God is great

By Capt. Fogg

The explosions look like fireworks but with the bright white stars headed downwards rather than up. Oh Jesus, it's white phosphorus, I said to myself when I realized what I was seeing. I've raged about such weapons when the US used them and it makes me sick to see Israel using them too. Burning phosphorus does horrible things to people.

They shelled everyone in Gaza... they shelled children and hospitals and mosques and in doing so, they gave us legitimacy to strike them in the same way,

said Senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar. Of course the hospitals and schools and even the mosques are ammunition dumps and launching pads for the thousands and thousands of missiles Hamas has launched and is launching indiscriminately into Southern Israel for the very purpose of provoking an attack which, seeing as they are hiding in schools and hospitals and apartment houses would generate the kind of inadvertent martyrdom Hamas , in its self-righteous cowardice, likes to assign to innocent people. They're still firing them into towns and villages and still refusing to stop even if it allows a cease fire and the end of the killing.

Of course, it's hard to cite something as a provocation when it follows your prior provocation, but the chain of provocation and response is so long, any party can pick a beginning that suits their arguments -- and of course they do.

Is the Israeli response disproportionate? Of course, but if someone fires a bullet at you would you limit yourself to firing only one in return -- and of the same caliber? I think not. Would we have given Germany back to the Germans or Japan back to the Japanese had they persisted in firing hundreds of rockets at us every day of the week? HaveHamas's rocket attacks and suicide bombing attacks been entirely against civilians? Of course. Have Israeli embargoes and draconian restrictions followed massacres? Yes, and around and around we go.

Is this kind of insanity the ineluctable result of two religious cultures claiming the same ground for religious reasons? In any event, I'm not a believer in any peaceful solution that will allow all concerned to lead decent, secure lives. If Israel were to turn over all territory taken after neighboring states tried to annihilate them, I have no doubt that every square inch would be used as a base of operations to once again attempt to kill every Israeli and every shot would come from behind a screen of women and children. So far, that's just what has happened.

There has been a tense and angry peace between Israel and other neighboring countries, but I see no hope for a Palestinian state in addition to Jordan, unless it's willing to accept Israel's existence -- and Hamas is not about the acceptance of Israel.

Hamas' strategy is to provoke Israel into vicious insanity - and it works. As they haven't the manpower or the weapons for anything but barbaric terrorism against innocent civilians, they depend on getting sympathy through the sacrifice of their own innocent citizens - and it works and as long as it works, they're not going to fix it.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)