Comment Re:Subject bait (Score 1) 379
The situation in Gaza has no direct relation to the kidnappings. Here is the indirect relation:
After the three bodies were found murdered, three to six idiots kidnapped an Arab teenager and burned him to death. This is widely seen (and I also believe it is) a revenge killing. Let me tell you something: I find those three to six people (who have been found) to be worse than the Hamas. They are as low as a human can go. When even Netanyahu condemns them, you know that they are scum!
After the revenge killing there were many riots. Even the Beduin, who usually try to distance themselves from the other Arabs in Israel and do _not_ call themselves Palestinian, were rioting. I myself was attacked in my vehicle on the way home from work, as I work near a Beduin settlement and in fact on my floor at work there is an office of Beduins and we are very friendly to one another.
In addition to the riots, Hamas stepped up the rocket attacks. Before the revenge killing, there were maybe a dozen rocket attacks per day on the towns near Gaza, such as Sderot. As the Israeli arrests in the West Bank mounted (I'm sure that you've heard: a few hundred arrests) so did the rocket attacks. After the revenge killing, Hamas went even further, using longer-range weapons against all major Israeli cities. Thus, the operations into Gaza to target Hamas.
Be there no mistake, there have been attacks on Hamas infrastructure in Gaza before the current mess. I don't know the numbers but at least a few rocket cells have been hit while deploying their wares on Sderot. That is why the situation is often called a "cycle of violence": X shoots at Y who retaliates who then retaliates who then retaliates ad infinitum. Are we (Israelis) perfect angles? No! I completely disagree with some of the Gazan targets, which seem to have been selected out of spite. However as objective as I try to be, I really do see that 90% of our actions target the proper targets and do so in a fashion that protects civilians. In the same sense, I see how the Hamas targets specifically our civilians.
As I'm typing this we just had an alarm. I counted one air burst (Iron Dome) and one ground hit. I don't know if the ground hit is inside or outside the city, it sounded close but not too close.
You should know that Israelis mourn Gazan casualties as well. We hate the Hamas, but certainly not the people of Gaza. They are, have been, and will continue to be our neighbours. The idea that we would even target civilians is so disgusting that if any politician or general tried it he would be lynched by the Israelis before the Arabs even got to him. The soldiers wouldn't even carry out the orders. And yes, I do know of artillery specifically that refused to fire on targets due to not being able to keep the minimum safe distance from civilians.