International outrage, including the U.S., over the death of
ten people in a Gaza refugee camp—apparently by Israeli shelling of a position
they believed that Hamas militants were hiding out, like the cowards they have
displayed themselves to be—was predictably self-serving in nature. Look, there
is no doubt that innocent people were killed, and needlessly. But it was
needless because the Hamas leadership continues to stupidly overplay its hand
in its random attacks on Israel. The three-day ceasefire it allegedly agreed to
now was the same as proposed by Egypt three weeks ago, and follows on the heels
of a “ceasefire” it allegedly agreed to three days ago. In fact, it would seem
that Hamas was deliberately waiting for just such an incident to occur to
achieve maximum international support for its “cause” before it would “agree”
to a ceasefire.
Also frustrating the chances of peace are the kind of
attitudes as that of Hamas spokesperson Osama Hamdan, speaking in that
irritating shouting manner, who denies everything even when confronted with
facts. That includes an interview he gave which he alluded to virulent
anti-Semitic myths as “fact.” Hamdan refuses to answer questions in a straightforward
manner, which also manages to discredits his “cause” in the eyes of at least
most Americans. When he talks about Palestinian “self-determination” and “freedom,”
he is still referring to that “determination” encompassing the state of Israel.
Today, when asked if Hamas would honor the agreed-upon ceasefire by not firing
rockets and mortars into Israel, he refused to give a straight answer, and even
suggested that this might not be the case when he said he “hoped” that
Palestinians would abide by it—meaning that while Hamas might “agree” to a
ceasefire, they didn’t have “control” over what their own people would do.
In the meantime, one may notice that most of the fighting
and destruction between Israel and Hamas is occurring in the Gaza strip, given
their comparative operational strengths. One may think that it would be in the
interests of Hamas not to provoke Israel by engaging in rocket attacks and
occasionally engaging in terrorists operations from their tunnels (which they,
of course, don’t want destroyed). Hamas also ludicrously claims that Egyptian
and Israeli blocking of their secret underground supply tunnels are
“suffocating” Gaza, but the fact is that any legitimate commerce needed for
every day existence of the people should be occurring above ground. Anything “below
ground” is obviously the subject of suspicion.
But logic, common sense and even a concern for the lives of
their own people are the least of the concerns of the leadership of Hamas. They
are just expendable pawns in their game to achieve international “sympathy” for
their “plight” without pausing to think about why what Hamas has been doing is
the height of lunacy.
One must not forget that Hamas’ reason for being is the
eventual destruction of Israel. This will not happen, yet like an individual
who lacks judgment and lives in a “reality” very different from one others
recognize, they will not change, and for that reason any expectation for
“peace” in that part of the world merely lasts so long as Hamas feels it needs
to restock its rocket inventory for the next round of attacks on Israel, and
the expectation of propaganda success from sympathetic news media starts all
over again.
I was watching CNN the other day, and apparently some
viewers questioned why the news network’s reporters in Gaza were not supplying
images of the Hamas militants firing their rockets into Israel—which, after
all, is what has provoked yet another Israeli military response. The suggestion
was that CNN was offering a skewed and overly one-sided view of the issues (of
course, one suspects that left-leaning MSNBC is even worse in this regard,
while Fox News leans the other way). It was being “suggested” that CNN
reporters were being “intimidated” by Hamas and prevented from getting close to
the sites being used. These reporters, however, “indignantly” responded by
claiming that there were not being “intimidated” or prevented from finding
these rocket launches at all, and that they only saw “ordinary” people on the
streets, as if they knew the difference.
It would seem, however, that the CNN reporters doth protest
too much. First of all, if they are suggesting that they are only interested in
reporting half the job, then they confirm the suspicions. But we know the
rocket launches are occurring; why are not the reporters finding them? Because
they are “intimidated” by what would happen to them if they did find them. After
all, Hamas is not this country’s “friend,” but a sworn enemy—they just allow us
in to see their own bloody Potempkin village. Let’s not kid each other: Hamas was
founded as essentially a terrorist organization, believes that there is no “peaceful”
mechanism to achieve its ends, other than Israel “voluntarily” declaring itself
a non-state.
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