberals wanted to help the Kosovars who were being attacked by the Serbians after starting an insurgency against Serbia. Although you could try to justify America’s rescuing of Kosovo from Serbia on the basis of ”human rights.” What did we really achieve in the end? How did we help America? Well, we actually hurt ourselves. We established a new Muslim country in the heart of Europe, we weakened a non-Muslim country, we caused to be a new base of operations for training Islamic militias who would later fight against us in Iraq, we pissed off Russia which later retaliated against our allies in Georgia, and we essentially got no gratitude for the whole adventure from the entire Muslim world.
I think ”human rights” is a false idea based on nothing and opposed to human freedoms. It’s a way for one party to demand and get something from another party - land, food, water, power, whatever. It’s a way for one group of people without power to subjugate another group who currently has power. When we support our enemies and the enemies of our friends on the basis of human rights, we are hurting ourselves and our friends and helping our enemies. Period. Russia, China, and India get this idea. The liberal fools of Europe and the West have been deluded into supporting human rights at the expense of their own sovereignty and the interests of their own people.
My basic point is this - rights and freedoms are not the same. Our constitution guaranteed our freedoms - freedom from persecution, unfair taxation, freedom to speak, freedom to assemble, freedom to defend yourself, and freedom to vote. There was no mention of the right to a decent wage, the right to a roof over your head, the right to health insurance, the right to 3 square meals a day, the right to 2 cars and 3 vacations a year, etc. Don’t you see that ”human rights” is a delusion? There can be no guarantee of human rights because they are just human ”wants”. The only thing that should be guaranteed is freedoms - as mentioned above and glorified in our constitution. Anything else is a power grab, a land transfer, a wealth transfer, and essentially robbery, dressed up in a deceitfully saintly package.