Hamas has promised to do it again. To ensure this doesn't happen, nothing less than unconditional surrender of Hamas or its total eradication will suffice. Know this: the era of killing Jews without consequences is over forever and that if you kill Jews you will be hunted down and die, just as the authors of the Munich Olympics massacre were and just as the Jewish Brigade of the British army did to Nazi camp guards and commandants in 1945-46.

Here's an example of what this certainty prevents: during the first Gulf War when Saddam's scuds were raining down on Israel a Financial Times correspondent asked a "high government official" (code for the PM or defense minister) how Israel might react if one of the scuds had a lethal chemical weapon on it. The reply: "the gassing of Jews again in this century would invite the return of Baghdad to the status of desert."

Saddam got the message and no scud carried a chemical weapon. This is how the world works.

In January 1943 at Casablanca FDR declared Allied war aims: "unconditional surrender" of the Axis powers. Israel has implicitly, though not explicitly, said the same to Hamas. I agree with this policy because nothing less is required to kill a malignant ideology like the American South's belief in slavery, Japanese Bushido, Nazism or Hamas' genocidal covenant. FDR understood that General "Unconditional Surrender" Grant at Vicksburg was right. You've presented no coherent argument for reaching a political result that equals what we got with the first three of these malignant genocidal ideologies. Hamas' is just the latest version of the same thing.

Gaza's children will stop dying when Hamas decides that saving their lives is more important than its genocidal project of killing Jews, destroying Israel and preventing peace between Saudi Arabia and Israel. The latter was the real reason for the timing of this war Hamas launched.

Revenge has nothing to do with it and unlike West Bank and Gazan Arabs Israelis don't pass out candy when bomb Gazans as they do when Jews are killed in terror attacks.

Israel's strategy is dictated by cold, rational geopolitical calculation. Only disproportionate response educates Israel's enemies about the true cost of killing Jews with impunity as they used to. We're acutely aware of the brevity of the sympathy for dead Jews as those still living start to defend themselves.

"modern democracy...doesn't kill indiscrimanantly":

Really" What about the fire bombings of Tokyo, March 9, 1945, Dresden, February 13, 1945?

When cornered, liberal democracies have not hesitated to use illiberal means to defend themselves. Nor should they renounce the right to use such means. Democracies' enemies like Putin, Xi Jin Ping, Kim Jong Un and Trump smell weakness like sharks smell blood. Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel know this. The other democracies won't relearn the lessons of 1931-45 until they again feel cornered.

I look forward to receiving similar messages about Syria, Darfur, Yemen, Kurdistan, Tibet, Xinjiang, the Rohingyas so you get out of the double standard anti-semitism jail you've locked yourself into.