A pot of coffee later...

And I'm feeling a bit more human.

First off, let me say Happy New Year to all here. 2008 was a tough year for us in NEPA (meaning my house and family), but we saw some big events that many friends and family got to share in, and for all of those I am very thankful. I look forward to the next time we can ALL get together and invade "the Banshee" pub again... even if it will cost us a cool $240 in beer and stout. There is no question... my fire pit is a little bit lonely without Jambo and Ryan sitting there drinking while the rest of the world works to make them happy and comfortable! {wink}

By the way... Super John was here last night for New Year's Eve, although I was at the casino. He brought lobster, stuffed mushrooms, and booze, to compliment Liz's spinach veggie dip, hot-wings, and chips. A full house... but less of an event because you lumps weren't around.

Now, to touch on what I have been thinking about since posting my last...

UPI has reported that a senior "military" leader of Hamas has been killed in the latest Israeli airstrike, bringing the total number of deaths as a result of the recent Gaza crisis to 400. That isn't the disturbing part of the story, though...

The story goes on to detail that, of those 400 dead Palestinians, 42 were children, 13 were women and 2 were medical workers. This is then compared to the 3 Israelis that are dead due to rocket attacks... one of which was an Israeli soldier.

The estimates on wounded Palestinians is as high as 2,000... with 216 critically injured in the Israeli strikes. This is then compared to the 56 Israelis wounded by the rocket attacks.

What is truly disturbing here is that UPI is painting the picture that Israel is not exercising "proportional response" tactics. From the article, I am forced to assume this means that the Israelis are expected to be as "bad" at killing Hamas as Hamas is at killing Israeli soldiers. Since none of the rockets fired by Hamas over the last week have been targeted at military units, this failure on the part of the terrorists is compounded measurably.

Hamas targets civilians, each and every time, without warning and without mercy, in the name of saving Palestinian lives and freedoms. Israel targets Hamas terrorists exclusively... but because Hamas is using the ROOF OF A SCHOOL as a storage point for their rockets, they are endangering innocent children... even though the Israelis gave them 14 minutes to evacuate the school before launching the attack. I got that information HERE... but you couldn't find it in the UPI story. There is no mention of the Beersheba schools hit by Hamas rockets, or the Ashod apartment building that was leveled by the rockets... because the Israelis had evacuated those buildings before the rockets hit. No caualties... no story, appearantly.

Again, I say... these Israeli strikes are WORKING. Hamas is paying the price, and Israel is looking GOOD doing the dirty work. Israeli deaths are minimal (but any death is tragic, I know... I don't want to seem ice cold), while the "innocent" deaths of Palestinians can be directly linked to Hamas using civilians as "human shields".

What can be gained by sending in tanks and troops that isn't being gained now?