Friday, January 02, 2009
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Toppling Hamas
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Posted by:
Hugh Hewitt at
12:00 PM
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The Israeli air offensive in Gaza is not diminishing, and international pressure for a "truce" is being brushed aside by the Israeli government.
Haaretz columnist Bradley Burston has penned a must-read analysis of how the Gaza war demonstrates the deep change in the Middle East conflict into one that also involves the future of Islam, not just of Israel.
"The world however, is no longer accepting Hamas' hydra-headed PR role as, at one and the same time, a humanitarian NGO, a sovereign government, and a resistance [read, terrorist] organization," writes Burston. "And many Palestinians, grieved and furious as they are over the civilian deaths in Israeli air raids, are coming to the same conclusion."
The PLA, Egypt and many other Arab countries know Hamas to be the Sunni arm of the radical, Shia mullahs running Iran. They are not unhappy that Israel is taking the battle to Iran via Hamas.Thus the routine condemnation of Israel is being shrugged off. What holds back the Israeli ground operation is not fear of international opinion, but the fact that Hamas is armed to the teeth with Iranian-provided weaponry, and the cost in IDF lives will be huge.
Charles Krauthammer has a summary piece on the moral Grand Canyon that separates Hamas and Israel, but even the obvious depravity of the Hamas tactics and the refusal to accept the peace offered the Gaza three years ago will not impact haters of Israel who will use ever much-regretted civilian casualty to blame Israel for the war.
There is new and spreading clarity that Hamas will never accept any deal with Israel. Hamas wants the war that it has, and counts on winning it via the Israeli restraint that crippled he Hezbollah War in 2006. Hamas' big bet is that Israel cannot sustain an offensive that results in civilians deaths and IDF casualties. I will be back in studio next week when we will see if Hamas bet correctly and wins another respite with which to further arm itself, or bet everything and lost because of a change in Israel's and the world's understanding of what Hamas intends not next month, or next year, but for as long as it exists --the destruction of Israel.
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