"The goal is to halt Gaza rocket fire on Israel for good." This is the reasoning Israel's foreign minister gave for the two-day attacks on Gaza, which now has a death tool close to 300. The old adage "Bombing for peace is like ****ing for virginity" comes to mind.

I'll admit that I'm not an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and obviously the Palestinian leadership is not without fault by any means, but American foreign-policy towards this region really needs to change. For years we've played second fiddle to the Israel lobby and to their credit, it's worked like a charm. Pretty much anyone that doesn't completely side with Israel is labeled as an anti-Semite or unsympathetic to the Holocaust.

First of all, an anti-Semite is one who has hostility to or prejudice against Jews. So to say that someone who doesn't completely agree with Israeli foreign policy is an anti-Semite is like saying all Americans are bad because of our sometimes less than noble foreign-policy. Trust me, people abroad still like us, just not the administration we elected twice.

Second, yeah there are extremists that believe Israel should be wiped from the map, but there are also people in America that believe we souled take a dump on the Constitution and bust out the Ten Commandments as our new Bill of Rights.

I'm not saying that Israel is all wrong and the Palestinians are all right. There are problems on BOTH sides, and that's something the Israel lobby doesn't want to hear politicians admit. In Europe, you'll find a much more open mind to both sides than you will here. I need look no further than the video below for an example of the narrow-mindedness of some Americans regarding this issue.

Old Joe's apparently a scholar on the subject.

There are probably those that will just quickly scroll to the bottom, so they can yell at me for being an anti-Semite (my Jewish relatives would be especially shocked to find that out!), but if you are of the growing, open-minded minority, then read a book or two on the subject and form your own opinion. Once you have an opinion, talk to some people and share ideas on how the problem can be resolved through peace and maybe one day we'll stop reading about rocket launchers going off in an increasingly un-holy land.