Ghaza: El-Harb El-Majnouna

The AP reports:

Special legal teams will defend Israeli soldiers against potential war crimes charges stemming from civilian deaths in the Gaza Strip, the prime minister said Sunday, promising the country would ''fully back'' those who fought in the three-week offensive.

The move reflected growing concerns by Israel that officers could be subject to international prosecution, despite the army's claims that Hamas militants caused the civilian casualties by staging attacks from residential areas.

Israelis, killed: 13
Palestinians, killed: 1,285.

Israeli civilians, killed: 3
Palestinian civilians, killed: 600-700

Regardless of provocation, there is something fundamentally wrong about Israeli calculations here. That's not a typo; that's 100 Palestinians killed (many of them militants, uniformed or not) for every Israeli.

But that's also nearly 250 Palestinian civilians killed for every Israeli civilian.

The Israelis have called the war "baal habayit hishtageya," or the boss has lost in. A very business-like metaphor; meaning, Israel wants to be seen as a madman who cannot be controlled.

In Arabic, the prime minister of Hamas has referred to the conflict as الحرب المجنونة "el-harb el-majnouna," the crazy war.

International criticism has also focused on the shelling of UN buildings and schools serving as shelters, and the use of white phosporous as a weapon--an intense inciderary used for lighting, that burns like napalm.

Clearly, Hamas invited this, perhaps consciously, first by provoking Israel with (ineffectual though terrifying) rocket attacks on civilians, then by firing and retreating into civilian-populated areas.

But it is in no one's interest to fire upon civilians, except Hamas's, who retains a "firm group on power" according to yesterday's WaPo. Hamas has merely gained support, from both Palestinians and other Arabs in the region--and destroyed the legitimacy of their moderate rival Fatah, who looks like an Israeli puppet government right about now.

The crazy war: fighting against your country's own best interests and national security.