These policies are completely self defeating if the goal is peaceful negotiation, though I am increasingly convinced this is not the goal of Kadima, Likud, or other Israeli conservatives.

Clinton had a paper agreed to and Arafat couldn’t get it done. That put an end to ‘negotiations’.

It isn’t about politics within Israel except that there is a militant minority who want to take all the West Bank. They must be dealt with as the Palestinian militants. I say clear a free fire zone and let all the militants enter into a death fight for that land! Put the radical militants on the front lines with adequate weapons, with skin in the ‘game’ and see how they feel about it then.

I think I would have been a suicide bomber if I was Palestinian. I would have been dead long ago if I had been forced into the situation in which Palestinians have been living these several generations.

Of course, that path is insane.

Keep doing what doesn’t work and yet expecting a different result.

It’s as insane as Israel NOT responding to rocket attacks.

So these pro-killing supporters are suggesting it’s okay to attack and remove a democratically elected government?

Consider America in Iraq:

When we first went in we were overthrowing a dictator. Good or bad?
When we freed Iraqis from the dictator. Good or bad?
When it was discovered there were no nukes. Freeing Iraqis: legal or illegal?
When we stayed as (colonial) occupiers. Good or bad?
When democracy seems to be taking hold. Good or freakish luck despite being the result of war crimes?

Israel fights it’s neighbors. Good or bad?

War is by definition bad for somebody. Whether it is avoidable seems significant at times, but often is mooted by real politik. Still, in all that, we tend to condemn warring based on aggression or some other stupid agenda/purpose like Dubya’s “God told me to free the world.” despite it being criminal (anti-Constitutional and anti-U.N.).

It’s really simple. Rockets hit deeper and deeper into Israel. They must stop the attacks. It’s their right! It’s their duty.

Where it gets complicated is when the people involved don’t respond simply, but based on their age-old hatreds and feelings about the land and honor and the way their religious views are tied into American actions around the world, with Israel and the whole Western Civilization Colonialists vs. the timid shy helpless little rock-throwing Palestinians.

Someday they’ll get tired of their children dying and then peace will be a comfort. Of course, this is nothing new. Golda Meir said as much several decades ago.

I know I believe that the response of the federal government in the wake of Katrina was tantamount to ethnic cleansing with respect to New Orleans; I know it was an economic cleansing with regard to the wider gulf region. No real attempt was made to return minority members to their homes; economically disadvantaged were also disenfranchised, but the toll was greatest among minority members. What differentiates the response of the U.S. government is only a degree of action — a passive-aggressive response, versus a pointed aggressive response. Is this another difference between “mere” ethnic cleansing and genocide?

Am I pro-dissident-party-of-the-week to even entertain the question of the government’s lack of appropriate response to the plight of its citizens?

And it gets tedious to hear people who are an intrinsic part of the problem label us as “pro-Hamas” or pro-any-political-group, as if the average citizen and their children on any street anywhere in the world who may be subjected to unnecessary violence must have no one speak out for them without having a vested political position. Real political freedom here in the U.S. means not having to take political sides except with those who suffer, regardless of politics.

I also love the “you’re not real jews” arguments levied at Yglesias et al.
Who’s the anti-semite again?