It's like 2 kids fighting because one challenged the other one, and the latter is left with 2 choices, run and cry or beat the crap out of him. Israel chose the latter, as an example for the rest of "potential" enemies. So 2 possibilities to stop this: either one gets knocked out, or someone has to intervene. But those that want to intervene don't want to cut in their own flesh, now do they ? This is the exact same situation in a nuts!@#$%^&*. After a while they just blame each other, and having a discussion whether which cause of which party was just is irrelevant. Btw dirty tricks such as making civilian casualties isn't only restricted to middle-east. The US did the exact same thing on Japan. So if terrorists are seen as ppl that want to create chaos by killing civilians, then you could deduct that US is the biggest terrorist of all countries.