As I write, the Israeli Air Force has killed almost twenty Gazans including an important terrorist leader. It did this as a part of its never-ending self-defense against terrorism emanating from Gaza. I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of Gazan dead rose to near one hundred in a short time.

In the past, Israel exchanged hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for one Israeli captive. Once it was against the corpse of an Israeli. The same sort of strange arithmetic prevails with respect to the civilian victims of Israeli military action, according to world-wide liberal opinion. Collateral killings of Arabs by Israeli Jews are unspeakable atrocities. When Arabs deliberately target and massacre Arabs though it’s not really so bad, not really. Mark my word, it will take only days, if not hours, for the liberal media to treat the twenty, or the hundred victims, of Israeli action as more reprehensible than President Assad 20,000 ( and counting).

Look again: 100/20,000.

It’s pretty clear anyway that Arabs killed by other Arabs just get up and dust themselves off when the cameras are gone.

I hope the new Islamist government of Egypt understands that any Israeli government will nuke parts of Egypt rather than see Israel, the state, and even more importantly, its population, seriously threatened. I am not confident that it does understand. Islamists are a parochial lot (ah, ah!) with feet firmly planted in the seventh century. I fear their ignorant, bellicose fantasies.

Hamas is the regularly elected government of the Gaza strip and a terrorist organization. There is no contradiction there. The fact that it’s legitimate makes ordinary Gazans more culpable of terrorism than would be the case if Hamas had been imposed on them from above and by force of arms. The way I see it, in my simplistic, crude moral way: If you bomb my house and I bomb your house back and your son is killed, it’s your fault, not mine.

There is a link to the Hamas Charter in English here. Its correctness has never been contested in the several years it’s been there. The Charter’s several last pages explains in detail how Hamas plans to deal with Jews when it wins and destroys the Jewish state.

In case you are wondering (or certain), I am not Jewish, never have been, never will be. I am not married to a Jew. My children are not Jewish (as far as I know). I have no economic interest in the “Zionist entity.” I am not even one of the God-inspired Christian Zionists. I wish I could confess to being in the employ of rich Jews who often deposit large sums of money in my Swiss bank account. No such friking luck! I am just a dedicated rationalist who loves democracy in its full Western form, specifically.