Any other country would have cleared the deck with .50 cal machine gun fire. Why does Israel allow its soldiers to be abused by those terrorist operatives?

Brian ,,,I believe you have forgotten when one of OUR ships was attacked by our “Ally” ISRAEL,,,. I believe it was either the Liberty or the Stark.
American sailors died when we were told NOT to fire on our buddys,,even though they were strafing our ship. The Isralies more or less said
“OOPS,,Sorry” & that was all that happenned for if any one said anything you were branded “Anti-Semitic” by the media,,many of whom are of the jewish faith.
When it comes to this incident off Gaza,,I believe that the Israelis are counting “Strike ONE”,,& after 3 they will retaliate with deadly force & I do not blame them for defending themselves (outnumbered 11 to 1 ) Put yourself in their place,,would you strike when ALL of the cameras are turned on & aimed at you??? I think not,,,you’d wait for the right time, then when all have been lulled to sleep,,,,,I’ll let you figure it out.

Thanks for the information on the USS Liberty, although I somewhat recall something about it I was not fully aware of that incident. I don’t know why since I was already two years old!
I think it is amazing that Israel is always in the wrong according to what appears to be the general non-west population. They are expected to give in to the Palestinians time and time again and it is all for nothing as nothing changes.
Although historically the Israeli’s may have claim to the land it is easy to see why others would see the situation differently. I could imagine the turmoil that would ensue should the American Indian decide to take their land back by force. Or how about the British and the French taking back the eastern part of the United States?
Even the claim of Israel on the land is Biblically and faith based as they were NOT the original inhabitants of this land, you probably know the story, if not read the book of Genesis. All-in-all it is a no-win situation as is the Isaac/Ishmael (Israeli/Islam) conflict.

“The Major”, you conveniently “forget” (you can check the facts before you write) that it was Iraq and not Israel that attacked the Stark. As for the Liberty, I think that it is easy to forgive an accident such as that when Egypt, Jordan, Syria, the Arab states of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria are all attacking Israel during the six-day war. That IS when the Liberty was accidently attacked.

Greg, though you are correct that Israel was not the orignal inhabitants, none of those inhabitants exist today. The Phlistim were invaders-attackers too and were not original inhabitants…the name Palenstine was given by the Romans when they invaded (destoying the 2nd Temple) to “wash” Israel of her “rights” as a people in her land. Modern archaeology gives them links with the Mycenean world in Greece. They came from Crete originally.