The blatant anti-semitism on this thread is digusting. How about getting your facts straight and not just listening to the media reports of what is happening in Israel?
Hamas are a terrorist organisation. Israel left Gaza with a ton of resources. They are still sending in resources throughout this entire crisis. They are treating the people of Gaza in their hospitals, including the child of the leader of Hamas.
Hamas' plan is to end the State of Israel and to kill all Israelis living there. They want to manipulate world opinion by ruthlessly engineering the maximum possible death toll among their own civilian population, especially their children.
Israel is constantly being attacked by Hamas with rockets fired daily (and terrorist attacks have been happening for years). Hamas has refused cease fire after cease fire. Five ceasefires have thus far been proposed, where Israel agreed to all of them, but Hamas steadfastly refused, including two humanitarian ceasefires broken by Hamas and today’s humanitarian ceasefire which Hamas exploited in order to kidnap an Israeli soldier, killing another two in the process.
Two of many Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets which misfired, one which hit the Shifa hospital killing 16 and the other hitting a playground in the Shati refugee camp killing 10 children. An Italian journalist has confirmed that it was a misfired Hamas mortar shell which hit the UN school killing another 17 and injuring countless others. This was blamed on Israel.
For the record, the Iron Dome anti-missile system came about through a combination of Israeli creativity, Israeli expertise, Israeli technical excellence and a desperate need and determination to protect Israeli citizens, Jews, Muslims, Christians and all; from harm.
In addition to the Iron Dome, the main reason that there have been so few Israeli casualties from Hamas is that currently, under fire from Hamas, around 3,000,000 Israelis are living in underground bunkers or reinforced concrete safe rooms. Since 2001 there have been over 15,000 rockets fired into Israel from Gaza.
You mention US funding of Israel. I fear you neglected to mention the billions in US, UN and European funds donated to the Palestinians in Gaza, which were not used as intended, to build schools and hospitals and create jobs, but rather were added to the considerable funding from Iran, Qatar and others in order to purchase and manufacture rockets as well as other weapons; and to build a massive underground terror infrastructure.
The concrete, cement and steel allowed into Gaza by the Israelis under great pressure from the international community were not in fact used to build and improve the lives of ordinary Gazans, but were in actual fact used to build, underground bunkers for the storage and manufacture of rockets and weapons along with apparently hundreds of kilometres of terror tunnels for the purpose of infiltrating Israel in order to kill Israeli civilians and in times of conflict, hide and protect Hamas fighters and leaders.
Surely if Hamas wanted to shield its women and children from the fighting, just as Israel does; Hamas could indeed provide refuge for its civilians in the vast array of underground bunkers and tunnels. Such safety however appears to be available solely to Hamas leaders and fighters and importantly its weapons.
What about the three UN schools in which, by the UN’s own admission, rockets have been stored or the fact that throughout the conflict rockets have been stored and fired from a selection of homes, schools, mosques and other civilian locations, in fact wherever Hamas could guarantee a civilian presence and consequently civilian casualties, apparently illegal under international law.
It has been stated that there a shortage of medical supplies and medicines in Gaza. However, there have been ample funds donated to Gaza for those very things, but that the money was misappropriated by Hamas to fund rockets and weapons. As I previously mentioned before, Israel is constantly treating anyone from Gaza who needs treatment.
For those of you wanting to boycott Israeli products, have a read of the article below and start thinking of all the things you will need to avoid...
www.takeapen.org/Takeapen/Templates/showpage.asp?DBID=1&TMID=84&LNGID=1&FID=583&PID=877
This is the side of the conflict that is not being shown daily in the media.