Reply #19: The fact of the matter is,

[PDJane]

That by that definition of yours, there are NO innocent bystanders in the area.

I don't condone the shooting on either side, which is an assumption one gets labelled with as soon as one says the Palestinians may have a point.

The fact of the matter is that Israel was put there to take advantage of a myth; the myth that the area was given to the Jewish people by God. That is nonsense. The Jewish people stole the land from the original inhabitants the first time around too, using the same justification.

The students were just students, yes. How about the dozens of Palestinian students shot at their desks or at play by the IDF? What about the five month-old baby who was one of the first casualties last week, dead in his mother's arms? Those people don't seem to count as people, which is the point I've been trying to make. That is what the quote from Amira Hass is about; that there are atrocities on both sides, yes, but the fact remains that Israel is the agressor more often than not, and a genocide in which the Palestinians had no part is a stick to beat them with.

Enough.