Define "Defense".

President Obama said today that Israel had a right to defend itself. Gee, Mr. President, way to be a moral leader and influence our ally. So much for the Nobel Peace Prize, and the Call to Action. By condoning this, you're lumping America in with Israel's actions. We all understand that, right?

Bearing Witness

GAZA CITY — Four young Palestinian boys were killed Wednesday when two explosions hit a jetty and beach where they were playing at the fishing port of Gaza City, an area that had been considered relatively safe from the intense Israeli bombing campaign of the past nine days.

The Israel Defense Forces acknowledged that it had struck the area. “Based on preliminary results, the target of this strike was Hamas terrorist operatives,” the I.D.F. said in a statement.
...
The first explosion left a small shack burning on the jetty. Several boys could be seen fleeing along the beach. About 30 seconds later came the second blast, and when the dust cleared, three figures lay motionless on the sand. One had most of a leg blown off, his body charred; a few yards away lay a smaller one with curly hair.

Men came running and scooped up three bodies. A fourth was found in the charred ruins of the shack on the jetty.

All these deaths are preventable, and unnecessary to "protect" Israel, that's the killer thing.

Israel’s military says it has taken extensive precautions to avoid killing civilians. But it has acknowledged, according to Israel Radio, that about half the people in Gaza killed so far were “not involved in terrorism.” Human Rights Watch issued a statement on Wednesday decrying the civilian casualties and demanding that Israel “end unlawful attacks that do not target military objectives.”

A running count kept by United Nations officials shows that of the more than 200 Palestinians who have been killed so far, about 75 percent have been civilians, including more than three dozen children. One Israeli has been killed.

In a related experiment in online social media,
David Sheen -- a documentarian, journalist, and designer who lives in Dimona, on July 10 "entered the Hebrew word for "Arabs", ARAVIM, into Twitter and searched for uses of the word over the previous few hours. What I found was young Israelis proclaiming their desire for all Arabs to die and in some cases be tortured to death."

He posted the Twitter users screen shots -- and was surprised so many pink-lipped young ladies, spouting hate. (These men and ladies will soon be serving as soldiers in the IOF.)

I also noticed that many of the Israeli youth who were cursing Arabs on Twitter were also expressing resentment at having been woken up to the whine of sirens, which sounded in response to rockets launched at Israeli cities from Gaza.

When I made this observation, one of the young Israelis I had quoted making anti-Arab comments responded to my tweet, assuring me that her hate of Palestinians was unrelated to having been stirred from her slumber that morning, but that it in fact was a constant in her life.

"Not just on our summer vacation we hate stinking ugly Arabs all our lives, for the rest of our lives"

Can we please stop pretending that Israel is undertaking these actions in her "defense"? De we really think this is the best they can do, taking great care to avoid civilians? Surely they're not that incompetent as fighters?

Israel is clearly trying to gain a strategic advantage while much of her populace expresses hate toward the "enemy". This has nothing to do with pursuing justice anymore.

Why do we Americans have to keep pretending that Israel is the perpetual victim here, and not the Palestinian innocents who are not planting bombs, but are continually being killed? We know better. Read those tweets, if you're still a believer.

ADDED: Remember the "scorecards" of sexual conquests some American teenagers kept and traded some years back? I can't help but wonder if something like that could be at play with the young people here. Might there be a sexual rewards system from some of the tarted-up young women in those photos, who would "reward" other young soldiers for every "kill" they recorded?

Sounds crazy? When you see people planning a kidnapping, and carrying through their plans of setting a small boy on fire, suddenly nothing is off the table. Plus, we've all been here before. I don't think Israel is dumb enough to think continually pummelling the civilian population is suddenly going to work this time, winning hearts and minds from Hamas. The people support those political groups precisely because Israel offers them nothing but checkpoints, destruction and now death.

In fact, I suspect many young Hamas fighters were born on that beach today, watching their playmates be cut down ... for nothing. No lives were saved here. No phantom attacks on Israelis prevented. Just four more dead little children. Hoo-rah! (?)

An Israeli military spokesman, Motti Almoz, told Israel’s Channel 10 that Israeli forces had fired at “a target near the sea” on Wednesday and that the details were still under review.

Alon Ben-David, a senior military affairs journalist with extensive Israeli military sources, said information he had seen indicated that the military had identified the beach shack as belonging to Hamas and fired at it.

Mr. Ben-David speculated that the second blast had been aimed at the children running away, who might have been mistaken for militants. But he added that given the military’s technologically advanced surveillance equipment, “it is a little hard for me to understand this, because the images show that the figures are children.”

I think I understand now:
Israel has a big hate problem they need to address internally, and soon!