THE WAR IN GAZA

Israel responds in self-defense to five years of Hamas rocket attacks on civilians . . . and of course, Arabs and the U.N. are "outraged"


Since 2003, Hamas terrorists have been launching rockets from Gaza into the Western Negev desert town of Sderot and more recently the larger city of Ashkelon---well over 5,000 missiles have landed in Israel to date, hundreds of which were launched in the last week, including one recent day in which 80 rockets hit Israel. This is clearly war, initiated by Hamas. Predictably, the Arab world is "outraged" at Israel's response, and the U.N. security council has called for both parties to cease fire.

Imagine how the U.S., Germany, Italy, Turkey or China would respond to attacks like this. How long would these countries permit daily cross-border rocket attacks on their civilians to continue without definitive, crushing response? Yet Israeli response until this weekend has been restrained, limited to occasional targeted retaliation on individual Hamas rocket-launching teams, when they could be located.

Israel cannot delay any longer. Its citizens plea for a stop to the attacks and a return to security. Now is the time for Israel to protect its cities through a military response against the terror infrastructure in Gaza. It's called self-defense.

Israel turned Gaza over to the Palestinians five years ago to create an opportunity for peace. In return, the Hamas terror organization took control of Gaza and is using its citizens as cover while it a) deliberately targets Israeli residential communities, b) espouses destruction of the state of Israel, and c) rejects every peace overture offered by Israel and the international community. For example, Israel agreed to a truce with Hamas through Egypt, which was violated by Hamas through continued rocket attacks, attempts to plant improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Israel, imprisonment of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and smuggling of increasingly deadly arms through tunnels to Egypt and by sea.

Even Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas declared this weekend that he had reached out to Hamas, urging them to continue the recent ceasefire with Israel. Even Abbas says that Hamas is responsible for Israel's forceful response. Why then does the international community put the onus on Israel (as it did during the Lebanon war in 2006) to end the fighting?

Imagine this: Despite everything, Israel continues to allow shipments of medical and other humanitarian materials into Gaza, it treats Palestinian victims of misaimed Hamas rocket attacks, and it attempts to avoid or minimize harm to Palestinian civilians, hundreds of thousands of whom live in neighborhoods and buildings in which Hamas has located its operations headquarters.

Unfortunately, Hamas cynically abuses its own civilian population and uses their suffering for propaganda purposes. Clearly, the responsibility for harm to Palestinian civilians lies with Hamas.

Hamas is a terrorist organization, supported by Iran, which does not represent the legitimate national interests of the Palestinian people. Rather, it advocates a radical, global Islamist agenda that seeks to impose fundamentalist religious law (Sharia) upon its people and all other people in the Middle East.

While confronting Hamas, Israel continues to believe in a two-state solution and remains committed to negotiations with the legitimate Palestinian Authority in the context of the peace process, launched at Annapolis. In defiance of the international community, Hamas has consistently and categorically rejected this path to peace.

-- factsandlogic.org