Enough is Enough: Why Israel is Right
On Wednesday, January 7, 2009, I attended a pro-Israel rally at Ahavath Achim Synagogue in Atlanta, Georgia. The speakers at the rally included Jane Schiff (Chair CRC of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta), Rabbi Neil Sandler (Rabbi of Ahavath Achim synagogue), Steven Rakkit (President of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta), Ambassador Reda Mansour (Consul General for the State of Israel, Southeast United States), Honourable Jere Wood (Mayor of Roswell, Georgia), Judy Marx (Southeast Director of the American Jewish Committee), Rabbi Ilan Feldman (Rabbi of Beth Jacob), Dr. Paul Root Wolpe (Director of the Emory Center for Ethics), Scott Allen (Executive Director of the Georgia Federation of Christians for Israel), Tom Glaser (President of the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce), Toby Parker (President of the Greater Atlanta Hadassah), Carol Cooper (Chair of the Board of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta), Rabbi Julie Schwartz (Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El), and Cantor Mark Perman (Cantor of Temple Kol Emeth).
The struck me on many levels. Many things were said and many things were expressed, but one rallying cry stood out:
Enough is enough.
-1,176 Israelis have been killed by terrorist attacks between 2000 and 2007, and 8,341 more have been injured.
Enough is enough.
-From January to November, 2008, 1212 rockets and 1290 mortar bombs, all fired from the Gaza strip, have hit Israel.
Enough is enough
-A Hamas official has proudly declared that Hamas uses Palestinian women, children, and elderly as human shields.
Enough is enough.
-Hamas consistently targets public places, such as bars, school busses, hotel lobbies, and more to deliberately kill innocent Israeli civilians.
Enough is enough.
-On December 25, Christmas Day, 2008, nearly 100 rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel with NO provocation.
Enough is enough.
-Since Israel LEFT Gaza in 2005, more than 6,300 rockets and mortars have been fired from Gaza toward Israeli civilian centers in the south. More than 3,000 were fired in 2008 alone.
Enough is enough.
-Rocket attacks increased by 500 percent after Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
Enough is enough.
-The rockets have increased not only in number, but also in range; they are now able to reach Yavneh some 37 miles away.
Enough is enough.
-More than 700,000 Israelis are now in range of the rockets.
Enough is enough.
-Over 90 percent of Sderot residents have experienced a rocket exploding on their own street or an adjacent one.
Enough is enough.
-For more than three years, families in southern Israel have spent nights in bomb shelters rather than bedrooms. During the day, schoolchildren, adults, and the elderly are forced to run for bomb shelters on a regular basis.
Enough is enough
The world we live in today is a sad world. John Lennon was murdered while Joseph McCarthy was allowed to die of old age. John F. Kennedy was murdered while Richard Nixon was allowed to die of old age.
Terrorists are praised and mourned while those that would defend themselves are vilified.
Facts: Israel is simply reacting to Hamas terrorism. They regret the civilian casualties, but Israel does NOT target civilians, and, indeed, takes action to minimize the number of civilians killed. The IDF is targeting Hamas military bases, weapons facilities, and other such places. Hamas consistently targets public civilian places. Israel regrets and mourns the death of innocent civilians, be they Israeli or Palestinian. Hamas rejoices in the death of all civilians, Palestinian and Israeli.
Israel provides the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza food and humanitarian relief, despite the rockets. During the past six months, Israel has facilitated more than 14,624 truckloads of humanitarian assistance including more than 185,000 tons of supplies and 39 million liters of fuel. There have been more than 4,130 medical evacuations. Many people, when asked, would rather be a prisoner of Israel then a prisoner of Hamas. Israel does NOT condone torture on its prisoners. Hamas proudly tortures its POWs, most of the time for no reason at all.
Many people claim that Israel should not be there; there is no claim for it. Oh really?
Myth: The Jews have no claim to the land they call Israel.
Fact: A common misperception is that all the Jews were forced into the Diaspora by the Romans after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E. and then, 1,800 years later, suddenly returned to Palestine demanding their country back. In reality, the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years.
The Jewish people base their claim to the Land of Israel on at least four premises: 1) the Jewish people settled and developed the land; 2) the international community granted political sovereignty in Palestine to the Jewish people; 3) the territory was captured in defensive wars and 4) God promised the land to the patriarch Abraham.
Even after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and the beginning of the exile, Jewish life in the Land of Israel continued and often flourished. Large communities were reestablished in Jerusalem and Tiberias by the ninth century. In the 11th century, Jewish communities grew in Rafah, Gaza, Ashkelon, Jaffa and Caesarea.
The Crusaders massacred many Jews during the 12th century, but the community rebounded in the next two centuries as large numbers of rabbis and Jewish pilgrims immigrated to Jerusalem and the Galilee. Prominent rabbis established communities in Safed, Jerusalem and elsewhere during the next 300 years. By the early 19th century years before the birth of the modern Zionist movement more than 10,000 Jews lived throughout what is today Israel.1 The 78 years of nation-building, beginning in 1870, culminated in the reestablishment of the Jewish State.
Israel's international "birth certificate" was validated by the promise of the Bible; uninterrupted Jewish settlement from the time of Joshua onward; the Balfour Declaration of 1917; the League of Nations Mandate, which incorporated the Balfour Declaration; the United Nations partition resolution of 1947; Israel's admission to the UN in 1949; the recognition of Israel by most other states; and, most of all, the society created by Israel's people in decades of thriving, dynamic national existence.
I love facts. They are very interesting things in our fucked up little world. They are interesting to me because they happen to be, well, true. Facts are not false. Facts are not debatable. Theories can be proven wrong. Theories can be debated. But not facts. Facts are truth. And the facts say that the Jewish people were in Israel many thousands of years before "Palestine," so, in fact, it is the Israeli people who have the legitimate ancestral claim to Israel not the Palestinians.
It is also a fact that Palestine does not exist!
Yeah, you read that right. Heres another myth for you:
Myth: Palestine was always an Arab country.
Fact: The term "Palestine" is believed to be derived from the Philistines, an Aegean people who, in the 12th Century B.C.E., settled along the Mediterranean coastal plain of what are now Israel and the Gaza Strip. In the second century C.E., after crushing the last Jewish revolt, the Romans first applied the name Palaestina to Judea (the southern portion of what is now called the West Bank) in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel. The Arabic word "Filastin" is derived from this Latin name.
The Hebrews entered the Land of Israel about 1300 B.C.E., living under a tribal confederation until being united under the first monarch, King Saul. The second king, David, established Jerusalem as the capital around 1000 B.C.E. David's son, Solomon built the Temple soon thereafter and consolidated the military, administrative and religious functions of the kingdom. The nation was divided under Solomon's son, with the northern kingdom (Israel) lasting until 722 B.C.E., when the Assyrians destroyed it, and the southern kingdom (Judah) surviving until the Babylonian conquest in 586 B.C.E. The Jewish people enjoyed brief periods of sovereignty afterward before most Jews were finally driven from their homeland in 135 C.E.
Jewish independence in the Land of Israel lasted for more than 400 years. This is much longer than Americans have enjoyed independence in what has become known as the United States. In fact, if not for foreign conquerors, Israel would be 3,000 years old today.
Palestine was never an exclusively Arab country, although Arabic gradually became the language of most the population after the Muslim invasions of the seventh century. No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine. When the distinguished Arab-American historian, Princeton University Prof. Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said: "There is no such thing as 'Palestine' in history, absolutely not."
Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted:
We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.
In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: "There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria."
The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations submitted a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947 that said "Palestine was part of the Province of Syria" and that, "politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity." A few years later, Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, told the Security Council: "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria."
Palestinian Arab nationalism is largely a post-World War I phenomenon that did not become a significant political movement until after the 1967 Six-Day War and Israel's capture of the West Bank.
So Palestine does not exist. So how can a people lay claim to a non-existent country? Its called Israel, not Palestine!
Heres more proof that Israel was there first!
This is a timeline found in Joan Peter's "From Time Immemorial" Harper & Row Publishers:
On Wednesday, January 7, 2009, I attended a pro-Israel rally at Ahavath Achim Synagogue in Atlanta, Georgia. The speakers at the rally included Jane Schiff (Chair CRC of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta), Rabbi Neil Sandler (Rabbi of Ahavath Achim synagogue), Steven Rakkit (President of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta), Ambassador Reda Mansour (Consul General for the State of Israel, Southeast United States), Honourable Jere Wood (Mayor of Roswell, Georgia), Judy Marx (Southeast Director of the American Jewish Committee), Rabbi Ilan Feldman (Rabbi of Beth Jacob), Dr. Paul Root Wolpe (Director of the Emory Center for Ethics), Scott Allen (Executive Director of the Georgia Federation of Christians for Israel), Tom Glaser (President of the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce), Toby Parker (President of the Greater Atlanta Hadassah), Carol Cooper (Chair of the Board of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta), Rabbi Julie Schwartz (Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El), and Cantor Mark Perman (Cantor of Temple Kol Emeth).
The struck me on many levels. Many things were said and many things were expressed, but one rallying cry stood out:
Enough is enough.
-1,176 Israelis have been killed by terrorist attacks between 2000 and 2007, and 8,341 more have been injured.
Enough is enough.
-From January to November, 2008, 1212 rockets and 1290 mortar bombs, all fired from the Gaza strip, have hit Israel.
Enough is enough
-A Hamas official has proudly declared that Hamas uses Palestinian women, children, and elderly as human shields.
Enough is enough.
-Hamas consistently targets public places, such as bars, school busses, hotel lobbies, and more to deliberately kill innocent Israeli civilians.
Enough is enough.
-On December 25, Christmas Day, 2008, nearly 100 rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel with NO provocation.
Enough is enough.
-Since Israel LEFT Gaza in 2005, more than 6,300 rockets and mortars have been fired from Gaza toward Israeli civilian centers in the south. More than 3,000 were fired in 2008 alone.
Enough is enough.
-Rocket attacks increased by 500 percent after Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
Enough is enough.
-The rockets have increased not only in number, but also in range; they are now able to reach Yavneh some 37 miles away.
Enough is enough.
-More than 700,000 Israelis are now in range of the rockets.
Enough is enough.
-Over 90 percent of Sderot residents have experienced a rocket exploding on their own street or an adjacent one.
Enough is enough.
-For more than three years, families in southern Israel have spent nights in bomb shelters rather than bedrooms. During the day, schoolchildren, adults, and the elderly are forced to run for bomb shelters on a regular basis.
Enough is enough
The world we live in today is a sad world. John Lennon was murdered while Joseph McCarthy was allowed to die of old age. John F. Kennedy was murdered while Richard Nixon was allowed to die of old age.
Terrorists are praised and mourned while those that would defend themselves are vilified.
Facts: Israel is simply reacting to Hamas terrorism. They regret the civilian casualties, but Israel does NOT target civilians, and, indeed, takes action to minimize the number of civilians killed. The IDF is targeting Hamas military bases, weapons facilities, and other such places. Hamas consistently targets public civilian places. Israel regrets and mourns the death of innocent civilians, be they Israeli or Palestinian. Hamas rejoices in the death of all civilians, Palestinian and Israeli.
Israel provides the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza food and humanitarian relief, despite the rockets. During the past six months, Israel has facilitated more than 14,624 truckloads of humanitarian assistance including more than 185,000 tons of supplies and 39 million liters of fuel. There have been more than 4,130 medical evacuations. Many people, when asked, would rather be a prisoner of Israel then a prisoner of Hamas. Israel does NOT condone torture on its prisoners. Hamas proudly tortures its POWs, most of the time for no reason at all.
Many people claim that Israel should not be there; there is no claim for it. Oh really?
Myth: The Jews have no claim to the land they call Israel.
Fact: A common misperception is that all the Jews were forced into the Diaspora by the Romans after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E. and then, 1,800 years later, suddenly returned to Palestine demanding their country back. In reality, the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years.
The Jewish people base their claim to the Land of Israel on at least four premises: 1) the Jewish people settled and developed the land; 2) the international community granted political sovereignty in Palestine to the Jewish people; 3) the territory was captured in defensive wars and 4) God promised the land to the patriarch Abraham.
Even after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and the beginning of the exile, Jewish life in the Land of Israel continued and often flourished. Large communities were reestablished in Jerusalem and Tiberias by the ninth century. In the 11th century, Jewish communities grew in Rafah, Gaza, Ashkelon, Jaffa and Caesarea.
The Crusaders massacred many Jews during the 12th century, but the community rebounded in the next two centuries as large numbers of rabbis and Jewish pilgrims immigrated to Jerusalem and the Galilee. Prominent rabbis established communities in Safed, Jerusalem and elsewhere during the next 300 years. By the early 19th century years before the birth of the modern Zionist movement more than 10,000 Jews lived throughout what is today Israel.1 The 78 years of nation-building, beginning in 1870, culminated in the reestablishment of the Jewish State.
Israel's international "birth certificate" was validated by the promise of the Bible; uninterrupted Jewish settlement from the time of Joshua onward; the Balfour Declaration of 1917; the League of Nations Mandate, which incorporated the Balfour Declaration; the United Nations partition resolution of 1947; Israel's admission to the UN in 1949; the recognition of Israel by most other states; and, most of all, the society created by Israel's people in decades of thriving, dynamic national existence.
I love facts. They are very interesting things in our fucked up little world. They are interesting to me because they happen to be, well, true. Facts are not false. Facts are not debatable. Theories can be proven wrong. Theories can be debated. But not facts. Facts are truth. And the facts say that the Jewish people were in Israel many thousands of years before "Palestine," so, in fact, it is the Israeli people who have the legitimate ancestral claim to Israel not the Palestinians.
It is also a fact that Palestine does not exist!
Yeah, you read that right. Heres another myth for you:
Myth: Palestine was always an Arab country.
Fact: The term "Palestine" is believed to be derived from the Philistines, an Aegean people who, in the 12th Century B.C.E., settled along the Mediterranean coastal plain of what are now Israel and the Gaza Strip. In the second century C.E., after crushing the last Jewish revolt, the Romans first applied the name Palaestina to Judea (the southern portion of what is now called the West Bank) in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel. The Arabic word "Filastin" is derived from this Latin name.
The Hebrews entered the Land of Israel about 1300 B.C.E., living under a tribal confederation until being united under the first monarch, King Saul. The second king, David, established Jerusalem as the capital around 1000 B.C.E. David's son, Solomon built the Temple soon thereafter and consolidated the military, administrative and religious functions of the kingdom. The nation was divided under Solomon's son, with the northern kingdom (Israel) lasting until 722 B.C.E., when the Assyrians destroyed it, and the southern kingdom (Judah) surviving until the Babylonian conquest in 586 B.C.E. The Jewish people enjoyed brief periods of sovereignty afterward before most Jews were finally driven from their homeland in 135 C.E.
Jewish independence in the Land of Israel lasted for more than 400 years. This is much longer than Americans have enjoyed independence in what has become known as the United States. In fact, if not for foreign conquerors, Israel would be 3,000 years old today.
Palestine was never an exclusively Arab country, although Arabic gradually became the language of most the population after the Muslim invasions of the seventh century. No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine. When the distinguished Arab-American historian, Princeton University Prof. Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said: "There is no such thing as 'Palestine' in history, absolutely not."
Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted:
We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.
In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: "There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria."
The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations submitted a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947 that said "Palestine was part of the Province of Syria" and that, "politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity." A few years later, Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, told the Security Council: "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria."
Palestinian Arab nationalism is largely a post-World War I phenomenon that did not become a significant political movement until after the 1967 Six-Day War and Israel's capture of the West Bank.
So Palestine does not exist. So how can a people lay claim to a non-existent country? Its called Israel, not Palestine!
Heres more proof that Israel was there first!
This is a timeline found in Joan Peter's "From Time Immemorial" Harper & Row Publishers:
1273 BCE Israel Conquest of Canaan ** under Joshua,
423 BCE Iranian Babylon invades and destroys First Temple [Persian empire was based in modern day Iran]
371 BCE Israel
Iranian King Cyrus issued decree to restore Jewish Nation
312 BCE Israel
Greek Battle of Gaza; Seleucus controls Syria and Babylonia [Seleucid empire was based in Macedonia, northern Greece]
285-246 BCE Israel
Egyptian Rule of Ptolemy II
199 BCE Israel
Greek Seleucid monarchy occupies Judea **
175 BCE Israel
Greek-Syrian Antiochus Epiphanes came to throne in Syria
168 BCE Israel
Greek-Syrian Pagan idol set up in Temple
165 BCE Israel
Greek-Syrian Macabean Revolt, beginning of Hasmonean dynasty
142 BCE Israel Shimon rules and gains Judean indepence
135-104 BCE Israel Rule of Yochanan Hyrkanus
104-103 BCE Israel Rule of Yehudah Aristobulus
103-76 BCE Israel Rule of Alexander Yannai
76-66 BCE Israel Rule of Salome Alexandra
63 BCE Israel
Roman Civil War: Hyrkanus vs. Aristobulus. Pompey intervenes, Conquest of Jerusalem by Pompey, Judea becomes Roman Vassal.
47 BCE Israel
Roman Caesar appoints Antipater ruler of Judea
70 Roman The Romans conquer Jerusalem
132-136 Roman Jewish revolt under Bar Kochba; final defeat of Judah and loss of political sovereignty, rename area to "Palestine" **
351 Roman Jewish revolt to end foreign rule; Roman Empire adopts Christianity.
395 Turkish Palestine part of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, still called Judea or Judah.
438 Turkish Empress Eudocia allows Jews back to Temple site, misinterpreted by Jews as return to nationhood.
614 Iran Persian conquest under Chosroes (with the support of a Jewish army).
628 Turkish "Palestine" reconquered by the Byzantines
633-637 Syrian Arab conquest; shortly afterward, attempt by Jews to restore their nation.
639 Syrian Muawiyah Arab governor.
660 Syrian Muawiyah is made the first Omayyad Caliph of Damascus.
661 Syrian Murder of Ali; Omayyad Dynasty begins.
750 Iraq Last Omayyad Caliph defeated; reign of the Abbassid Caliphs of Baghdad (Persian, Turk, Circassian, Kurd).
878 Egyptian Ahmad, b. Tulun, a Turkish general and governor of Egypt, conquers Palestine; reign of the Tulunides (Turks).
904 Iraq The Abbassids of Baghdad reconquer Palestine.
906 Carmathians Inroads of the Carmathians.
934 Egyptian The Egyptian lkhshidi princes conquer Palestine; their reign begins.
969 Egyptian The Fatimid Caliphs of Cairo conquer Palestine.
969-971 Carmathians War with the Carmathians.
970-976 Turkish Byzantine invasion.
1070-1080 Turkish Seljuq Turks conquer Palestine.
1099 Crusaders The Crusaders conquer Jerusalem, massacre the Jewish and Muslim populations; reign in parts of Palestine until 1291.
1187 Crusaders Saladin of Damascus, a Kurd, captures Jerusalem and the greater part of Palestine.
1244 Mongolian The Kharezmians, instigated by Genghis Khan, invade Palestine; Jerusalem's population is slaughtered, the city sacked.
1260 Egyptian Mameluk Sultans of Egypt defeat Mongols at Ain Jalut, in Palestine; their reign begins.
1260 Egyptian Mongol invasion; Jerusalem sacked.
1291 Egyptian End of the Latin (Crusaders) Kingdom.
1299-1303 Mongolian Mongol invasion.
1516-1517 Turkish The Ottomans conquer Palestine.
1799 French Napoleon conquers Palestine, but is defeated at Acre.
1831 Egyptian Ibrahim Pasha, adopted son of Egypt's Viceroy, occupies Palestine.
1840 Turkish Ibrahim Pasha compelled by the Powers to leave Palestine; Turkish rule restored.
1840 Turkish English writers and statesmen begin to discuss the possibility of a Jewish restoration.
1871-1882 Turkish First Jewish agricultural settlements.
1909 Turkish Foundation of the all-Jewish city of Tel Aviv.
1917-1918 British Allies occupy the whole of Palestine, east and west of the Jordan River; British military administration, end of Ottoman reign.
1917-1918 British Balfour Declaration granting "Jewish Homeland" internationally approved.
1920 British British (pre-Mandate) civil administration; Turkish sovereignty renounced, treaty includes Balfour Declaration
1922 British Palestine Mandate; Jewish National Home confirmed.
1923 British Palestine Mandate comes into operation.
1923 British Seventy-five percent of Palestine is set aside as an independent Arab "Palestinian" state, Transiordan.
1925 British Hebrew University of Jerusalem opened.
1927 British High Commissioners receive Commission for Transjordan.
1929 British Arab revolt.
1936-1939 British Arab revolt and civil war.
1946 British Establishment of Arab state of Transiordan.
1948 Israel End of Mandate for Palestine; establishment of State of Israel; Arab-Jewish war.
1948 Israel Eastern Palestine-Transjordan-.occupies the West Bank area of Western Palestine, becomes "Jordan," constituting over eighty percent of Palestine.
So as you can see, Israel first entered the Middle East in 1237 BCE. Palestine didnt come into being until around 635 CE. So Israel was there first, and has the TRUE original claim.
And yet people still claim Israel is the one that needs to go. Israel is the terrorist nation. Israel is inhumane.
Inhumane? Inhumane?
Israel does all they can to avoid civilian casualties in their provoked, defensive attacks! Hamas and the other terrorists who target Israel do all they can to kill innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians in their unprovoked, offensive attacks! In the Gaza strip, it was Hamas who attacked first, and they attacked Israeli towns, and schools, and buses, and hotels, and bars, and synagogues, and even Israeli churches and Mosques. So Israel has rightfully responded, attacking, however, military bases, weapons arsenals, and known terrorists safe-houses.
And Israel is the inhumane fighter in this conflict?
Many people say talk to Hamas. Negotiate with them. How do you negotiate with a people who have declared, as their official mission, the total annihilation of Israel and America? How do you negotiate with a people who are bent on total destruction? How do you negotiate with a people who not only do not fear, but welcome and even love death? They cannot be negotiated with. They must be destroyed. These terrorists must be wiped out.
Does that mean all Arabs, all Palestinians, and all Muslims? NO! Absolutely not! There are innocents on every side and the innocents should be allowed to live!
It is the terrorists who must die. It is the terrorists who must be annihilated. You do not negotiate with terrorists. You do not talk with them or call a truce with them. They will not honor these because their goal is the destruction of those they are against.
A cease-fire will not destroy Israel, so Hamas will not agree to a cease-fire. Hamas will not except an Israeli surrender unless that surrender allows them to go in, sack the country, and kill all who live there. They will not sit through negotiations because they will not settle for anything less then the complete destruction of Israel!
Israel has no choice. They must destroy Hamas, or they will be destroyed. And that is, quite simply, a fact.
At 10:36 am today (Thursday, January 8, 2009), 8 Hamas rockets fired from Gaza hit Israel, including the cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon.
Enough is enough.