Prior to their bombing run in Gaza on New Years Day, Israeli miltary telephoned many residents warning of the impending attacks.  Leaflets dropped in eastern Gaza, sonic missles used as auditory warnings, and soldiers mounting at the borders should have made the attack no surprise.  However, in typical fashion, these warnings were paid no mind, and the resulting devastation has led to a hornet’s nest of anti-Israeli and anti-US sentiment.
     “When you stand in front of a moving train where the conductors are continuously flashing the lights and blowing their steam horns, whose fault is it, really, when you get run over?” asked Sam Kelter, legal and political correspondent at blogitude.com.

     The surgical strike by Israel was largely successful in Gaza, where a militant mosque and more than twenty homes were leveled, homes which reportedly housed Hamas leaders, militants and weapons.  In addition, Hamas militant leader Nizar Rayan, his four wives, and ten of his twelve children were killed, dealing a significant blow to the Hamas power structure in the region.

     Gaza health officials claim more than seventeen hundred are wounded at present.  The United Nations claims that up to twenty-five percent of the dead may be civilians, while Hamas actually verifies that around fifty-percent of its security forces are deceased, along with as many as twenty-five children.  Whether or not these children were in Hamas homes is still unknown.

     The present death toll includes around four hundred people, four thousand sheep, seventy five dogs, twelve monkeys, six geese a-laying, and an unidentified meat puppet which may have been used in a Quiznos commercial.  No cats were injured during the bombing.

     Asked to comment on the situation, upcoming President Barack Obama replied, “Umm, yes, and, umm, I plan, umm, to address, umm, this situation, ummm, when we, ummm, you know, umm, January, ummm, by the end of the, ummm, by tax season.”
     It seems that our only hope of a diplomatic resolution to the situation may be in the verbal skills of future Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose previous statements regarding the War on Terrorism were, “I will not rule out the nuclear option.”