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Hamas' New Tactics
(Tablet) Ruth R. Wisse - Arab and Muslim factions still compete over who can best whom at destroying the Jews. Hamas recently beat the competition with a demonstration of savagery unlike the earlier improvised pogroms in Europe to which it has been compared. October's slaughters were plotted with crucial input from Gazans employed in Israeli homes they had scouted and mapped for the purpose, making this the first military campaign designed to culminate in acts of beheading, torture, and rape of predetermined victims. As attempts to destroy Israel through conventional warfare had only made Israel militarily stronger, the new tactics aimed at destroying the Jews' will to remain among antagonists sworn never to leave them in peace. More than to intimidate, these attacks were made to demoralize. Hamas murdered parents and children in each other's presence so as to sharpen the survivors' agony. Every Jewish value - respect for women, honoring the human being who was made in the image of God - was gleefully defiled. The writer is professor emerita of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard.