Israel is still retaliating for the attack on an Israeli outpost which resulted in the death of four Israeli soldiers. That, and the capture of the Karine A which Israel alledges was smuggling arms to the Palestinians.

I'm not sure why it is terrible for the Palestinians to bring in a small ship load of weapons to use against Israelis if it's OK for Israel to spend over a billion dollars of American money a year on armaments such as F-16s, Blackhawk gunships, and tanks to use against the Palestinians.

Secondly, the attack on the Israeli outpost was, by most definitions, not a terrorist act. It was an attack on an military occupying force and not on civilians. But Israel defines any action by Palestinians as terrorism while their attacks on Palestinian civilians is "self-defense".

IDF razes Rafah homes in retaliation

A massive demolition operation carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip early yesterday morning destroyed dozens of civilian homes, rendering at least 520 people, including some 300 children, homeless, according to data released by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East. The operation was carried out in retaliation for the Hamas attack on an IDF post near Kibbutz Kerem Shalom early Wednesday morning, in which four IDF soldiers were killed.
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IDF commandos hit PA naval base in Gaza, destroy two ships

Israeli military sources said a larger patrol boat, the Jandala, was destroyed with explosives planted by divers. Reporters touring the harbor after daybreak Saturday saw a large hole punched into the hull of the Jandala, which was taking on water. The Jandala was targeted because the captain and machinist of the weapons ship, the Karine A., had once sailed on the Jandala, the military said.
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The Israeli paper Ha'aretz feels that the Sharon, the Israeli government, and the IDF have committed war crimes in carrying out their revenge. Ha'aretz is usually pretty critical of Sharon but todays editorials are off the meter.

Blind cruelty

The razing of homes is one of the most severe punitive and preventive actions utilized by the IDF and the security forces over the years in the brutal confrontation with terrorists. Many instances come to mind in which it was decided to destroy the home of an individual who took part in deadly terrorism. In and of itself it is a controversial action, even in the harsh reality of the confrontation.

However, this time we are dealing with a case of destruction on a systematic, collective and indiscriminate level, against Palestinians - including the elderly, women and children - whoever they may be. As far as is known, the only sin of most of them - perhaps even all of them - was the place where they lived.
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Through this action, the IDF could lose the support of the broader Israeli public that wants peace, but understands the need to employ controversial means as part of the effort to prevent and minimize attacks against Israeli citizens during the months of the uprising. No Israeli can agree to such blind cruelty.
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A crime against the innocent

The punitive action executed by Israel at the weekend in the Gaza Strip, and in particular the mass demolition of homes in Rafah on Thursday morning, constitute a war crime. There is no other way to describe and define the collective punishment of hundreds of innocent civilians who have been left utterly destitute.

Under the cover of the media blackout in Israel - it is very difficult to get to the southern Gaza Strip - bulldozers of the Israel Defense Forces turned "homes into a wasteland," as M., a Rafah resident, said by phone. If there was a time when at least part of Israeli public opinion was in an uproar over the demolition of the home of a terrorist's family, and there was a public debate over the justice of the act, now Israel is demolishing the homes of hundreds of residents who don't even have a family connection to terrorism - and hardly anyone says a word in protest.

Can we, the Israelis, even begin to imagine what it feels like to have bulldozers suddenly appear in the middle of the night and plow under everything a family has, as they and their children watch? Did the decision makers take into account the hatred they are sowing in the hearts of the children who witnessed the destruction of their homes? And what will become of these wretched people now, people who even before their homes were razed were doomed to a sordid life in one of the poorest of the refugee camps? Where are they going to spend the bitterly cold nights?
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Israel will have to explain the difference between the violence it is perpetrating and the violence perpetrated by the other side - and, horrifically, it is hard to believe that the Palestinians will succeed in preventing mass terrorist acts in this state of affairs. The next suicide bomber may well emerge from the ruins of the homes in Rafah.

The officers and soldiers who take part in contemptible operations of this kind will no longer be able to wash their hands of guilt and claim they are only following orders. What do they tell their families on the day on which they demolished dozens of tin huts, and what will they tell their children in the future?
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Analysis / A shameful chapter in Israel's history

But the events at a refugee camp near Rafah, where the IDF demolished the home of 58 Palestinian families and left hundreds without a roof over their heads, is destruction itself, an action that reflects shamefully on the IDF and us all. It was an act of undisguised ruthlessness, a military act devoid of humanitarian and diplomatic logic, based on simplistic and overgeneralized operational considerations.

In this dispute, Israel wants to prove to the Palestinians that we will not be subdued by violence. But our actions in Rafah are nothing more than superfluous violence against civilians, among them children and the elderly, which will only serve to encourage revenge attacks by desperate people.
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The soldiers killed at the outpost, from the Bedouin desert patrol battalion, were surprised in the attack, but fought bravely and fell fighting. Members of their families made a graveside call for Israel not to respond to the deaths of their sons, and to avoid further bloodshed. But the IDF's feelings of anger and insult were too great to be overcome.
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The day after the demolition of civilian dwelling places in Rafah, Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer hosted the heads of the three coalition parties making up the Japanese government. At the end of the visit, the minister's office issued a statement, which included the following sentence: "The Defense Minister pointed out [to his guests] that `we must do everything to ease the suffering of the wider Palestinian population.'"

This is a slogan that is bandied about by all and sundry. After the demolitions in Rafah, in which hundreds of unarmed civilians were turned into victims, that particular slogan sounds like nothing more than a cynical joke.
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