Update III: Israel Attacks The Dalai Lamas of Gaza

Or so the Hamasniks will, indubitably, be depicted in the course of the offensive Israel has launched against its terrorist neighbors.

DEBKAfile reports:

Israeli bombers hit Hamas’ film center in southern Gaza Saturday night, Dec. 27, after massive air raids destroyed Hamas compounds across the enclave leaving 225 killed, 330 injured and thousands of shock victims. The operation followed a week in which Hamas fired 200 missiles at Israeli civilian targets.

“Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert defined the objective of the Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip as “improving the lives of citizens in the South and giving them a normal life.”

You see, Hamas cannot be prevailed upon to desist from firing rockets into Israeli population centers. Egypt knows as much. It “has condemned Israel for its military attack, but held Hamas responsible for refusing to heed warnings.”

The Israeli Air Force planes struck Hamas security headquarters in Gaza City and compounds, police stations and ports. Several Hamas commanders were killed in the bombardment of a Hamas military passing-out ceremony

What else do we know?

That “Hamas appealed to Tehran and Hizballah Thursday, Dec. 25, asking for Iran’s support by threatening to intervene if Israel launched an attack on the Gaza Strip.”

That “Lebanese sappers defused 13 rockets pointing at N. Israeli cities.”

And that “Hizballah handed rockets to Hamas terrorists at the Ain Hilwa camp in south Lebanon and guided them to the exact launching site for hitting the two Israeli towns. Their point was to demonstrate that Hamas could hit Israel with rockets not just from Gaza but also from a second front in Lebanon in the event of an Israeli military operation against Hamas.”

Update I (Dec. 29): Al Arabiya reports: “World stands united against ‘genocide’ in Gaza.” Some characteristically florid journalism there. The images from across the world, curiously, depict demonstrators punching the air, many in the traditional keffiyehs etc. Muslims around the world, safely ensconced in their host countries, are out in force, protesting the right of another western government to respond to ongoing aggression against its people.

“The reticence of Arab states” to be more vocal about evil Israel is being criticized by assorted Islamic organizations and by protesters.

As election results across the Arab world have proven, “the Arab Street tends to be more militant than its leadership, a propensity the Arab-American scholar Fouad Ajami was wise to. ‘It is a peculiarity of the Arab political order,’ he wrote in the Wall Street Journal, ‘that many of the rulers and the dynasties are more moderate than the populace.'”

“Nobody in their right mind would accuse ordinary Palestinian moms and pops, the kind that encourage their kids to go out with a bang, of moderation.”

Mindful of swelling the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood in their midst, Egyptians were adamant about preventing Palestinians from infiltrating their territory: “A crowd of Palestinians trying to flee the Gaza Strip were stopped by heavy machine gun fire from Egyptian forces.”

Where’s the universal outcry over the refusal of the (rather wise and wily) Arab nations to accept fleeing Palestinians?

Mind you, there was never much of a reaction when the late King Hussein of Jordan massacred tens of thousands of Palestinians for fomenting a coup against the monarchy. He then expelled the PLO and thousands of Palestinian troublemakers to Lebanon. The world clearly understood that wise man’s need to avert anarchy.

In Iraq, a suicide bomber on a bicycle detonated explosives in a crowd of around 300 anti-Israel protesters. A teenage boy was killed, and 17 people wounded in the attack in Mosul.

Clearly, the instincts of the natural-born killer can become confused, thrown off-scent.

Update II: Debbie Schlussel has an interesting analysis of the Israeli offensive, one I cannot dispute:

“Anyone who thinks this latest “salvo” against HAMAS is of any significance whatsoever, really doesn’t know much about Israel and hasn’t been paying attention to goings on there for the last couple of decades, especially the last several years. …You’re buying into the latest campaign tactic of losing candidate for Prime Minister, Tzipi Livni–a complete doompa a/k/a Olmert in a skirt and makeup.

You must ask yourself why Israel suddenly chose to strike back now after years of HAMAS sending these rockets to kill the poor, working-class Israelis of Sderot–most of them descendants of Jews expelled from their homes and property in Arab Muslim countries. Why did it not matter that HAMAS sent rockets every day to kill Jews during the faux-truce and before then? Why does it suddenly matter now? What was different about now versus two months ago or two months from now?

Schlussel then swoops down for the kill:

“Binyamin Netanyahu … is whipping Livni in the polls, and the elections are just two months away. This is Livni’s and Olmert’s attempt–after several years of capitulation to Islamic terrorists, after practicing Judenrein in their own country and yanking Jews from their homes and businesses in Gaza and cities like Amona in the so-called West Bank–to try to look tough to Israelis with short attention spans. That’s all it is.”

Update III: Lawrence Auster reserves similar, studied contempt for the Israeli awakening:

“Gosh, I guess Hamas has finally gone ‘too far.’ Fifty or 70 mortar shells and rockets fired into Israel from Gaza over a period of a few days is ok by the Israelis. And the same rate of attack going on for month after month is ok by the Israelis. But a hundred such attacks in a few days–well, that’s too much! That’s going over the line! There’s a limit, after all! Having become thoroughly left-liberal and universalistic, having become a people without chests, the Israelis no longer believe in their nation’s inherent right of self-defense. They will only defend themselves when the enemy’s aggression becomes literally unbearable, when the imperative to take action becomes an unreflective, instinctive necessity, not a matter of right and duty. Then the Israelis will act, not on the basis of the non-liberal moral principle of self-defense (because liberalism prohibits any appeal to non-liberal moral principles), but on the basis of the unprincipled feeling, ‘We just can’t handle this any more, we’ve got to do something.'”