Hamas Causes Tragedy, but Israel Gets Blamed

Perhaps the best, most concise commentary on the war so far, from leftist Tim Rutten, at the San Bernardino Sun:

As the philosopher Bernard Henri Levy has observed, the “spirit of Munich” is once again abroad in the world.

It is important to remember, though, that while the Munich spirit ended in appeasement — as it still may do in the Ukraine — it built on the Western democracies’ years of deceit, denial and self-deception concerning what was happening around them. Those three shameful qualities also characterize much of the international outrage and calumny now being showered on Israel over its heartbreakingly unavoidable incursion into Gaza.

As the civilian casualty toll in that unhappy strip of land climbs past 1,300, no decent person, which includes the overwhelming majority of Israelis, can regard the fighting in Gaza as anything but a tragedy. It is, however, a tragedy whose script was not written in Jerusalem, but in the furtive councils of Hamas, the terrorist clique that seized control of the area following the Israelis’ 2005 withdrawal. As a self-proclaimed Islamist organization, Hamas was an early adapter of jihadism. Its charter, which few of those protesting on its behalf ever will have bothered to read, still calls not only for the destruction of Israel and its replacement by an Islamic state, but also for the killing of all Jews. Since it’s seizure of Gaza’s government from the PLO, Hamas has held power by intimidation, torture and the assassination of other Palestinians. Note the absence of any international protest over that.

If Hamas confined its oppressive depredations to its own people, others might have grounds to insist on Israeli forbearance, but that isn’t the case. Over the past two years it has fired literally thousands of rockets and mortar rounds into Israel. If the Jewish State’s defenses were not so proficient and Hamas’ artillery skills so poor, we’d now be counting Israeli casualties in the hundreds, if not thousands. If an irredentist Mexican group seized one of Tijuana’s barrios and began lobbing rockets into San Diego, what would the American public demand our government do?

Well, it's not like we don't have pro-Mexican irredentists, heh. Maybe they'll start lobbing rockets into San Diego, lol.

More at the link.