While it claims otherwise, Israel has been fighting "terror" with "terror." It is impossible to suggest that Israel is worried about Palestinian civilians when it launches raids like the one on June 10. Authorizing helicopter gunships to launch missiles into crowded Palestinian streets? Only a ruthless government would authorize such attacks. Furthermore, as many others have stated, the target of Israel's June 10 attack was not a suicide bomber packed with explosives on his way to blow up a bus or a café. No, that target was Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the well-known Hamas political leader who was merely driving down the street at the time; Rantisi barely survived the attack. It is a highly dubious assertion for Israel to claim that this extreme level of force was needed.
Such heavy-handed and careless attacks by Israel are making it harder and harder for the Jewish state to claim the moral high ground. In order to defend its occupation of what the U.N. has labeled Palestinian lands, the Israeli government is using similar tactics that its enemies use: not distinguishing between militants and civilians. The only difference between the opponents is that Palestinian militant groups admit they are uninterested in peace; the Israeli government, on the other hand, claims that it is interested in peace, while at the same time ordering massive military attacks meant to bring terror and death to the Palestinian populace.
It seems that the Israeli government, and the Israeli populace, still believe that they can break the will of the Palestinians. This explains why they continue their harsh repression of the Palestinian population, along with their massive retaliatory attacks anytime Palestinians defend themselves either justly or unjustly. But the past 55 years have shown that such actions merely further radicalize the Palestinian population, resulting in more terror and death for the Israeli people.
Palestinians from 1948 would be shocked at the current methods of Palestinian resistance. What used to be a civil disobedience movement has now been radicalized into one that largely approves of the use of suicide attacks on civilian populations. So, too, would Jews from the 1940s be shocked at what is now considered "self-defense": occupying a land whose population does not wish to be occupied, continuing to build illegal settlements on that land, following a policy of assassinations, and firing rockets and missiles into crowded streets or apartment buildings.
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