JTS:

I don't care what your 'level' of education is. I care about the accuracy and logic of your argument.

I read about the Stern gang some time ago, can't remember the source. But they did not come off as heros. They came off as rabid extremists. They were not many, and did not have a lasting impact on the Jewish immigration question, which at the time was Jews versus English administration, not Arabs. As I mentioned, when the English got the better of the Stern gang, they did not make it to trial, which is unusual for the English.

The Haganah were the precursor to the IDF, and they carried off attacks that would be called 'terrorist' by their enemies, and 'freedom fighting' to their people. Sort of how George Washington would come off if viewed by the French he fought at the beginning of the French and Indian War, or if the English had defeated the American War for Independence.

The basic problem here is that Israel has never been allowed to 'win'. In the regular order of things, Israel would be acknowledged its independence and borders by not just the UN, but the Arab states as well. Since this has not happened, the Arab countries maintain that the Palestinians need no resettlement except back into Israel, which is unacceptable to Israel. If there was an absolute acceptance by the rest of the world that Israel is a legitimate state, that the Palestinians need to accept that fact and go elsewhere, there would be no problem.

In the foundation of the United States, for example, there was considerable resettlement. That is how Canada got its English speaking inhabitants, in fact. There was considerable and long lived trouble over this, but at base, in 1783 there was a treaty where England (hence what we call Canada) acknowledged American Independence. But all around that time there were border raids, border clashes, and the use of Native Americans in the internecine warfare (to their long term detriment, in fact).

There is no 'right' or 'wrong' about it. There is the taking of sides, certainly, but you only prolong the agony if you decide to favor whoever seems to be the 'underdog' of the moment.

The once and long term underdog is certainly Israel. The Arab population dwarfs it, the oil economy streams around it, and the Arab's religion is 'on the march' so to speak. This doesn't mean that American aid is called for necessarily, but American money is flowing like a tidal wave into the coffers of the oil nations, and whether or not that means directly into the Saudis or Iranians' pockets, it amounts to the same thing due to the fungible nature of the product.

As to the absolute 'wrong to kill civilians' admonition, we are long into attacks on civilians as a common denominator of the conflict, from the Arab attacks on Israeli schoolchildren long since to the suicide/homicide bombers of the more recent past. If you are trying to make a point that more Arab civilians died in the recent conflict than Israeli, that's a pretty meagre point. And in fact, one is hard put to find a conflict where civilians were not a part of the equation, particularly this kind of conflict.

As for sponsoring war, my earlier point which you did not address was that if Israel is cut off from US aid, their next sorties will of necessity take out a lot more people and material, since they won't have the luxury of resupply and they will have to make absolutely sure that their opponents get none from their nearby suppliers Iran and Syria. So cutting aid to Israel will make the conflict much sharper very quickly.