Consult UNICEF and you find that 4,000 under-5 year old Occupied Palestinian children die each year, 75% avoidably and due to racist Zionist-imposed deprivation in gross violation of the Geneva Convention (see: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/oPt_statistics.html ) i.e. race-based, racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel deliberately passively murders 3,000 under-5 year old Palestinian infants each year and actively or passively murders about 6,000 Occupied Palestinians in total each year.

Jewish British Labour figure David Milliband recently reported thus on the Gaza Concentration Camp under war criminal blockade by racist Apartheid Israel: "Save the Children, obviously, is most concerned about the 53% of the Gaza population under 18. The statistics say 10% of children are "stunted" – so undernourished before the age of two that they never grow to their full potential" (see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/11/david-miliband-gaza-... ).

Post-invasion Occupied Palestinian avoidable deaths from Israeli-imposed deprivation now total 0.3 million and post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.2 million (see "Ongoing Palestinian Genocide" in the recent multi-author book "The Plight of the Palestinians", Palgrave Macmillan, London : http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ).

One deplores the violence in the US-UK-backed Syrian civil war however let us not forget that Apartheid Israel has almost completely ethnically cleansed the Golan Heights part of Syria of over 100,000 Indigenous inhabitants and recently shot dead a dozen Syrian pro-democracy demonstrators.

@cityca

So you still refuse to engage with the facts in the above article, even though I helped by pointing one out to you. No, you still have to divert attention by referring to other things. That is a tactic of someone covering up what they themselves know undermines their point of view. You are part of the problem.

Following her stunning Super Bowl halftime performance, Madonna announces her world tour launch in Israel. The anti Israel BDS are crying in thier hands concentrating on how to stop this, whilst not giving a seconds thought to innocents that are being slaughtered in Syria. What was their alert this morning when 15 Syrians were slaughtered? Boycott Madonna! What a tragedy for true human rights campaigners!

"Is Israel a democracy or an ethnocracy?"

Israelis live in a Democracy, that's more than any Brit can say.

It's remarkable how the zionazis above can reply only with a torrent of abuse to Gideon Polya - no mention of, or reply, to the numerous links he has provided.

Anyone who seriously believes Israel is a liberal country (democratic or otherwise) needs to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

@julia harris
So you think others should shed tears for the Syrian dead? Why should anyone listen to Israelis who have visited more bloodshed and brutality and violence on their neighbours than all their dictators and governments put together? Look at Lebanon. At Israeli crimes in Sabra al-Shatila. Tens of thousands killed under Israeli direction, and terror operations once planned by that great terrorist Shimon Peres, the doe-eyed president. Land thieves, you hold illegally land stolen from Syria in 1967 and practice racist segregation excluding the original owners the Druze. Israeli fighter-jet ‘heroes’ have strafed Syria for years. Israel captures and abducts Palestinians from Gaza and the west bank everyday. Many of them disappear for ever, many of them killed. How many thousands are held in Israel’s secret jails? It was because of two such abductions that that militant group (it was not Hamas) captured Gilad Shalit, and Israel didn’t like that, even though it was permissible under the rules of war. As for the constant chorus by Israelis of Palestinians’ desire to kill all Israelis, it’s a mirror-image of the Israeli desire to kill all Arabs. You would if you could. The Israeli press is constantly reporting some rabbi’s references to the King’s Torah which enjoins Jews to kill their enemies, even babies. You and the Arabs are of one kind; all the semitic religions have the same tendency to cultivate fanaticism, including Christianity.

Steve Mann - I want Israel to recognise the right of Palestinians to live normal lives with equality in the area formerly known as Palestine. No to privileging any one group of people on the basis of their religious or ethnic background in Israel or anywhere else.

What is the difference between the massacre in Homs and the massacre in Gaza?

The first was perpetrated by a dictator, and the second by a government elected by the registered citizens of Israel.

In theory it should be easier for the people of the second country to change their leaders, but the rules of obtaining citizenship are getting harder for anyone who is not in the approved group. Thus anyone who is likely to have sympathy for the plight of people in the occupied territories is unlikely to be able to influence elections.

Don't assume the support of the international community Israel. In the last vote in the UN Security Council on Israel you depended once again on the lone US veto. A worse result for Netanyahu than the vote on Syria was for Assad. Incidentally making the US perhaps realise how others feel when they use their veto. Ironic.

Andy

Israel is not really a democracy in the sense accepted in Western Europe but has its own peculiar brand of democracy much in the way that Lebanon has.
I can't think of any other democracy in Europe which illegaly occupies land populated by a subjegated and hostile population whilst encouraging agressive colonisation.