Memo to Reuters: Hamas Does Not Shun Israel

Reuters reported today that Israeli forces repelled a Palestinian attack, killing two Palestinian terrorists. It's the first major incident between Israelis and Hamas since a truce was brokered in January, ending Operation Cast Lead. The problem is that Reuters characterizes Hamas' position regarding Israel as merely shunning:

Hamas shuns Israel but has signaled interest in a long-term truce. Egypt and Germany are trying to broker Hamas's release of an Israeli soldier seized in a 2006 border raid, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians held in Israel's jails.

The gunmen killed Tuesday had been deployed in night-lookout positions east of the town of Jabalya, close to the Israeli border, Hamas said. Medical officials said their bodies bore injuries from heavy ordnance.

Sorry to break it to Reuters, but Hamas does not shun Israel.

Hamas seeks Israel's destruction. Its leaders call for the annihilation of Israel on a regular basis. Its leaders indoctrinate fellow Gazans into hating Israel's very existence. They treat Israel's independence day as a day of mourning and the Naqba - because Israel exists. Their maps do not show Israel alongside a Palestinian state. In Hamas (and Fatah's view), Israel doesn't exist except as a map for coordinating attacks against civilian targets. These groups will not accept any mention even remotely mentioning Israel and Jewish claims to the region, on grounds that it would "Judaize" the education of the Palestinians. Moreover, any territory evacuated by Israel in favor of Palestinians will become Jewish-free - ethnic cleansing of a sort that the world seems to have no problem with, even though there has been a Jewish presence for thousands of years in the land between the Jordan River and the Med - a fact that Palestinian and Arab commentators repeatedly try to disavow at every opportunity.

Meanwhile, Hamas maintains and operates smuggling tunnels through which it gains access to weapons shipments, including one such shipment that was caught by the Egyptians in Sinai. Hamas gets a piece of the action on everything that goes on in Gaza. The terrorists also don't like it when other terror groups encroach on their iron grip in Gaza, and target them for attack, just as they did with al Qaeda affiliated Jund Ansar Allah three weeks ago.

But media mendacity isn't solely confined to Reuters.

UPDATE:
Dave at Israellycool notes that the Hamas terrorists killed along the Gaza fence were killed when the explosives they were placing along the security fence went off. Israeli forces had nothing to do with the incident.

Moreover, he notes that Reuters didn't seem to notice that Hamas and the Gazans had been busy violating the ceasefire several times in the past month, but Israeli reprisal counts as a violation. Curious.