Gaza

When Joe Biden remarked that Obama would be "tested" early in his administration, the future VP was derided as suffering once again from foot in mouth disease. Seems to me, the tests are being devised even before Obama takes office. I don't know how calculating Hamas leadership is, but I suspect that they chose now to break the cease-fire knowing full well that Isreal would respond with full force now, in the waning days of a U.S. administration that knows only one way to respond to an asymetrical attack.

While American-made F16s drop bombs on Gaza, the United States is drawn inexorably into this dispiriting conflict and the Obama administration finds shrinking by the day options for mediating an end to a conflict in which one side draws its oxygen from hatred of Israel even as Israel stokes that hatred by responding to innacurate missile firings with overwhelming force.