Reuters nearly pulled off an interesting trick in a story on the war between the Palestinian National Authority and Israel. I say almost because smart readers will see right through it as soon as I point it out.
GAZA (Reuters) – Israeli air strikes flattened bastions of Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip on Monday in the third day of an offensive that has killed more than 325 Palestinians in the deadliest violence in the territory in decades.
“We have an all-out war against Hamas and its kind,” Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said in parliament, using a term he has employed in the past to describe a long-term struggle against Israel’s Islamist enemies.
[Emphasis Mine]
Reuters wants to cast doubt on his use of the word “war”, but Barak is exactly correct. Hamas was given control of the government of the PNA in as free and fair an election as one could possibly have there; thus any attacks is launches against Israel are acts of war. This myth that Hamas is merely a terrorist group is one that even our government continues to push and it’s not helping anyone. The sooner the world stops treating the Palestinians like a bunch of homeless waifs and starts treating them like responsible adults who chose Hamas to act on their behalf, the sooner we can get into really solving the problems there.
That is, unless Israel solves the problems first by obliterating Hamas entirely, which is a very real possibility so long as Israel keeps treating Hamas like the legitimate national government it is. If Hamas has any hope for survival as even a political entity, it’s going to have to realize that the rules have changed and not in its favor at all.
Reuters isn’t doing the Palestinians any favors either by diminishing their electoral choices. The Palestinians are going to have to realize that when you take on the grown-up responsibility of electing your own government, people are going to hold you responsible for what you do. We do not do them a service by calling what is happening to them anything less than it is, a war instigated about by the government they chose of their own free will. Considering the attacks in (and from) Gaza as anything less than a war infantilizes the Palestinians. They will never grow into a mature and responsible nation if we coddle them. They will remain the politically imamture, morally irresponsible people we have helped them to become.
I do not agree with you. Our governments blind policies to back the Israeli’s has been the sole reason they have been emboldened as they are. For the past 10 years, in which the Palestinians have held out an olive branch, the Israeli’s have refused to recognize the Palestine governing body of the moderates, have pushed back dates for peaceful meetings, have blocked foreign humanitarian aid, has angered Muslim nations by using aggressive military tactics, and has murdered more Palestinians than anyone apparently wants to talk about.
Another interesting fact is that, in the Bible, the Israelis are one of the first nations to go on record, by their own account, to have committed genocide.
Americans should put their foot down and say enough is enough: no more money and aid for these killers! Apparently our government doesn’t have the cajones to do anything about it while the fat cat Jewish Lobbyists here fatten congressional purses.
I can’t recall the last “olive branch” the Palestinians held out to Israel, going back at least to Oslo. You remember Oslo, when the Israeli’s granted the PA almost everything it wanted as an opening offer and Arafat responded by walking away and launching another Intifada?
And Israel gave the Palestinians Gasa, and all the infrastructure in it, which Hamas then turned into a rocket attack base. You might recall that even with the Hamas truce in place, thousands of rockets have rained down on Israel without a single Israeli military reaction.
The very simple fact is that Hamas has committed repeated acts of war against Israel and now Israel is reacting as any other nation would. You can twist yourself into a pretzel to rationalize that away, but it doesn’t change reality.