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Downplaying Hamas: The Persistence of Rationalizing Terrorism Against Israel

[City Journal-Manhattan Institute] James Kirchick - When Israel erected a security fence and imposed a blockade on Gaza following its withdrawal from the territory in 2005, Palestinian terrorists had to find other means of killing Jews. Hamas chose crude rockets, which, while occasionally injuring and even killing Israeli civilians, were not nearly as lethal as men detonating themselves in crowded shopping malls. Lamenting the greater number of Palestinian civilian casualties (due almost entirely to the Hamas practice of using women and children as human shields) is a perennial tactic of Israel's critics. The logic of their position dictates that Israel should wait until some critical mass of its own civilians is killed before eventually fighting back. Over the past several weeks, the critics have developed a new piece of rhetoric: The Hamas actions that provoked Israel were merely a nuisance. A Guardian news report referred to the rocket attacks as a "manageable irritant." Israel's detractors have minimized, to an almost comical extent, what its citizens have had to endure over the past three years. They portray a bona fide war crime - the deliberate firing of rockets into civilian areas - as a minor irritant. They criticize, from the comfort of their keyboards thousands of miles away, the actions of a beleaguered democracy under siege from terrorists. The writer is an assistant editor of The New Republic.
2009-02-25 06:00:00
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