If "kill them all" seems like a reasonable approach to you, and you don't mind making statements to that effect in a public forum, then I think it is fair to point out what a pathetic, simple-minded, and adolescent approach that is as a response to violence. How would the suffering of what you propose not be exactly the same, in kind, as what has already happened? And how do you not then become exactly the thing it is that you ostensibly object to?
To put it another way, if you think "kill them all" is a reasonable response, then how can you object in any principled way to their effort to "kill them all?" You effectively share their values. You validate their intent, because you echo it, you share it, and you promote it.
If you think the distribution of horror and death on a mass scale is a solution to something, you are an idiot.
Sorry, MarkK but there is another facet. Your pacifist views are yours, but I respectfully suggest they are incomplete and perhaps a bit idealistic.
Don't forget that we get the idea of avoiding excessive punishment ("let the punishment fit the crime" concept) from the Jewish culture and King Solomon, who declared "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life." Hamas's initial combined rocket and ground attacks killed over 1000 people. You appear to not understand that when faced with barbarian logic (as shown by Hamas) that you must FIRST get their attention, which sadly requires a bit of barbarity to make them step back. You decry the suffering, yet APPEAR to ignore that Hamas started the latest round of suffering. Well, war is like that, and Hamas informally declared war on Israel. Is it truly a surprise that Israel would then return the favor and formally declare war on Hamas?
The Jewish people, throughout history, have been displaced in various diasporas including Russian and German persecution. But there were French diasporas as well - all of them telling the Jews they weren't welcome. And let's not forget the pre-Christian diaspora from Egypt, if you believe the Bible's book of Exodus. In 1948, the Jewish people got a homeland and they vowed to never again be pushed away from that homeland. They jealously protect what they have because it took them ... not decades or centuries, but millennia to secure a homeland. And they offer credible threats of force to those who would interfere. Usually it is a sufficient deterrent. The threat of serious retaliation is a good deterrent. The threat of near-complete annihilation has to sink in as a deterrent to future actions of this type.
On the larger stage, the world has not had a nuclear war because the countries with whom that would be most likely know that we have enough firepower that while we might lose, they surely wouldn't win. There would be no victory celebration. Mutually assured destruction is a great deterrent even for lunatics like President Kim of North Korea.
You want to know if we are advocating genocide. Perhaps, perhaps not. But the usual treatment for a cancer is surgical excision. Gaza has repeatedly become like a cancer in Israel's side. I have lost track of how many times this region flared up. Repeated concessions have not worked because Hamas wants to eliminate Israel. They are intransigent in this sentiment. When you have the irresistible force / immovable object conundrum, you can expect non-trivial mayhem. And so we have that. What did you expect to happen? A fly-over dropping flowers?
