Over the past week-plus Israel has been attacking Hamas in the Gaza strip. First using precision-guided munitions and, since this past weekend, with ground troops. After five years and more than 7,000 rockets launched with the sole aim of terrorizing Israeli civilians, Israel decided it had finally had enough. Instead of being lauded for their patience and restraint (imagine how long the U.S. would've waited if Mexico had started lobbing rockets from Tijuana into San Diego), Israel has been almost universally condemned.

It's not just happening overseas, Tom Trento got this footage of a protest and counter-protest that took place in Ft. Lauderdale last week.

For those of you who don't want to watch the entire 9+ minutes, I created an edited version of the video highlighting the relevant parts.

I'm not sure how scared I should be that there are people in the United States who think that urging Jews to get back in the ovens is proper political discourse. (It also makes me a little dizzy -- half the time they're denying the Holocaust ever occurred and now it seems they're acknowledging it occurred in order to further their hatred.)

While people like those above are scary, I don't think they're nearly as dangerous as people like Glenn Greenwald who actually have a platform other than a streetcorner from which to influence people. Greenwald was interviewed today on Hugh Hewitt's radio show and his blinkered view of the world around him is shocking.

Greenwald appears to operate from one basic misconception: He thinks most of the people in the world are kind, understanding, basically liberal (using the little 'l' definition) and want peace, security and freedom.

Unfortunately, this does not describe a majority of Palestinians -- or Arabs for that matter -- in the Middle East.

Hugh Hewitt: Again, I don’t want to get off course, though, because I’m really, genuinely trying to figure out if you were the king of the world, and you could tell people to do everything, if you could direct Israeli policy right now, Glenn, what would you have them actually do right now? Would you have them pull out of Gaza, and if the rockets kept falling, would you give them an airport, and if the rockets continue to fall, would you give them medicine and food, and if the rockets continued to fall, would you dismantle the West Bank settlements, and if the rockets continued to fall, what would you do then?

Glenn Greenwald: Well, I mean those are huge, huge numbers of ifs. I mean, those are, there are lots and lots of steps that the Israelis can take in order to diffuse that anger. And I mean at the end of the day, it may be the case that there’s nothing that can prevent every last rocket from falling. The question is how do you gain security, maximize security for the Israeli people? That’s the question you have to ask if you’re the Israeli government. And in my view, making those kinds of concessions, showing a true devotion to finding a resolution that works for Palestinians and for the Israelis, is infinitely more likely to secure the peace and security of the Israeli people than continuing to drop bombs on Palestinians. I think exactly the way, probably the best thing that was done for Israeli security was the peace agreement entered into with Egypt. So I would definitely go in the direction of trying to resolve my conflicts with the Palestinians, marginalize the extremists, rather than creating more extremists, which they’re doing every day by slaughtering innocent Palestinian civilians.

I encourage you to read the entire transcript, because Greenwald isn't alone on the Western left in holding the belief that appeasement would somehow defang Islamic terrorism. The scenario Hewitt describes would not, as Greenwald suggests, weaken Hamas' support, but increase it. After all, if Hamas shows it can deliver an end to the naval blockade (designed to keep out weapons), an airport, medicine and food by lobbing rockets, why would that suddenly reduce Hamas' credibility?

It's that sort of reflex to appeasement that got millions of Jews killed 60+ years ago. The same reflex would get more killed today.