Whose war is it now?
Capt. Dan Gordon is not only a reservist in the IDF, he's also a Hollywood screenwriter. When war breaks out in Israel, Dan leaves his scripts and heads to the Jewish state.He takes up his post as one of the spokespersons for Israel. Here's his latest dispatch on the latest development of "Operation Protective Edge."
Who's War Is It Now?
If there was ever any doubt before, there is none now.
This is Hamas’s war.
They wanted.
They got it.
They own it.
And they own all the consequences that will befall their own people whose lives and well-being, whose property and livelihoods, they have so callously exploited for two reasons:
The first and foremost reason they wanted this was, and is, to maintain their own power, to maintain the literal stranglehold they have on the hapless people of Gaza. As mentioned in an earlier article, Hamas was feeling pressed from two sides. When they seized power from their own Palestinian brothers in an absolutely bloodthirsty coup, during which they lined people up against walls and machine gunned them, pushed them, bound and blind folded off of buildings and terrorized them into submission, they faced what seems to have been an unexpected problem. Now that they had indeed “occupied” Gaza, they had to rule it. That means mundane things like providing electricity and water, processing raw sewage and collecting garbage and providing the conditions that would create, if not economic growth, at least prevent Gaza from falling into abject misery and poverty.
At all of these things, they have utterly and completely failed.
There is over 40 percent unemployment in a place that literally should, could, and still can, be the Singapore of the Middle East. Indeed they have failed so miserably that within the last few months they were not able even to pay the salaries of their own soldiers and bureaucrats.
Thus for the first time they were actually beginning to face demonstrations against their completely corrupt and incompetent regime, which they feared could become the first cracks in the dikes holding back a flood of discontent that could sweep them from power.
At the same time they were being pressured from newer breeds of terrorists like ISIS and al Qaeda and Islamic Jihad, who perceived them as too tame toward Israel. Thus their calculus was that a limited war against Israel, even one they knew they would lose, would be to their advantage. It would rally the populace around the flag, focus it’s anger at Israel instead of the Gazans’ own rulers and prove their terrorist street creed to their competitors.
In order to hype a conflict for which their own population showed absolutely no appetite, they promised” surprises” for the Zionist enemy, if not actual military victory. They dug a tunnel under Israel’s border and intended to use it to infiltrate their most elite commandos, who would then kill and kidnap as many Israeli CIVILIANS as possible.
Instead Israel discovered the tunnel and used it against them, used it to allow our own commandos to attack and wipe out the entire force that Hamas had hoped and promised would provide their own version of “ Shock and Awe.”
They infiltrated a terrorist cell onto Zikim beach near Ashkelon. Israeli forces discovered and destroyed them.
They have to date launched over 1,300 short, medium and long range missiles against Israel, promising to devastate the Israeli civilian population against whom their rockets were aimed. They promised to “Open the Gates of Hell” on the Zionist enemy.
Instead, thanks to its Iron Dome missile defense system, a civil defense operation second to none in the world, and a civilian population that has displayed the grace and courage under fire reminiscent of London under the Blitz, yesterday Israel suffered its first and only fatality; a civilian, father of three who had gone out to deliver food to the soldiers. Just a nice man, doing a good deed. That is, thus far, Hamas’ Divine Victory.
The only misery they have managed to inflict has been what they have visited against their own people.
There is one other reason Hamas decided to go to war against Israel. Their Iranian puppet masters told them to. In that way, Iran, engaged in supposed nuclear negotiations with the West could now say, “How can we make concessions of any kind when the Zionist enemy is committing genocide in Gaza?” That, after all, is the tune to which Iran has taught to its Hezbollah and Hamas puppets to dance, a terrorist two step if you will; commit acts of terror against Israel’s civilian population while hiding behind your own civilian population. Launch your rockets from school yards, mosques, hospital courtyards and crowded neighborhoods and then when Israel, having no other choice but to strike those rocket launchers, attacks them, accuse Israel of genocide. That way you can both be a terrorist and claim the mantle of victimhood.
One can’t blame them for doing it because to a degree it works. There are only too many apologists and enablers in the West for whom this perversion of morality and logic has almost taken on the aura of religion. Israelis are white European colonialists oppressing the brown skinned indigenous people.
Never mind that the majority of Israel’s population comes from the Middle East and have lived here for thousands of years and were turned into homeless refugees when they were driven from their homes in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon and other Middle Eastern states for the crime of being Jews. Facts don’t matter. Only the mantra does.
That Hamas started this war is beyond doubt. They began by launching rockets into southern Israel in clear violation of the 2012 cease fire agreement, which was the result of the last war they started with Israel.
But Israel didn’t respond, saying instead that “calm would be met with calm.”
Then Khaled Meshaal, chairman of the Hamas political bureau, not its military wing mind you, but the supposedly more moderate, political wing, issued a public call for Hamas cells in the West Bank to kidnap Israelis. And one of those cells answered the call and kidnapped three Israeli school boys on their way home from school and then murdered them in cold blood, laughing and singing as they did so, “We got three! We got three.”
And still Israel did not attack Gaza. Instead it carried out a police action in the West Bank trying to put Hamas out of operation there before they could turn the West Bank into another Hamasstan only a few miles from Tel Aviv.
Of course there were those who then pointed to the horrific torture and murder of an Palestinian teenager by a demented group of Israeli, murderous thugs as a sure sign that there was a moral equivalence in this struggle. “The Palestinians killed three Jews; the Jews killed a Palestinian teen.” What’s more, a handful of Israeli police brutally beat the Palestinian /American teenaged cousin of the murdered boy. "If that isn't evidence of moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel, what is?”
But every society has cold blooded murderous thugs. To confuse the Charley Manson’s or Ted Bundy’s of the world as being one and the same with Osama Bin Laden is either intentionally disingenuous or betrays a flawed moral or intellectual compass, or both.
Moreover I was a specialist reserve officer with LAPD at the time of the Rodney King beating. It was an awful thing, a horrible thing, and betrayed the fact that LAPD had real problems, especially with regard to its attitudes and practices toward LA’s minority communities. But that did not make the United States of America the moral equivalent of al Qaeda or Hamas.
But let’s say you just don’t buy that. Let’s say you simply believe the Zionist racist society was indeed committing genocide in Gaza. Yesterday Egypt, a Muslim Arab state, offered up a ceasefire proposal that Israel accepted unconditionally. It was to have gone into effect at 9:00 a.m. this morning. There was a chance to end the bloodshed, end the suffering, not just of the Israeli people, but especially that of the Palestinian people in Gaza about whom so many in the world have rightly expressed so much concern. There was a chance to put an end to the supposed cycle of violence. Hamas gave its answer within an hour. They launched a barrage of rockets at Israel’s most populous city, Tel Aviv. Had it not been for the Iron Dome intercepting all of them there would have been thousands, not hundreds of casualties. Since then another hundred rockets have rained down on Israel. I had the dubious honor of having had Iron Dome keep me above ground once again.
This morning there was a chance for a cycle of peace.
Hamas has answered that with war. Now there can be no doubt as to the legitimacy of what Israel must do. And what, all in all, are Israel’s goals in this conflict?
Not peace. We know that won’t happen as long as Hamas’ charter says’ We go forward to the fulfillment of the promise that “the time will come when the Muslims will rise up and kill the Jews until the rocks and the trees cry out, ‘O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him.’” That’s their charter. That’s their “We the People.” No we’re not so naive to believe that this will be the war to end all wars and the peace will descend upon our beleaguered nation. Our goal, our hope, our prayer…is just for a few more years of quiet in which to raise our children and grandchildren until the next time we have to fight simply for the right to live in the Jewish state.
But make no mistake. From now on, this is Hamas’s war.
Only those who prefer to see the sheep’s clothing, rather than acknowledge the wolf within, will see it for anything else.
Dan Gordon
Capt. IDF ( res.)