Don't believe anything you hear and half of what you see...

[kentuck]

That might be especially good advice nowadays?

"Follow the money" is still a fairly accurate method of determining the truth.

Also, truth is the first casualty of war.

And, most of the time, we see what we want to see.

For example, only today, we see footage on the morning TV news that the Israelis have found 32 tunnels used by Hamas to attack Israel, footage furnished by the Israeli government.

One might ask, if they built all those tunnels so they could attack Israel, then they sure have wasted a lot of money?

Also, we are told by the talking heads that Hamas broke their truce by firing rockets into Israel so Israel was justified in continuing their assault upon the people of Gaza. We have no independent source to verify that but we accept it as truth?

And we are shown a grainy video of what looks like rockets being fired from a UN schoolyard in Gaza as evidence that Israel was justified in bombing the school. We are not told where the video originated? One might ask, if they wanted to shoot rockets into the middle of Tel Aviv, would they not try to get a little closer before firing them?

And for someone to shoot thousands of missiles and not hit anything, one would have to guess they are either the worst shots in the world or the Israelis are the luckiest people on earth?

And now, just breaking on American TV news, the truce has broken down...

[jberryhill]

1. "for someone to shoot thousands of missiles and not hit anything"

What is that supposed to mean?

Each one hit something - typically the ground.

How many artillery shells in, say, WWII do you reckon were fired, and how many hit "anything" however that is defined? Most bullets, shells and bombs in war don't damage anything significant.

These are unguided projectiles fired in the general direction of a city, and randomly landing where they may. What calculations have you done to show the probability of hitting "something", in order to compare with the rate at which these rockets are reported to have hit something.

Would you care to provide more definition of "anything" along with your calculation of the expected hit rate?

[GeorgeGist]

3. First one in and it's Strawman.

[former9thward]

4. No, its accurate.

[kentuck]

6. I suppose if they get "lucky" and hit a school yard...?

And maybe kill 18 children, Nutty-yahoo and his right-wing supporters might even go "nuclear"?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. I generally go with 'follow the money AND the power'.

Cause some people want the power, and money generally follows along with power as well.

Palestinians had lots of tunnels, often for the same reasons drug smugglers do tunnels under the US border in the SW. To move products across the border that can't go legally. As far as the US goes, that generally means drugs, and possibly some people. As far as Palestine goes, well, that would be just about anything you can fit through the tunnel, since Israel controls the border so tightly. However, apparently when Hamas took control, they actually created a 'transit authority' to regulate the tunnels, both those that were 'official' and those that were privately owned. So even though the primary use for the tunnels is basically smuggling of everyday items, presumably any of the tunnels into Israel could potentially be used to launch attacks or smuggle weaponry.

As to the breaking of the cease fires, I have to wonder if it was actually Hamas. Now that word is out that it was non-Hamas militants who were the likely kidnappers/killers, one has to wonder if those militants or others like them, that Hamas has not managed to get under control were the ones still launching rockets.

No idea on the schoolyard, I haven't seen the video.

Thousands of misses? Palestinian rockets are generally far smaller than Israeli missiles, so the blast radius is going to be a lot smaller, and if you google pics of them up, they also don't look like they have any sort of aiming/targeting. You just point them in a general direction and set them off. You're not going to get any sort of accuracy out of that kind of setup.

[former9thward]

5. Yeah, the tunnels, the rockets, its all fake.

All made up by the Israelis....Nevermind that independent reporters have seen all these things. The crafty Israelis must have built the tunnels themselves -- an excuse for war!

[kentuck]

7. You have links to those independent reporters??

Or those Hamas "leaders" that called off the truce or verification of where the latest rockets landed?

Lies and Propaganda? Probably.

[former9thward]

8. Yes, everything is fake, lies, propaganda.

You are so far out there nothing would convenience you. I guess it is nice being in that world instead of the real one.

[CJCRANE]

9. AFAIK most of the rockets are intercepted in mid-air

by the Iron Dome anti-missile system.

However, I agree with your general point.

[spanone]

10. when we can no longer depend on our media, as now, democracy is over.

imho