Raise Praise for Hamas

"Terrifying, that's how it feels.  But they are also terrorized on the other side of the border.  To be honest, I thought Hamas had forgotten about fighting Israel.  I was wrong."
Ali al-Ahmed, Gaza

It is simply amazing how life offers satisfying vignettes that somehow make one's own sacrifice worthwhile, in the realization that those whom one assumes to be the 'enemy' are suffering in the very same way.  The only difference being that the enemy deserves to suffer, and the long-suffering people of Gaza obviously do not deserve to.  The peculiar thing is that the very same force causes suffering to both the Gazans and the Israelis.

The State of Israel, through the defensive actions of the Israel Defence Forces seeks to protect its population from the violent attacks of the Hamas governors of Gaza.  Even while Hamas 'militants' employ the very useful strategy of forcing suffering upon the Palestinians they purport to protect from Israel's brutality.  Aiming to destroy Jewish lives through the barrages of rocket fire, many of those rocket-launchers are deliberately placed within crowded urban centres to invite retaliation.

But Hamas, the Islamist militia given birth as a younger component of the Muslim Brotherhood, is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the annihilation of Jews.  And that is reason enough for Palestinians in Gaza - and increasingly their West Bank counterparts - to laud the courage of Hamas fighters in 'standing up to' Israel by sending deadly rockets across the border.

That they themselves are the designated recipients of responding artillery is on the one hand, an example of the enemy's inhumanity for targeting them - and on the other represents their sacred duty in Islam to present themselves as martyrs to the cause of Islamic superiority and victory.  It is a victory that is foretold, and it is just, because Jews have no place where Muslims live.

So sophisticated are the Palestinians that they, like virtually everyone else on Earth, commit their jubilation and success to Facebook pages to express their unalloyed joy at the thought of Israelis desperately rushing toward shelter from the rockets.  Two singers from the West Bank have produced a YouTube hit, Strike Tel Aviv, where Hamas and other terrorists are praised for firing rockets to threaten Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Reviving hope that justice will ultimately prevail.  Land that the Jews, arrivistes, foreigners, pretenders to the land, a pernicious alien presence, wrested from the sacred trust of Palestinians to hold on behalf of Islam, in reflection of its holy presence in the Middle East where no other religious pretenders should dare to show their undeserving presence, must be restored to the Palestinians, the Jews punished with deserving death.

"Today we raise our hats to Hamas.  They look organized, aware of what they're doing and ready to pay the price to achieve their agenda.  Ordinary people can only admire them today.
"Israel is no longer able to predict what Arab leaders might do if a ground offensive takes place, certainly not what Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi could do under pressure from the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist and secular parties.
"Maybe Israel does not care much, but its American and European allies do.  They care for their own interests in the Middle East, the new Middle East."
Talal Okal, Gaza political analyst

Those who now champion Hamas, who were formerly critical of its lack of success in furthering the economic interests of Gaza, now crow in satisfaction at its purported successes in sending over a thousand rockets into Israel.  The claims that Hamas shot down an Israeli F-16 fighter don't have to be proven.  Mocking Israel's "Paper Dome" as a failure flies in the face of its success in saving hundreds of Jewish lives, but they believe themselves.

They believe that world opinion is on their side, that the world looks on in admiration at the courageous efforts of Hamas, using Gazans as human shields, lobbing rockets into civilian areas of a despised nation.  "Hundreds of civilians may be killed if the Israelis invade", Ali Al-Ahmed said, "but once they leave, rockets will follow them home, so they would fail."

Alas, true, every damning word of it.