I find your accusation of arrogance riotous Todd. You, mr. humble pie, what a laugh. You spend so much time looking down your nose that it's a wonder you don't need the services of an eye surgeon. Do you always generalize the term conservative or is it just a political tic that crops up now and then? You have no monopoly on empathy. I am pleased that you seem to have the word in your vocabulary. If you cannot empathize with the Israelis, that is your problem. The fact that a World power did its' best to eliminate them from the gene pool does give them a bit of a complex. Hell if I was an Israeli in a position of power I would eliminate every member of Hamas and Hezbollah that I could identify. Turnabout is fair play and there is no such thing as 'fair' in War. The only way I would stop is when the two organization previously mentioned dropped their arms, stopped the suicide bombers and pledged on their belief in Allah that the atrocities sponsored by them are over.
If that means kicking Syria's butt to make it happen, so be it.
There is even a bit of room for some empathy for the Arabs in all this. They have been crapped on big time by the world powers mainly because they sit on a huge chunk of the planets fossil fuel. It would be a lot easier to sympathize with them if they spent a little more time and effort trying to upgrade the conditions under which most of the people live, rather than encouraging "JIHAD."
Get some windex Todd and wash your glass house.