What is there to say…?

If there was any doubt in the world’s mind about the ruthlessness and immorality of Hamas, it ought to be put to rest now that they deliberately broke a humanitarian cease fire with what appears to have been a well-planned attack.  If they really cared about the Palestinian people, they would have respected a 72 hour cease fire to allow them to get food and bury their dead, but then if they really cared about the Palestinian people they wouldn’t use them as human shields, and deliberately fire rockets and mortars from densely-populated neighborhoods and schoolyards and hospital grounds. Of course the anti-Semites of the world will still find an excuse for them, and believe their propaganda.  Those people probably also believe the Russians have nothing to do with the Ukrainian rebels, and perhaps they believe in a flat earth as well…!

The UN and Secretary Kerry and President Obama can hand-wring all they like – nothing is going to stop this Hamas brutality until they are exterminated.  Yes, it will be bloody.  Yes, a lot of civilians (who, by the way, voted Hamas into power in 2005 in the first place) will die, just as we killed a lot of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Korea, and in World Wars I and II.  War is bloody and unfair and unpredictable, and however hard one tries, innocents get killed and maimed.  But until the brutal cancer that is Hamas is eradicated this killing on both sides will continue.

What is perhaps more significant is that Kerry and Obama strong-armed Israel into this truce over the Israeli cabinet's better judgment, and it turned out to be a Hamas trap.  I would expect that whatever residual influence Washington might have had with Israel is probably gone now. We never had any influence with Hamas, of course.  If I were an Israeli, I would draw from this the lesson that Israel is on its own, and Washington is neither a help nor a friend to us in this affair.  Indeed, many of the Arab countries who would dearly like to see Hamas crushed for their own safety are probably better allies of Israel today than the Obama administration.

In the end Israel may have to take the unpleasant step of re-occupying the Gaza strip in order to fully root out and suppress this gang of thugs. They dismantled all the Jewish settlements and left the Gaza strip voluntarily in 2005, hoping that Gaza would become a normal country.  Instead it has become a hideout and base for a vicious and fanatical Hamas.  I suspect they may have no alternative in the end but to reoccupy it for their own safety.  It certainly puts a damper on the much-touted two-state solution, since it appears that any Palestinian state is likely to be taken over and run by one or more of the fanatical jihadist groups dedicated to eliminating Israel, probably with the acquiescence if not the full support of the population, just as Gaza has been.  It's not a solution I would accept if I were an Israeli.