I keep posting here expecting that I'll regret it. Maybe this'll be the time.
The problem is that you can't argue with someone who has decided that her personal opinion is simple, obvious, irrefutable, objective fact. Best you can do is sit back and try to appreciate the ironies.
Moving on (or perhaps back) to Israel, then...
Mossad has done an amazing job of protecting the country from attack. The country is surrounded by enemies. Their neighbors refuse to acknowledge that they even have a right to exist, and have vowed to wipe them off the map, drive them into the sea, and kill as many as possible doing it. But they're still there.
When they identified a nuclear reactor that was producing materials for WMDs, they had an appropriate response. They snuck in and took out that specific building. No invasion. No killing of innocent civilians. Just a single surgical strike, leaving the clear message that the threat will not be tolerated.
So, yes. There have been attacks against them. Suicide bombers, car bombs, insurgents... Those aren't the kind of attacks you can stop with intelligence organizations. They're not the kind you can stop with military attack, either, as shown in both Israel and Iraq. When you're faced with fanatics who will scrounge together whatever weapons they can get, there's only so much you can do.
You can try to limit their supplies. Make sure that they can't get their hands on seriously destructive stuff. You go after their funding and supporters. You can use guards and security protocols to catch more attacks and minimize the impact of the ones that get through. But that's only symptomatic treatment.
The only real solution is education. You have to combat the hate and lies and propaganda. Otherwise, they'll keep attacking, generation after generation, with whatever weapons they can get.
As for Israel's response to attack...
Little kids, raised on blind hate, were throwing rocks at Israelis, particularly Israeli soldiers. People said "They're just kids, they're just rocks." But thrown rocks (or rocks dropped from low roofs) can break bones. If they hit you in the head, they can cause serious brain damage, even death. A rock thrown at our car when we were on an Israeli highway (thrown with no idea of who we were or why we were there) blew out a tire. That single rock could have caused an accident that would have killed our whole family and the people in any other cars involved.
To combat the problem, Israeli soldiers (for the most part, teenage draftees) were set on patrol. To try to keep order. To protect themselves and others, they were given guns that fired rubber bullets. Rubber bullets can hurt, but they're most likely to cause little more than bruising. They're used by US police for riot control - when they go out expecting to find out-of-control civilians who might be doing dangerous things like throwing rocks.
So we have these kids who are throwing rocks. Attacking people just because they're Israeli, but particularly targeting soldiers.
And then we have the soldiers, who are barely more than kids themselves, out on patrol. Tasked with keeping the peace, ordered to fire only in self-defense or defense of civilians.
Kid throws a rock. Soldier fires a few rubber bullets at him. What happens? There's an international backlash. "Look at this! They're just kids! And here are these big, mean soldiers with guns shooting at them! Someone has to stop these violent Israelis!" Exactly the kind of thing Ann echoed above.
And yes, the country has become more aggressive in recent years. For decades, they tried the more passive approach. They tried defense only. But they were criticized for defending themselves, and the attacks didn't stop. They tried negotiation, but extremists kept stopping the process. And, really, you can't negotiate when the other side not only refuses to even try to stop the extremists but are even quietly helping them. They tried giving away bits and pieces of the country, but it didn't really slow the violence. And so, finally, they started pushing back.
I don't know that it's the right answer. I don't know what the right answer is. And I do know that Roger is going to seize on this as proof that the US needs to take a hard-line, militaristic approach, too. I don't agree that the situations are the same, and I don't agree that the response is doing any good. But I can understand why they've opted for it.
Of course, I'm not claiming the Israelis are perfect. They have their extremists, too. And, in general... you have this kind of violent, long-standing, two-sided conflict, and, inevitably, people become polarized over it. The hate is reflected, the racism spreads, it all becomes more and more entrenched.
Israel has done wrong, too. But, considering the circumstances, I think they've done remarkably well. I just wish there was a way to settle the situation. To get people on both sides to recognize each other as human beings and individuals.
