dead tofu, apartheid in South Africa was based on white people's beliefs about the racial inferiority of black people.

The Israelis do not think that the Palestinian people are inferior, racially or otherwise. The Israelis want to stop being threatened and killed by Palestinians.

The anti-apartheid movement was renowned for being almost entirely pacifistic.

The Palestinian movements are rarely pacifistic, and are not simply about having voting rights and equal treatment under the law. The Palestinian movements are mostly focused on sovereignty (an admirable and moral goal), and the destruction of the state of Israel (not so much).

Thinker, if I was a civilian in Gaza with a family, I wouldn't have voted for Hamas. If I was a civilian in Gaza with a family who didn't vote for Hamas, I would condemn Hamas, not Israel, for bringing war down upon my head.

Yes, enough of the people in Gaza are Hamas militants to warrant an invasion. No, it's not a decimation. There are approximately 1.5 million people in Gaza; less than 700 civilians have been killed.

700 into 1.5 million is less than five thousandths of a percent - .000466666%

This is not decimation, this is not genocide, and this is not disproportionate response.

This is war, and war is horrible, but this war is being prosecuted with more care, more understanding, and more concern for civilian casualties than the staggering majority of modern wars.

Get off your high horse, and stop downvoting my comments simply for disagreeing with you and explaining why I do so. Your sympathy for the suffering of others is admirable, but misplaced.

Feel empathy instead for the people of Israel, who have a Hobson's choice to make whenever they are attacked by cowards in civilian garb, unguided rockets launched into towns, and suicide bombers in their homes and streets.

Another nutter self-hating jew.

Again, he elides over the difference between a Jew in Nazi Germany, who would not have fought against the Nazi state if not for being placed in a concentration camp, and the Hamas militants, who would by-and-large continue to seek the destruction of Israel by any means possible, whether they were completely free or not completely free.

At every juncture in history, since the British mandate on, a significant proportion of Palestinians has sought the destruction of Jewish life in Israel, regardless of the amount of safety, security, and freedom those Palestinians had.

This man is the fool, for condemning Israel without providing an alternative.

The Jews in Nazi Germany were not fanatics. The Palestinian militants, by-and-large, are fanatics.

And Turing deserves most of the credit for modern computing...

Well, we both know, and Israel knows, that nearly all of the people in Gaza can't leave. All of the nations in the middle east, friend to Israel or friend to any faction of the Palestinians, will not accept any large number of refugees beyond those already present in their country (and are in fact unlikely to grant citizenship to the refugees already there).

Honestly, I think that there is no and never was a clear consensus amongst Israeli leadership as to the exit strategy for this campaign. I think everyone involved agreed that some form of military response was necessary/called for, and that they all had and have different ideas of how they want it to end.

Hamas is in the position of balancing further casualties and suffering amongst their members and constituency against the possible goodwill they can gain in the region by mimicking Lebanon's performance in the previous war.

To be entirely blunt, the Palestinians in Gaza (including Hamas) have been losing a lot, and stand to lose a lot more if the IDF pushes forward.
I think the likely "out" in the near term (and possibly the endgame that a majority of Israeli leadership is pursuing) is that a sufficiently large majority of Hamas operatives in Gaza will decide that it is in their best interests to reach a compromise that accedes to some but not all of Israel's demands.

Joedirt, Hamas leadership in Syria has consistently refused a ceasefire without Israel first completely withdrawing, which I think is rather unrealistic.
This Arabic daily criticizes Hamas leadership for obstructing cease-fire negotiations (see the bottom) http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=15352
Here's the Telegraph, saying that there is division as to a cease-fire between the Syrian leadership of Hamas and the leadership on the ground in Gaza http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palestinianauthority/4240932/Analysis-The-choices-confronting-Hamas.html

In the long term? Personally, I had been thinking that unilateral distancing by Israel was a positive step towards peace. However, if Israel leaves open any significant access to Palestinian territories, additional weapons or weapon-precursors will enter the region and be used against Israel.
As we have seen, Palestinian militants will tunnel or otherwise attempt to circumvent even relatively thorough security procedures put in place by Israel.
This leaves Israel in the unenviable position of deciding whether to leave the Palestinians with relatively open borders, and suffer proportionately more attacks, or completely isolate Gaza (and probably the West Bank as well) in a truly thorough fashion.

This is a classic asymmetric warfare situation, which historically have been very bloody and nigh-impossible to end peacefully. I don't know of any historic examples that didn't end in the militarily superior power either pulling out completely ala Russia in Afghanistan or the U.S. in Vietnam (not a realistic or moral option here) or committing genocide as in many Medieval and Colonial conflicts (also not a realistic or moral option).

To end this before it gets any longer, simply giving the Palestinians a homeland will not bring peace to the region as long as a significant portion of the Palestinian population is willing to pursue the destruction of the state of Israel via violent means.

I do not dispute that there have been a number of bad actors affiliated with Israel. However, I believe from personal experience that the vast majority of Israelis would be happy for the Palestinians to have their own state, but also believe that many Palestinians would continue to pursue the violent destruction of Israel even if they had full sovereignty.

No, it doesn't make you an anti-semite, tofu.

Consider though that it's actually relatively good targeting - what's the ratio of combatants to noncombatants in the warzone?

Compare that and the amount of fire being directed into the front against other conflicts over the past 20 years, and you will likely come to the conclusion that, as wars go (and all wars are terrible), this war is being prosecuted with relative care.

And Joe Dirt, you can belittle those statements as much as you like, but it doesn't negate their truth.

Who prevented the residents of Gaza from pursuing peace? They knew what Hamas would do! They fully supported strikes against Israel. Hamas can't afford to sign a peace agreement with Israel at this point because it would look weak to not only Fatah but to its own constituency; the people of Gaza.

The Germans were demented, believing that the Jews were responsible for their defeat in World War I and were determined to destroy the German people.

Hamas' charter holds as its primary goal the destruction of Israel; they chant "death to the Jews" at every opportunity.

There's a difference between the two, and there's no semblance of rationality in what Asmo said.

Is it crazy to believe that someone who says they want to kill you wants to kill you? Is it wrong to act on the belief that they actually want to kill you? What about when they say they want to kill you and try to kill you?

These are the people who agree with Ron Paul.

http://www.counterpunch.org/norrell01122009.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_bombing_debate

Ignorance is bliss, huh?

Hamas, the freely elected Palestinian government, holds and has always held as its core tenet the destruction of the state of Israel and the murder of its citizens. What is Israel supposed to do?

Sit still and quiet, and let the rockets fall and the bombers kill dozens in the streets and discotheques?

Without question the death of non-combatants is horrifying, and everything within reason should be done to avoid it.

However, it is not reasonable to tell a country that it should forgo a violent response to the premeditated killings of its populace by a state or state-like actor.

Probably fine; your current door has only one edge of attachment, and most accidents don't come from the vector (diagonal-top, let's call it), where one would assume this door to be weak.

None of the fundamental philosophical bases of free speech support unlimited commercial speech. Generally speaking, commercial advertisement does not promote the free flow of thought, does not aid in the education of a voting populace, and has slight connections with personal liberty. These ideals are fully able to stand independent, and well safe-guarded, in the face of regulations on commercial speech.

The losses to society by restricting free commercial speech are outweighed, on the whole, by the benefits from greater truth in advertising and any potential reduction in the prevalence of partisan slander.

Note also that commercial speech may be regulated to prevent falsehood and defamation without hindering, for example, solicitations by charitable organizations.

Yah maybe, and Cronyx is still thirty-one flavors of Wrong. Someone stepped up to the plate with a cogent, rational argument and the lot of Maher-"manly-men" (and by the way, he sure is a prime specimen of "natural evolutionary manhood"...not) have no response of any weight.

Maher's got a batting average on the "truth" about as good as A-Rod has been playing lately.

Where have all the skeptics gone? This video is a fake (a good, funny fake, but a fake). I saw it months ago, and in much higher quality.

I still wish Cavedog lasted long enough to make Amen. *sigh*

Joe, the commerce clause IS liberally interpreted. Otherwise we wouldn't have any of the civil rights bills. Like it or not, the Constitution is a living, interpreted document, and it would be stupidity to amend the text and jeopardize the case law that's been developed in the last 50 years.

The information you're denying the readership here is that the Telcos did NOT pay for that infrastructure out of their own pockets - it was heavily subsidized by tax dollars, so it really IS the property of the people, not to be alienated for the benefit of private interests. Should we subject commerce and trade on the internet to free market forces? Of course! That's what's currently happening, and it's caused a massive rise in productivity.

The government will usually only step in to maximize competitiveness across industries - to allow Telcos to establish a monopoly market would not be in the interest of free markets as a whole and would definitely not be in the interests of freedom - thus, the government should not act against the interests of efficient markets and give the Telcos an undeserved windfall.