Gaza catch-up

'If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same.' - Barack Obama, on a visit to Sderot, Israel, July, 2008.

My self-imposed blogging silence over Christmas has meant absenting myself from the heated debate about Israel's military response to Hamas' shelling of its civilian population. In brief, my feelings about the situation (for what they're worth) can be summed up as: certainty about Israel's moral right to defend itself against terrorism, exasperation at the unthinking one-sidedness of much media and 'progressive' comment on events, horror at the loss of innocent life, and acute anxiety that the longer the campaign goes on the greater the danger to Israel's interests and to hopes for peace in the region.

Here are some contributions to the debate that I've found helpful (which isn't to say I agree with every word):

- Norm and George Szirtes on the definition of a 'proportional' response

- the Contentious Centrist on the cynicism of Hamas

- Eric Lee on the predictable response of the pseudo-Left

- David Aaronovitch and Jonathan Freedland on concerns about the longterm impact of Israel's actions

- and this response to Freedland's piece by Eric Lee