You may win the award for most ignorant contributions to this board. The reason that Arab casualties are more than Israeli ones is because Hamas uses civilians as human shields and instead of building bomb shelters for its population it builds tunnels to smuggle weapon into Gaza with the stated intent of committing genocide against Jews. Israel has no such intent against the Arabs. And intent is everything, my friend. Intent is everything. See here, from today's Wall St. Journal:

***** JANUARY 8, 2009

THE JEWS FACE A DOUBLE STANDARD

Why doesn't Israel have the same right to self-defense as other nations?

By MARVIN HIER

The world-wide protests against Israel's ground incursion into Gaza are so full of hatred that they leave me with the terrible feeling that these protests have little to do with the so-called disproportionality of the Israeli response to Hamas rockets, or the resulting civilian casualties.

My fear is that the rage we see in the protesters marching in the streets is far more profound and dangerous than we would like to believe. There are a great many people in the world who, even after Auschwitz, just can't bear the Jewish state having the same rights they so readily grant to other nations. These voices insist Israel must take risks they would never dare ask of any other nation-state -- risks that threaten its very survival -- because they don't believe Israel should exist in the first place.

Just look at the spate of attacks this week on Jews and Jewish institutions around the world: a car ramming into a synagogue in France; a Chabad menorah and Jewish-owned shops sprayed with swastikas in Belgium; a banner at an Australian rally demanding "clean the earth from dirty Zionists!"; demonstrators in the Netherlands chanting "Gas the Jews"; and in Florida, protestors demanding Jews "Go back to the ovens!"
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How else can we explain the double-standard that is applied to the Gaza conflict, if not for a more insidious bias against the Jewish state?

At the U.N., no surprise, this double-standard is in full force. In response to Israel's attack on Hamas, the Security Council immediately pulled an all-night emergency meeting to consider yet another resolution condemning Israel. Have there been any all-night Security Council sessions held during the seven months when Hamas fired 3,000 rockets at half a million innocent civilians in southern Israel? You can be certain that during those seven months, no midnight oil was burning at the U.N. headquarters over resolutions condemning terrorist organizations like Hamas. But put condemnation of Israel on the agenda and, rain or shine, it's sure to be a full house.

Red Cross officials are all over the Gaza crisis, describing it as a full-blown humanitarian nightmare. Where were they during the seven months when tens of thousands of Israeli families could not sleep for fear of a rocket attack? Where were their trauma experts to decry that humanitarian crisis?

There have been hundreds of articles and reports written from the Erez border crossing falsely accusing Israel of blocking humanitarian supplies from reaching beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza. (In fact, over 520 truck loads of humanitarian aid have been delivered through Israeli crossings since the beginning of the Israeli counterattack.) But how many news articles, NGO reports and special U.N. commissions have investigated Hamas's policy of deliberately placing rocket launchers near schools, mosques and homes in order to use innocent Palestinians as human shields?

Many people ask why there are so few Israeli casualties in comparison with the Palestinian death toll. It's because Israel's first priority is the safety of its citizens, which is why there are shelters and warning systems in Israeli towns. If Hamas can dig tunnels, it can certainly build shelters. Instead, it prefers to use women and children as human shields while its leaders rush into hiding.
In Today's Opinion Journal

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

* The Deficit Spending Blowout
* Steel's 'Buy America' Ploy
* Burris Unbanished

TODAY'S COLUMNISTS

* Wonder Land: Top 2009 Resolution: Don't Be Stupid
– Daniel Henninger

COMMENTARY

* Six Lessons for Investors
– John C. Bogle
* President Bush Tried to Rein In Fan and Fred
– Karl Rove
* What Medicaid Tells Us About Government Health Care
– Scott Gottlieb
* Hospital Scrubs Are a Germy, Deadly Mess
– Betsy McCaughey

And then there are the clarion calls for a cease-fire. These words, which come so easily, have proven to be a recipe for disaster. Hamas uses the cease-fire as a time-out to rearm and smuggle even more deadly weapons so the next time, instead of hitting Sderot and Ashkelon, they can target Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

The pattern is always the same. Following a cease-fire brought on by international pressure, there will be a call for a massive infusion of funds to help Palestinians recover from the devastation of the Israeli attack. The world will respond eagerly, handing over hundreds of millions of dollars. To whom does this money go? To Hamas, the same terrorist group that brought disaster to the Palestinians in the first place.

The world seems to have forgotten that at the end of World War II, President Harry Truman initiated the Marshall Plan, investing vast sums to rebuild Germany. But he did so only with the clear understanding that the money would build a new kind of Germany -- not a Fourth Reich that would continue the policies of Adolf Hitler. Yet that is precisely what the world will be doing if we once again entrust funds to Hamas terrorists and their Iranian puppet masters.

In less than two weeks, Barack Obama will be sworn in as president of the United States. But there is no "change we can believe in" in the Middle East -- not where Israel is concerned. The double-standard continuously applied to the Jewish state proves that, for much of the world, the real lessons of World War II have yet to be learned.

Mr. Hier, a rabbi, is the founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance.

REVISING THE TERMINOLOGY OF TERROR:

A significant consequence of the escalation of armed Israel-Palestinian violence is that events on the ground are able to speak with a startling clarity as to the wider realities of this on-going conflict. Over time both sides have built up an armoury of words with which to battle for justification and control of the historical, legal and humanitarian context of this war. Many of us have drifted in accepting this lexicon of crafted terminology, however it is now looking very exposed indeed.

Perhaps one of the most striking illustrations of actual events is the ratio of 1:100 Israelis to Palestinians killed in the conflict. In this stark light talk of 'Proportional Response', 'Precision Targeting' and 'Unfortunate collateral damage' is very hollow indeed. It has become evident to the majority of observers how the words 'Proportional' 'Unfortunate' and 'Precision' are both miss-leading and not relevant in describing the situation.

This reveals a broader issue for the Israeli military and political establishment as they struggle to find a new global/US friendly narrative with which to align the cause and update their PR lexicon. The 'War on Terror' had proved a strong geopolitical narrative to replace the 'Cold War' and use in aligning Israel's interest closely with the US. The 'War in Terror' lexicon is now looking pretty barren and suffering from extreme exhaustion courtesy of the Bush administration. So what next?

More of the same mantra of ‘Terror'-

“A necessary war on terror does not end with an agreement. We don't sign agreements with terror; we fight terror.” (Israeli foreign minister January 2009). Tzipi Livni very succinctly excuses Israeli aggression as defensive, with 'terror' as a justification for Israel's rejection of any form of peace process to end the occupation of Palestinian land.

However events on the ground provide a stark revision of who now owns the word 'Terror'. If the Palestinians are clearly the more 'Terrorised' party, it surely begs the question who are the real 'Terrorists'. There has been an assumption that 'Terrorists' work outside the structure of the nation state, do not come in the form of a disciplined uniformed national army. However the Israeli army's 'Terrorising' of a dense civilian area and its stated strategic aim of using this military action to achieve a long term deterrence effect, does require us to reconsider the Israeli army as one of the best organised, equipped and most powerful 'Agents of Terror' in the world. Hamas' action against the citizens of Sderot, makes them look like home-spun amateurs by comparison.

By BRET STEPHENS

Maybe this column would get a better reception if it were titled, "No Endgame for Israel." Because the quantity of commentary claiming that Israel cannot possibly achieve any kind of successful outcome in Gaza is already approaching presurge levels of Iraq defeatism.
[Global View] David Klein

The argument that Israel's assault on Gaza is an exercise in futility has four main parts. First, say the critics, Israel cannot defeat Hamas by restricting its attacks to the relatively safe distance of airstrikes and a limited land incursion. Down that road lies a reprise of the failed 2006 war with Hezbollah.

Next, they say, the human cost of taking physical control of Gaza will be too high in terms of Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians. Down that road lie memories of the 1982 siege of Beirut.

Third, we are told that the only method by which Israel can prevent Hamas from regaining power is by resorting to another full-scale occupation. Down that road lies endless international condemnation and, inevitably, another excruciating intifada.

Finally, we hear that by invading Gaza, Israel has further weakened Palestinian moderates and midwifed into existence yet another generation of jihadists. Down that road lies the end of the two-state solution and, demography being what it is, the end of the Jewish state itself.

On this last point, it would be interesting to know how a two-state solution is supposed to come about by allowing Hamas to continue to rule half of a presumptive Palestinian state. Are we now to endorse a three-state solution of Israel, Hamastan and Fatahland? Are Israelis supposed to support a peace deal by looking at Gaza as the model for what they should expect in the West Bank? Is Mahmoud Abbas's hand strengthened by the mockery Hamas makes of his claims to presidential authority? And, speaking of Palestinian moderates, shouldn't the test of their moderation be a willingness to stand up to Hamas, if only rhetorically?

Then there is the matter of the war itself. Israel has already demonstrated that it has learned the principal lessons from the war with Hezbollah. It did not wait too long to begin the ground campaign. It resisted the lure of a premature cease-fire, engineered by others. It did not promise ambitious goals at the war's outset only to walk away from them amid military and diplomatic complications.

On the contrary, the stated goal of a "quiet" border with Gaza has the dual advantage of suggesting a degree of restraint while allowing Jerusalem to preserve its options as the battle unfolds. "Quiet" does not require the destruction of Hamas. But neither does it exclude it.

In other words, instead of being forced publicly to ratchet its aims downward, as it did in Lebanon, Jerusalem can now ratchet them upward, putting Hamas off-balance and perhaps tempting it to cut its losses by accepting a cease-fire on terms acceptable to Israel. Doing so would not quite amount to a defeat for Hamas. But it would be an unambiguous humiliation for a group whose greatest danger lies in its pretension of invincibility. Burst balloons aren't easily reinflated.

It is precisely for this reason that Hamas will likely fight on, in the hopes that Israel will flinch. Critics of military action point to this damned-if-Israel-does, damned-if-it-doesn't scenario as evidence of the folly of the war.
In Today's Opinion Journal

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

* What Congress Knew About 'Torture'
* Feel Like a Trillion Bucks

TODAY'S COLUMNISTS

* Global View: An Endgame for Israel
– Bret Stephens
* Main Street: Like a Virgin: The Press Take On Teenage Sex – William McGurn

COMMENTARY

* How the U.N. Perpetuates the 'Refugee' Problem
– Natan Sharansky
* Iran's Nobel Laureate Has Become a Target of the Regime
– Azadeh Moaveni
* Banks Don't Need to Be Forced to Lend
– Bert Ely
* Justice Requires 12 Angry Men
– Steven Calabresi and Michael Saks

Yet by no means is it obvious that the Israeli army needs to walk directly into a Gaza City Götterdämmerung in order to achieve its military aims. Hamas has been able to arm itself with increasingly sophisticated rockets thanks to a vast network of tunnels running below its border with Egypt. Israel found it difficult to destroy that network prior to its withdrawal from Gaza and will not easily do so now. But by bisecting the Strip, as it has now done, it will have no trouble preventing these rockets from moving north to their usual staging ground, thereby achieving a critical war aim without giving Hamas easy opportunities to hit back.

Israel also has much to gain by avoiding a frontal assault on Gaza's urban areas in favor of the snatch-and-grab operations that have effectively suppressed Hamas's terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank. A long-term policy aimed squarely at killing or capturing Hamas's leaders, destroying arms caches and rocket factories, and cutting off supply and escape routes will not by itself destroy the group. But it can drive it out of government and cripple its ability to function as a fighting force. And this, in turn, could mean the return of Fatah, the closest thing Gaza has to a "legitimate" government.

All this will be said to amount to another occupation, never mind that there are no settlers in this picture, and never mind, too, that Israel was widely denounced for carrying out an "effective occupation" of the Strip after it imposed an economic blockade on Hamas. (By this logic, the U.S. is currently "occupying" Cuba.) If Israel is going to achieve a strategic victory in this war, it will have to stand firm against this global wave of hypocrisy and cant.

Israel will also have to practice a more consistent policy of deterrence than it has so far done. One option: For every single rocket that falls randomly on Israeli soil, an Israeli missile will hit a carefully selected target in Gaza. Focusing the minds of Hamas on this type of "proportionality" is just the endgame that Israel needs.

So how was your holiday season? Over in Gaza, whether or not they're putting the Christ back in Christmas, they're certainly putting the crucifixion back in Easter. According to the London-based Arabic newspaper al Hayat, on Dec. 23 Hamas legislators voted to introduce Sharia — Islamic law — to the Palestinian territories, including crucifixion. So next time you're visiting what my childhood books still quaintly called "the Holy Land" the re-enactments might be especially lifelike.

The following day, Christmas Eve, Samuel Huntington died at his home at Martha's Vineyard. A decade and a half ago, in his most famous book "The Clash Of Civilizations," professor Huntington argued that Western elites' view of man as homo economicus was reductive and misleading — that cultural identity is a more profound behavioral indicator than lazy assumptions about the universal appeal of Western-style economic liberty and the benefits it brings.

Very few of us want to believe this thesis.

"The great majority of Palestinian people," Condi Rice, the secretary of state, said to commentator Cal Thomas a couple of years back in a report that first appeared on JWR, "they just want a better life. This is an educated population. I mean, they have a kind of culture of education and a culture of civil society. I just don't believe mothers want their children to grow up to be suicide bombers. I think the mothers want their children to grow up to go to university. And if you can create the right conditions, that's what people are going to do."

Thomas asked a sharp follow-up: "Do you think this or do you know this?"

"Well, I think I know it," said Secretary Rice.

"You think you know it?"

"I think I know it."

I think she knows she doesn't know it. But in the modern world there is no diplomatic vocabulary for the kind of cultural fault line represented by the Israeli/Palestinian dispute, so even a smart thinker like Dr. Rice can only frame it as an issue of economic and educational opportunity. Of course, there are plenty of Palestinians like the ones the secretary of state described: You meet them living as doctors and lawyers in Los Angeles and Montreal and Geneva � but not, on the whole, in Gaza.

In Gaza, they don't vote for Hamas because they want access to university education. Or, if they do, it's to get Junior into the Saudi-funded, Hamas-run Islamic University of Gaza, where majoring in rocket science involves making one and firing it at the Zionist Entity. In 2007, as part of their attempt to recover Gaza from Hamas, Fatah seized 1,000 Qassam rockets at the university, as well as seven Iranian military trainers.

At a certain unspoken level, we understand that the Huntington thesis is right, and the Rice view is wishful thinking. After all, when French President Sarkozy and other European critics bemoan Israel's "disproportionate" response, what really are they saying? That they expect better from the despised Jews than from Hamas. That they regard Israel as a Western society bound by civilized norms, whereas any old barbarism issuing forth from Gaza is to be excused on grounds of "desperation."

Hence, this slightly surreal headline from The New York Times: "Israel Rejects Cease-Fire, But Offers Gaza Aid." For whatever that's worth. Wafa Samir Ibrahim al-Biss, a young Palestinian woman who received considerate and exemplary treatment at an Israeli hospital in Beersheba, returned to that same hospital packed with explosives in order to blow herself up and kill the doctors and nurses who restored her to health. Well, what do you expect? It's "desperation" born of "poverty" and "occupation."

If it was, it would be easy to fix. But what if it's not? What if it's about something more primal than land borders and economic aid?

A couple of days after Hamas voted to restore crucifixion to the Holy Land, their patron in Tehran (and their primary source of "aid") put in an appearance on British TV. As multicultural "balance" to Her Majesty The Queen's traditional Christmas message, the TV network Channel 4 invited President Ahmadinejad to give an alternative Yuletide address on the grounds that it was a valuable public service to let viewers hear him "speak for himself, which people in the West don't often get the chance to see."

In fact, as JWR contributor Caroline Glick pointed out in The Jerusalem Post, the great man "speaks for himself" all the time — when he's at the United Nations, calling on all countries to submit to Islam; when he's presiding over his international conference of Holocaust deniers; when he's calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map" — or (in his more "moderate" moments) relocated to a couple of provinces of Germany and Austria. Caroline Glick forbore to mention that, according to President Ahmadinejad's chief adviser, Hassan Abbassi, his geopolitical strategy is based on the premise that "Britain is the mother of all evils" — the evils being America, Australia, Israel, the Gulf states, Canada and New Zealand, all the malign progeny of the British Empire. "We have established a department that will take care of England," Mr. Abbassi said in 2005. "England's demise is on our agenda."

So when Britain's Channel 4 says that we don't get the chance to see these fellows speak for themselves, it would be more accurate to say that they speak for themselves incessantly but the louder they speak the more we put our hands over our ears and go "Nya nya, can't hear you." We do this in part because, if you're as invested as most Western elites are in the idea that all anyone wants is to go to university, get a steady job and settle down in a nice house in the suburbs, a statement such as "England's demise is on our agenda" becomes almost literally untranslatable. When President Ahmadinejad threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the map, we deplore him as a genocidal fantasist. But maybe he's a genocidal realist, and we're the fantasists.

The civilizational clashes of professor Huntington's book are not inevitable. Culture is not immutable. But changing culture is tough and thankless and something the West no longer has the stomach for. Unfortunately, the Saudis do, and so do the Iranians. And not just in Gaza but elsewhere the trend is away from "moderation" and toward something fiercer and ever more implacable.

To be fair to President Ahmadinejad's hosts at Channel 4, the "department that will take care of England" probably doesn't get the lion's share of the funding in Tehran. On the other hand, when Hashemi Rafsanjani describes the Zionist Entity as "the most hideous occurrence in history," which the Muslim world "will vomit out from its midst" with "a single atomic bomb," that sounds rather more specific, if not teetering alarmingly on the "disproportionate." Unlike its international critics in North America and Europe, Israel has no margin for error.

Just reading the news and watching the TV one can not help witnessing an act of genocide being committed by Israel on the unarmed Gazan civilians, armed by the most sophisticated US weapons of mass distractions also financially supported by the US and other western governments. The entire “International Community” is watching silently this criminal Israeli massacre happening, which means a quite approval of the crime.

We should all ask ourselves some important questions:
• What Democratic Principles do we stand for?
• How Far do we Support State Terrorism? When done by friendly states such as the US or Israel?
• Why do we perpetrate crimes against humanity when we preach the opposite?

We have all joined hands to strive for democracy and pushed developing countries to follow our example so they may close the cultural gap between our nations.

We have worked many years to establish the United Nations and International Laws to protect the World human rights and freedom of speech.

We use to salute freedom fighters who have struggled to hold invading forces from destroying their countries.

Whilst our leaders in the western democracies are selling to their nations the idea that they also support democracies around the World, they were and still are supporting tyrannical and authoritarian governments in these parts of the World, which is a direct contradiction with whatever they preach.

The Palestinian people have elected Hamass (the Palestinian Islamic Political Party) under global supervision to become the democratic legal rightful elected government of Palestine, yet our western governments elected their own from Fateh party, a party otherwise lost the elections as known of his corruption and disrepute.

Moreover the western government's stance lead by the US refused to deal with the Palestinian legally elected government, as it may have an Islamic connotation, and called Hamass a terrorist organisation! Instead they supported Abbas and his war monger Dahlan the killers of many thousands of innocent people, both Jews and Muslims, now and in the past.

Incidentally Palestine was not the first stop and will not be the last. The following are just few examples of these democratic rightfully elected governments refused by the western democracies:

• The Somali people elected their own Islamic government which was also refused by the western democracies, and a war was waged against the Somali population and their elected government supported directly by the US, followed by an invasion by a US backed neighbouring army.

• The Algerian people elected their own Islamic government but the west directed and paid for the largest massacre of Muslim civilians in North Africa for years to topple this elected government. This massacre was supported by mercenaries from different countries, known to most educated people.

• The Afghani people elected Taliban, an Islamic party who fought to free Afghanistan from the USSR occupation and previously supported by the western governments. Later the same western governments have collectively waged the largest war in Afghanistan to end the Taliban rule. To create a reason for this war, the US and their western followers unjustly accused Taliban of supporting the executors of 9/11 without any foundations, a similar lie to the “weapons of mass destructions” which was the reason to invade Iraq. This Afghani doomed war is still running to date leaving hundred of thousand civilian casualties, otherwise called by the western democracies “War Collaterals” or a price worth paying, call it as you wish, the situation in Afghanistan is “free for all” right now. However the great western economies have paid dearly and will continue to pay for this unjust war.

This is a different face to democracy; it is a specially tailored democracy to suit and pleases those war mongers controlling the western governments. Democracy may have more than one meaning to our western governments, good un-Islamic democracies, which really consist of tyrannical corrupt rulers; and “out of tune” Islamic democracies which are otherwise called “terrorists”.

Whilst we have in the past condemned the kidnapping and torture of innocent people, we are now watching quietly these crimes been committed by the US and their allies, such as the prisons and detention camps set up by the US in Abu ghraib, guantanamo bay and many other locations. Many crimes against humanity have been committed by the US and western allies at these camps.

Headed by the neo-nazi few extremists in the US, the west is leading the World irresponsibly to a global disastrous confrontation, the like of which has never been witnessed, even in the last two world wars.

It can not be right to destroy nations of unarmed populations and commit acts of genocides on the false pretext of protecting the western way of life!
Bombing other democracies is almost like shooting ourselves in the foot, but may also have devastating consequences.

• Have the American people forgotten what they suffer at the hands of the British?
• Have the Jews forgotten how painful it was to be subjected to the nazi treatment?
• Do the Western and Israeli soldiers, who posses the World most sophisticated fighter planes, tanks, submarines and weapons of mass destruction for the killing of innocent unarmed civilians have any left dignity or honour? Don't they feel any ashamed when they kill elders, women and children?
• Is it not the case that we too lost our loved ones to fight these unjust illegal wars just to please Bush and other World fascist?
• Is it acceptable to us to kill and inflict extreme pain to others, but not to our children?
• Is it not a God given right to choose your religion and creed without fear of being subjected to torture and death?
• Is it not the right of other nations to elect their own governments and enjoy democracy?
• Who appointed George Bush and his mentally disturbed clan to be the Global judges and police?
• Haven't we in the past supported nations struggle to have freedom and decent life?
• Is it not time for the western nations to vote to remove these war mongers before they drive us all on a roller coaster to a Global potential war?
• Have the Western media lost the sense of reporting the truth in full?
• Shouldn't we know that a civilisation conflict will ultimately lead to a religious war that may have grave consequences to the entire World?
• Why do the western nations follow the US through every ditch and have to pay for it?
• How long will take us to recover from the man made depression that was caused due directly to these misguided wars?
• How much have we changed and how much uglier will it get?

It is the collective duty of each of us to keep this situation from escalation and push our political representatives to search for a just peace, rather than stir an otherwise an explosive concoction of lies.

"Late Saturday, thousands of Gazans received Arabic-language cell-phone messages from the Israeli military, urging them to leave homes where militants might have stashed weapons."

-- Associated Press, Dec. 27

Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating.

Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life that, risking the element of surprise, it contacts enemy noncombatants in advance to warn them of approaching danger. Hamas, which started this conflict with unrelenting rocket and mortar attacks on unarmed Israelis -- 6,464 launched from Gaza in the past three years -- deliberately places its weapons in and near the homes of its own people.

This has two purposes. First, counting on the moral scrupulousness of Israel, Hamas figures civilian proximity might help protect at least part of its arsenal. Second, knowing that Israelis have new precision weapons that may allow them to attack nonetheless, Hamas hopes that inevitable collateral damage -- or, if it is really fortunate, an errant Israeli bomb -- will kill large numbers of its own people for which, of course, the world will blame Israel.

For Hamas, the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians. The religion of Jew-murder and self-martyrdom is ubiquitous. And deeply perverse, such as the Hamas TV children's program in which an adorable live-action Palestinian Mickey Mouse is beaten to death by an Israeli (then replaced by his more militant cousin, Nahoul the Bee, who vows to continue on Mickey's path to martyrdom).

At war today in Gaza, one combatant is committed to causing the most civilian pain and suffering on both sides. The other combatant is committed to saving as many lives as possible -- also on both sides. It's a recurring theme. Israel gave similar warnings to Southern Lebanese villagers before attacking Hezbollah in the Lebanon war of 2006. The Israelis did this knowing it would lose for them the element of surprise and cost the lives of their own soldiers.

That is the asymmetry of means between Hamas and Israel. But there is equal clarity regarding the asymmetry of ends. Israel has but a single objective in Gaza -- peace: the calm, open, normal relations it offered Gaza when it withdrew in 2005. Doing something never done by the Turkish, British, Egyptian and Jordanian rulers of Palestine, the Israelis gave the Palestinians their first sovereign territory ever in Gaza.

What ensued? This is not ancient history. Did the Palestinians begin building the state that is supposedly their great national aim? No. No roads, no industry, no courts, no civil society at all. The flourishing greenhouses that Israel left behind for the Palestinians were destroyed and abandoned. Instead, Gaza's Iranian-sponsored rulers have devoted all their resources to turning it into a terror base -- importing weapons, training terrorists, building tunnels with which to kidnap Israelis on the other side. And of course firing rockets unceasingly.

The grievance? It cannot be occupation, military control or settlers. They were all removed in September 2005. There's only one grievance and Hamas is open about it. Israel's very existence.

Nor does Hamas conceal its strategy. Provoke conflict. Wait for the inevitable civilian casualties. Bring down the world's opprobrium on Israel. Force it into an untenable cease-fire -- exactly as happened in Lebanon. Then, as in Lebanon, rearm, rebuild and mobilize for the next round. Perpetual war. Since its raison d'etre is the eradication of Israel, there are only two possible outcomes: the defeat of Hamas or the extinction of Israel.

Israel's only response is to try to do what it failed to do after the Gaza withdrawal. The unpardonable strategic error of its architect, Ariel Sharon, was not the withdrawal itself but the failure to immediately establish a deterrence regime under which no violence would be tolerated after the removal of any and all Israeli presence -- the ostensible justification for previous Palestinian attacks. Instead, Israel allowed unceasing rocket fire, implicitly acquiescing to a state of active war and indiscriminate terror.

Hamas's rejection of an extension of its often-violated six-month cease-fire (during which the rockets never stopped, just were less frequent) gave Israel a rare opportunity to establish the norm it should have insisted upon three years ago: no rockets, no mortar fire, no kidnapping, no acts of war. As the U.S. government has officially stated: a sustainable and enduring cease-fire. If this fighting ends with anything less than that, Israel will have lost yet another war. The question is whether Israel still retains the nerve -- and the moral self-assurance -- to win.