There are no words for what has happened in Gaza.
Israel has invaded the territories. They have unleashed what Juan Cole describes as an all out war on Gaza Palestinians after the "micro-war" waged by the same Muslim fundamentalist Hamas party Israel funded and favored to weaken and split the very secular PLO.
It is mercilessly and gleefully destroying everything on its path; terrorizing survivors not just with bombs but even by calling and texting them that about how their untimely death by their hands is not their fault but Hamas'.
Israel is becoming the enemy that it so desperately fears and seeks to destroy : a remorseless genocidal force that knows no end to violence.
Paranoid dreams of revenge for pogroms and holocausts past have perverted the idea of "the right of Israel to exist". The notion is not anymore about survival. "Israel's Right To Exist" has become synonymous to the right of Jewish Zionists to occupy, terrorize and wipe clean from the earth as you do with lice every single Palestinian.
Is this what we, the citizens of the United States are subsidizing to the tune of $3 billion dollars a year? Yes.
Our hands are covered in the blood of innocents.
Sigh
There is so much more to it than this. The insanity of Hamas, who is being blamed by Egypt, Fatah (not surprisingly) and Saudi Arabia for the current war, and who had the PRIME opportunity to be a true government and seek a diplomatic solution but instead opted to attack Israeli homes and schools. The stupid and corrupt broth of Israeli politics that has the three biggest candidates for Prime Minister who are trying to out hawk eachother. The complete failure of the US to even seriously try to broker a peace agreement since Bush took office. Pressure on the Israeli government from citizens who have been targeted by the Hamas rockets and mortars, who have been staging protests and civil disobedience to get their government taking action against Hamas. The failure of any other Palestinian faction to provide a viable option to Hamas. Fatah is mired in corruption and ineffectiveness and no other faction having much more to offer.
Here is a Salon.com article providing the view (which I may not completely agree with) from Israel regarding why this war is POPULAR there, in ways that neither Lebanon war was. And I heard on BBC news this morning two Hamas spokespeople saying nothing but Israelis civilians deserve to die and a somewhat slippery seeming Israeli spokesperson saying that a main requirement Israel has for a cease fire is for a mechanism, perhaps international observers, in place to prevent the rearming of Hamas.