Normalizing, Vindicating Terror
Such a popular option to submitting to Israel, is Hamas. Surviving the onslaught, pride intact, honour undisturbed. What's a few thousand Palestinian civilians dead; in any event; by misadventure, by Israeli steel and molten lead. Gazans may now be in doubt, surveying the damage, counting their dead, but not so Palestinians in Jericho and Ramallah. It is only the Hamas ministries, their police stations that have been broken, not the hearts of the Hamas police, the Qassam Brigades.The rocket arsenal so carefully assembled and set aside for ongoing future use, now destroyed, can and will be replaced. There are ways, there are means, there is determination. The young men of Gaza, dedicated to Hamas; their sense of obligation to the resistance, their spirit of freely indulging in war games given free rein, stride with pride. Fear of retribution ensures the huddled masses remain quiescent, uncomplaining.
Besides, the streets and the buildings within Gaza City remain undisturbed. The four thousand homes destroyed are elsewhere. Elsewhere too is Ismail Haniyeh, not yet surfaced, more than a trifle comfortable in his safe haven underground. Hamas pennants fly defiant from street corners and rooftops. Hamas's victory undeniable. Triumph is theirs, the defenders of the Palestinians.
Some of those defenders used children as living shields in the UN school from which they fired mortars on the IDF. And, predictably, in firing back at the Hamas 'defenders', children were sacrificed to the larger purpose of demonstrating that the IDF heartlessly kills children.
Despite Ban Ki-moon's fury over the bombing of UN buildings in Gaza, it has become abundantly clear that UNRWA has been transformed as an welcoming haven for Palestinian terror groups. When the IDF targeted a weapons manufacturing workshop in Rafah, a teacher, educator and UNRWA school principal was killed. Who happened simultaneously to act as head of Islamic Jihad's weapons unit.
University students at Al-Quds Open University casually join the armed branch of the Islamic Resistance Movement. "We do the final tests on rockets and mines and advise launching units how best, from a technical point of view, to use them", explained one 22-year-old. "We won because we continued to launch rockets throughout the invasion and their forces did not reach many of the militants, only civilians."
Thus is victory determined; the decoying of civilians for exposure to the IDF's response, while the militants casually ease themselves out of the line of return fire. With Israel, claim these young Islamists, remains the responsibility for "killing so many innocent women and children." As for the rockets fired by Hamas killing women and children in Israel?
"For sure I don't feel sorry when their women and children die. They must drink from the same poisoned cup that they make us drink from." Complacent that their might is right, that the enemy's represents a sin against Islam. "The people who have suffered damage and death are against this. But the rest of the citizens are with us. They love Hamas and all its branches because we share the same customs and habits."
With this mindset what possible hope is there of persuading fanatical militants that their best and most humane course of action on behalf of the people they purport to support, is to recognize the legality of the presence of the State of Israel and prepare for the viability of a Palestinian state to be established alongside that of their neighbour?
Labels: Middle East, Terrorism
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, January 27, 2009
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