Lev, a response to your questions:

1) & 2) You wrote: "Why is it that Israel's "security related" behaviour appears to be an exercise in collective punishment and humiliation of the Palestinian people?"

A tragic but unavoidable consequence of military action is that innocent civilians will suffer. If there were no rockets, they're be less need for Israeli controls.

Please tell me how else Israel is expected to defend itself. Are you saying it should simply tolerate rocket fire? What country would not defend itself in such circumstances?

3) You wrote: "A functioning state in Gaza?!" "It is impossible for Gaza to do be a functioning state with the controls that Israel has on it."

Yes, NOW it's very difficult I agree. But almost 3 years ago billions of dollars of international investment flowed into Gaza and there was great potential for creating a functioning state. Israeli controls were far less strict then. But sadly militant groups chose to use their newly controlled territory as a launching pad for attacking Israel. No surprise that Israel was forced to defend itself.

4) You wrote: "Not one village must be left" etc. I do not see any statements that recognise a Palestinian state."

Let's put this issue to bed. The official Israeli position is that: "The final peace settlement will establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people just as Israel is the homeland for the Jewish people." - this was the text agreed to by both the PA and Israel at the Annapolis summit on 27/11/2007

Olmert said after the summit: "I believe that there is no just solution other than the solution of two national states for two peoples"

http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/928637.html

(to be continued)

(continued from above)

5) You wrote: "Would you care to list the Arab states still at war with Israel?"

Syria. Lebanon technically not at war, but there have been sporadic incidents near the border between the IDF and both Hezbollah or Lebanese army since the ceasefire.

Diplomatic relations? You didn't respond to that one.

6) "You take it to United Nations to expand the role of operations of UNIFIL"

In an ideal world, yes. But the reality is that UNIFIL is incapable of controlling Hezbollah. It failed to do so prior to the 2006 war and since then it's failed again with Hezbollah now re-arming and re-building. It's naive to expect Israel to rely on others to defend itself.

I suspect we'll have to agree to disagree on some things but I appreciate your willingness to debate these issues. I wish others on this forum (not naming names of course!) would do the same.

Lev,

A few lines in a dictionary ... ? Hardly a indepth definition, let alone a philosophical treatise.

Read Bellum Iustum in its entirety.. preferably in the original language, and with subsequent glosses. Indeed read later philosophical works addressing this sole issue.

Don’t cite the UN - deliberate naivity; and the use of sophistry is neither legitimate nor appeals to logic.

One simple point - legitimate warriors wear uniforms to distinguish themselves from innocent non-combatants. Hamas not only conceal themselves as non-combatants, but use the innocent as shields. Their aim is to ensure that the innocent suffer as much misery, indeed deaths, as possible in the hope to gain their support.

Indeed, patent to all, the more the Gazans suffer as a consequence of Hamas’ activities, the more Hamas rejoice.

Islam also has its own Bellum Iustum treatise. Hamas diverge sharply away from all points of this Islamic work.

Explain the brutality of Hamas against the Gazans. Have Hamas contributed in any meaningful sense to the well-being of the Gazan people; created a life of security, of optimism for them ...

Is it better to avert one’s eyes from the brutalities and horrors wrought by Hamas on the Gazans, ignore them, even pretend they are not occurring? Does it make your arguments against Israel better. Hardly. By ignoring Hamas’ activites, it weakens any argument you have about Israel.

OLO posters, by not condemning these attrocities, support Hamas’ actions. Are posters so anti-Israel, that they prefer to condone Hamas’ activities? The only conclusion - tthese posters support terrorism and brutality of a peoply by their own ... a case of the end justifies the means ...

Posters are utter cowards by not condemning terrorism - Hamas - in the harshest possible way. If Australia were ever in such a situation ... then g-d help us ...

cont ...

Lev, you do not know the definition of a “Jew”.

Sol has yet to explain this to you.

Also, Sol, ... Why so coy about explaining the platforms of the United Arab List and the Arab Movement for Renewal who ran together as a united list and won seats in the Knesset? ... and Arab speakers in the Knesset ...

You say >> “Could Palestine be a Jewish homeland without persecution and without needing to be a Jewish state? Most certainly.

5. It seems that you either believe that radical Islamo-facism is not a strong and rapidly growing force in Palestine (and elsewhere) or that some group has the influence or power to overcome this extremism. Where is the evidence for this? Every day the Islamists are getting stronger yet you believe they can be banished altogether. Your comparison with Australia is facile. How many Middle Eastern states could be considered to be as receptive to minorities as Australia? None

6. By merely handing Palestine and Israel over to so-called democracy you won’t achieve anything except ethnic cleansing on a previously unseen scale. If you said that after 50 years of a two state solution, a single state would be an option I could understand. Not today or next week or even next decade however.

7. I don’t agree with your definition for ‘terrorist’. I believe that a terrorist is a person who deliberately uses force against civilians to create a climate of terror for political purposes. I don’t accept, and I pretty sure Danielle doesn’t either, that Israel is deliberately targeting civilians. In fact I hold Hamas and the other terror groups responsible for using civilians as shields. A study by the US Army counted 109 different definitions of terrorism. Laqueur "the only general characteristic generally agreed upon is that terrorism involves violence and the threat of violence.

For Spy’s questions although he has answered them more thoroughly than me.
1 Israel’s security behaviour is aimed squarely at achieving security for its people.
2 Proportionate response is a soft liberal idea that only prolongs violence.
3 Gaza would not have been as tightly controlled if they weren’t using it as a forward base to attack Israel.
5 I would include Iran, which virtually controls Hezbollah. If you believe Syria was attacked without provocation then why did the Syrians keep it so quiet?
6 Peacekeepers have been attacked by all sides in the conflict. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/26/africa/web.0426egypt.php

For pete's sake a jew is just another cult member, they have no race. Will you people grow up. It is a cult where some men made up a god thousands of years ago and then rammed that god down everyone else's throats in the name of being superior to the plebs.

That is what all the stupid cults are. As for this delusional debate about when Palestinians existed - the Australian and British armies fought alongside the PALESTINIANS IN WW1 AND WW11, it was PALESTINE that was immorally and illegally partitioned by the west with the exclusion of the PALESTINIANS in 1947 and it was 800,00 PALESTINIANS ethnically cleansed in 1948 by the Irgun, Stern and Hagadah terrorist gangs.

Judaism is a cult, now get over it.