Sir Vivor,

we seem to be going in circles. You have this utopian belief that Israel can settle the dispute with the Palestinians by means of diplomacy and negotiation when that approach has failed before. Secondly, there's really not much to talk about when the government of Gaza is an anti-semitic terrorist group dedicated to wiping out Israel.

Unfortunately, the world is such that reasoning with terrorists does not work. As a result, they must be defeated. It is my belief that peace between Israel and the Palestinians will be impossible before the Palestinians are tired of losing their friends and families and decide to renounce terrorism. Peace is impossible for as long as there are terrorists committing terrorist attacks.

Given this, I am amazed that you persist in blaming Israel for doing what is necessary in protecting itself against terrorism. If Hamas really loved peace, why would they continue firing rockets after Israel announced a unilateral ceasefire? It is interesting that you believe that Israel should work towards peace, but you don't seem to apply the same rules to the Palestinians.

Finally, I don't think it has occurred to you that all these stories about Israel such as the spraypainting episode are made up to make Israel look bad. And the media and people like you buy it up, wanting to believe the worst, even when you are proven wrong, such as the school story. This is proof of your anti-Israel bias.

Israel can be divided into land, government and people. That is perhaps simplistic, but no more so than you asserting that you have proof of my anti-Israel bias, or that my views are utopian.

I disapprove of what the Israeli government is doing, as do many Israelis. You can read their concerns in many places on the internet. Neve Gordon, Uri Avnery and many others across a wide spectrum of occupations, ethnicities, faiths and nationalities are concerned about Israel's aggression in Palestine.

Because I disapprove of Israel's actions does not make me anti-Israeli, any more than disagreeing with policies and actions of the Australian government makes me anti-Australian.

I disapprove of Hamas' civil and international crimes, as well. Because the US and Israel refuse to recognise the freely and fairly elected Hamas administration of Gaza, dealing in an orderly manner with those crimes becomes extremely difficult, as does reaching agreement about how to get on with life, so that Palestinians enjoy rights which they are granted under the UN Charter: the same rights as Israelis and Australians should enjoy.

But my opinion matters little in the greater scheme of things. The balance of opinion in the wide world does matter.

Israeli representatives have already started negotiating indirectly with Hamas, with Egypt acting as an intermediary. I expect, with the change of administration in the US, Israel and Hamas will arrive at a ceasefire agreement.

I do not think it is utopian to believe in the necessity of a resolution of this conflict which lgives both the Israeli and Gazan governments a basis for further peacebuilding. If Israel veers away from peacemaking, it will become isolated and its citizens unwelcome and perhaps persecuted elsewhere.

AFJA, not all the news stories are made up, and Israel does indeed look bad. The Israeli government has admitted using white phosphorus, and there is also evidence of DIME ordnance used against civilians.

As I have said before, there is robust evidence that Israel has committed war crimes against the people of Gaza, and the balance of world opinion sees Gazans as more the victims

"Because the US and Israel refuse to recognise the freely and fairly elected Hamas administration of Gaza, dealing in an orderly manner with those crimes becomes extremely difficult, as does reaching agreement about how to get on with life, so that Palestinians enjoy rights which they are granted under the UN Charter: the same rights as Israelis and Australians should enjoy."

How about Hamas recognising Israel? Why does recognition have to be one way only?

It's funny that you mention world opinion. Arab nations such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt have acknowledged that Hamas was the aggressor.

But ultimately, world opinion dosen't matter. In fact, the whole concept of Israel is founded on the belief that world opinion is not enough to protect Jews. Did world opinion prevent the Holocaust?

Ultimately, by firing thousands of rockets into Israel, Hamas gave Israel no choice. Allowing the rockets to keep wounding and killing civilians was not an option. But any half-hearted measures against Hamas would have simply prolonged conflict. Only by inflicting big blows on Hamas would Israel succeed in stoppping Hamas from firing rockets.

This indisputable truth show that notions of Israel's "disproportionate" are false. Anything less would have been ineffective.

Of course, the loss of Palestinian civilian life is regrettable. But the numbers here were also inflated by Hamas, and once again the world media never questioned their calculations. But since Hamas hides within civilian areas, it is unavoidable.

The real wonder is how few Palestinian people were killed, given how many missiles Israel fired at Hamas sites and tunnels

When the statement is made that Israel must pay for crimes. How do you put a whole nation on trial? When a nation elects agressive leaders to protect them from enemy attacks should it only be the leaders put on trial, when they represent the majority will of the people. Is it fair to only put the leaders on trial when the people are their supporters and accomplices?

AFJA, what authority backs your personal opinion?

I'm OK about admitting I will never know all the details and may miss essential elements, the crux of an issue. My efforts at reducing my ignorance of Israel's attack on Gaza are limited to reading a wide range of sources. There is little other access in Tasmania, well out of the range of Hamas' comically inaccurate rockets.

That the rockets are comically inaccurate in no way diminishes the terror they may cause: terror which I believe is amplified and exploited by some Israeli politicians, for their political gain.

One telling fact is the number if Israelis killed by these thousands of rockets. In a January editorial in the Australian titled "Stopping the rockets a necessity", Foreign editor Greg Sheridan writes:

"ISRAEL has taken the fateful step of a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip because ultimately the threat it faces from Hamas is strategic, even existential.

Hamas has fired more than 6000 mostly Qassam rockets into Israel over the past four years.

They have killed only about two dozen people, although in other acts of terrorism Hamas has killed hundreds of Israelis."

Greg's further argument seems pretty much in line with your own, AFJA, so I hope you can accept the arithmetic which follows from his statistics:

6000 rockets over 4 years averages to about 4 per day.

"about two dozen people over 4 years" averages to one death every other month.

If this represents, as Greg Sheridan states, "an existential threat", then it ought to be dealt with in an efficacious manner. I would suggest the diplomacy you argue against would be, would have been, a better option.

When the cruel and stupid assault on Gaza did not stop the rockets, the politicans then frantically negotiated, through Egypt, with Hamas; trying to achieve some results by the eve of the election and appear as winners on Israeli TV and newspaper front pages.

AFJA, have you read Joseph Heller's "Catch-22"? For me, that is the book brought to mind by this whole sorry, contemptible attack by Israel on Gaza.

Sir Vivor,

I agree with Greg Sheridan. The only reason more Israelis weren't killed is because Israel has a system which alerts civilians of incoming rockets, allowing them a few precious seconds to hide under cover.

There any many underground dugouts in parts of Israel because rockets are often fired. These also help prevent lives.

But no country should have to protect itself in this way from terrorists. If you lived in this way, would you tolerate rockets being fired all the time? Of course not. Yet this is what you expect Israelis to do, rather than attack the source of the rockets. Indeed, you even describe such efforts at self-defence as contemptible, revealing that you expect Israelis to endure what no person interested in their own survival would.

It is thanks to Israel that the Israeli toll is a lot lower. Trying to use the lower toll as justification for suggesting that Hamas is harmless and not a threat is fundamentally dishonest.

The facts destroy your argument. The Hamas Charter reveals that Hamas is a Jew-hating organisation which is not interested in negotiation with Israel:

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm

You think its reasonable to ask Israel to talk with this organisation?

Israel wants to exist, whilst Hamas wants to destroy Israel and kill her Jewish citizens. The goals of Israel and Hamas are theefore diametrically opposed, and cannot ever be reconcililed.

In other words, Israel and Hamas have nothing to talk about.