To protest at the words "Jewish" and "Israeli" being used interchangeabley.

Why shouldn't the Jewish people have a homeland? I'm no nationalist but if the Turkish people have Turkey, German people have Germany, Egyptian people have Egypt, why can't the Jewish people have Israel?

Judaism (as a religion) says nothing about ethnicity. Absolutely nothing.

HoneyBadger, are you saying that the reason an ISIS supporter is the same as a Zionist is that they support religiously-based states? If so, do you consider any Briton who supports the Queen, Established Church, and current constitutional settlement to be the same as a Zionist or ISIS supporter? If not, why not?

Yeah, shelters to protect themselves from the military. That's kind of why Hamas built shelters for their top brass.

I'm not justifying the civilian death toll in Gaza. I'm not sure what the solution is to the problem but I don't think that such disregard for civilian life, intentional or not, is going to solve anything. But that's on the Israeli side.

On the Palestinian side, I'm pretty sure that building bomb shelters would be a good idea. It's one of the reasons why so few Israelis died (that and defensive shield) - it certainly wasn't for lack of Hamas trying very hard to kill them!

i don't want a christian state either - doesn't make me anti christian. it is just the same consistent view that citizens should have equal rights and their religion and ethnicity (and let's face it judaism places a great deal of emphasis on ethnicity and israel uses that basis of determining who has rights) shoudln't come into it.

not rocket science.

500 children is a terrible, terrible toll.

Incidentally, 24 times as many children have been killed in the Syrian conflict: 11,964 according to the Syrian Human Rights Observatory, which may of course be prone to overestimation.

They are every bit as precious a loss, and heartbreakingly more numerous, and the threads expressing distress about the horrors inflicted on them are not 24 times as common as threads about Gazan children.

TheViciousChickenofBristol

I've also never understood the idea that having been through the holocaust will somehow make Israelis/Jews nicer?

No, the holocaust was such a huge national trauma (and still is) that when Iran says 'we want to wipe you out', Israelis go 'shit, they mean it' and when Hamas' charter calls for the destruction of Israel, Israelis don't go 'whatever', they go 'bloody hell, we'd better not let that happen again'. Yeah, Israel is strong now but there's a feeling (rightly or wrongly) that if Israel weren't strong, there's no stopping round 2 of the holocaust so Israel had better damn well stay strong.

Having six million of your people killed makes you a bit fucked up and paranoid like that, it doesn't make you nice and cuddly.

Look at Rwanda and how they behave in DRC. That's what a people who have undergone genocide behave like.

Egos

I think that the Palestinian parents should also look to their own leadership and ask exactly what they are doing to improve their lives.

Maybe a Gazan parent should ask Hamas that if they had all this concrete to build tunnels and shelters for themselves, perhaps they could have built public shelters for their children as well?

HomeHelp- I missed that. Comparing Gaza to the Holocaust is not on. I just want to be clear that whilst I've disagreed with a lot of what has been said by some of the more pro-Israeli posters I don't think that's OK.

Exactly. It is a tragedy. Any child dying. It's not a competition. But it's true that the Palestinians have far more to gain from a peace deal than the Israelis.

TheViciousChickenofBristol, you make this extraordinary statement:
"Funny that a people who suffered the utter horror of the Holocaust at the hands of the Nazis would go on to essentially turn Gaza into the largest concentration camp in the world."

I'm genuinely curious: do you actually, truly believe that Gaza is akin to a concentration camp? Or are you deploying a rhetorical device?

If the former, in what ways do you think Gaza is akin to a concentration camp?

Do you think there are gas chambers, medical tortures on unaesthetized patients? Do you think women are whipped to death, children thrown into crematoria alive, that anyone is literally enslaved? Is anyone transported to Gaza in cattle trains in conditions so terrible that a large fraction die on the journey? Is every single person in Gaza routinely stripped naked, shorn of all hair on head and body such that they are bleeding and given ill-fitting, louse-ridden clothes to wear? Do many hundreds of people die from guard dog attacks? Do you think the death rate begins to approach that of a concentration camp?

These, and many other horrific features, are what makes something akin to a concentration camp, at least to me. In my view, it neither supports the plight of Palestinians nor respects the plight of Jews and others who suffered in concentration camp to say that they are just one and the same. I don't see how anyone can think differently, but perhaps you'll respond and explain your reasoning (or state that it was mere rhetoric).

I know! So many names. Karam and Kareem Ahmed Al Helou jumped out at me. 5 month old twins.

Thank you fuzzy. I don't know how anyone can read that list and not just weep.

And yes it is a tragedy any child dying. The 500 take nothing away from poor Daniel or his family. The whole situation is a rotten bloody tragedy.

Just in case anyone gives a shit this is the list of the 504 Palestinuan children killed in that "war". It's disingenuous to claim that Israeli children (Jewish and non-Jewish) aren't better shielded and in less danger than Palestinian children. Hampsterdam did say "almost immune" not entirely.

s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/html/tables/Version3/tables/web13681.html

Is he the one isreali child who was killed by missile during the month long 'war'?
The fact you can state one child by name speaks volumes to the inequality of the whole situation seeing as no one could name all 500 children who died in gaza. I remember the bakr boys though.

Although of course they are almost immune from actually being hit by them unlike the children of gaza

Tell that to the parents of Daniel Turgeman.

Lastuser surely isreali children would have made the point or are non Jewish isreali children somehow immune to getting ptsd when missiles fly over their homes and schools?
Although of course they are almost immune from actually being hit by them unlike the children of gaza.

Worridmum - which talks did Israel cause to fail? 2000 AND 2008? And that's according to who exactly? Dennis Ross, Bill Clinton and Condoleeza Rice - while all having justified criticism of Israel - all agree that it was the Palestinian leadership who torpedoed the negotiations.