"The Ceasefire"

This piece from the National Review deserves to be posted in full:

The Ceasefire

It’s amusing to read (in Patrick’s update) that the Israeli government has agreed, as part of the “ceasefire,” to stop the “targeting of individuals.”

What moral universe do we live in where Hamas launches hundreds of missiles and sets off bombs the intent of which is the mass homicide of civilians, yet what the world is whipped up about is Israel’s targeted assassination of the jihadist leaders who direct the mass homicide of civilians?

If you’re actually concerned about human rights, Israel’s approach, targeting the terror chiefs in order to minimize civilian casualties (notwithstanding that Palestinian civilians are the ones who voted to put Hamas in charge), compares quite favorably to Hamas’s intentional targeting of civilians and its storage of military assets in and around civilian infrastructure — guaranteeing that there will be Palestinian civilian casualties when Israel inevitably reacts to Hamas’s relentless provocations. If Israel is not going to target the terrorist leaders — who then have license to orchestrate mass-murder attacks with impunity — what is it going to target?

Interesting that Israel is pressured to treat the terrorist leaders as if they were heads of state but the Palestinians are never expected to concede that Israel has a right to exist.

In fact, Hamas’s reason for existing is to destroy Israel by violent jihad — as I’ve pointed out here before, that’s not just me saying so; it’s in the Hamas charter.

I wonder what, for example, the State Department and our Muslim Brotherhood “allies” in Egypt and Turkey would say were Prime Minister Netanyahu to counter, “No ceasefire, and we’re going to keep targeting individuals, until Hamas repudiates the introductory section of its charter”: 

This is the Charter of the Islamic Resistance (Hamas) which will reveal its face, unveil its identity, state its position, clarify its purpose, discuss its hopes, call for support to its cause and reinforcement, and for joining its ranks. For our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave, so much so that it will need all the loyal efforts we can wield, to be followed by further steps and reinforced by successive battalions from the multifarious Arab and Islamic world, until the enemies are defeated and Allah’s victory prevails. Thus we shall perceive them approaching in the horizon, and this will be known before long: “Allah has decreed: Lo! I very shall conquer, I and my messenger, lo! Allah is strong, almighty.”

“And the charter’s Article 7″: 



Article Seven: The Universality of Hamas:….  Hamas is one of the links in the Chain of Jihad in the confrontation with the Zionist invasion. It links up with the setting out of the Martyr Izz a-din al-Qassam and his brothers in the Muslim Brotherhood who fought the Holy War in 1936; it further relates to another link of the Palestinian Jihad and the Jihad and efforts of the Muslim Brothers during the 1948 War, and to the Jihad operations of the Muslim Brothers in 1968 and thereafter. But even if the links have become distant from each other, and even if the obstacles erected by those who revolve in the Zionist orbit, aiming at obstructing the road before the Jihad fighters, have rendered the pursuance of Jihad impossible; nevertheless, the Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree. [This is taken directly from authoritative Islamic scripture -- the hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim.]

There are no ceasefires other than in the diplomats’ Islamophilic imaginations. Hamas is at permanent, existential war with the Jewish state. So are the region’s other Islamists. These “ceasefires” are just periodic lulls that allow Islamists to catch their breath and rearm for the jihad’s next round, while the diplomats browbeat Israel into more concessions — assuring the jihadists that their barbarism works. The war will continue until one side decisively wins, meaning the other decisively loses. With all that is stacked against them, with the perverse way the supposedly civilized world averts its eyes from the unabashed savagery of Israel’s enemies, it is a marvel that Israelis remain so strong and so decent.