Here They Go Again!

History doesn't repeat itself--but it can sure seem that way. Last week Hamas went for yet another round of rocket induced coercion with the goal of forcing Israel to back down from its closure of the landlines of communication. Big shock! The action was counterproductive. Despite Hamas' fond hope that the upcoming elections would paralyse Israel's capacity to react with force, the IDF has proven otherwise.

All the usual actors--the UN, the EU, the Arab League, the Pope--have performed the expectable stereotyped roles. Violence has been deplored. Humanitarian crisis has been declared.

Of course the majority of condemnation has fallen on Israel. That's the line that has been routinely taken ever since the First Intifada started nearly twenty years ago. Israel went from champ to chump as cameras caught footage of tanks rolling through houses and grunts shooting at rock tossing kids.

The reflexive reprobation of Israel ignores several fundamental realities resident in the present situation. The first, most glaring, is that Hamas is the effective government in the Gaza Strip. As the government the Hamas terrorists have the duty of protecting the civilian population.

Far from meeting even the basic requirements of this duty Hamas has deliberately and repeatedly put the civilian population at great risk. Not only the risk of becoming collateral damage from IDF reposts to Hamas terror attacks, but also assuring that civilians would lack the basics of life including food, medical supplies, and potable water.

Yes, there is violence to be deplored. But the violence was begun and continued by Hamas--as a matter of deliberate and continually enunciated policy.

Yes, there is a humanitarian crisis. But the crisis is the deliberate product of Hamas' actions and policies. It is a creation of Hamas. Period.

What this means in practice is simply that Israel is not under a specific duty to assure that no civilians die in the Gaza. It is not Israel's duty to assure that each and every civilian in Gaza has adequate supplies of the necessities of life. It is not Israel's duty to assure that Gaza has a functioning economy.

These are no more Israel's obligation than they were the duty of the US and other Allied nations to assure an absence of civilian casualties or suffering in Germany or Japan during World War II. The protection and maintenance of civilian life is the responsibility--the sole responsibility of the government having power over the civilian population. In Gaza that is Hamas.

The hand wringing High Minded of the EU, the UN, and the Vatican had best get a grip on that reality. So should those of We the People who have joined the chorus of criticism.

There is a second, more basic reality in play. It involves dissecting the motivation behind the policies and actions of Hamas. One superficial reason is self-evident. Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

That is not the only nor even the most basic motive. Samuel Huntington, the Harvard political scientist who outlined the "Clash of Civilizations" over a decade ago, got it right. Wherever and whenever Islam meets a culture based on another religion, it does so with intolerant violence.

The authoritarian and death oriented nature of Islam, particularly Islam of the Islamist/jihadist sort, is no more concerned about the suffering and death of its own population than it is the misery and fatalities of the opponent's civilians. The record of Islam's conquests and defeats is marked with blood of its own as well as that of the "infidel."

In recent years the lack of Islamist/jihadist concern for the well being of Muslims is seen not only by the Hamas policy of seeing the non-combatants of Gaza live in misery, fear and under the threat of death. It is seen as well in the vast number of Muslims killed by suicide bombers and IED's in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.

Hamas is following the normal course of Islamist affairs and Muslim history when it willingly, even eagerly, uses the bodies of the people under its rule as pavement on the road of policy. As long as the High Minded, Lofty Thinkers of the West fail to see what precisely Hamas is doing, it will continue to do everything possible to show the world pictures of bleeding and dying Gazans. This hardened, cynical, religously mandated practice will continue until and unless the governments and opinion molders of the US, of the West get a grip on the realities extant not only today but over the span of centuries.

Failure to get a grip on these unpleasant but easily seen realities makes the US, the EU, the UN facilitators, enablers of the atrocities committed against the people of Gaza. Atrocities which are inflicted not by Israel but by the government called Hamas.