AVW, I intend, in the future, to apply the following maxim to all those who, like you, offer palpable nonsense and lies instead of serious debate:

"Argue not with Fools, Fanatics and Frauds! Seek better companions."

This has to be a joke. A group (Hamas) fires rockets into a civilian population (Israel)and the people being shot at fight back.

The people that start this (Hamas)then complain that they are getting killed because the others (Israelis)are shooting back.

You can dress it up as a resistance or freedom fighters except the "freedom fighters" (Terrorists) are calling for the death of everyone else,(Jews & Christians read Hamas articleshttp://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/880818a.htm ) not freedom for themselves and people.

They try to make this a religious war as though they are not being allows to worship as they like but the people they are trying to kill (the average Israeli) do not care what religion they are.

It is true that the innocent (Palestinians being used are human shields) are suffering but it is also true that the leadership of the Palestinians (Hamas)do not care except to use them as PR tools. That is why they use apartment buildings, hospitals and schools as rocket launching sites and weapons storage.

Shame on anyone that would support Hamas and their heartless and cruel tactics. It is the Palestinian leadership that is controlled by Iran that calls the shots ( and supplies the rockets). Feel bad for the Palestinians but do not blame Israel.

In SF's first link, Professor Benny Morris presents a meandering tale based on the small change of Pappe's translations, his selection of terms, his disputes with other academics, his character, his politics, just about everything except anything that in any way invalidates what he has written about the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1947 and thereafter which is what the current disputes are about.

SF’s second link refers to DNA evidence that links "Israelites" in biblical and pre-Roman times through to now. The DNA studies are a work in progress and do not seem to do more than tenuously link Semitic peoples (which would include Jews and Palestinians) with one another over the millennia. No apparent demonstration of a Jewish people/nation/race/whatever. The article quotes scientist Professor Karl Skorecki: “Whoever uses genetic studies of the Jewish people, based on one agenda or another, in order to describe a people-race, is distorting reality.” How right he is! We've seen where that leads.

Lefties have been fascists since at least Stalin, and they also all seem to be trainee oven attendants. The War crime is to site offensive weapons among civilians. ALL injuries that flow from this accrue to those who sited said illegal weapons. Proportionality refers only when say surrounding suburbs are shelled as well as the illegal weapon sites. It does not refer to collateral damage immediately about the illegal offensive weapon sites.

SF, regarding your claim that the Israeli military tries as hard as possible to minimise civilian casualties:

It just so happens that a couple of days ago on another Internet forum that somebody wrote that he wanted people to provide evidence that the Israeli military targets civilians. So I found these reports. It did not take long.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/11/09/wo...nce/index.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009...a-israel-obama

http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/05/20/i...order-protests

http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/04/12/i...vilians-attack

http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/04/05/g...els-war-record

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/israe...ors-2012-11-19

http://www.cpj.org/2012/11/in-gaza-n...ts-injured.php

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ma...y-1305571.html

I also recommended he read Norma G. Finkelstein's books "This Time We Went Too Far" and "Goldston Recants". I remembered later that I also could have recommended he red Norman G. Finkelstein's book "Beyond Chutzpah - On The Misuse Of Anti-Semitism & The Abuse Of History" and Gideon Levy's book "The Punishment Of Gaza".

I also pointed out that the Israeli military has a record of using white phosphorous bombs and cluster bombs, both of which are clearly indiscrimate weapons.

I would like to see your links claiming Gazans are nowhere near poverty.

Here are some links about Israel's blockade of Gaza.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7545636.stm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle+east-10520844

http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/report/palestine-report-260609.htm

http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/Ocha_opt_Gaza_impact_of_two_years_of_blockade_August_2009_english.pdf

Benny Morris supports the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

http://www.deiryassin.org/bennymorris.html

Jonathan J. Ariel, you write that there is no such international principle or international law about disproprotionate force. Well, I just found this.

http://www.crimesofwar.org/a-z-guide/proportionality-principle-of/

fungus

Seeing as you are quoting from highly questionable and anti-Israel sites, your argument holds no water.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHCeSFC3caM&feature=g-all-u
http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/comment/91931/media-should-use-ceasefire-reflect-double-standards
"Media should use ceasefire to reflect on double standards"

By Colonel Richard Kemp, November 22, 2012 former commander of British forces in Afghanistan
The mobilisation of Israeli forces around Gaza this week was strikingly reminiscent of the British and American build-up of troops along the Kuwait and Iraq borders before Operation Desert Storm, the massive armoured counter-attack that hurled Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in 1991.

While I know many British Jews serve with the Israeli military, I was nevertheless taken aback to hear the dulcet, north-London tones of a couple of English lads in IDF khaki at a service station south of Ashkelon. After 30 years in the infantry, I am a good judge of soldiers. Like every one of their Israeli brothers-in-arms that I met, these men were absolutely not the bloodthirsty killers so often portrayed in the international media.

Yet much of the media, and many politicians, diplomats and human-rights activists believe there is an equivalence between the military actions of a Western democratic nation seeking to lawfully defend its people and a jihadist terrorist group indiscriminately attacking civilians and using its population as human shields. I recall no such equivalence being drawn between Allied forces attacking under international law, and the rape, plunder and callous violence of Saddam's forces on the rampage in Kuwait.

Predictably enough, the media has been full of shrill accusations of indiscriminate Israeli air strikes and deliberate targeting of civilians. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Every strike in a civilian area is authorised in real time, personally, by the commander of the Israeli Air Force or one of his deputies. As in Cast Lead, extraordinary steps have been taken to minimise civilian casualties - leaflet drops, text and radio messages, phone calls. Israel has even developed live munitions that explode harmlessly above terrorist-occupied buildings before a strike, warning innocent civilians to leave.
Intelligence is vital for accurate targeting and minimising civilian casualties.
The Israelis have refined technical intelligence collection as…Continue