The Israelis secure the airspace and sea around Gaza to prevent weapons from being brought in for Hamas to use to murder Israelis as well, and therefore it serves the same purpose as the checkpoints on the ground (the protection of Israelis, both Jewish and Arab).

And as for questionable tactics, which ones are you referring to?

Israel certainly needs to hold onto the Golan, Syria has shown itself too many times to use it as a artillery & rocket staging point to attack Israel.

You're absolutely right.  Hamas likes to see civilian deaths because they see it as a sacrifice in exchange for good P.R. on their side, and negative P.R. for the Israelis.

100,000,000 people didnt die in world war 2 to help the jews. It was all for political reasons.
OT: Neither side is in the right. Israel shares blame, and always will, for killing civilians. Same for hamas.

Uh.. no.  And "frying up babies to make latkas" is an old anti-Semitic story that caused many pogroms that resulted in the deaths of countless numbers of Jews in Europe, so it's really an inappropriate comment to use anyway to make whatever point you were trying to make.

 What do you mean? Non-jewish people in Gaza and the West bank aren't citizens of Israel and they never can be. The Israelis don't want even more Arabs into Israel when they already have over a million of them since 1948. Actually, Palestinians aren't very welcome anywhere, not even in Arab countries (for political and other reasons).

Ugh and with doing nothing the EU and NA are creating terrorists.

Yes, I understand why Israel desires control, and these methods in tandem with the Gaza barrier have been successful in reducing the number of suicide attacks to essentially nil. With that being said, if Israel is going to demand control over the supply lines into and out of Gaza, it should not restrict fuel and food as it has done with this blockade. That is one of the tactics I question. It seems neither a proportionate response nor a successful tactic in dealing with Hamas. As I said, I believe Hamas shoulders a greater share of blame for the situation. Hamas cannot be absolved from its actions and treated as a victim. Conversely, I do not give Israel carte-blanche in its actions.  

I could actually agree with you if there were a way to regulate who was receiving the materials (as in keeping those same materials out of the hands of Hamas).  I've banged my head against a wall, and have come up with nothing really (outside of invasion, displacement of Hamas, and the installation of the some-what friendlier Palestian Authority). It's unfortunately almost impossible to prevent Hamas from controlling (and abusing) the resources that enter Gaza.

Lol, calm down, dude.  I hate all races equally.  I'm giving an extreme example to show how extreme our support is for Israel.  I mean you NEVER hear anyone in our government say anything bad about Israel.  EVER.  Is that normal?  Should our relationship with any country be like that?  Its essentially the same kind of groupthink that got us into the recent financial crisis.  Everyone in the room was saying the same thing, and no one was allowed to disagree.

I'm just saying that the responses we get from the talking heads on any issue involving Israel is always horrendously slanted towards Israel, whether or not Israel is in the right.  And this doesn't even reflect popular sentiment that accurately, or at least seriously masks some people's disapproval of Israel's actions and our past history with Israel.

This article can explain it better than I can:

Dem leaders out of step with voters on Israel's attack on Gaza

A new Rasmussen Reports poll -- the first to survey American public opinion specifically regarding the Israeli attack on Gaza -- strongly bolsters the severe disconnect between American public opinion on U.S. policy toward Israel and the consensus views expressed by America's political leadership.

Not only does Rasmussen find that Americans generally "are closely divided over whether the Jewish state should be taking military action against militants in the Gaza Strip" (44 percent to 41 percent, with 15 percent undecided), but Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the Israeli offensive -- by a 24-point margin. By stark contrast, Republicans, as one would expect (in light of their history of supporting virtually any proposed attack on Arabs and Muslims), overwhelmingly support the Israeli bombing campaign (62 percent to 27 percent).

It's not at all surprising that Republican leaders -- from Dick Cheney and John Bolton to virtually all appendages of the right-wing noise machine -- are unquestioning supporters of the Israeli attack. After all, they're expressing the core ideology of the overwhelming majority of their voters and audience.

Much more notable is the fact that Democratic leaders -- including Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi -- are just as lock step in their blind, uncritical support for the Israeli attack, in their absolute refusal to utter a word of criticism of, or even reservations about, Israeli actions.

While some Democratic politicians who are marginalized by the party's leadership are willing to express the views that Democratic voters overwhelmingly embrace, the suffocating, fully bipartisan orthodoxy which typically predominates in America when it comes to Israel is in full force with this latest conflict.

Is there any other significant issue in American political life, besides Israel, where citizens split almost evenly in their views, yet the leaders of both parties adopt identical positions which leave half of the citizenry with no real voice?

More notably still, is there any other position, besides Israel, where a party's voters overwhelmingly embrace one position (Israel should not have attacked Gaza) but that party's leadership unanimously embraces the exact opposite position (Israel was absolutely right to attack Gaza and the U.S. must support Israel unequivocally)?

Equally noteworthy is that the factional breakdown regarding Israel-Gaza mirrors quite closely the factional alliances that arose with regard to the Iraq war. Just as was true with Iraq, one finds vigorous pro-war sentiment among the Dick Cheney/National Review/neoconservative/hard-core-GOP crowd, joined (as was true for Iraq) by some American liberals who typically oppose that faction yet eagerly join with them on Israel.

Meanwhile, most of the rest of the world -- Europe, South America, Asia, the Middle East, the U.N. leadership -- opposes and condemns the attack, all to no avail. The parties with the superior military might -- the U.S. and Israel -- dismiss world opinion as essentially irrelevant. Even the pro-war rhetorical tactics are the same, just as those who opposed the Iraq war were said to be "pro-Saddam," those who oppose the Israeli attack on Gaza are now "pro-Hamas."

There are certainly meaningful differences between the U.S. attack on Iraq and the Israeli attack on Gaza (most notably the fact that Hamas does shoot rockets into Israel and has killed Israeli civilians and Israel is blockading and occupying Palestinian land, whereas Iraq did not attack and could not attack the U.S. as the U.S. was sanctioning them and controlling their airspace). But the underlying logic of both wars is far more similar than different: military attacks, invasions and occupations will end rather than exacerbate terrorism; the Muslim world only understands brute force; the root causes of the disputes are irrelevant; diplomacy and the U.N. are largely worthless.

It's therefore entirely unsurprising that the sides split along the same general lines. What's actually somewhat remarkable is that there is even more lock-step consensus among America's political leadership supporting the Israeli attack on Gaza than there was supporting the U.S. attack on Iraq.