Nathan,
As an attorney, you will be aware that the legal definition of "murder" includes elements of malice aforethought and intentionality.

Unlike Hamas, it is never the Israelis' object to kill civilians.

Fine, it's not murder, it's just careless slaughter of a two year old child (or perhaps a more accurately defined word would be in order). Call it what you want but don't think it's ever justified.

Jack- you are wrong. I covered this issue a while ago here and here.

Murder and especially homicide to be legally precise includes as well "reckless disregard" for life. For example, if you commit a felony, even if you don't mean to kill anyone, if someone dies you are guilty of murder because committing a felony is considered to inherently endanger others.

Bombing an area where civilians are guaranteed to die is far greater disregard for life and to call the deaths "unintentional" when the intention was to bomb the place and you knew civilians would die is just hair-splitting.

I would direct you all to this article, written by an Israeli, in support of Nathan's argument.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=270513

Nathan completely misunderstands, what they actually were doing was "liberating" the baby. Death was just an unfortunate side effect, and in fact probably her own fault for not fully devoting her two whole years of life to the overthow of Arafat. She can now enjoy democracy in Heaven.

Do I sound bitter today?

Nathan, semantics is all about "hair-splitting," especially when it comes to legalese.

You are bending terms and debasing the language in order to justify your overheated fulminations.

Hamas militants get up in the morning planning to murder Israelis. To say that the Israeli government is the "mirror image" of this is just (how else can I phrase it?) specious, overheated nonsense .

Jack, read the article I linked to above. It's an analysis which attempts to go beyond the hair-splitting on both sides.

A few months back, an Arab sniper in Hevron deliberately shot dead an infant in a stroller. That was murder, but it didn't warrant any mention on this blog, because the victim was Jewish, eh?

The other day, Arabs in Yesha assassinated two other Arabs on charges of "collaboration" - no court, no trial, just plain old Arab assassination, as in 1936-1939. But Yale graduate, attorney Dr Newman has no problem with that, since the sole objective is to attack our sister democracy, Israel.

Little wonder the left is held in profound contempt.

[apologies to Nathan and the readers for the length of this post. It wasn't intentional at the outset !]

Joseph Alexander Norland: any examination of particular incidents necessarily involves selectiveness which is not, on its own, evidence of bias. It goes without saying that all reasonable people on the left, center and right, abhor every death of every innocent person.

If a person chooses to emphasise the deaths of one side vs another, surely one should ask what their motivations are for doing so. I cannot speak to Nathan's but I can to my own, as a left-leaning jew who has spent much time studying the conflict and talking to Israelis and Palestinians.

If I step back and look at the conflict I never cease to be impressed by one overwhelming fact: the world's fourth most powerful military machine, with the near-unconditional backing of the world's only superpower, continues, on a daily basis to deprive over 3m people of rights that anyone in the West would regard as inalienable. It engages in a multiplicity of actions which cannot be legtimiated in the name self-defense. I do not want to downplay the sufferings of the Israelis or fail to recognise the very real terror that has overtaken their lives (I hear again and again from people who live there or have recently moved about how they are gripped with fear every time they go out onto the streets). Yet the basic structure of Israeli society is in tact. This cannot be said about Palestine. The core elements of civil society - schools, utilities, government offices - have in many cases literally been physically destroyed. We are not talking about targeted assassinations of known militants here, rather the wholesale decimation of a whole society by the Israeli army. And this doesn't include all the non-physical damage such as the daily and clearly ritual humiliations imposed at the checkpoints.

As victims, subjected to a brutal 35 year military occupation, if we fail to understand their predicament, we will overlook what motivates certain people to take up arms and terrorise others, as they are being terrorised themselves, in order to achieve basic freedoms. I recently watch this documentary about the Gaza strip - http://www.arabfilm.com/item.html?itemID=202 . With no narration, it presented a cinema verite account of life there, centered around a 13 year old boy. At the end of the film, he said that he truly wanted to die as life around him was so unimaginably terrible (and the filming had borne witness to this) and that if this was going to be the case, better to do it as a matyr fighting for his people. Would this justify some future murderous act on his behalf: absolutely not. Does it provide an intelligible context to his motivations which can in turn provide an understanding as to what action may be needed to remove the basic drivers of the conflict: perhaps. What could possibly lead such a young person to wish death for themselves ?

All of this must necessarily be emphasised, even over-emphasised such that it may appear biased, because otherwise one cannot begin to understand what leads the Palestinians to attack the Israelis with such savagery and desparation (best exemplified by someone blowing themselves up). This is, in turn, important because the governments of Israel and US are in a position to address the causes behind this desparation. No reasonable inhabitant of Israel or the US would condone the brutality that goes on in the occupied territories. However there are those in power who wish this to continue (most obviously the new coalition government in Israel who are, in effect, opposed to a two-state solution) and who use a biased media to advance their objectives. Only by presenting the other side of the conflict, by counter-acting the biases that seek to equate the words Palestinian and terrorist, can one educate the populations who have the real power, with their vote, to demand a new agenda. This necessary presentment of a counter-bias does not imply that one regards an Israeli death as any less terrible. It is simply a means to achieving a cessation of all violence in the region.

I would really encourage you and all the readers to look at this moving article written by the daughter of two holocaust survivors who also happens to be an eminent academic specializing on Israel and Palestine: http://www.afsc.org/pwork/0212/021222.htm

I saw Thomas Friedman on "Oprah" today. He made a point on Israel by saying; "Israel won a war in six days, they have been stuck in the seventh day for 35 years."
He said this to make a point about how Israel and the U.S.A. are hated because they can win wars but not the peace. Their policies don't include the losers. Hence the Palestinians with nothing to lose because they are not included in the Israeli dream of a good life, strike in the only way they know how. With suicide-bombers. We haven't equipped the Palestinians with the terrible weapons the Israelis have. I don't condone this acts, but I can understand the frustration and hopelessness they feel.

i may take somone a bit more seriously on this topic when i see a title such as "Palestinian blows up bus killing 14 students" or "Palestinians blows up cafe killing men women and children"

seems like a one sided battle. if you love them so much.. go live over there.