Clarification on the prior post

A big thanks to National Review's The Corner for the link.

An anonymous commenter to the prior post read my reference to "occupied Gaza" to mean that I believed Israel was occupying Gaza. To clarify, my reference was to the Palestinian Arab occupation of Gaza. Israel can not occupy land which is rightfully its own.

Also, I've received a number of emails complaining about the alleged slaughter of Palestinian Arab children by Israel (as if that were justification for attacks on Jews around the world). Let me remind those of you with short memories of the slaughter of eight Jewish rabbinical students in Jerusalem in March 2008.

Story here

Video here
A few points on this.

First, Hamas and the residents of Gaza (not all of them, but a large number) praised the slaughter of the Jewish students and promised that more such acts would occur in the future.

Second, it's quite well known that many rabbinical students receive an exemption from serving in the Israeli military.

My point is that there already is a long history of Muslims and those who support the Palestinian Arab position attacking Jews, rather than Israeli targets (e.g., if you go to a yeshiva to slaughter people, you are going there to kill the people who are LEAST likely to be connected to Israel's military). There's also a long history of Hamas, and Palestinian Arabs in occupied Gaza, celebrating the slaughter of Jewish civilians.

So to me, it's quite clear that Hamas, Palestinian Arabs and many other Muslims and their supporters are very happy to ignore all distinctions between Israel and Jews in general and as long as Jewish blood is shed the mission has been accomplished. It's also clear that whatever civilian casualties are inflicted by Israel, they are absolutely not intentional and thus can not be seen as the type of collective punishment that Hamas, Palestinian Arabs and their supporters inflict on Jews.

I just wish that some government (other than Israel) and the media would acknowledge the double standard that exists between the collective punishment that Muslims are protected from and that which is inflicted upon Jews.