generalspeaking

Guidepost To Desolation

Fanatical Islamists triumph in their minds, if not in reality. They imagine themselves doing the bidding of a mighty god-figure who demands the faithful submit to holy jihad. And as God wills, so it will be done. How this medieval mindset enraptures the minds of impassioned believers would present as a fascinating study in the pathology of hatred. It's quite simply amazing that no reputable, unbiased social scientist has yet embarked on a study of this malaise.

"Victory is coming, God willing", proclaim the fantasists. The cult of dealing death, of absorbing the necessity to sacrifice one's life to the Angel of Death to achieve the victory seen in setting holy fire to one's enemies' aspirations toward existence defies humanity, rationality, explanation. The rancid hope of creating another holocaust to remove the atrociously distasteful reality of the presence of a religion other than Islam on land dedicated to Islam is fatefully pathetic.

Fanatical Islamists like Hezbollah and Hamas deliberately plan to install themselves in the very midst of heavily populated civilian areas, to invite violent response to their goading violence against their perceived enemy. They are eagerly willing to sacrifice Palestinian women and children - above all children - to their larger purpose of destroying Israel. Bomb-mutilated children's bodies make such wonderful public relations material in arousing the denunciatory anger of the compassionate West.

Yet Hamas leaders fulminate that they will dedicate themselves to killing Jewish children anywhere in the world in revenge for Israel's assault upon Gaza. During which process, in response to the unnervingly endless Kassam assaults upon Israeli soil, among Israel's villages and towns, civilian Palestinians do fall victim. By default, to Israeli defensive assaults; by malicious intent, a result of Hamas's intentional decision to sacrifice them.

Perhaps God has not been willing, after all, to lead Hamas to the death-dealing they are so fond of. On Monday, Hamas's Katyusha missiles managed to hit their desired target; a kindergarten in Ashdod. Empty of the thirty children who generally fill its space, now destroyed. And the rocket that slammed into a high school in Be'er Sheva would have killed hundreds of students who normally are taught there, had they been in the building at the time.

The best-laid plans of terrorists do often go awry. Yet the courageous terrorists who goad Israeli into responding to the attacks against it, are nowhere to be seen, making themselves absent from the combat zone, preferring instead to carefully install themselves in the thick of urban settlement, hoping that the knowledge of their presence there will encourage Israeli soldiers to enter the dank, narrow corridors where they can be ambushed by stealth, by the terror militias who know every cranny of that crowded place.

That, in the process of searching out the well-hidden snipers of Hamas, innocent civilians may present as more sacrifices is hardly worth the effort of thought. What is worth the thought is to lure the Israeli soldiers into the labyrinthine burrows of the inner city, primed with booby traps, ambushes and tunnels where captured soldiers can be spirited away and make themselves useful for a future of tantalizing and tormenting the government of Israel and their families with the promises of release.

Israel, responding to the dire need of the captive-hostage Palestinians in Gaza, and the horrified condemnations of the international community, permits convoys of trucks carrying humanitarian supplies into Gaza, with medicine and food. The Nahal Oz terminal is opened for the transfer of fuel for Gaza's electricity station, along with 120 tonnes of cooking gas. And Hamas continues to fire rockets into Israel.

And while the IDF has stormed the northeastern area of the Gaza Strip where Hamas usually launches rockets, Hamas engages in continuing to fire them from within Gaza City. The spider tempting the fly to enter its lair.

Labels: Israel, Middle East, Terrorism

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, January 06, 2009