They "crave" peace. They "yearn" for peace.

Several days into this war on the Palestinians, what have we learned?

#1. This has nothing to do with the red herring rockets.

Stuart Littlewood asks:

What if Hamas dumped all their rockets in the sea tomorrow? Would Gazans enjoy the same freedoms as other nations? Would they be able to open their sea port to foreign ships and rebuild and operate their airport? Would they be able to import and export and carry on trade and develop their economy and prosper like other countries?

Of course not, because it's not about the rockets. The rockets are simply a pretext to continue the ethnic cleansing because

#2. It's very clear that Israel wants all of Palestine for the Israelis.

At any point during the past six decades, Israel could have had peace, simply by assenting to the great moral imperative of our time, namely the Palestinians’ right to their own, unitary, sovereign homeland.

That, apparently, is a bridge too far for enough Israelis, because they keep voting in one murderous thug after another, pious protests notwithstanding. Speaking of pious protests, Jeff Jacoby wonders whether Israel has "learned its lesson." What lesson, you ask? Shorter:

Israel "craves" and "yearns" for peace, and that's why it must murder the Palestinians without mercy.

Don't click through unless you have a bucket. According to Jeff Jacoby, and presumably according to all the other hive-mentality Ziobots, Israel simply has no choice but to wage brutal war...because the Palestinians are completely unreasonable. They've tried stealing their land, bulldozing their homes, using their children for target practice, erecting illegal settlements, putting up countless checkpoints, destroying their economy, starving them, denying them medical care and power, polluting their land and water, destroying their olive trees, squeezing them mercilessly into tinier and tinier areas --- and these people still don't get it!!! They still don't lay down and die and give Israel their land!!! So now, don't you see you idiots?, Israel has no choice. It has to bomb the Palestinians with those pissah F16s we gave them.

So. How shall Israel achieve the goal of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians? We can assemble a list of things that would advance the cause, in order of priority.

1. Ensure that the biggest bastard wins in February.

With all the conspiracy theories swirling around the blog-sites, it's hard to believe that the real motive behind the current siege could be something as mundane as winning an election, but that is the most likely explanation. With Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu solidly ahead in the polls, and the balloting just 6 weeks away; the only hope for Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak is a sudden surge in public approval. War is a reliable way to bathe oneself in glory provided one's enemy is properly vanquished. That should be possible if Barak's legions move swiftly to round up some high-ranking Hamas officials and declare "victory" a week or two before the voting begins. (A poll taken on Sunday in Israel showed that Barak's Labor Party has already gained 50 percent since the bombing began!) But could anyone really be so cynical that they would intentionally slaughter hundreds of people and wreak havoc on an entire society just to improve their chances of being reelected?

Author and jazzman Gilad Atzmon summed it up best in his article "Eine Kleine Nacht Murder":

"Not many people in the west are aware of the devastating fact that killing Arabs and Palestinians in particular is a very effective Israeli political recipe. The Israelis are indeed confused people. As much as they insist upon seeing themselves as a 'Shalom seeking’ nation, they also love to be led by politicians with an astonishing record of unlawful murderous activity. Whether it was Sharon, Rabin, Begin, Shamir or Ben Gurion, Israelis love their 'democratically elected leaders’ to be belligerent hawks with their hands dripping with blood and backed by a solid record of crimes against humanity."

2. Destroy Hamas. Just destroy them, and create pure anarchy. Make it unbearable for the Palestinians. Make them want to die.

Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) head Yuval Diskin told the security cabinet Wednesday that Hamas’s ability to govern Gaza has been significantly impaired. And that, it appears, is one of the key tactical goals of the military actions of the last few days.

...Israel is going after the trappings of governance, of power, of control, of rule. And the reason is the belief that the force that may eventually sweep Hamas from power is not Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah, but pure anarchy.

If Hamas cannot rule, if it cannot provide the people with what they need, if the leaders are in hiding, if anarchy reigns, then Hamas’s legitimacy is delivered a major blow.

And this, to a large degree, explains Israel’s targets. Jerusalem wants to hit Hamas’s ability to rule, it wants to encourage anarchy that would threaten the organization.

Israel’s opening of the Gaza crossings to allow in humanitarian aid contributes somewhat to this sense of anarchy, because it makes Hamas look unable to govern. If the Palestinians must rely on Israel’s green light to let food aid in from third countries, then that undercuts Hamas’s argument that it is able to serve its public.

But it’s not only Hamas that is afraid of losing its valuable toehold - so is Iran.

3. Implicate Israel's other enemies so they can bomb them, too.

“The role of Iran in the training and buildup of the Hamas arsenal has been regrettably overlooked by the world’s media and many of its political leaders,” said Tom Neumann, executive director of the Institute [JINSA].

Am I unfair? Am I? Do you think?

Amira Hass, in a powerful article for Ha'aretz, writes:

This isn't the time to speak of ethics, but of precise intelligence. Whoever gave the instructions to send 100 of our planes, piloted by the best of our boys, to bomb and strafe enemy targets in Gaza is familiar with the many schools adjacent to those targets - especially police stations. He also knew that at exactly 11:30 A.M. on Saturday, during the surprise assault on the enemy, all the children of the Strip would be in the streets - half just having finished the morning shift at school, the others en route to the afternoon shift.

This is an important insight. Israel's control of the situation is immense. They have detailed intelligence, sattelite imagery (which they like to show off at press conferences), sophisticated guidance technology, etc. It has planned this assault for months in advance, and its leadership is ostentatiously proud of how all the branches of military and intelligence, from Shin Bet to the Southern Command, have gelled in this attack. If an assault on major public facilities is timed to coincide with children being in the streets, this is not accidental: it is intended to leave a number of children lying in their own blood, and terrorise others.

This massacre was planned months in advance.

Read how the Israelis gloat. As long as they don't have to pay any price, as long as the operation remains risk-free to them personally, the Israelis are ALL FOR THE KILLING! Their spirits are high, baby. People are holding their head high. That's right. Israelis are pulling their cars off to the side of the road to cheer each bomb as it rips apart the Gaza Strip.

"We feel that the government is finally supporting us," Biton said. "True, rockets are falling and we are losing money. But we'll suffer for a month and then we'll be done with this."

I guess it's good times when you can crush the defenseless Palestinians with the military might given to you by ignorant US taxpayers who believe everything you tell them through your personally owned media whores on every fucking corner after you've been starving and torturing and weakening the Palestinians for months on end in total violation of international law --- and you get away with it! All of it!! Sixty Fucking Years of torturing the Palestinians with impunity and listening to everyone bitch and piss and moan, forcing you to trot out your PR machine every other day, and this little bombing shit that will inconvenience you for a month or so, hey, it's a small price to pay, right, to have to put up with all this bullshit from those whiners?! Hey, you earned it, huh, with all that work and planning? So fucking frustrating dealing with everybody, so yeah, this is a little payback, huh? What's not to feel good about? Maybe they'll lay down and die now so you can have some peace, huh?

The Israelis "crave" peace. They "yearn" for peace. Mmm hmm. That's right. And don't you forget it.