A CHRISTIAN SAYS IT IS TIME TO DEAL A CRUSHING BLOW TO HAMAS

COMMENTARY: Terrorists Smell Blood

By Charles Gardner

Israel Today
November 8, 2018

With Israel now on a war footing as Gaza-based terrorists rain down yet more rockets on the Jewish state, we can anticipate yet more bloodshed in the ongoing conflict.

It appears that Israeli Defence Force patience has finally run out with ferocious rioting on its southern border showing little sign of abating and a rocket destroying a home in the city of Beersheva.

In fact, residents from southern Israeli communities are taking to the streets to protest what they perceive as government failure to deal with the situation.

It is four years since the ‘Protective Edge’ engagement which severely blunted Hamas firepower. Now I hear that tanks are moving into position to launch a fresh attack on the terrorists, who have been firing rockets into Israel on a regular basis ever since the very reluctant 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

That was when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon caved in to international pressure by agreeing to the pull-out as part of a ‘land for peace’ deal. And what peace did it bring?

It only served to embolden Israel’s enemies all the more as they took advantage of what Arabs would generally perceive as weakness (i.e. compromise) by using the Palestinian-led enclave as
a launch-pad for missiles with which to destroy Israel – or wipe it off the map as their slogan goes.

Then, for several years following the 2014 war, the IDF kept a relatively low profile in a bid to contain the conflict while the Iron Dome anti-missile weapons system intercepted many rockets bound for Sderot and other southern Israel towns.

But back in spring this year, a new tactic was devised in the shape of a so-called ‘March of Return’ in which rioters would descend en-masse on the border fence demanding ‘re-entry’ as refugees allegedly forced out of the country.

Their status as ‘refugees’, backed by the United Nations, is entirely bogus and based on the claim to being descendants of the 700,000 Arabs who were panicked into leaving Israel in 1948 by the surrounding Arab nations who promised they would be able to return once they had defeated the new-born Jewish state – as they fully expected to do.

Of course that never happened, and the truth is that they left of their own accord, fearing for their lives no doubt but believing the word of Israel’s enemies who could easily have absorbed them into their combined vast territories.

But no, they were forever-after cynically used as pawns in a sick political game designed to make Israel look like uncaring bullies.

And yet a similar number of Jews, who had really been forced to leave Arab states at the same time, had been quickly absorbed into the Jewish state with no fuss or bother.

Meanwhile generations of descendants of these unfortunate Arabs would subsequently claim not only to inherit refugee status – uniquely in the world – but also Palestinian nationality at a time when no such state or people existed. If anything, it was a case of stolen identity as it was the region’s Jews who were known as Palestinians at the time of the British mandate.

The UN had in the meantime set up a body to look after the needs of these ‘refugees’ (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency – UNRWA) at the cost of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money in America and elsewhere. Fortunately, President Trump has the measure of this bogus body and has begun to cut U.S. funding.

And so, every Friday for the past seven months, when Jewish people are getting ready for their weekly Shabbat (Sabbath) and a well-earned rest, thousands of Gaza-based Palestinians have answered calls from terror group Hamas to put their lives on the line with violent protests.

These have included the use of Molotov cocktails, burning kites and balloons packed with explosives, from time to time causing further mayhem by blasting holes in the fence and charging into Israeli territory uninvited.

Then they wonder why they get shot at by soldiers called to protect their citizens from waves of terror which have left many dead and caused considerable damage to crops and property.

The snake has provoked the lion long enough, and it is time to deal a crushing blow. Hamas claims it as a ‘peaceful protest’ but this is yet another lie because the rioters are hired.

They smell blood – and suicide; the opportunity for ‘martyrdom’. This is what has been drummed into them – through education and the media – much as British children are brainwashed by LGBTQ+ propaganda.

Israeli soldiers, by contrast, are taught to value life, and this is no surprise because the Jewish people gave us the Bible which teaches that life is sacred. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is among the Ten Commandments, the basic laws by which they live and conduct the nation’s affairs.

Brutality and dishonesty is a defining portrait of some of Israel’s enemies. Saudi Arabia, though currently an unofficial ally of the Jewish state due to the threats of their common enemy Iran, also fits this description as you will no doubt have noticed from the shocking assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi whose criticism has thus been brutally silenced.

And the tangled web of deceit being weaved by the Saudi authorities desperately trying to cover their tracks is as farcical as it is tragic.

Yet our political left-wingers would rather focus on the supposed injustices committed by tiny Israel while dissenters in neighbouring states face summary execution.

There are at least 30,000 political prisoners in Saudi where torture chambers abound and where beheadings as well as crucifixion take place.

And yet we ingratiate ourselves with them. The Crown Prince now under fire over the Khashoggi scandal was given the red carpet treatment here back in March.

Mindful of all the injustices we are seeing, particularly in the Middle East, my wife and I were encouraged on our recent train journey to London to see Bible Society posters on the stations quoting the words of Isaiah: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.” (Isa 5.20)