By Vic Rosenthal
Israel is presently being engaged in a full scale war by Hamas and the other factions’ militias, even if Israeli officials don’t admit it. As always, Hamas is happy to state their intentions clearly:
“We call on our fighters to launch rockets attacks on the settlement of Ashkelon [within the 1967 borders, of course — ed.], which was built on Palestinian-owned land,” said a Hamas official in the Jabalya refugee camp. “We will force the settlers to run away from Ashkelon as they have already done in the settlement of Sderot. We will continue to fight until the Jews leave all of Palestine.”
According to the official, Hamas has developed new rockets capable of reaching Ashkelon and other Israeli cities. “We will turn Ashkelon into a ghost city,” he warned. “We will use all methods against the Zionist enemy.”
Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders expressed satisfaction with the recent attacks on Sderot, noting that many residents had fled their homes. They also called for the resumption of suicide attacks…
The armed wings of Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad said in separate statements that the rocket attacks would continue “until the Zionists flee from Palestine”…
“We will make the Jews drip tears of blood,” said Muhammad Abdel Al, a commander of the Popular Resistance Committees, an alliance of several terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip. “We will never find comfort until we shed the blood of the sons of monkeys and pigs.” — Jerusalem Post
The fact is that Israelis are presently fleeing from Sderot under a rocket bombardment to which “there is no immediate solution” in the words of the Prime Minister.
There is no question that an invasion of Gaza would be costly for Israel and for Palestinian civilians; certainly Hamas and its sponsors have been investing heavily in fortifications. I don’t know if this is the solution that the PM can’t seem to find, or if maybe there’s another one — perhaps something along the lines of the Lebanese army’s action against the Fatah al Islam terrorists.
When one nation declares a war of annihilation on another, and then attacks it murderously, the response should be commensurate. Think Britain, the Blitz, and Nazi Germany.
If the nation that is attacked does not strike back or does so weakly, the aggressor assumes that either it is for some reason incapable of fighting, or afraid of the consequences. In this case, the attack has been successful, and it will be followed by additional attacks until the enemy has been destroyed or surrenders.
Since the aggressor in this case has the backing of several major powers in the region, as well as the whole constellation of terrorist militias, the Israeli leadership is quite right in seeing the war that has been forced on it as a dangerous and costly struggle. But that doesn’t mean that the correct response is to avoid it.
I don’t know if war could have been avoided, but the situation today is past avoiding. Today it’s necessary to crush the enemy before it’s too late to act.
Think Britain, the Blitz, and Nazi Germany.