The Viral Pathology of Hatred

"The occupying state has to understand that the changes the Arab region, and especially Egypt, have witnessed will not permit that the Palestinian people be put under the hold of the Israeli offence in the same way as the past." 
Freedom and Justice Party, Muslim Brotherhood

"There should be no doubt that we will retaliate.  We will retaliate, we will fire rockets and we will fight until we are killed."
Ahmed Al-Jabari's nephew Mohammed

"It doesn't really matter that it was Jabari who was killed.  It could have been any of us.  I never believed this truce with Israel would hold.  This is what it will be until the world's final days --- us against the Jews."
Ghalib al Hatour  Gaza City streetside spare parts workshop owner

Occupier?  Did not the Zionist Entity vacate Gaza of all its Jewish settlements, withdraw all its citizens from the Gaza Strip, and leave it and the buildings therein to the Palestinians to do with what they would?  Among them an extensive greenhouse compound as a ready-made enterprise for Palestinian agricultural entrepreneurs, which they trashed, along with synagogues?

The Gaza Strip was left to the Gazans to build within it their own society unobstructed by the irritating presence of Jews whose enterprise had built thriving businesses there.  Israel withdrew the settlers, and withdrew its forces.  It waited for Gazans to organize themselves, to take pride in themselves, to begin the process of structuring a law-abiding and fruitful, secure state for themselves.

What resulted was gangs oppressing those who merely wanted to exist unmolested.  What resulted was criminal activity with tribal groups battling one another for primacy, predators on the bulk of Gaza's Palestinians.  And an increasing frequency of incursions across the border into Israel of committed jihadists eager for martyrdom, sacrificing themselves in the pursuit of mass murder.

Enter Hamas.  And security within Gaza ensued, as the tribal enmities were subdued, and the Fatah aligned faction was brutally expunged, killed or exiled.  And Gaza's Palestinians, already committed to Islamism unlike the more secular-inclined West Bank Palestinians, found themselves under another occupation, that of Islamist Hamas, offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose charter emphasized the destruction of Israel.

A restraining wall eventually was built to physically separate Israel from the enterprise of death, so beloved by jihadists; doubly embraced as the entrance for them to Paradise and the method by which, through their sacred mission leading to the slaughter of countless Jews, they could approach the voluptuous virgins awaiting their heavenly ministrations.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the countless other jihadi militias took to leaping the impediment of the restraining wall by the manufacture of crude rockets.  The Kassams eventually morphed into more sophisticated, far-reaching and dangerous bombardments courtesy of Iran and Syria.  And one hundred of them in one week-end proved to be too much of a challenge for Israel to ignore.

The criminal mastermind of the 'modernization' of the Hamas military, the planner and executor of atrocities against Israelis was next in line for mortal punishment to aid in Israel's 'deterrence' warning gainst ongoing assaults against its citizens.  And while Hamas scorned Israel's repeated warnings as empty rhetoric, Israel's intelligence experts carefully planned its moves.

"I would call him the number one terrorist in the Gaza Strip, whose hands are stained with blood", said Brig.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai, Israel's chief military spokesman.  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the killing of Ahmed al-Jabari, commander of Hamas's military wing as a "clear message" to Hamas, that "If it becomes necessary we are prepared to expand the operation."

These messages really do reach deaf ears.  The IDF was intent on targeting Hamas's medium-range underground rocket launch and infrastructure sites in the strikes that followed.  "Israel has declared war on Gaza and they will bear the responsibility for the consequences", said Islamic Jihad.  Yes, yes they will.