Hamas says it is a defender of Islam. Yeah. Right. That’s why Hamas fires missiles on Jerusalem. Some Muslim holy place.
As for Hamas’ protestations of peace, even an NPR reporter last Friday found them difficult to accept. Incredulous, she asked the Hamas deputy foreign minister, to this effect, “Why don’t you just stop firing missiles on Israel? Then you’ll have peace.” The Hamas minister offered no coherent response. She reworded the question. Same incoherent response.
Incoherence governs this entire, tragic episode in Gaza. Until a couple of months ago, an informal ceasefire reigned on the Israel-Gaza border. Palestinians from Gaza even sought medical treatment in Israel.
But no. This must not be. Hamas must kill. Must attack. Must target even its “holy place,” Jerusalem.
Not to mention, rockets fired without precision can land on Jerusalem’s Arabs, Christians and Muslims in Jerusalem, as well as on the holy city’s Jews and Israelis.
But no. Peace must not be. Israel must not be. Jerusalem must not be. Hamas takes more inspiration from Iran, and from Arabs around the world, who cheer it on.
Arabs have long sought to encourage the Palestinians to fight — to the last Palestinian. Hamas falls for this. Palestinian children die, and not just because Israeli missiles, fired to destroy the Hamas weapons’ depots and missile launchers, inevitably inflict collateral damage — inevitably, because Hamas intentionally locates its weapons near its children. No, there is another reason why Palestinian children die: from Hamas’ own missiles. Misfired, these land in Gaza and kill Palestinian children.
Another source of incoherence: news reports that accept at face value the Palestinian claims that it was Israeli missiles that killed Palestinian children. Often, such reports are the 21st-century version of the medieval Christian blood libel, which had Jews killing Christian children for blood to bake matzah. For the 21st century, replace “Christian children” with “Muslim children,” and “Jewish killers” with “Muslim shooters of rockets” — and it’s not a libel. Muslims intentionally put their own children in harm’s way.
This is not new this week. We’ve seen it in Gaza; we’ve seen it in Lebanon. We are inured to it. What we are not inured to is Muslims firing on Jerusalem. That is new. It reveals that just when we thought Hamas had reached the bottommost depth of depravity, we were wrong.
Copyright © 2012 by the Intermountain Jewish News
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