[Ottawa Citizen-Canada] Editorial - The Palestinian radicals who are firing rockets into Israeli towns measure success by the number of civilians who die. Here's the weird part - they don't care whether it's Jewish Israelis who die or their own Palestinian brothers. More significantly, Palestinian groups such as Hamas view the death of each Arab woman or child as a propaganda victory in the religious war against Israel. This is, sadly, old news. In the 1980s, before the Palestinians had rockets, they would arrange for children to throw rocks at Israeli soldiers, then they - the Palestinian fighters - would fire bullets at the Israelis from inside the crowds. Hamas' real objective was not to kill Israeli soldiers but to ensure Arab children got killed in the crossfire. Was this depraved? You bet. But it was effective. Israel is a liberal democracy and it didn't like being blamed for the deaths of civilians, so gradually it disengaged from the disputed Palestinian territories. In the case of Gaza, Israel withdrew completely. No matter, Hamas wanted to continue the fight, which brings us to today.
2008-03-06 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive