Oh please,

Your exact words were

" Israel has an election coming up and killing Palestinian children is a vote winner"

I will leave others to draw their own conclusions.

On the subject of child killing...

Both sides in this conflict have been guilty of that. Rockets fired into densely populated areas will kill whoever happens to be at the point of impact, and both sides will point a finger at the other side and say 'child killers'.

This is a conflict that is fueled by intense hatred,and although no politician is ever going to admit it, neither side cares deeply about the individuals who are killed. If they did, the rocket attacks and air strikes on civilian-populated areas would stop immediately.

"in Israeli politics you don't lose votes by killing children, as long as they are Palestinian. "

I don't very often agree with fourm member, or much press comment, but that is not bigotry but a sad, undeniable, fact.

fourm member

You are correct that I do not know the members of this forum, but one thing that I do know is there is nothing like knowing and experiencing local knowledge and experiences first hand, and not solely quoting media articles as the true facts, when the media item obviously suits the member or person possible debating skills.

Perhaps a subject that I didn't want to mention, but you seem to have brought it into this thread, is child killing. This will always happen or is likely to happen in any conflicts on all sides, where ever in the world. Yet there doesn't seem to be much mention about child deaths that occur every minute or hour of every day due to bad sanitation and poverty?.

spuds

I don't claim to 'know' Israel well - I've been there twice. I do know some Israelis pretty well however, and I've heard their point of view explained ad nauseam.

The truth is, there are old grudges on both sides, and they go back a very long way. As with all long-running conflicts there are people on both sides who shout loud, but have no personal recollections of the decades of smouldering that go to create these outbreaks of fighting.

There will be mediation and diplomacy aplenty, and at some point there will be an uneasy cease-fire. Perhaps it will hold, perhaps it will not. Eventually however, there will be another confrontation, and the whole sorry cycle will be repeated, or so history tells us.