Clownfish

Personal opinion is not like a charter of an organisation.

A charter of an organisation is the principle of what an organisation believes in, ie all the members believe in it, as do all its supporters

If you interview everyone in Australia, you will probably get enough quotes to say all Australian hates (Jews/Arabs/Asian/Greek/Italian/Aussies)

There is significant difference between the believe of individuals and an organisation like Hamas

dovit2, Clownfish quoted a principle Israeli rabbi and the late prime minister of Israel.
These people where Israeli leaders, representing the people of Israel, and to read their comments one must ask how democratic is Israel.

Runner, you are a "christian"?, then please explain how you can condone, the slaughter of hundreds of innocent children in this brutal attack.

Leigh, you state you are not religous, though your extreme right of centre beliefs, appears to cloud your respect for human lives. If Israel controls all of Palestine, I can assure you that there will not be a return of John Howard.

Judi Hall
You summed up in this one article what I have failed to put in words.
Disregard all the posts that oppose your beautiful and stirring article as the answers of those who disagree are without foundation, lack knowledge of history (or ignore history altogether)and are filled with hatred. I hope that you consider to make this an open letter to news outlets, especially those of the BBC, SBS, Time,Reuters etc. who consistently fail to show cause why they are so biased against Israel in their opinions.
Ubique

Kipp

You ask
'Runner, you are a "christian"?, then please explain how you can condone, the slaughter of hundreds of innocent children in this brutal attack.

I don't condone the slaughter of any innocent children or adults. More to the point how do you defend a bunch of terrorist who cowardly use women and children as human shields in order to win sympathy from the West. Hamas hate everything about the West (except our aid) and brainwash kids from a young age to be suicide bombers. I would hardly call defending oneself from these terrorist slaughtering innocent children. Unfortunately we murder the unborn at a much higher rate than Hamas itself.

Good article, says it all very succintly.

I have no strong sympathy either way but the abject cowardice of Hamas is breathtaking, starting a war, (and being annoyed it took so long for the Israelis to respond), then not showing up to fight them as promised "to the last drop of blood".

Seems Hamas expected the international liberal, bleeding hearts to step in and stop the Israelis almost immediately. The Hamas fighters, (you can hardly call them that can you), must be impressed with their leaders who hang out in Syria instructing them to fight to the death.(/sarc)

To all the posters who demand Israel or the international community rebuild the Gaza Strip, how about Hamas using some of the money they use to arm themselves with THOUSANDS of missiles, to improve the lives of "their" people. Do you know what a missile costs? It's not peanuts. So where does Hamas funding come from?

This has been a disaster for Hamas not because of lives lost, but because they have been shown to be the cowards they are and not the brave fighters they claim to be, it's a bit different to bullying women and children isn't it boys?

I heard today 80% of Gazans rely on international aid for food, (even when not irritating their very powerful, but fortunately tolerant neighbour) so where is this great benevelent government Hamas supposedly supply - Hamas are just bullying parasites, using Palestinians as shields. If Hamas used the same tactics with Syria or Jordan or anyone else in the region, they would be wiped out overnight.

About the negative comments: people say they care about the Palestinians, but they rarely mean what they say. For decades the Palestinians have been used as the "whipping post" in order to denigrate the Israelis - or more accurately, the Jews. If those that have written here - even going as far as drawing Frank Lowey - the filthy rich Australian Jew into it !?!? - are not interested in being advocates for the Palestinians; if they did, they would have taken up on some of the points that you made, such as the use of civilians as human shields, purposefully storing arms in sensitive places such as mosques, hospitals and UN schools. As well as encouraging their children to detonate themselves for their own selfish ends. When Israel withdrew from Gaza - unilaterally - in essence complying to the UN resolution that "ordered" them to do just that - Abbas made a speech in an abandoned settlement saying 'not is the time to put your guns away; now is the time to build'. But instead, they threw away their shovels and ploughs, and bought tonnes and tonnes of weapons. Denied their children their childhood in their hate indoctrination and eventually, on Christmas Eve lobbed 50 rockets into Israel, and on Christmas day, lobbed 80 rockets into Israel - so drawing the very response that they wanted - an invasion of Gaza. So Hamas touted that Gaza would become the graveyard of the Israelis - Bad luck guys! But what about your people? You simply don’t care: and neither do those that can quote every harsh word uttered from the mouth of a Jew, but have absolutely no understanding of the real nightmare that the Palestinians face: Hamas.