In today's world there is little sympathy for political struggles whose primary weapon is unmitigated and wanton attacks on civillians. In fact Islamic terrorism has undermined the sympathy many once had for the Palestenians and their dispalcement from Arab lands and even here one may probably make out a strong case that the Arab governments were as guilty as any other power.

The breakdown of the cease fire was heralded by the rocket attacks from Gaza on Israeli civiliian targets. The HAMAS cannot claim that the targets in thweir gunsights were military targets as all the rockets landed in heavily populated civilian areas. The purpose was clear to wreak havoc in the population of Israel and the State of Israel responded by launcing a series of air strikes against HAMAS targets. Nearly 300 people were ckilled. It is clear from the footage released by the Israeli Ministry of Defence that HAMAS has hidden their rockets in highly populated areas thereby that organisation is guilty of using civilians as shields.  The Israeli Defence Minister has pointed out that the primary objective was the degradation of HAMAS capacity to target civilians using their rockets.

Israel is showing great courage by inflicting huge casualities on the HAMAS and it is time foer civilised nations of the world to declare war against terrorist organisations, non-state terrorist organisations and it is time to extend the definition of terrorism to include governments that allow by default their territory being used for launching terorist attacks. Israel has shown the way and it is time for the rest of the world to realise that by finding political justifications for terrorism they are in reality only encouraging terrorism. It is time to say "enough is enough" and Israel's example is ceratinly a worthwehile one.

Liberals will cry out about the unacceptable level of civilian casualities but the responsibility for that lies squarely with the HAMAS which used civilian areas to hide thweir weapon dumps.