"Israel wants to live in peace next to a thriving Palestine ..." This is an assertion for which there is not one shred of evidence. The evidence as far as I can see it is that Israel wants to expropriate Palestinian land and stop having to deal with the existence of Palestinians, but what ever means are necessary.

Mr. Kellner's story is very illustrative of the Zionist attitude:

Zionists want to have as large a part as possible of Palestine for the Jewish people, but at the same time they want to see themselves as being morally superior.

In reality these goals cannot be achieved at the same time. In the Zionist Universe however, they can. The way they do this is by constructing a very distorted view of reality.

I am dismayed at the fact that Opendemocracy publishes such biased justifications for the current Israeli war and I hope mr. Keller sits up quickly in realization of what his country is doing and does something about it instead of juggling the facts so that they fit.

Asymmetries to ponder...

Asymmetry 1: Security Council binding resolution - 14 for, one abstention.

Asymmetry 2: General Assembly Special Emergency Session non-binding resolution - 142 for, 4 against, 8 abstentions.

Bonus asymmetry round: thanks to persistent falsehoods contained in the state-orchestrated Hasbara campaign, and thanks to evolution of the internet, vast swathes of people across the globe have had their attentions drawn to the verity of Israel's being a false democracy based on apartheid principles, and Israel's having secured its status as a 'Jewish state' through waging a premeditated program of terrorism, murder and land theft against indigenous populations per Herzl Zionism. A program which continues to this day. There is no escaping the fact that the State of Israel is the tainted fruit of a poisonous tree.

The main point the author wants to point out is that Hamas will not disappear but will be more strongly supported by the people.

There is an oriental saying "even an insect an inch long has half an inch of soul." Insect is a cornered someone and soul means his/hers adversarial spirit (against humiliation) unproportionally great compared with the body size. The Palestinians are cornered but will not lose pride.

Israel is not winning the mind of Palestinians; Israel is not finding a way out of the swamp because they are too selfish, relying only on their military strength.

Most Palestinians want peace. Most enlightened Jews want peace,but Ehud Olmert announced in May 2006 to the US Congress that the Jews had a right to the entire land of Israel.
The rare informative Israeli politicians along with an American regional ambassador and US intelligence officers have said that Israel, in the 80's let Yassin (member of the Muslim Brotherhood) into Gaza with a licence to funding to create Islamic schools etc. (seeds of Hamas) hoping to undermine Fatah and kill Palestinian nationalism just as the the British once tried to undermine Nassar in Egypt. The balance got lost and Palestinians now have to pay for that wicked ploy.
I believe the war, planned over 6 months, started because an Israeli election was coming, Bush was leaving and Olmert and kin needed to look tough.
One should read an article posted on Palestine Chronicle called '500 Citizens of Sderot Contradict the Israeli Government', by Janine Robarts. Another informative article is at Foreign Policy In Focus, called 'Does Israeli Intelligence Lie?' which will reference you to an article that appeared in Haaretz. A real eye-opener. So much for Mr. Kellner

To me there are two obvious assymetries.

 One side gets 3billion dollars military aid and the other does not; this results in an assymertry in the number of F16s  and tanks.

 One side welcomes foreign journalists into the conflict; one forbids.

oD shouldn't have put up Kellner's 'article' because his reasoning is purile and sentimental and his views flagrantly racist. It is an abuse of free speech.

The reason Israel is attacking Gaza at this moment is simple. Even a child could understand it (but not a child in Gaza because Israel's terror is driving Gazan children mad with fear.) It is this: Israel anticipated Obama's intention to talk to Hamas. It broke the ceasefire provocatively and got the rockets it wanted. Then ploughed bloodily into the area to kill as many people who could be linked to Hamas as possible, and a lot more besides.

Kellner is incapable of understanding this because he has put his intelligence into suspended animation so he can blind himself to the true nature of his beloved country.

Per day of the war and the twenty-open the Gaza Strip, the number of Palestinian martyrs to 1154 people including 435 children, and more than 4850 wounded, including more than 400 in a very serious condition.
According to medical sources, 21 Palestinians killed since the dawn hours Thursday, and among them are also more than 100 elderly people in addition to the five journalists and 13 doctors and paramedic targeted by Israeli bombing while trying to save the injured in different parts of the sector.
Local sources described the knife in Gaza that the Israeli offensive, which began in the twenty-seventh of December last, reached its peak on Thursday morning invaded large areas of Gaza City and the north-west of the city, especially in the Tel al-Hawa, which was besieged by hundreds of families of martyrs and the injured without allowing the arrival of ambulances it.
One of the families in the besieged Tel al-Hawa district, north-west of Gaza City, said that Israeli tanks surrounding the tower engineers with more than 27 family and fired in the direction of the move in the building.
He stressed that the Israeli army blew up the buildings and apartments that stand in its way, despite the presence of a large number of families who did not leave their homes, despite the cries of women and children inside the apartment.
They pointed out that they lost contact with his parents, who were lying about 50 meters in the industry since the street hours after their home was bombed, without access to the fate of the family.
The group of women in Otalegnha calls via the satellite channels that hundreds of children are held in one apartment in a tower in the Tel al-Hawa Israeli tanks shelled the towers are random, and prevent the exit of any of the population.
In the meantime, the Israeli shelling continued throughout the Gaza Strip, amid reports of dozens of victims without being able to reach medical teams to it, despite the intensity of the shelling in the vicinity of Gaza City neighborhoods in particular, especially the Tel al-Hawa and Sheikh Ajlin in the north west of the city.

What distresses me beyond the sight of death and destruction  is not Menachem's reasoned and thought-out arguments but the maddeningly biassed and hate-filled comments which are in the majority, and reveal not only the usual anti-Semitic undercurrents that are noticeable in such thinking but also utter historical ignorance, along with the usual cavalier attitutude to the facts, which just goes on and on. And always with an anti-Israeli edge. First and foremost: in 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted a unanimous decision ruling that a Jewish and an Arab entity should be created in the place of the former British mandate called Palestine (there were no such people as "Palestinians" then, only Arabs; I fully acknowledge, of course, that today there defnitely IS a Palestinian identity). The Jews accepted it and declared their own state. The Arabs did not : their unified armies attacked the Jewish state instaead. Which means that A PALESTINIAN STATE COULD HAVE  BEEN CREATED 60 YEARS AGO without any problem, had Israel's Arab neighbours chosen to accept the relevant UN resolution rather than disregard it and go to war. 

Second: Israel accepted the two-state solution years ago, and was twice on the brink of signing a peace agreement, once accepting 96 per cent of all Palestinian demands. (Camp David.)The majority of Isrealis are fully aware that their only gurantee for security and peace is a peaceful, relatively prosperous Palestine, and not a gurerrilla camp whose only objective is its destruction. 

Currently there are two separate entities visá vis Israel, both of which claim to represent the interests of all Palestinians. In the West Bank, with great difficuty, a Western model was acccepted along with Western money. People struggle a lot, yes, with Israeli restrictions, too, and basically work (but who the hell cares about working Palestinians?Dead ones are so much more interesting!) and children go to school (but who, in the media, gives a damn about Palestinian children going to school, when they make for such great visuals when they are dead?) In Gaza, on Iranian money, they elected Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel, indeed, that is its raison d'etre, as is destablished in its charter. Money is the economy. rossross: when exactly did Hamas officially say that it might accept the existence of Israel at any time? All it talks about is the utter destruction the "Cusader-Zionist entity".  No, Hamas is a radical Islamic organization spreading and using the same kind of anti-Western, anti-civilatzion, premodernist rhetoric coupled with a frightining death cultt (a typically fascist phenomenon)  that al Qaeda is spreading. I simply don't understand some of you people: what makes you so blind (or how can your hatred of Israel blind you so much) that you actually support an organization like that? All you want to hear or read is the ritual vilification of Israel as a mass murderer and ganster .Anyone saying anything that contravenes this ever so slightly makes you are roaring with outrage.

After all the other comments here I would simply like to tell Prof. Kellner thanks for another perspective even though it seems he has really stirred up a hornets nest. I can understand what you have said although I do not agree with it 100% but it's given me some food for thought. Wish there was more clear writing out there. 

Illegitimi non carborundum 

Hamas has repeatedly stated that it will not accept Israel's right to exist, and that any truce they agree to will simply be used to strengthen itself for future conflict with the aim of destroying Israel.

The leaders of Hamas have also repeatedly stated that they consider Jews, as such, to be evil and accursed of God.

The leaders of Hamas have also expressed total disinterest in a "Palestinian state"; they're not nationalists of any sort. They want a global Caliphate. Deranged as it may seem, they really take this stuff seriously.

This is simple fact, available to anyone who cares to do a little Googling for the relevant statements.

Israel has repeatedly stated over the past 20 years that it is prepared to accept a Palestinian state, along roughly the 1948 boundaries, provided that such a state accepts Israel, accepts the legitimacy of Jewish statehood, suppresses any terrorism by irreconcilable elements, and renounces any further claims against Israel -- the so-called "right of return" for the remote descendants of refugees, for instance.

Just as Greece and Turkey have accepted the population exchanges which took place after the Graeco-Turkish war in 1921, and the Germans, Poles and Czechs have accepted those which followed WWII at about the same time as the creation of Israel.

All that most Israelis want is "us here, them over there"; to be left alone, in other words. There are enthusiasts who want the whole of Biblical Israel, but they're a minority and get political traction only because the Palestinians continue in their absolute would-be genocidal rejectionism -- openly, with Hamas, and disguised by lies, in the case of Fatah.

The Palestinians have repeatedly rejected this offer, and every time the Israelis have taken the boot off their necks -- by removing roadblocks and checkpoints in the West Bank, for example, or by withdrawing from Gaza in 2005 -- the result has been further attacks. Only physical force, as exemplified by the separation wall, has proved effective in preventing attempts to massacre Israeli civilians.

Israel is under no obligation to endanger itself and its citizens to make the Palestinians feel better.

They rejected the British partition plan in the 1930's (which would have given them 80% of Mandate Palestine), they rejected the UN plan in 1947, and they've rejected every compromise since.

Hence they are the authors of their own miseries. They keep putting things to the wager of battle, losing, and then complaining about the results.

They seem to think there should be some special exemption which frees them from the consequences of defeat.

News flash: the world doesn't work that way.

Let's introduce a little linguistic clarity here:

"Genocide" =/= "killing people".

It means "trying to kill off an entire ethnic group". It's a synonym for "extermination" or "attempted extermination".

If Israel wanted to inflict "genocide", all the Palestinians would be dead by now, except for any who managed to escape. They have more than enough raw physical power to kill on that scale, and do it rapidly, too.

Hence if they haven't killed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, it's because they don't want to.

Gaza itself has urban population densities throughout and could be finished off by two nuclear weapons in the 25 kilotonne range anytime the wind was blowing from the Negev and out to sea... and Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons of all types and sizes. Enough to kill everyone between Casablanca and Karachi, in fact.

Going on for a million have died in Darfur. Nearly a million Tutsis were killed in Rwanda in about three months. Virtually every Armenian in the Ottoman Empire was killed during WWI. And of course there's the Holocaust.

That is the context in which one can legitimately use the word "genocide".

1000 dead out of a group of several million is not "genocide", at least to anyone not in the grip of hysteria. I notice that none of the people spouting the word here get worked up about Darfur.

The Israelis are systematically demolishing Hamas; killing its leaders and militants, blowing up their stockpiles of weapons, demolishing any structure they use. A fair number -- probably several hundred -- civilians have been killed in the process, as is inevitable when combat takes place in densely populated areas.

That the war is taking place in densely populated areas is, of course, entirely the responsibility of Hamas. The Israelis would be delighted if Hamas would come out and fight in the open by the standard rules -- in which case the war would be over in about half an hour, and the cost to Israel would be even less than it's suffering now.

This misuse of the word "genocide" is even more annoying and mindless than misusing "decimate" to mean "slaughter" rather than "kill every tenth person".

Please, let's use the language with precision. Otherwise rational discussion becomes impossible.

After this article Open Democracy ought to be renamed Open Propaganda (Israeli). Mr. Kellner, I've cricked my neck trying to look at your 'assymetries' squarely. You base your decision making in support of 'war' (more like heavily armed aggression) on Israel being greener than Gaza. I never realized that planting seeds had such far reaching consequences that include averting war! The assymetry is more analogous to a state launching an armed offensive on a prison (open, where prisoners live with their families) because they smuggle drugs and other material because they have been conditioned by their status into seeing themselves as a party in a conflict. Israel having the more institutional development of the two parties in this conflict should shoulder the bulk of the responsibility for the state it has created, that it needs to create to continue being an superlatively armed entity and maintain the perception that it is a target, which it is albeit largely of its own making. This is as the arabic saying 'hokm el qawi 3l da3eef' - 'the rule of the strong over the weak'. This entrenches the weak to try and become stronger and the strong to continually try to prove and maintain their superior strength, similar to the bully kicking sand in the face of the weedy boy in front of his girlfriend on the beach...you know the scenario.

Use of language is the key. Let’s turn Menachem’s arguments on their heads.

“Palestine wants to live in peace next to a thriving Israel while the Israeli government wants to destroy Palestine.
Israel, on the other hand, has indiscriminately fired thousands of rockets at towns and cities in Palestine.
Israel and Hamas: if the former win, Palestine is destroyed; if Hamas wins, Israelis - albeit at tragic expense - are freed from the thuggish terrorism of the Israeli government, and people in Palestine can live without the constant threat of military aggression.
When I think of Palestine’s future, I think of birth, of building, of literally turning the desert green. When I think of Israel I think of death, of destruction, of turning thriving farms into military encampments.
Israel and its supporters celebrate the death of Palestinian children.
The reporters have a set narrative and pre-determined terms ("cycle of violence", "disproportionate Hamas response", and the like) which rarely let uncomfortable facts get in the way.
Men, women, and children of Israel, many of whom have nothing to do with the Israeli government, and through no fault of their own, are victims in this battle, and that is surely tragic. To allow Israeli government to continue in its indiscriminately murderous way would be no less tragic.

For all of his academic erudition Monachem operates in a discursive binary: Us good – Them bad.

This is the logic of Nazism.

Here is one more asymmetry - nearly all the comments here assume that Israel is a monolithic entity in which there is no diversity, no debate, no peace camp, no good faith efforts at peacemaking, no questioning or critique, and and so on, while Hamas and other Palestinian groups are fully human, with all the dignity that implies.
Guess what? Both sides are human, both have legitimate aspirations, both make mistakes and commit injustices. That is what makes this such a terribly complex situation.
Israel is a country that has made terrible mistakes over the years, and we pay for them, in blood and in the corrosion of our democracy. The Palestinians too have made terrible mistakes over the years, and they too have been made to pay for them, in blood and the corrosion of their democracy.
Now, since I am a Jewish Israeli, like Prof. Kellner, I fear that anything I say in this forum will be taken as further evidence of how evil I am, and even a kind or forgiving word about the Palestinians will be seized on as evidence of my sheer mendacity.
Yet here goes: For decades now, fully half the Israeli body politic has wanted to leave the occupied territories, reach some just settlement with the Palestinians and try to build decent lives for all. (Do you think Yitzhak Rabin would have been killed if his opponents didn't understand he was serious about peacemaking?) Roughly a quarter - to -third of the Israeli public are hardcore ideologues who will never willingly leave the territories. But there is a crucial "swing" third - to - quarter who are utterly pragmatic on this, and will gladly leave the territories so long as they can do so without fearing for their personal security. Had the Palestinians ever opted for nonviolent resistance that "swing" constituency would have been theirs and they would have had their state long ago -- and it could have been the first step towards a confederation and maybe even some sort of return to their pre-1948 homes.
But nonviolence was never tried. To the contrary, Arafat could never give up violence and Hamas has preached, not "resistance," but a cult of death and martyrdom that leads nowhere.
I still believe it is not too late for Arabs and Jews of goodwill somehow to make something better out of this, if only because we have seen the alternatives for too long, and have seen and suffered enough.
And that is a symmetry - of shared humanity - worth fighting for, if we can.

I find it strange that open democracy is agreeing to publish such a negationist article - because that's what it is.
-There should be limits to showing the different 'perspectives', and those should first be factual. Interpretations may vary, but the texts should at least get its facts right (such as the lies about hamas).
-Furthermore, I am highly surprised to see a text being published that is full with racist cliches (such as the claim about 'barbarian' Hamas people celebrating dead israeli babies as opposed to 'enlightened' Israelis mourning Palestinian babies, or the contrast between 'green' civilised israel as opposed to grey hamas, with no mention at all to the reasons of these differences (occupation and impossibility to build a sustainable alternative due to the various blockades)).
It is simply disgusting, and I'm highly dissapointed in opendemocracy for publishing such propagandastic and racist piece.

In this article reality is turned upside down::

assymetry 1)
Hamas's goal is to live in peace with Jews and Palestinians in a new state in all of Palestine
The Zionist ideal is to live in peace, in a state called Israel, in all of Palestine, without Palestinians

assymetry 2)
Israel has a track record of attacking civilians; for instance in 1948 mortaring of civilians was the favorite cleansing tactic, and in 2006 it extensively bombed civilian areas in Beirut; Amnestiy International and Human Rights Watch have pointed this out

assymetry 3)
Israel has blocked Gaza's borders in the last year and a half: Hamas never got a chance to build something in Gaza
The green land on the Israeli side of the green line (the area around Gaza) was stolen from the Palestinians in 1948

assymetry 4)
The Palestinians are interested in real justice
If you study Zionism you will find that Zionists are primarily interested in convincing themselves that they are just (e.g. when an Israeli soldier kills a Palestinian civilian the typical reaction is that he is not worried about the fate of the Palestinian, but about his own morality) the so-called shoot-and-cry syndrome

assymetry 5)
It is Israel that does most of the killing. Including Israeli soldiers that are killed by Israeli fire, the killing ratio is far above 100 to 1

Israel wants to live in peace???.... yeah it wants a piece of "Greater Israel" 

Since 1948 and the formation of Israel, the real villains in this situation, have been the US and UK.Although done with the best of intentions towards the Jewish people as a mea-culpa for all the historical butchery and mistreatment meted out to them, mainly by so called Christian nations, neither the US or UK respected the rights of the Palestinian people. Their one eyed support for Israel at the expense of the Palestinians just grievances, is what has led to the current situation. The real solution to this problem is for the US and UK to finally shoulder their moral responsibility, step in and force Israel back to agreed borders, which do not encompass ‘Greater Israel’, i.e. any parts of The West Bank, Lebanon. Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey or Saudi Arabia. Likewise the Palestinians should be allowed to form their own viable State, i.e. Gaza and all of the West Bank and realize that Israel is not about to commit national suicide and its people depart back to where they came from. 

Israel should also be brought up to speed on the proposition that they are Gods chosen people, have a covenant with God and that they, as a result, are superior to other peoples and are entitled to a Greater Israel. That’s just plain  ARROGANT claptrap and as stupid as the proposition that whites are superior to Negro’s or any other race of people.

Failure by either side to comply should be dealt with by international blacklisting and isolation, until they come to their senses. 

The US and UK should be economically liable for all costs and should compensate the Palestinian people for the Israeli land grab and ongoing destruction of their infrastructure. That's what should happen, but with the UN a toothless tiger and war mongering war criminals holding the reins of power in the US and UK, there is little chance of this occurring.

Israelis are being lied to and they choose to believe the lies. this is just another indication of how dysfunctional the society is.

Israel occupies Palestine and has done so for more than half a century. It is a brutal occupation and a continued colonisation. The Palestinians live in the concentration camp of Gaza or the series of concentration camps in the West Bank. Israel denies them either full citizenship of one land or their occupied lands back for a State. Israel murders them at will, imprisons without trial, tortures prisoners including children ... thousands of them in prison, demolishes homes, orchards, vineyards, and, in the case of Gaza denies food, water, medicine and Israelis can still argue they are the victims. Israel with its massive military might has become a rogue state inflicting state sanctioned terrorist upon the Palestinians it occupies.

It is the most tragic farce that anyone can condone this. It is in fact insanity. Who would say that the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were using their women and children as human shields in their fight against the German occupiers? Well, that is what Israelis are saying when they say this of Palestinians. Who would say the Russians in Stalingrad were terrorists because they fought against German occupation? Well, this is what Israelis say when they accuse Palestinians of being terrorists because they resist occupation.

Madness, madness, madness which will destroy Israel not Palestine.

this is a poor and useless argument Israel is farting for his survival ever sense it was created, (1948) the reason for this wars is that Israel the state of Israel exist on false pretenses of religion and occupies a land that does not belong to them, they invaded the place with the UN help and approval. Why, OIL, Petrol, not the holly wall that does not exist, just petrol.

this is simply Washington's killing Arabs with Israeli hands for oil. just that when the Israelis  or rather Hebrews and Jews will realize that they will understand that they were just trick for a estate that will never materialize but became the concierge of the middle east; they do play a great role for those that need petrol to survive.

the day Jews will realize and act against the foolish state of Israel they will gain peace and even at that moment the same Arabs that they fight will be glad to have such a noble race as their neighbors. today Jews are prevented for being what they hope to be simply by the Israeli state not by hamas or anyone else. victims of their own regime this is what Israel is a sad story to humanity once again played by the same participants.

What convuluted reasoning; disturbing logic. Frankly, I don't understand why this is appearing here; it is nothing but the most brazen public relations rubbish churned out by the basketful by all sorts of propaganda vehicles either employed by or beholden to the Israeli government.

This quote really sums it up: "Hamas might have devoted its energies to turning Gaza
into the Singapore or Hong Kong of the Mediterranean. Google Earth reveals the
nihilism at its heart."

Excuse me? Israel has strangeled Gaza ever since (before even) Hamas won the elections. To see a viable Palestinian economy is anathema to Israeli interests; why do settlers destroy the olive groves?