CHRONICLE EDITORIALS: Pressure for cease-fire must intensify

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 1/4/9 | Editor

[SmithL]

A week of aerial bombardment of Gaza left no doubt about Israel's ability to inflict serious physical damage to the Hamas leadership and its arsenals of weaponry. On Thursday, militant Hamas leader Nizar Rayan - who reportedly once sent his own son on a suicide mission that left two Israelis dead - was killed when a one-ton bomb crashed into his home, also claiming the lives of four of his wives and 11 of his children. On Friday, Israel bombed the homes of a dozen more Hamas operatives and leveled a mosque that was believed to be a weapons storage site.

Yet still more Palestinian rockets struck apartment buildings in southern Israel.

Israel's stated mission for this military assault was to stop the Hamas rocket attacks, and to break both the will of and Palestinian civilian support for a terrorist organization that seized control of the Gaza Strip by force in June 2007. But as the punishing air strikes continued, with civilian casualties mounting and a humanitarian crisis developing, Israel was losing ground in its battle to convince people that Hamas bears sole responsibility for the devastation.

The Israeli government and various organizations that support it were doing their utmost last week to provide context to the unsettling images and eyewitness accounts that were coming out of Gaza: the smoke and rubble, the scenes of civilian panic, the faces of fear and death. The Israelis noted that it was Hamas, not them, aiming rockets at civilian targets. It was Hamas, not Israel, that provoked war by breaking a cease-fire. And it was Hamas, not Israel, whose refusal to accept the other's right to exist created an intractable barrier to meaningful negotiation.

All true. But the notion that Hamas could be bombed into sensibility is a little hard to imagine.

[SmithL]

The Comicle did not give a damn when only Jews were being killed.

[Enterprise]

Kill more Hamas gunmen. That will hasten a cease fire.

[wk4bush2004]

NO cease-fire until Hamas is obliterated!

[marron]

But as the punishing air strikes continued, with civilian casualties mounting and a humanitarian crisis developing, Israel was losing ground in its battle to convince people that Hamas bears sole responsibility for the devastation.

Thats because Israel isn't yet targeting pro-Hamas propagandists in San Francisco.

[Rome2000]

Theres only a million and a half of the animal palis in Gaza.

I bet if they were annihilated there would be peace.

[Liberty Valance]

"But the notion that Hamas could be bombed into sensibility is a little hard to imagine."

Nobody but this Chronicle writer imagines anything of the kind. Israel will only "bomb them" to a distance where they are no longer able to lob missiles on the civilian population of Israel.

[Da Coyote]

Cease fire? Why?

When you stomp the piss-anthill, no reason to stop stomping.

[flowerplough]

Israel losing ground in its battle to convince people that Hamas bears sole responsibility for the devastation? Not with this future world Messiah Leader: in July at Sderot, the Israeli town that is the target of rocket attacks from Palestinian militants in Gaza, Obama said : "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."

[Da Coyote]

Who gives a s**t about the words of the loon?

[Rj Snows]

Kill or be killed.Irans opps sorry Hamas mission is to kill all Israels. We are next

[Psycho_Bunny]

"But the notion that Hamas could be bombed into sensibility is a little hard to imagine."

Yes. You have to kill evil.

These morons hit the nail on the head but blather on.

[AnAmericanMother]

But the notion that Hamas could be bombed into sensibility is a little hard to imagine.

That's right, Einstein. You bomb them into eternity.

[AlphaOneAlpha]

“NO cease-fire until Hamas is obliterated!”

I say take it a step further. Obliterate and plow under every thing and every person in Gaza. Nobody wants the Palestinians, including the other Arab states, and for good reason. They are an unrepenting, hate-breeding collection of dependent terrorists....all of them.

[kingu]

also claiming the lives of four of his wives and 11 of his children.

I know how to end all the liberal support for Hamas. Claim that they voted for Prop 8, banning gay marriage. That'll end it right there. Or, alternately, call them a cult branch of the Mormons.

[Munz]

>>French President Nicolas Sarkozy prepared to visit the troubled region this week.<<

While they are at it, maybe this turd can be capped as well.

[Malsua]

But the notion that Hamas could be bombed into sensibility is a little hard to imagine.

And that there is the problem with modern libs. You wage wage against someone unmercifully until they lose either the will or the ability to fight.

[sniper63]

If civilians are not going to point out the locations of the bad guys, then they themselves should be considered bad guys by association and be eliminated also. Stop the next generation before it starts.

[stevie_d_64]

Well, the pressure for a cease-fire can build all it wants...Cease-fires have been put in place, broken, come to an end, or have been ignored altogether for the longest time...

Seems to me that the U.N. and its ilk can stew as long as they can take it...The Israelis and Hamas terrorists hiding amoungst the Palestinians don’t seem to feel any pressure to do anything but fight...Israelis fight, Hamas dies...If the Palestinian people want to exist in peace stop co-existing with these numbnuts that want to ignore peaceful co-existence...

Seems like a reasonable plan to me, and I bet you the Israelis will go with that plan...

But something tells me Hamas/Hezbolla et. al. do not want this...So there you have it...

The San Fransisco Comical can go pound sand...Their opinion doesn’t matter a hill of beans to me...

[tessalu]

Hamas is seeking death, hoping to be martrys, and they are going about it in the right way. Go Israel, Go.

[goldstategop]

Hamas is targeting Israel because it wants Israel to be destroyed. It is like the Biblical Amalek: a group to be extirpated without mercy. The milk of human kindness must be absolutely refused to the truly evil. There must be no ceasefire with them.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus