Jeffery Goldberg from The Atlantic has an interesting article: Is Hamas Trying to Get Gazans Killed? A few other astute writers have made the same argument that he makes - that Hamas was driven to start this latest exchange because it has become markedly weaker as many of its normal sponsors and sources of funds (like Egypt and Syria) have dropped away.
It is clear (a) that sending rockets into Israel is not going to accomplish any of the stated goals of Palestinians - it won't get them a state, nor eliminate the blockade, nor make the State of Israel go away, nor even kill many Israelies, (b) on the contrary it will make all of these things less likely, but (c) it will increase the standing of Hamas among other terror groups in the short term. For these thugs apparently that is enough to justify getting a lot of Muslim civilians killed - as many as possible in fact.
I am continually amazed at the UN and world leaders who decry Israel's response, though if the same thing happened in their own country their own response would be at least as forceful, if not more so. Is this another example of the latent anti-Semitism still around in the world?
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