This just in from TIME Magazine online: 

The policeman’s quick reactions no doubt saved lives in Israel’s first suicide attack in over a year. But the bombing seemed to confirm fears by Israeli security chiefs that terrorists had joined thousands of Palestinians who streamed through the breach made last week in the security fence between Egypt and Gaza.

And yet people still still criticize Israel for building a “wall of hate“…

And again via Yahoo News:

A Palestinian armed with a semi-automatic rifle opened fire on a dining room full of Jewish religious students on Thursday night, killing eight and wounding eight others.  Police told TIME that the terrorist walked into the unguarded seminary, up two flights of stairs to the library, where hundreds of male students, many of them teenagers, were having a celebratory feast. The intruder then pulled his weapon out of the box and began spraying the room with bullets. Eyewitnesses told police that students tried hiding under tables and behind bookshelves. But as the students began to scatter, he hunted them down, killing each victim, one by one, with shots to the head at close range. 

I’m sure our hearts go out to the families of those killed.  These deaths were not simply the result of “collateral damage” resulting from the targeted killing of armed enemies but the intentional slaughtering of innocent civilians… as an end in itself… as an act of terrorism.  Yet even as we grapple with the concept that another human being could be so callous as to do such a thing… we must face yet another incomprehensible reality:

“In Gaza, news of the seminary killing was greeted with celebratory gunfire, cars honking their horns, and people passing out candy in the streets. “

words fail me…  These are the people the world demands Israel make peace with… people who rejoice… who celebrate the slaughtering of defenseless young students. Whatever the problems with the security fence, it certainly serves an incredibly important purpose–to protect the innocent civilians living within Israel.

Let’s cut to the chase… the quickest way to STOP Israel from building the fence… the most effective solution to open borders is NOT to be found in criticizing Israel’s attempts to protect its civilians but is instead the condemnation and eradication of the radical Palestinian terrorists who do not show even the slightest deference for human life.

The dirty little secret is that if these terrorists did not exist, there would be no reason for a wall!  

I wonder… if Palestinians ever did get a state… would a single Israeli be able survive there? 

Ever Since I posted a link to a Stanford lecture by Alan Dirshowitz, some of my readers have been giving me a, shall I say, hard time about it. In response, these same reader(s) have posted articles critical of Israel. I had the opportunity to read one of the posted articles, and I think that, given the circumstances, that a reasoned discussion of that article would be helpful.

First, let me be clear that this is not a post in support of Israel as a state or in support of the Zionist movement. Instead, this post is an exercise in the use of logical; a foray into the fundamentals of proper debate. In short, I want to examine the statements and position of Mr. Amayrea’s article from a critical standpoint. Let me begin by quoting a rather long passage in a piece by Mr. Amayrea:

Last week, Israel marked the “Holocaust Day” in West Jerusalem amid the usual fanfare of sanctimonious rituals, never-again speeches and glorification of Zionism… The solemn but also highly propagandistic occasion is manipulated to the fullest by Zionist leaders in order to justify the crime against humanity, otherwise known as “the state of Israel.” - This year, too, Zionist leaders preyed on the memories of holocaust victims by seeking to blackmail the collective conscience of the world into recognizing the “uniqueness of Jewish pain” — as if non-Jews were children of a lesser God and their pain was unimportant.

Thus we had the political and ideological gurus of Zionism, from the morbidly sanctimonious Elie Wiesel to the pathologically duplicitous Ehud Olmert berate the world for the “reincarnation of anti-Semitism,” a deliberately twisted reference to legitimate criticisms of nefarious treatment of Palestinians, including the adoption of such policies as apartheid, ethnic cleansing and the use of brutal tactics for the purpose of forcing the victims of Zionism to leave their ancestral homeland.

First, let us ask on the basis of language alone, whether this author has even the slightest hope of an objective argument. The employment of words such as “sanctimonious”, “propagandistic”, “manipul[ation]“, “preyed”, “blackmail”, “morbid[ly]“, “twisted reference”, all expose the author’s insatiable distain of everything Jewish. In every sentence, Mr. Amayrea liberally interjects emotionally-charged, subjective terms into every description of anything Israeli–and in doing so sacrifices the strength of whatever argument he was about to make.

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I recently started subscribing to the Stanford University’s itunes podcast and I just finished listening to a speech by Alan Dershowitz discussing the Mideast turmoil. My impression is that his perspective is an incredibly balanced one — one that I feel (and which he clearly points out) is missing in the larger mideast peace debate.

If I can sum up the viewpoint in one word, it would be pragobjectimatic.

I challenge any of my readers who have their ax to grind against Israel to listen with an open mind.  I think you will be surprised with his positions.