Pushed To The Brink

The prime minister of Israel has appealed to the ordinary citizens of Gaza, Palestinians whose lives and fortunes have been represented for the past year and more by the Islamist terror group Hamas, to reject their rule, to refuse to be represented by them, and above all, to rebel against the onslaught on Jewish territory of Kassam rockets which disrupt and terrorize other civilians, across their border.

The appeal is unlikely to result in the merest wisp of a reaction. Even if Palestinians might not agree with the actions of the Hamas leaders, they know full well that to express any kind of misgivings is to open themselves to accusations of treachery, of consorting with the enemy. The penalties are swift and final. There might well have been a time, years ago, when Gazans could have halted the empowerment of Hamas, but that time is now long past.

As things stand now, they are in the position of being represented by a terror militia which claims that it has the full support of the broad spectrum of the population whose best interests they purport to represent. Not by responsible civil actions, in agreeing to represent the best interests of the population by demanding their rights through civil discourse and mutually agreed-upon actions to be undertaken by both sides, to legitimize separate and autonomously-governed nations, however.

Hamas's game is to spread hatred, create grievances, to attack and to taunt for the purpose of inciting attacks on the civilian population in Gaza. To enable it to express their indignation at the human rights abuses imposed upon Palestinians by the oppressive nature of their brutal overseers. It's an endless cycle of hatred, anger, attack and response, accomplishing nothing worthwhile for either side.

Like Hezbollah, which, during its inconclusive war with Israel, resorted to launching attacks against the IDF from behind a barrier of civilian enclaves, to entice the IDF to respond in the midst of civilians, enabling the terrorist group to claim that Israel's forces deliberately targeted innocent people, Hamas too engages in erecting a human barricade of defenceless civilians to further their agenda.

A militant group of fanatical haters, who target Israel as an interloper whose presence will not be tolerated, demanding the return of the geography to Palestinian and Islamic rule, will not be moved by reason. There is no reasonable accommodation possible between a government and a quasi-government of a people taught from the cradle to fear and distrust and hate Jews, as representative of the oppressors of Muslims.

An organized group of terror practitioners who profit by teaching children, through scholastic publications, academic primary education, television programs, that Jews are evil with their singular brutal intent against Palestinians, has no interest in promoting an atmosphere of potential reconciliation between peoples.

A determined group like Hamas who sees nothing wrong and everything right with exposing vulnerable children to the appeal of surrendering their lives to Allah through willing sacrifice as a blessed Shaheed, has no need of bargaining for peace. It bargains instead for a hudna, a brief period of respite where it can re-arm to fight another, propitious day.

There is no appeasement of such intransigent brutality that will not recognize the humanity existing in other people, other cultures, other religions. They live to express violence and hatred, and can only be vanquished through the kind of language they themselves express, through the response of an armed force whose purpose is to protect the citizens of a country reluctantly at war.

They leave no other alternative.