Hamas has been preparing for this war for a long time. Where did all these rocket stockpiles come from? What else crossed in from Egypt when Hamas invaded a few weeks back? Just food and humanitarian supplies right?
Hardly.
And Hamas has been stockpiling weapons and rockets since the Israelis withdrew from Gaza in 2005. They've been preparing for a war ever since. Their actions every single day since the withdrawal leads to no other conclusion.
They first consolidated their own power - taking out Fatah, who they considered to be incapable of carrying on the war against Israel with as much intensity as they wanted. Then, they learned from the Hizbullah war to stockpile weapons and disperse them among the civilian population as much as possible. That way when Israel attacks, civilians get hit - no matter how careful the Israelis are. It's win-win for the terrorists.
Of course, throw in a sympathetic media that ignores the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, what Hamas and Fatah both did thereafter, the rocket war that Hamas and the terrorists initiated against Israel, and that Israel maintains an unconditional right to defend itself, and you've got a bloody mess.
Sorry BBC, but Israel is not confounded by the terrorist rocket makers. They know where the terrorists are making them and where they're firing them. The problem is that the terrorists know that the Israelis are going to take media hits every time the Israelis cause civilian casualties, so they've purposefully placed those rocket makers and launchers where civilians live, work, and play.
The media plays up the civilian casualties unquestioningly. They ignore that the terrorists dress like civilians and but for headdresses and guns in their hands, you'd be hard pressed to differentiate between civilians and terrorists if they come into a hospital or are found dead or dying on a street after an Israeli airstrike. It may be sad to some that Palestinian children are dead or injured as a result of these running battles with Israel, but the fault rests entirely with the terrorists, who launched a war against Israel, and now rely on the media to restrain Israel from taking actions crucial to Israel's national security.
Fatah, for its part, is going to try and get Hamas out of the frying pan, at least so that the terrorists in Hamas can regroup for a bit - and it gets Abbas to bolster his street credibility too. Neither terrorist group can be trusted. Fatah and Hamas are rivals, and both seek Israel's destruction, so their goals are the same, which always seems to get lost in the diplomatic maneuverings.
Still, more rockets keep hitting Ashkelon and Sderot. Islamic Jihad is also in on the act, and some of their terrorists got dispatched by Israel too.
The war takes many forms, and the media plays a huge role. Propaganda is a huge part, and demonstrations in places like Syria should be placed in this context since little can be done without government approval or sponsorship. This is designed specifically to be picked up by media outlets to attack Israel in the media.
UPDATE:
The rockets keep slamming into Israel, which tells me that Israel isn't doing enough to kill the terrorists before they fire them. Those terrorists say that they want to die for their cause? Israel should oblige them.
And Iran should be in the crosshairs as well given that those longer range rockets are of Iranian vintage. How they got into Gaza should make for an interesting story - given that they came in when Hamas invaded Egypt by breaching the Gaza-Egypt border.
Speaking to the parliament's powerful foreign affairs and defence committee, a senior military intelligence official said that over 20 Katyusha-type rockets, also known as Grad, were fired against Israel since last Thursday.UPDATE:
"We are talking about regular Iranian-made rockets," an official quoted the intelligence official as saying.
The 122-millimetre rockets have a range of about 20 kilometres (12.5 miles) and carry a large payload which caused heavy damage to buildings in the southern coastal town of Ashkelon, which bore the brunt of the Grad rocket fire.
Gaza militants have in recent years fired thousands of short-range makeshift rockets and mortars against southern Israel, but have only rarely fired the longer-range Grad-type rockets.
Israel believes that over 100 such rockets were smuggled into the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip through its porous border with Egypt in recent months following the Hamas violent takeover of the territory, a security official has told AFP.
Many in the media, the talking heads and the diplomats love to spout about how Israel's response needs to be proportional to the terrorist threat. What utter bunk. There is no such thing as "proportional" response. The only response that is proportional is the response that ends the violence. So, if the Palestinians increase the violence after Israel fires back at the terrorists, then the Israelis need to ratchet things up more and start taking out Hamas leaders, along with the Islamic Jihad, AAMB, and all the other splinter terrorist groups that make up Fatah and Hamas. All of them.
The terrorists continue to sustain their efforts precisely because they count on Israeli restraint to stop them from offering the finishing blow to the terrorist groups. The groups bend, but do not break, because the breaking blow is not delivered.
UPDATE:
The media continues to play its favorites, but we know where the truly decent and honorable side. Israel continues to get pummeled by kassams and Iranian rockets, but the media focuses on the hardships of the Palestinians who would not have to worry about Israeli reprisal raids (HT: Kragar at LGF) simply if they stopped supporting terrorism against Israel.
UPDATE:
Through it all, while Palestinian terrorists are busy trying to blow up Israeli hospitals (along with anything else within the growing range of their missiles, rockets, and mortars, those same Israeli hospitals are busy providing the best care anywhere to everyone, including Palestinian preemies. They're forced to treat the babies in bomb shelters because their jihadi brethren would love nothing more than to blow up these facilities.
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