The choice of Hamas

As far as I’m concerned, they can all go to hell, those bleeding-heart armchair warriors abroad who are far too busy to condemn Hamas when Israel shows restraint in the face of thousands of rockets and missiles, yet don’t hesitate to cry foul when Israel dares to defend itself and protect its citizens. Hypocrites the lot, as you conveniently ignore the truly one-sided atrocities of the world, preferring to save your venom solely for Israel. What of the ongoing tragic situation in Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe is literally allowing his own people to starve to death? Where were your raucous demonstrations against the Russians when they invaded Georgia, or against the Turks when they attack the Kurds? Where is the mad dash for the podium at the UN, the queue of ambassadors patiently awaiting their turns to condemn the leaders of these rogue nations, in the voice that you have seemingly reserved for your blindingly one-sided condemnations of Israel?

Hundreds of Palestinians killed is indeed a tragedy. You condemn the asymmetry with regard to the numbers of casualties, but it is certainly not for lack of trying. Perhaps you would be happier with a more proportionate response; perhaps you’d prefer if the citizens of Sderot and the South had responded by firing rockets into Gazan cities, but I suspect not. After all, you must think, what are a few rockets that wreak more havoc and anxiety than physical pain and death? Surely, you say, these rockets are merely an inconvenience because they rarely kill. Suffice it to say that I would not wish it upon your towns and cities to have your lives defined by the whims of a few rocket-launchers, dictating your every thought, your every movement. I would not wish it upon you to feel the mind-numbing fear of the parents who do not know exactly where there children are when the alarm is sounded, when the missiles scream overhead before slamming into the ground in deafening, bone-chilling explosion. I would not wish it upon you to explain to your children why they spend their childhood in sealed rooms and reinforced buildings, living in a town where two-thirds of the young people are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of growing up in the shadow of rocket fire, rockets which seemingly have a penchant for falling precisely at the hour when children are making their way to school.

And lest you forget, these rockets have been falling for more than eight years – more than 8,000 of them (and counting). I’m guessing that you can’t even imagine what that must be like, nor have you even tried. It is more convenient to ignore the rockets, to place the blame for the current situation squarely on Israel’s shoulders, as though Israel woke up one day and decided to have an unprovoked go at the neighbors. The selective memory of the world is mind-blowing, in one fell swoop utterly obliterating any responsibility on the part of the Palestinians for the devastating situation in which they find themselves. It is not the Israelis’ fault that the Hamas leadership cares more about making the Israelis suffer than about the ongoing suffering of its own people. It is not the Israelis’ fault that Hamas is more than willing to sacrifice the lives of innocent Palestinians while aspiring to a goal that they will never be able to achieve – the destruction of Israel. Yet, you continue to excuse their actions, time and time again. You prefer us to remain quiet and contrite, licking our wounds in silence, expecting us to accept this and all punishments in the name of the occupation, as though our citizens in the south should be amenable to having their daily lives destroyed as some outrageous form of collective repentance.

The events of the past few days have been unfortunately predictable, and while it is certainly a shame that there are innocent civilians among the casualties, I simply do not have it in me to summon up a great deal of sorrow for this avoidable loss of life, avoidable, because the Hamas leadership purposely chose to impose this situation on its own people by opting to ignore the hints and warnings that were repeatedly issued by the Israeli government. It was Hamas who chose to destroy the ceasefire and gamble with the lives of its citizens by escalating the rocket fire into Israel, knowing full well that if they continued to do so, Israel would retaliate and many Gazans would probably die. Sadly, they have, and unless Hamas decides that saving their people is a more important goal than trying to kill ours, these numbers will continue to rise. The blood will be on the hands of Hamas, who knowingly and repeatedly chose to sacrifice their own.