Waging (Defensive) War, Sparing Lives

[Sigh], on the warpath again Israel is slaughtering civilians in Gaza. It is on trajectory "purposefully wiping out entire families", according to an Arab member of the Knesset. Can we visualize a Jewish elected member of the Palestinian Authority government, much less that of the Hamas government in Gaza? And Mahmoud Abbas has mourned the fate of Palestinians slated for genocide at the hands of the merciless, slaughtering Jews.

As for one of Israel's biggest supporters in the Middle East, the Islamic Republic of Iran has claimed that Israel is committing "massacres against the defenceless Palestinians." Perhaps explanation enough as to the reason that Shiite Hezbollah in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon has lobbed rockets into northern Israel in sympathy with Sunni Hamas with whom they've all fallen out lately for not supporting Syria's massacres against Syrian Sunnis.

President Abbas, at least, has expressed his perplexed concern over the brutality of abducting and killing three Israeli Jewish teens; almost as bereaved over it as his anguish over the dreadful abduction and death meted out to a Palestinian youth. And he has now distinguished himself further by obliquely criticizing Hamas for provoking Israel into reaction through its intemperate lobbing of rockets from Gaza into Israel.

Israel agonized politically and diplomatically over the depth of its reaction until it could no longer do so and was forced by circumstances it could no longer control to act decisively. Terrorists in Gaza had fired over 150 rockets into Israel, rejecting a demand for a cease-fire before the IDF was finally ordered into defensive action. And the Hamas propaganda machine has gone into overdrive, publishing photographs reflective of Israeli atrocities.

The thing of it is, some observers have long and quite accurate memories and recognized staged photographs as well as pictures purporting to show current devastation from Israeli strikes when they belong to earlier war situations. The actual numbers of Palestinian deaths approaching one hundred represent a population devastation. Not all that hard to understand given that Hamas is given to launching rockets from among packed population centres.

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  View of central Israel seen from Tel Aviv as an Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept a rocket from the Gaza Strip, Israel, Thursday, July 10, 2014. Israel dramatically escalated its aerial assault in Gaza Thursday hitting hundreds of Hamas targets, as Palestinians reported more than a dozen of people killed in strikes that hit a home and a beachside cafe and Israel's missile defense system once again intercepted rockets fired by militants at the country's heartland.

  Dan Balilty/AP

Schools, hospitals, mosques and other public buildings, let alone hotels and apartment blocks are other favoured sites where weapons are cached and lobbed off from. Hamas is fond of human shields advancing their agenda. People are hugely dispensable for the larger cause. All the more so when retaliatory strikes bear a gory cost for those unfortunate civilians who are caught in the cross-fire and lose their lives. They present as valuable public relations fodder to accuse Israel of massacres.

According to Israel's minister of defence his forces have targeted the homes of terrorists, along with "arms, terror infrastructures, command systems, Hamas institutions [and] regime buildings". If Hamas can consider all Israeli citizens suitable targets for annihilation since they are guilty of upholding the Zionist regime, then it stands to reason that the homes of Hamas leaders are used as command centres, ripe for destruction.

One Israeli official stated: "There's not a single Hamas brigade commander that has a home to go back to". But the Hamas elite have taken due caution to ensure that they personally cannot be reached by any penetrating bombs to inconvenience their long life on Earth. As for unannounced strikes on the homes of "terror command centres"; just doesn't happen. Just as the IDF in 2012 notified people in areas where bombs would hit by telephone to evacuate those areas, and distributed warning leaflets, the same is now also occurring.

Flares are fired or low-impact mortars (spoken of as a 'knock on the roof') to warn of impending strikes. In fact Hamas and other Palestinian sources affirm such phone warnings have been issued to families in targeted homes. For the Khan Unis strike on the home of a terrorist commander which Hamas describes as a "massacre against women and children", the family received both a warning call and a knock on the roof.

Palestinians remove the rubble of the Ghanam family home after it was targeted in an Israeli air raid on Rafah, in the southern of Gaza strip, on July 11, 2014. Five Palestinians, including a woman and seven-year-old child, died when the home of a Hamas operative was hit, Gaza emergency services said. (Photo credit: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

Israeli forces didn't fire their missile, according to an Israeli security official, until the family left the house. That same official cannot understand why some family members and neighbours decided to return and place themselves in harm's way. Nearby residents explained they were attempting to "form a human shield". Shield? Not quite; more like a human sacrifice. Reflecting the height of dedication to martyrdom. But then this complements the cult of martyrdom so prevalent there.

Palestinians so steeped in the lore of suffering and victimization and lifelong refugee status, so self-pityingly linked to their bitter resentment at the creation of a Jewish state upending their way of life and memories of time past, sweeter than the reality and therefore deeply mourned, have embraced the fantasy of honour in martyrdom. The PA has encouraged and supported it by naming streets after the shaheeds, paying their families monthly stipends. Teaching children of the pride of the martyr.

A martyr, moreover, who sacrifices not only his/her life, but that of as many unwilling others as conceivably possible.