"If the Arabs put down their arms, there will be no war. If the Israelis put down their arms, there will be no Israel." – Benjamin Netanyahu

In the 1967 war, Israel defeated the combined forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, capturing the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem. At that moment of complete victory, Israel offered its defeated foes the return of the captured territories in exchange for real peace. That's all Israel has ever wanted. In response, the Arabs announced the Khartoum Resolution which declared "the three no's" - no negotiations, no recognition, and no peace. That remains the official position of some, though happily not all, Arab nations, now of Iran, and of all the jihadist Muslim terrorist groups.

Since 1967, Israel has traded land for peace several times, the result being that it has less land and no peace. In 2009, it agreed to a ten-month cessation of new settlement construction in exchange for negotiations with Hamas. Construction stopped. Hamas refused to negotiate. Israel has agreed to numerous cease-fires, all of which has been broken by the Arab side. When Israel has had to fight, it has made a greater effort than any other nation, including our own, to avoid non-combatant casualties. Yet Israel is reviled, branded an aggressor, and condemned by "progressives" throughout the world. The lack of moral clarity here is staggering.

This is a no brainer. Israel is a vibrant, functioning democracy. It respects human rights, including those of its ethnic minorities (Israeli Arabs have more rights than those in Arab states) and its religious minorities (there are Muslim and Christian representatives in the Knesset). Hamas, on the other hand, is a murderous gang of jihadist thugs. Doubt that? Read the "Hamas Covenant:" http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp. Officially recognized as a terrorist organization by the United States and several European nations, Hamas is anti-democratic, anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-everything that progressives claim to support. So why the excuse-making for Hamas and the frothing-at-the-mouth criticism of Israel?

Some of it is old-fashioned anti-Semitism, a left-wing staple these days. But most is misguided blame based on "disproportionate casualties," a militarized version of another progressive mantra, "fair share." Progressives love to whine that various groups or individuals don't pay or do their fair share, whatever that means. In this case, conflating it with "disproportionate casualties" means that Israel's self-defense effort is illegitimate because Israel has caused more civilian casualties to Palestinians than vice-versa. And that's not "fair."

By that logic, America's effort during WWII was illegitimate because we caused more civilian casualties to Germans and Japanese than they did to us.

Israel's critics ignore – some even deny - the fact that Hamas uses hospitals, schools, and mosques as weapons depots and rocket firing positions thereby deliberately turning Palestinians into targets so as to gain sympathy from the much-publicized photos of the dead and wounded for whom it, not Israel, is responsible. As Benjamin Netanyahu correctly noted, "We're using missile defense to protect our civilians and they're using their civilians to protect their missiles."

For years, Israel has been subject to attack by terrorists operating from Gaza, yet has continued to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza during that entire time. Hamas has confiscated much of that aid and used it to support its military build-up, including its tunnel network which was built partly with forced Palestinian child labor (Hamas itself admits that at least 160 Palestinian children were killed during the construction of the tunnels).

Israel finally was obliged to fight back and progressives object on the absurd pretense of "disproportionate casualties." They should be ashamed.

This conflict between civilization and barbarism will stop the moment the terrorists decide to stop it. But they won't because the true "underlying cause" (yet another silly progressive mantra) is the jihadist Muslim commitment to the destruction of Israel. Remember "the three no's."

America should stand squarely and resolutely with Israel.