"Israel has time and time again missed the point,that its physical responses have been to psychological situations."

What the hell are you talking about? The separation barrier/fence was built in response to the massive waves of Palestinian suicide bombings and attacks committed against Israeli civilians earlier this decade. It has largely been successful in thwarting such attacks, but you seem to forget that there was no separation barrier/fence before Arafat launched the Second Intifada. I am also not sure how thousands of rockets launched at civilian towns constitute a "psychological situation."

The rest of your column is equally ridiculous. You completely ignore that Hamas purposefully operated amidst the civilian population--digging tunnels under houses, booby-trapping schools and other buildings, firing rockets from civilian areas, hiding in hospital basements, storing explosives in apartment buildings, etc etc--so that when Israel finally did respond to the rocket attacks, civilians in Gaza would undoubtedly get caught in the crossfire. Then people like you go around screaming "genocide," and paint Hamas as the victim of Israeli "aggression." This is how they have always operated, yet people like you fall for it every single time. Where were your screams of condemnation when children in Gaza were killed by Hamas rockets that didn't go far enough to hit Israel or when Hamas tortured and killed Fatah members? You only care when it's the Jews who are doing the killing.

If we are to have a constructive dialogue about the Middle East and the recent conflict in Gaza, we must acknowledge the facts as they are and put aside the lies and double standards. Unfortunately, Ms. Rutkin-Becker’s recent opinion piece is plagued with many such faults.

She starts by questioning whether Israel is even justified in responding to the 8,250 rockets and mortars that have landed in Israel since April 2001 by the hands of terrorists operating in Gaza. Apparently, Article 51 of the UN Charter, which reserves to every nation the right to engage in self-defense against armed attacks, does not apply to Israel. The author then goes on to decry Israel’s response as “disproportionate” without ever defining proportionality as a legal term and without elaborating as to why Israel’s response is disproportionate. Should Israel launch 8,250 rockets into Gaza directly at Palestinian civilians to preclude claims of disproportionality? Hamas’ ideology is purely genocidal—its charter demands the destruction of Israel and its leaders call for the annihilation of Jews from the world. In the name of proportionality, perhaps Ms. Rutkin-Becker would be happy if Israel adopted a similar genocidal policy. (To those who absurdly claim that Israel is somehow already engaged in the genocide of Palestinians, keep in mind that the Palestinian population in Israel has soared over 30% in the past ten years and that Palestinians enjoy a higher rate of growth in Israel, and even more so in the West Bank and Gaza, than the rate of growth in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt or Jordan.)

More interesting is the author’s neglect to describe what a proportionate response would be. I pose this question: If terrorists controlled Long Island and launched over 8,000 rockets and mortars at Manhattan, Westchester, Brooklyn, etc. what would you do? Pinpoint airstrikes and brief incursions have failed to halt the rocket attacks. Years of Israeli restraint have been interpreted by Hamas and other terrorist groups as weakness, and have only served to increase the attacks on Israel. Israel not only has the right, but indeed the duty, to respond with force to protect its citizens and eliminate the terrorist threat on its border.

The author continues by enumerating other worn-out myths—that mere critics of Israel are labeled anti-Semites and that the Israeli lobby subverts American interests. However, the author ignored to provide any proof whatsoever to support these false claims.

The lies continue when the author questions whether “anybody sincerely believe[s]” that “building a wall” will make Israel safer. First, the security barrier around Gaza is not a wall, but rather a wire fence. Similarly, over 95% of the West Bank security barrier consists of a chain-linked fence and less than 5% of it is comprised of a concrete wall, meant to prevent snipers from targeting Israeli drivers and civilians. Second, the security fence, without question, has improved Israel’s security situation. Construction of the fence started in mid-2002, in response to the Second Intifada. Between 2001 and 2004, 128 separate suicide attacks resulted in the death of 502 Israelis. That is an average of roughly one terrorist suicide attack every 11 days. Would any nation tolerate that? It took several years, as the barrier had to be constructed, but the security fence has had a significant and measurable impact on Israeli security. In all of 2007, there was one suicide attack resulting in three deaths. There were four suicide attacks in 2006, resulting in fifteen deaths. The decrease is not coincidental, nor is it for lack of trying on the part of Palestinian extremists. As Ramadan Abdallah Shalah, a leader of Islamic Jihad, stated in a March 23, 2008 interview with a Qatari newspaper, the security barrier does indeed frustrate terrorists’ efforts to carry out attacks in Israel. The numbers do not lie. The security barrier has saved the lives of countless Israeli civilians.

The remainder of the article is equally mendacious and one-sided. The author reserves all of her condemnations and criticisms for Israel, never once mentioning Palestinian terrorism or the responsibility that Hamas bears for the current unfortunate situation in Gaza.

The opinion piece is more notable for what the author left out than for what the author included. The author mentions that Palestinian civilians have unfortunately died in the recent fighting, but fails to acknowledge the indisputable proof that Hamas used civilians as human shields—operating in and around mosques, schools, hospitals and apartment rooftops, while rigging civilian homes and even a zoo as booby traps. The author also neglects to mention that on the very first day of the conflict, senior Hamas officials ordered all its fighters to take off their uniforms to prevent detection by the IDF. This is because Israel goes to great lengths to prevent harming Palestinian civilians, and Hamas knows this.

Some months ago, the IDF called Abu Bilal al-Ja’abeer, a senior member in Hamas, and warned him that they would be targeting his house and that he should evacuate his family. Although Israel knows that this advance warning will spare the life of the very extremists that it is after, it does so to prevent civilian casualties. Al-Ja’abeer, though, called on women and children via loudspeaker to go to his house to cause the IDF to abort the airstrike. A similar story can be told about Abu al-Hatal and Othman al-Ruziana, both of whom rushed civilians to their homes to serve as human shields against an anticipated airstrike. The question must be asked—if Israel purposefully targets civilians, as Hamas and others claim, why would Hamas engage in this tactic and why does it work in stopping IDF airstrikes? In addition, why do Palestinian women and children rush to these houses? They are either suicidal or they realize the truth, which is that Israel does not target civilians and that they are, in fact, safe in those homes. Fathi Hammad, a Hamas member of parliament, sets out the truth when he stated in a televised speech on February 29, 2008 that “[the Palestinian people] have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine.”

Behind a cloud of lies and double standards, Ms. Rutkin-Becker places no blame on Hamas. It is ok that Hamas killed and wounded dozens of Palestinians to oust Fatah and take control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. It is ok that in early August 2008, Hamas killed and wounded numerous Palestinians in a crackdown on Fatah loyalists. So brutal is Hamas that during this last episode of fighting, about 180 Palestinians ran to Israel for safety and refuge—a telling sign of how Israel treats civilians and of how Hamas treats political dissenters. It is ok that in the days since the January 18 ceasefire, Hamas has tortured, killed, and shot dozens of Fatah activists for “collaborating with Israel,” all without evidence or trial. To the author, none of these events matter because she cannot point the finger to Israel, and so she remains quiet on these matters. This is the true “wrong to remain silent.”

There is no moral equivalence between Hamas and the IDF. Hamas terrorists deliberately target Israeli civilians with indiscriminate rocket and mortar attacks. The IDF, on the other hand, acts defensively in response to the firing of thousands of rockets. In doing so, it sometimes accidentally harms civilians while pursuing terrorists—terrorists who operate out of civilian infrastructures and who do not wear uniforms—despite the IDF’s best efforts to avoid civilian casualties. The strategies of Hamas, who wants to maximize civilian deaths, are diametrically opposed to the strategies of the IDF, who seeks to minimize civilian deaths. Can you imagine Hamas calling Israelis to warn them of incoming rocket attacks? Do you think if Israel created a human shield, it would deter a Hamas attack? The very notion is ridiculous, as is Ms. Rutkin-Becker’s article.

This opinion piece is a textbook example of allowing one's emotions to grossly exaggerate the facts on the ground. Thousands were not killed, and Israel, contrary to the popular hope in the halls of the UN, is not going anywhere.

Ms. Rutkin-Becker seems to have made an attempt to convey the message of taking the moral high ground: that killing is wrong, (generally agreed) and that a strong nation picking on a poor, helpless population that's perpetualy oppressed is deplorable, which MAY be true, if this conflict were observed only on its' most superficial level. Furthermore, in order to lend true credibility to this moral high ground position, I now expect Ms. Rutkin-Becker to produce equally passionate arguments of her past work on similar situations, such as the government-sponsored genocide in Darfur, or the recent Russian Incursion into Georgia, or any myriad of other "David and Goliath" issues, such as the unfortunate regimes of Kim Jong Il or that of Robert Mugabe toward their subjects. Come to think of it, following that thread of reasoning, we'd be wise to include Hamas in there, as well. But no, according to this article, since there's no mention of Hamas in any critical fashion, the reader shall presume they are doing a splendid job, and should indeed be commended for their statesmanship.

The fact is staring anyone in the face that cares to research it: The Palestinians could have had their nation in 2000 when Ehud Barak, the Prime Minister of Israel, offered 97% of what Arafat was asking for as a Palestinian homeland, INCLUDING East Jerusalem, which contains Judaism's most holy site, the Western Wall. Where in History has such a concession ever been made? Better question: When in history has such a concession been made, and then REJECTED? Apparently, the palestinians, in their infinite wisdom of evaluating their risk to reward ratio, decided it's better to launch a violent intifada to...fight for another 3% of land?

When people of the world, along with this author, wake up and realize that this is NOT about "land", but rather, the land is the excuse to fight a dense concentration of Jews to extinction, perhaps some headway will be made with the peace process, beginning with the overhaul of the democratically elected government run by Hamas.

The Palestinians themselves are pawns and are used by the larger Arab world as a proxy to fight the Jewish State. There is no reason why the "refugee" camps in Jordan and Lebanon need to exist today - the Palestinians are not one iota different culturally or religiously from the citizens of those countries - the only differentiation lies purely along political lines, and hence, a political motive for preventing their absorbtion and allevation of misery. If the moral high ground is the craving here, let's perhaps examine critically the (in)actions of the Arab States that allow their cherished brothers and sisters wallow in the decaying society of Gaza.

Finally, does anyone actually realize that Gaza has NOT been occupied by a single Jew or military personel since 2005, when Ariel Sharon unilaterally and without request for concession, pulled Israel by its' roots out of Gaza? If Gaza is the 'beta' version for the State of Palestine, this experiment needs to be scrapped immediately - The world does not need another terrorist state to grapple with.

As for Ms. Rutkin-Becker, if supporting the Israelis' percieved illegitimate acts of self determination bother her, she can send an equally offsetting monetary contribution to the Cleptocratic government of Hamas. She should be confident that the money will be put to good use, i.e., education, food, infrastucture, etc. in Gaza.

I have not read such an inaccurate column in my life. You yourself are sticking to quotations' every phrasing and wording and writing whole paragraphs impaling them, so look at things you have written that stem from complete lack of knowledge about the situation.

"giving Israel a free pass to behave like an irresponsible child when the stakes are literally life and death"

The fact that you see things this way are simply because you have been exposed to bias media. No one is taking this stuff lightly, no one is approaching this childishly, we're not simply letting the army go ahead and have a field day in Gaza. These steps are taken years in advance in policy, it's part of the security strategy and the way Israel has acted for decades, the fact that the situation is different is because Gaza isn't Egypt or Syria, it's a city governed by Hamas who hide, and so the conflict is different. This is a deep topic with many details American Jews may not be seeing.

Your speech comes from false premises, and I hope no one takes your advice.