In a nice editorial piece, David Aaronovitch of the London Times Online, asks some common sense questions about the developing hostilities in Gaza:

This is not about proportionality. Let us instead express outrage and, perhaps, illustrate it with pictures of crowds of similarly outraged protesters in Damascus, Amman or Indonesia. Let half of us concoct round-robins of suddenly active professors, Gallowegian politicians and unthinking actors, expressing hyperbolic rage at “genocide”, describing Gaza as Israel’s Guernica and demanding sanctions, while the other half wonders why no petitions ever get launched against the funders and organizers of, say, the suicide bomber in Khost at the weekend, who blew up his vehicle beside a group of passing Afghan schoolchildren; or against the Taleban cleric threatening last week to kill female students in Pakistan for their un-Islamic desire to learn.

But the article falls apart in my opinion in its conclusion:

It was Shimon Peres, the Israeli President, who said that, far from there being no light at the end of the Middle East tunnel, there was indeed light. The trouble was that there was no tunnel. Bit by bit, inducement by bribe and cease-fire by restraint, we have to construct one.

If we are to do this then the friends of the Palestinians would be best advised to put pressure on Hamas never to launch another of its bloody rockets and to stop its death-laden rhetoric, and the friends of Israel well placed to cajole it into making a settlement seem worthwhile. All else is verbiage.

The problem is the author’s ignorance of history and Hamas’ own charter, which specifically calls for the destruction of Israel. For thousands of years, Islamic extremists have waged bloody war against anyone who is not a true believer in Islam. Jews and Christians are particularly singled out for death simply because they have different beliefs. According to the Koran and the institutionalized hatred for Jews and Americans being taught at Islamic schools, there can be no coexistence. The only option is for nonbelievers to be converted, subjugated (to pay a financial tax to true believers) or to be killed. This fact is difficult for many westerners to believe, but all the well-wishing in the world won’t change it. We need to see the world for the way it is and not the way we want it to be.  And let’s not forget that the greatest victims are the innocent children being killed, maimed and orphaned every day due to the actions of those who murder in the name of their God. Thousands of years of broken truces, murder, and hate are lessons that must be heeded or repeated. There can be no peaceful coexistence until Hamas and other extremists can embrace a less violent interpretation of the Koran and begin accepting the differences between cultures and religion. Tolerance must be a two way street, or there will never be a solution to the conflicts which are spreading around the world as Islamic extremism spills new blood throughout the Middle East, Europe and in America.  

What are your thoughts?

Giving new meaning to the words “stretch marks”, doctors at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills, CA couldn’t believe their eyes when they first saw the baby in the womb of Sara Sault.

In fact, it took two of them to lift up 14-pound, 2-ounce Richard Walker Sault during the mercifully required C-section.

“Oh my God!” a nurse gasped. For a second, mom Sara thought something was wrong. But her big bundle of joy was perfectly healthy when he came into the world on Dec. 23.

“We thought our first baby was a miracle, and now we have this little guy,” dad Richard Sault told the OC Register. “Guess he’s not so little.”

Richard Sault Jr. is the largest baby ever delivered at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center – and possibly in Orange County, California, according to veteran doctors and an informal check of other major county hospitals.

“That’s a big baby,” Marty Wright, department manager of labor and delivery at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, told the newspaper. During her 21 years at the hospital, about 102,000 babies have been delivered. “I remember one that was nearly 12 pounds, but 14.2? Never!” she said. Read more