Do you think there was even one person in that auditorium in Venice who, somewhere in the back of their mind, said to themselves, Wait a minute: 1) One side is holding 251 hostages, including children, grandparents, and parents. 2) It has just invaded and massacred defenseless civilians in Mongol-style fashion. 3) It has systematically turned one of the most beautiful places in the world into a fortress of hundreds of kilometers of tunnels used exclusively for warfare. 4) Its entire doctrine of warfare is built on erasing the fundamental distinction on which the laws of war rest: the distinction between combatants and non-combatants. In fact, its strategy depends on Israel being the only side bound by the laws of war. 5) It knows that Israel calculates the risk to civilians when planning military strikes, and therefore makes sure to surround itself with a minimum number of non-combatants in order to gain protection and cause Israel to call off attacks. 6) It uses mosques, hospitals, schools, and homes as weapons depots and centers of military activity. 7) There is a country, Egypt, with a border that refuses to allow people to leave the war zone. Yet instead of all the world's "humanitarians" pressuring Egypt to accept refugees fleeing a war zone, they call this "ethnic cleansing" and insist that people who are not combatants and do not want to be in a war zone must remain there, despite wanting to flee. And on the other side, Israel: a) Invests billions in obtaining intelligence that allows it to calculate, for each military target, how many non-combatants are likely to be killed if it is attacked. b) Changed its calculations after the massacre regarding how many non-combatants may be put at risk or killed while still falling within the range of collateral damage permitted under the laws of war. c) Following the massacre, decided to expand its definition of military targets to include, for example, an active Hamas member who is officially listed as "only" a police officer carrying a weapon. d) Has lawyers who, for every strike, deliberate over whether the expected harm constitutes permissible collateral damage and whether the attack is justified under international law. And isn't all of this rather strange behavior, and an extraordinary investment in intelligence and lawyers, for a country supposedly intent on carrying out the "indiscriminate killing of civilians/genocide"? Do you think there was even one such person in the auditorium? (In another post, I'll address the phenomenon of Jews giving their enemies pound after pound of flesh.)