I must admit, I am deeply puzzled by the outrage that some people apparently have for this conflict being "unbalanced." "Unbalanced" because Israel has suffered no direct casualties of rocket attack so far, whereas there have been over a hundred Palestinian casualties of Israeli bombing.
However, Israel appears to have avoided casualties largely because of the Iron Dome defensive weapon system, which has a ninety-plus percent success rate in taking out missiles inbound to populated areas, and because the Israeli government has, at tremendous expense, subsidized every single home built having a bomb shelter room, and nearly every other building or complex having a readily accessible bomb shelter within or in an adjoining space.
Whereas during their leadership of Gaza, Hamas has not turned its (admittedly much more limited) resources toward either defensive capabilties or providing shelters to its populace, but instead has done its best to import or build as many offensive rockets as it can. And it now fires those rockets from within populated civilian areas, and urges its citizens to become human shields to protect those weapons and the terrorists who fire them, apparently to maximize carnage so as to provoke outrage and sympathy for their cause in the international community.
I am at a loss to understand why Israel should be condemned for being unfair for utilizing defenses to protect its citizens simply because Hamas has not even tried to provide those under its rule with similar defenses, or are using those under its rule as human shields to protect their weapons and fighters.
No other country in the world would tolerate a thousand rockets in a week being shot into their country, regardless of how successful their defenses might be. No other country in the world, if its retaliation for such attacks included not only warning leaflets and radio broadcasts to the civilian populace, but direct phone calls and warning shots with unarmed missiles prior to live fire, would be urged to exercise more restraint or be called murderers.
No amount of double-talk about Israel as a "western colonial power" or "Zionist nationalist occupiers" or whatever similar crap will change the fact that Israel is being judged and condemned uniquely because it is a Jewish country, and there will always be plenty of people who are happy for an excuse to hate Jews. The fact that they can now do so under the mask of humanistic concern for those who are all too happy to claim the mantle of helpless victim is just icing on the cake to such individuals. But it's the same old anti-Semitism under a different set of clothes. End of story.
