Myself, I see Hamas as a thug, lawless gang. They have been promising, and committing illegal acts, brutalism, and using deadly force against individuals.

They attempted to take a stand on the world stage, by violently breaking the law and overthrowing their government. Instead of using their position to secure their borders, protect their people, and assure prosperity for their own – they hid amongst the citizens in their “territory” and continued to harass and provoke Israel, loudly and repeatedly vowing and acting to wrest land and superiority, and ultimately the death of Israel.

The legitimate government of the Palestinians abandoned the people that elected Hamas, that provided that stage for continued atrocities. How innocent can they be?

For years the Muslim nations, including the Palestinian government that ostensibly holds responsibility for that area, have failed or neglected to take control of the international provocations uttered and committed by Hamas. Why would Israel expect the Muslim community to do more than it has done, when clearly Iran and others are backing Hamas?

The people in the Gaza region living under Hamas’ rule haven’t fled, haven’t expressed an interest in leading a peacefully co-existent life, or even obeying international treaty and law. Why would Israel now care about what the UN says, when it essentially tells Israel to stop resisting while Hamas continues to kill and threaten, and re-arm?

If the argument goes that “all it takes for evil to flourish, is for good men to do nothing,” then the hapless people hiding Hamas in Gaza are criminally derelict, to each parent and adult and half-grown child, in permitting Hamas to establish and persist among their homes. The UN and Muslim nations are criminally derelict in *failing* to end traffic in weapons and supplies to Hamas.

Israel has their own agenda; I don’t know what it is. Judging from their past record, though I imagine they intend to act like policemen – to pursue the perpetrators until all persons involved are identified and restrained from being a menace to others.

Don’t look at what Israel is doing as an invasion of war. What we are seeing is cops and robbers. Played out in blood and slanted news media.

In my life time, the world community pressured Israel into withdrawing her citizens and her sovereignty from Gaza, granting lands and independent statehood to the Palestinians.

Appeasement. It still doesn’t work.

No politician, no world leader, no petty bureaucrat will accept a concession from another – and continue to pursue their goals, looking for that next concession or outright victory. Israel was promised, when the Palestinians took power, that the Palestinians would police their own. That Israel’s security would be protected. Instead, Israel lost the control they had maintained over flow of resources to the lawless elements in the region. The promises have fallen flat, and Hamas and other radical groups continue to hammer for more concessions.

Let the Muslim nations, the United Nations, the Palestinian nation, and the people living in Gaza take responsibility for their lives and for the actions of the neighbors and militants living among them. No one gets killed in a school harboring a terrorist thug, if everybody vacates the building and someone calls the Israelis and says, “Room 105″. This is a police raid, into savagely hostile territory. There are no innocents when hiding thugs and criminals like terrorists. If you want to keep your children safe, keep the criminals far away. Demand better protection, better security, better government.

Hamas can end this in an hour – just call Israel, say, “Oops! We are sorry. No more rockets or shots or anything.” Until then, the perps are still out their, still acting criminally.

These statements have been made by hundreds of people who are of the Jewish faith, specifically hasidic Jews. Many holocaust survivors of the Jewish faith and many who suffered during the brutal invasion of the soviet union and the rest of europe have had memories of those terrible days reawakened by the actions of the Israeli military.

I do not recall my government carpet bombing Irish hospitals and schools and refugee camps every time an attack on the mainland was carried out. If Israel is refusing to honour its treaty’s it should at the very least conduct itself in an honourable and appropriate manner. As it is the IDF seems more suited to the targeting of civilians and UN aid stations then it is at actually facing combatants. They should go back to their pre 1967 borders and begin stamping out the racial hatred of Arabs and their apartheid against them. The Palestinians have had their land stolen and been brutalised for the last sixty years. It is time for Israel to compromise and start conducting itself as a civilised country. America needs to salvage its reputation by condemning the acts of Israel as well as Hamas or sanction them.

In my personal opinion the rogue state of Israel is an insult to the millions of brave Soviet and European soldiers who died in the second world war. Oh and to matt I can only assume that you are mentally challenged or a child with no comprehension of violence or genocide so I would ask you kindly to shut up and let the adults talk.

I developed scientific software for 17 years. Now, when I stand in line at Wal-Mart or Lowes (mostly at Lowes), and the cashier or customer come awry of the register, and fixing something is cumbersome, someone is likely to comment, “danged computer” as if the computer made things difficult. For me the picture looks a bit different.

For every computer executing a program, there is a programmer or team that build the code driving the computer.

That programmer or team has a supervisor. That supervisor is the one that said, “Stop! Ship it now!” Any dissatisfaction with the computer is mis-directed – nothing will get back to the supervisor or his/her boss, and get the problem (shipping the software before it was finished is the underlying problem; the annoying thing it does is just details).

Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Quaeda, etc., are all ongoing organizations. They purport to follow a belief system. The people doing the central teaching, the organizing, the fund raising, are the ones directly responsible for the attacks and violence. Those are the ones that “all need to have their minds changed or be put down as vicious dogs of war.”

In the short term, stopping Hamas’ activities has to happen, and will be best if stopped quickly and in a way that changes Hamas’ leaders’ minds – whether that be killing them all, isolate them from the means to carry out their piracy and genocide, or convince them they and their teachings and goals are wrong. So far none of that has happened, and just killing all the Hamas fighters, if possible, would not correct the problem of people creating turmoil and organizing groups like Hamas.

This week I would settle for destruction of all Hamas’ weapons, and all the trigger pullers that can be found. As long as the larger problem is then pursued.

Hama, like Hezbollah and Iran and many others, are engaged in a holy war. They have no soldiers – all, men, women, children, are actively involved in fighting, or supporting or hiding fighters. There are no ‘photo opportunites’ in Gaza, only wartime propaganda releases.

The mainstream media here in the United States is free to report Hamas’ atrocities and intransigence – because radical liberals believe that “Two rational men can always come to a consensus”. Bleeding heart liberals will not and can not accept that both men have to be rational, and have respect for the other’s values. Hamas continues to pledge to destroy Israel and Israelis. That doesn’t sound very respectful.

If we could get NBC and the New York Times and others to call Hamas “pirates like those Somalian murderers”, the picture might clear up for many. That simple change would solve many problems. Or even “terrorists” and mean it, as if violent, indiscriminate, murdering vigilantes were a threat to others.

Blessed be.