Why Israel Was Wrong To Attack Hamas

Did Israel have a right to attack Hamas?  You betcha, they did.  As an Associated Press article points out:

The offensive began eight days after a six-month truce between Israel and the militants expired. The Israeli army says Palestinian militants have fired some 300 rockets and mortars at Israeli targets over the past week, and 10 times that number over the past year.

“There is a time for calm and there is a time for fighting, and now is the time for fighting,” said Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, vowing to expand the operation if necessary.

If someone had fired 300 rockets at you in the last week, and 3,000 at you over the past year, you would either know that you were justified in going to war with them, or you would be a complete idiot.

John Bolton once famously said that if the United Nations lost the top 10 floors of its 39-floor building, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.   The UN losing ten floors would be like a million lawyers on the bottom of the ocean (i.e., A GREAT START).  The more floors the United Nations lose, the better.  In addition to being corrupt and incompetent, the UN is too often immoral.  The United Nations has condemned Israel again and again for protecting itself from its most bitter enemies and from the terrorists who want to murder its women and children.  But they just can’t seem to bring themselves to condemn those who would murder Jewish women and children.

Given the United Nation’s heinous past regarding understanding good and evil in the Middle East, it comes as no surprise that the UN immediately called upon Israel to cease fire against Hamas, even though it has rarely managed to muster up such outrage over the thousands and thousands of rocket attacks launched on Israel for the past eight years.  And the UN talks about Israel’s “disproportionate response” – as though the “proportional response” of sending thousands of missiles into Arab territories to indiscriminately murder innocent civilians would have been deemed appropriate.

Hamas has launched an all-out war against Israel.  It’s literally their reason for being.  No civilized government in the world would allow their citizens to be so endangered without doing anything to stop it.  Which is why it is right to call every nation that condemns Israel “uncivilized.”

So I would I title my article, “Why Israel Was Wrong To Attack Hamas”?

There’s a line from one of my favorite movies, Silverado:

“The problem is, Emmett, you killed the wrong McKendrick.”

It wasn’t that the one Emmett killed wasn’t bad; it was the fact that the one he didn’t kill was even worse.

Fortunately, by the end of the film, Emmett rectified his error.

In this reality-version of Silverado, Israel-as-Emmett should have gone after Iran instead of Hamas.  Israel’s chief terrorist enemies – Hamas and Hezbollah – both receive major funding from Iran.  In effect, Israel is sharing a border with Iran, which uses these surrogates to attack it.

Iran is the real enemy.

And if they are allowed to obtain nuclear weapons, they will be an even greater enemy.  It would not merely the threat of a nuclear attack that Israel would need to fear; it would be the development that Iran – which already acts outrageously – would be able to launch virtually any form of attack against Israel with impunity.

My problem – and my ONLY problem – with Israel attacking Hamas is that it very likely means that they won’t be attacking Iran any time soon, even as the time clock toward nuclear weapons capability draws nearer and nearer to zero.

I could be wrong, but I just don’t see Israel subjecting itself to bitter international criticism twice in short succession.

As an American, who would like to see the United States defend Israel even to its own hurt, I would like to think that the US has Israel’s back.  But I don’t think we do.

President-elect Barack Obama “has offered Israel a ‘nuclear umbrella’ to protect it against a possible nuclear attack by Iran,” which was described by the media as a tough stance.  The problem is that it is in reality a severe weakening of the previous US position that the United States would not allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons under any circumstances.

The rest of the world won’t do a damn thing to confront Iran with the only thing that will stop them from developing nuclear weapons: the commitment of raw force.  Western nations have become the worst kind of cowardly cynics, in that they depend on us to do what they themselves aren’t willing to do even as they criticize us for doing it.  And tragically, the United States itself under the leadership of Barack Obama – who wants us to become more like Europe – will most likely also fail to do what needs to be done.

That leaves Israel on its own against an Iran that has vowed to destroy them.

Israel certainly has a right to go after terrorist entities such as Hamas.  I just hope that in going after Hamas they aren’t attacking the wrong terrorists.