Dr. Mads Gilbert: "The statistics are clear. Among the 2,400-2,500 injured, 45 percent are women and children. And then there are also all the civilian men. So the large majority of the injured, the victims, are women, men and children civilian.

Compare that with the 22 Israelis who have been killed by rocket attacks by Hamas since 2000, i.e., 22 Israeli deaths over the last nine years versus 783 Palestinian deaths in just under two weeks. No one supports Hamas' actions in launching those attacks, but Palestinian deaths caused by the Israelis since the December 27th start of the current conflict dwarfs that number. And with Israel's Air Force launching 50 new bomb and missile attacks yesterday against targets in Gaza, the death toll there is no doubt already considerably higher than the last reported figures. And, of course, there are no reliable figures for deaths attributable the Israeli blockade of Gaza over the last 18 months, a blockade that has prevented the delivery of needed supplies of medicine, food and potable water to Gaza's 1.5 million residents.

I have to ask the question: What is Israel's real purpose for this war? Stopping rocket attacks from Hmamas which, despite the danger they pose, have killed only a relatively few Israelis over the last nine years, or a chance to exterminate significant numbers of Palestinians in Gaza before George Bush leaves office on January 20th? I have to conclude the latter is the real reason for Israel's decision to commence this war now.

As Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia, notes in his op-ed piece in the New York Times today, Israel could have chosen to negotiate with Hamas, but instead chose the path of oppression and war when the Palestinian elections did not provide the the result ( a Fatah victory) which they would have preferred:

THE BLOCKADE Israel’s blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation.

The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury and malnutrition. This amounts to the collective punishment — with the tacit support of the United States — of a civilian population for exercising its democratic rights.

THE CEASE-FIRE Lifting the blockade, along with a cessation of rocket fire, was one of the key terms of the June cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. This accord led to a reduction in rockets fired from Gaza from hundreds in May and June to a total of less than 20 in the subsequent four months (according to Israeli government figures). The cease-fire broke down when Israeli forces launched major air and ground attacks in early November; six Hamas operatives were reported killed.

WAR CRIMES The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or by Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life is precious. But the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis killed, many of them soldiers. Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip.

This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

Read that last quote again by Moshe Yaalon again, please. The sheer monstrosity of it sends chills down my spine. It makes clear that this war in Gaza (much like the war Israel fought in Lebanon against Hezbollah) is all about making the Palestinians suffer so much loss, incur so many deaths, that they lose the will to ever rise up against their Israeli overlords and demand independence. It will not work. Military actions rarely deliver the solutions that the political leaders who order them expect. Just ask George Bush.

But until Israel is forced to change its approach, these crimes against humanity will go on and on and on, into an indefinite future, a future in which Israel becomes ever more isolated from the rest of the world. A future of ever more wars and terrorist attacks. A future of ever more bitterness and animosity and hatred and death and destruction and gross inhumanity where the lives of all the people living in the Middle East are ever more at risk.

It's almost as if Israel wants to create the conditions in which to bring about an Armageddon in which it can finally unleash all of its military power, perhaps even its nuclear arsenal, against its Muslim neighbors. This is the type of peace that Hitler sought to impose on the Jews with his Final Solution. The only difference? Israel is stumbling toward such an end result, one murderous conflict at a time. I don't think that will be any consolation to all the people who may die in the future because of the criminal policies Israel's leaders have recklessly chosen to pursue.