Ah, There It Is - SEVEN

I had to work my way down to McClatchey Newspapers to find it (even though I know I should have started with McClatchey) and there it is.

The aerial bombardment of Gaza is indeed in response to the deaths of Israelis from unguided rockets fired into Israel from Gaza, rockets that have killed

SEVEN Israelis during the past TWO YEARS

And, as the paper's account reveals, Israel has no idea how to translate its devastating assault into anything meaningful for either side:

"I don't see how this ends well, even if, in two weeks time, it looks like it ends well," said Daniel Levy, a political analyst who once served as an adviser to Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister who's now leading the military campaign against Hamas as Israel's defense minister.

...Israeli leaders haven't explained what could bring the violence to a halt. Once the smoke clears, the rubble is removed and the dead are buried, Hamas is still almost certain to remain in control of the Gaza Strip, and its hard-line leaders are already vowing to strike back.

"To the extent to which there's a scenario where Israel wins a tactical round, it will again lose a strategic round," said Levy, a senior fellow at The New America Foundation, a liberal policy institute in Washington, D.C. that's providing ideas and personnel to the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama."

Seven dead Israelis killed by extremists firing rockets from Gaza. It's amazing how much justification you can milk out of something like that if you carefully frame the argument, scrupulously avoiding mention of numbers and time frames and any other inconvenient facts.

Facts like this. There are now 430,000 Israeli "settlers" living illegally in the West Bank on land stolen from Palestinians. In the first half of 2008 the UN documented 222 settler attacks on Palestinians and Israeli troops, up from 229 for all of 2007.

Using terrorism to fight terrorism isn't about solving anything, it's about revenge and that's all. It's got nothing to do with defence because it only perpetuates the core root of terrorism. All the noble justifications are so much sophistry, distortions and manipulation. This is a matter of revenge and, with deaths now probably well over 400 and as many as 1400 wounded, Israel has had more than ample payback for its own seven dead.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/255/story/58625.html

http://www.metimes.com/International/2008/12/08/israeli_premier_

denounces_hebron_pogrom_against_palestinians/9477/

http://www.truthout.org/123008A