Latest reports indicate that Israel has rejected the French call for a 48 hour truce to allow humanitarian supplies to enter Gaza but may consider other cease fire options later. While there were fewer Israeli air strikes overnight- in part due to bad weather, more details of civilian casualties in Gaza are appearing:

On the fourth day of airstrikes in Gaza Tuesday, one of Israel’s many targets was a Hamas military commander’s home within the teeming Jabaliya refugee camp. He wasn’t there, but seven civilians died as a result of that attack…

Israelis claim the high ground by arguing that even though they fight terrorists who deliberately target civilians, they try to uphold a spirit of "purity of arms" by avoiding civilian casualties as much as possible.

Critics counter that by putting Palestinian towns under blockade and going after militants in civilian areas, Israel makes noncombantants targets.

For Ziad Koraz, whose nearby home was damaged in the attack on the government compound Tuesday, that violence gratuitously puts Gazan civilians at risk, the Associated Press reported.

"More than 17 missiles were directed at an empty government compound, without regard for civilians who lived nearby," Mr. Koraz said. "If someone committed a crime, they should go after him, not after an entire nation."

Sunday, we had Time magazine’s reports of Israelis gathering to watch and cheer the air strikes on Gaza. Today we learn of more:

ALONG THE ISRAEL-GAZA STRIP BORDER — In a muddy field overlooking the smoke-blackened Gaza Strip skyline on Tuesday, young soldiers from an Israeli tank unit linked arms with euphoric civilians and joined them in the hora, a circular dance, in anticipation of a possible ground invasion of the Palestinian territory.

Far overhead, a pair of Israeli Apache helicopters fired on a target inside Gaza, unleashed diversionary flares and disappeared to the north. Elsewhere in the autonomous Palestinian region, Israeli jets, helicopters and ships pummeled the area with new strikes against dozens of targets.

The Jerusalem Post this morning advises “Forget about those rockets – it’s time for a laugh!,” an article by Gil Sasson about "Eretz Nehederet (A Wonderful Country), the nation’s top TV satire show – and top television show in general [which] interrupted the grim news from the South with a special wartime edition last night."

Sasson suggests that some Israelis may have questioned whether laughing at at time like this was appropriate – then he assures us:

But, in fact, Eretz Nehederet did not veer from good taste in that respect, setting its sights mainly on other, easier targets, as it did in a similar broadcast during the Second Lebanon War.

Roni Daniel was all gung-ho, happy that "we’re beating ‘em 380-4," and excitedly declaring that we are "few versus many – that is, a few jets versus many Gazans."

A very different view is that of Julia Chaitin, a Negev resident who teaches at a college in range of the Hamas rockets. Her essay in the Washington Post today is a brave and beautiful call for peace and deserves to be read:

When people are in the midst of war, they are not open to voices of peace; they speak (and scream) out of fear and demand retribution for the harms they have suffered. When people are in the midst of war, they forget that they can harness higher cognitive abilities, their reason and logic. Instead, they are driven by the hot structures of their brains, which lead them to respond with fear and anger in ways that are objective threats to our healthy survival. When people are in the midst of war, voices calling for restraint, dialogue and negotiations fall on deaf ears, if their expression is allowed at all.

We need more Julia Chaitin’s in the world – and fewer dances and guffaws at the thought of hundreds dying.

Video: Trailer for Waltz with Bashir, the recent animated Israeli film examining the 2006 war on Lebanon.


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