Settling Scores

"Clearly, it's part of their chain of command, it's a part of their decision-making process, it's a part of their force-leading capabilities, it's a part of their motivation. I think it sends a clear message that nobody has any sort of immunity when carrying out terrorist attacks against us."
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, military spokesman, IDF

"I think after 34 days in bunkers and tunnels, they wanted to go out a little bit and this gave us an opportunity to go after them."
Amos Yadlin, former head, Israeli military intelligence

"It was an operation by your brothers from the al-Qassam Brigades [a] heroic operation [abduction and murder of three Israeli teens in June]."
"[Hamas] did not have the intention at this time to ignite a large battle. But Allah has chosen and willed that a large battle would be ignited."
Saleh Arouri, Hamas leader meeting of the International Union of Islamic Scholars, Turkey

Very nice; in Turkey the International Union of Islamic Scholars -- 'scholars' no less - can be jubilant about the courage of their "brothers" from the al-Qassam Brigades mounting a 'heroic operation' to abduct and murder three young men, Gilad Shaar, 16, Naftali Fraenkel 16, and Eyal Yifrah 19 for the crime of being Jews, thus cleansing the Middle East of the presence of three Jews. Heartening news to the assembled scholars.

It was a plan gone awry, said Mr. Arouri, since Hamas had planned to use the abduction as leverage to exchange them for countless Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. But the best laid plans of brilliant minds encased in the bodies of bloodthirsty terrorists go off course when the compulsion to kill surmounts the will to indulge in friendly trading agreements; one young civilian each for several hundred convicted criminals. It's the Palestinian way.

The public admission, that though Hamas had repeatedly denied it had anything to do with the abduction of the teens, even while expressing their boundless praise for the kidnappings while Israel had doggedly accused Hamas of orchestrating the taking of the three boys and going so far as to identify two operatives as their chief suspects, reveals much about the mindset of these geniuses and their modus operandi.

"Hamas has no qualms whatsoever about targeting innocent civilians", noted Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev. The discovery of the three dead teens three weeks after they were missed, led to the arrest of Hamas members in the West Bank where the bodies were found. The revenge killing of an innocent Palestinian Israeli boy led in turn to outrage in the Palestinian community and violent protests that followed.

The tension between the two communities was high, but as it happened, people of gentle faith on both sides comforted one another, as Israelis, Jew and Arab. But the reckoning with Hamas was yet to come, and it has culminated in the deaths of three, perhaps four top Hamas commanders. Mr. Arouri himself is one of Hamas's most senior members having founded the military wing in the West Bank decades earlier, commanding its operations from exile in Turkey, released in a deal freeing him from prison in Israel.

As for one of the three commanders killed in a pre-dawn strike on a multi-storied building in the southern city of Rafeh where the three men had been tracked emerging from tunnel havens against attacks, one, Raed Al-Attar 40, was involved with the kidnapping of soldier Gilad Shalit, held for five years and ransomed for over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. He had also been involved in smuggling weapons into Gaza, constructed tunnels infiltrating Israeli territory and related attacks from Sinai.

While Mr. Abu Shammala orchestrated the July 17 tunnel incursion near Kibbutz Sufa leading to Israel's ground invasion of Gaza. He had also, in 2008, been involved in an attack on the Kerem Shalom crossing injuring 13 IDF personnel, and was involved in a tunnel explosion killing six Israeli soldiers in 2004 among other deadly crimes.

Their dedication to jihad against the intolerable presence of a Jewish state in the heart of an Arabic-Islamic geography represents an affront too excruciating to the Arab sensibility to endure. But the thing of it is that Hamas's covenant with Allah to destroy the Jewish state and its inhabitants does not sit well with Israel, as it does and will continue to do everything in its considerable power to prevent Hamas and its brethren-in-terror from accomplishing the feat they set out to do, in honour of Islamic jihad.