Hamas Trying To Cast Israel In Bad Light Again

There's one thing that the Palestinian terrorists are quite good at, and it's accomplished with a willing media. They are able to cast Israel in a bad light at every opportunity.

The latest is with the claim that Israel supposedly agreed to the release of hundreds of Palestinian terrorists, including many with Israeli blood on their hands. Hamas further claims that Gilad Shalit was included only as an afterthought.

I suspect the government response will be muted, but no deal will have been struck. Indeed, this latest claim is no different than any of the dozens of other reports in the past two years that Hamas demands the release of hundreds of its terrorists from Israeli jails.

The sad fact is that Israel has engaged in prisoner releases in the past, which is why Hamas believes it a matter of time before some of their terrorists get released. Never mind that this revolving door policy has real world consequences of undermining Israeli national security, to say nothing of taking the terrorists at their word that they wont engage in terrorism again. Israel has repeatedly found that those terrorists released have gone back to operating against Israel again, and Israel's security posture is not improved one iota via these prisoner deals.

Once again, I suggest it is well past time that the world start demanding that the terrorists in Hamas and Fatah start making good faith gestures of their own before demanding concessions of Israel, who continues to receive barrage after barrage of mortars and rockets.

For its part, Israel's Prime Minister Olmert says that it's close to a decision on what to do next with Gaza. Right, and I'm sure that every day of delay in dealing with Hamas there has meant that the Israeli operations will result in more casualties on both sides because they're telegraphing their intentions. I blame Olmert for accepting a certain level of terrorism from Gaza without responding with appropriate and overwhelming level of force to destroy Hamas. By accepting a level of attacks on Israel, Olmert has signaled that there is a certain level of disruption and carnage he's accepting. That translates to Israeli dead, wounded, and disruption of business and enterprise surrounding Gaza - pushing Israelis to move further away.