Fatal Neuroses

It does present as a bit of a puzzle. Unless one assumes that committing to rage, hatred and violence curdles the brain to a point where rational thought is no longer feasible. It is a moot point; those are all densely addictive and self-destructive emotions, so perhaps it can be assumed that people who commit to such fundamental emotional stressors share a common incapacity to intelligently assess situations they deliberately place themselves within.

As in: does it make any kind of rational sense for a weaker aggressor -- one that constantly provokes and taunts, violates and attacks a neighbour that is known to have superior intelligence gathering command and control, manpower, technology, firepower and domination of air space -- to continue its self-defeating attacks on the superior agency? Perhaps, if the neurotics are playing for sympathy.

An Israeli mobile artillery unit fires towards Gaza from outside the Gaza Strip July 14, 2014. Egypt proposed an initiative on Monday aimed at stopping fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, state news agency MENA said. REUTERS/Nir Elias

Or alternately if they genuinely do subscribe to the belief that there is glory in the death of a martyr who finds a cause and will not release himself from its bonds. Even if the cause is based on religion and all the more so if that religion comes with tenets and claims and instructions seething with belief in its exceptionality and the inferiority of all others to the point of destroying others who will not share their exceptionality.

Boasting that their superiority is based on a religious adherence so inimical to nature-given survival instincts that imbue Islam's followers with a 'love' of death that brings them in immediate proximity with their maker, and that the highest privilege to be attained for a believer in surrendering to Islam is attained by the supreme sacrifice for which rewards follow in Paradise, each believer becomes a lethal weapon of destruction.

Some pundits claim that Hamas leaders themselves are more than adequately logical in their decisions to attack Israel; it is their followers whom they persuade that in provoking Israel to respond to the attacks they are performing the work of Allah, and as pious Muslims they too must submit themselves to death. It is a process that brings the world's condemnation down not necessarily on the aggressors but upon the defenders of life.

Losses on the battlefield equate with wins in the international political arena for Hamas. Israeli responses to ongoing rockets blasting off from Gaza, launched from the midst of crowded population bases, aimed to destroy the launches and the launchers and in the process threatening the lives of civilians gains Israel censure. That censure arises from those who would never countenance their own populations being constantly threatened, nor their sovereignty doubted.

One conflict after another, with Israel responding to rocketry from Gaza, venturing into the area to find and destroy armaments and the leaders of Hamas inevitably takes the lives of civilians whose champions have placed them deliberately in direct line of fire, and who take advantage of the bad press that faults Israel, to preen themselves and pose as courageous martyrs for the cause of destroying the Jewish State.

Because Israel has the advantage of strength, intelligence, determination and superior technology, it heeds the temper of world opinion and agrees to ceasefires long before its intended purpose has been accomplished. Because Israel cherishes not death but life, it tempers its response to violence meted out to it by restraint, by extending humanity to the helpless civilians that Hamas purposefully uses as human shields.

Gaza is dependent on Israel for its water needs, its electricity, its gas supplies, but nothing stops Hamas from sporadically attacking, nor from using its own strength in Gaza to compel other terrorist militias like Islamic Jihad from constant attacks against Israel. Although Gaza is blockaded by both Israel and Egypt in response to Hamas's covenant featuring the destruction of Israel, humanitarian aid is permitted to cross into Gaza and Israeli hospitals give medical treatment to Gazans.

Hamas features itself as the courageous defenders of the Palestinians, of the collective Arab/Muslim rage against the presence of a Jewish state within the Middle East, for Islam forbids land consecrated to itself to be formally occupied by adherents of any other religion, just as it prescribes the death penalty for apostates. Hamas hasn't found it difficult to inspire the gullible Arab street of their jihadi credentials.

It is the ease with which they are able to persuade Western leftists and traditional anti-Semites of the justness of their cause and their actions that is more the concern.