How Should the U.S. Respond to the Gaza Crisis?

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Southern Israel is under fire. Hamas, a fundamentalist terrorist organization that attacks, tortures and kills their own people, uses Gaza as one big rocket launcher to strike at, injure and kill children in playgrounds, young mothers at cafes and senior citizens in their homes. Hamas rockets and mortars target the border town of Sderot and also Beersheba, Ashdod and Ashkelon, respectively Israel’s 4th, 5th and 13th largest cities. 

To put that into perspective, it would be Houston, Phoenix and San Francisco under daily rocket fire. That would mean that each day, over 4.5 million Americans would wake up in the crosshairs of fanatical terrorists. No country would accept one rocket.  Israel has endured over 6,000 rockets since their unilateral disengagement from Gaza.   

But while Israel fights back to defend its citizens, at the same time it sends SMS text messages and drops leaflets to warn innocent civilians to clear out. Hamas on the contrary, purposely plants their fighters and arms caches in hospitals, mosques and residential areas. Israel delivers – in the middle of a war - humanitarian aid to help civilians, while Hamas terrorists fire on the Israeli convoy.

Since the summer of 2005, when Israel withdrew and especially since January 2006 when Hamas won elections in Gaza, they have had the opportunity to show their true colors. They began by kidnapping Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who they continue to hold captive to this day, in violation of international law and custom. Hamas could have built a thriving society with infrastructure, jobs, and homes for Gazans still living in refugee camps. Instead, they chose to buy guns, rockets and mortar shells and to see how many Israeli kindergarteners they could kill or maim. That is why playgrounds in Sderot have bombproof “caterpillars” for Israeli children to run for when the Code Red sounds.  Hopefully, they can make it in fifteen seconds. Otherwise, they become a Hamas trophy.  

The “old lady” of Middle East politics, Golda Meir, at times Israel’s prime minister, foreign minister and diplomat, famously said peace will come to the Middle East when the Arabs “love their children more than they hate us”. Hamas has proven again and again that they desire not peace and not accommodation but war and annihilation. If Hamas wants peace, let them lay down their arms and negotiate as civilized, responsible actors on the world stage. If they continue to choose terror, they ought not to be surprised that free people defend themselves.    
     
Make no mistake, Hamas is a terrorist group. Not only to Israel, whose existence Hamas does not recognize. The United States lists Hamas as a terrorist organization.  So does Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union and the Japanese and Australians too. In fact, Hamas is banned in Jordan, a Muslim country.

In the current war, Hamas is increasingly short on allies. The Palestinian Authority blames Hamas for the current escalation. So did the Egyptian government. It’s easy to see why. Hamas broke the truce (and even during the truce, they were still firing rockets at Israel) and radically escalated the number and ferocity of their attacks.

No civilized nation would live with its civilians under threat of daily attack by an enemy sworn to push them into the sea. With political sponsorship from Syria, which hosts the Hamas leadership in exile, and from nuke seeking Iran, which provides funding, training and weapons, Hamas continues their attempts to maim and kill innocent Israeli civilians. Faced with unrelenting attacks and no prospect for peace, Israel has done what every free people would do. They fight for their lives. All free people everywhere, of every race, creed, religion and nationality should stand with them. All who truly desire peace in the Middle East should pray for the defeat of Hamas.