Israel Cleans Out the Rat's Nest

Hamas and their fellow Palestinian goons have become quite confident that they can lob rockets over the fence in Gaza and Israel will show a very restrained response lest they fall under the whithering glare of the UN. Sure enough - as soon as Israel decided they'd put up with enough random death and destruction from these rocket attacks the UN dutifully condemned Israel and slapped Hamas on the wrists. The Israelis need to ignore the UN and get on with the rat removal:

GAZA (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Israel for using "excessive" force in the Gaza Strip and demanded a halt to its offensive after troops killed 61 people on the bloodiest day for Palestinians since the 1980s.

Addressing an emergency session of the Security Council in New York after four days of fighting in which 96 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians, Ban also called on Gaza's Islamist militants to stop firing rockets.

The 1.5 million Palestinians crammed into the blockaded, 45 km (30-mile) sliver of coast, enjoyed a relative respite early on Sunday from Israeli air strikes and raids. Two Israeli soldiers died in a ground assault on Saturday. An Israeli civilian was killed by a rocket in a border town on Wednesday.

"While recognizing Israel's right to defend itself, I condemn the disproportionate and excessive use of force that has killed and injured so many civilians, including children ... I call on Israel to cease such attacks," said Ban.

"I condemn Palestinian rocket attacks and call for the immediate cessation of such acts of terrorism," he said.

But with public anger boiling in Israel, there was no sign the government was ready to call off an offensive that took troops deeper into Gaza on Saturday and in larger numbers than at any time since Israel ended a 38-year occupation in 2005.

The Islamist Hamas movement, which seized control of Gaza last June by routing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's forces, vowed to maintain what it says is a self-defense strategy unless Israel agrees to end all military action.

Areas from which Hamas has launched rockets that have killed three Israelis in the past year saw heavy clashes on the ground on Saturday and air strikes continued to pound buildings and homes that Israel said were used by militants. In some of these attacks, children as young as six months have been killed.

Israel says militants use the population as cover by firing from built-up areas and blamed Hamas for the civilian deaths -- at least 30 occurred on Saturday.

Senior Israeli diplomat Daniel Carmon dismissed suggestions Israel was guilty of war crimes. "Hamas bears sole responsibility for the violence," he told the Security Council.

Folks, we need to get serious about Israel and the Palestinians. There will never be peace between the two. American presidents one after the other have harbored the illusion that peace in the middle east was possible, but it isn't. It's a pipe dream and somebody needs to come out and say it.

Why? The problem lies in the definition of "peace". To Israel peace means a nation secure in its borders coexisting with a Palestinian state and neither side threatening the other. To Palestinians peace is defined as an Israeli state which ceases to exists and with every Jew pushed into the sea. You can see how those two definitions will never be able to coexist with one another.

Hamas et al hide behind the burqas of the civilian population and the Israeli government has all too often withheld retribution for fear of international condemnation. They need to ignore the UN and others, and when rockets are launched from civilian areas, those areas should be attacked without concern for collateral damage. Perhaps if the Palestinian populace gets tired of being punished for the acts of their political leadership they'll wise up and remove that leadership.