RUTHFULLY YOURS

There has been considerable controversy among observers and commentators sympathetic to Israel in its latest round of hostilities with the terrorist belligerents of Hamas, the Gazan wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. One school of thought, whose tenets I share, advocates the total destruction of the terrorist infrastructure, thus eliminating the depressing spectre of sporadic and then continuing outbursts of rocket attacks, followed with metronomic regularity by the inevitable armed conflict and faux hudna  every couple of years.

It is clear that Hamas will not relent in its purpose of terrorizing Israel’s civilian population and ultimately, as per its charter, of annihilating the Jewish State root and branch. The perpetuation of this status quo is not only tedious and wearily predictable, but finally unsustainable, for no responsible nation can permit its citizens to spend a portion of their lives hunkering down in bomb shelters.

An alternative thesis — or interpretation of Israel’s best interests — has been gaining momentum of late, and indeed appears to have superseded and eclipsed the more “hawkish” perspective. It seems to have become the prevalent meme governing current thinking on the Israeli dilemma, namely, that  in destroying a known entity like Hamas, one creates a vacuum into which far more lethal and barbarous groups can step in and pick up where their predecessor left off—only to greater noxious effect. According to this line of thought, having to deal with even more pathological cadres like Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Al-Quds Brigade, the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Ansar Al Sunnah, and possibly ISIS as well, would result in a collective feeling of nostalgia for the good old days when Hamas would be allowed to declare victory after being pummeled into semi-oblivion.

Thus, as National Post columnist Michael Higgins writes ^[1], “One of the biggest dangers Israel faces as it cracks down [on Hamas] is that it could be too successful.” Similarly, former chief of staff at Israel’s Ministry of Defense Michael Herzog argues ^[2] that Hamas at least “provides an address — you don’t have that with the Jihadi factions.” The belief that Israel should pull its punches, deliver a resounding though tolerable  spanking to a mischievous and impertinent Hamas, and then let it live to kill, mutilate, and terrorize another day — business as usual — may to some seem realistic in the boiling cauldron that is the Middle East. The trouble is that political realism often founders on the reefs of actual reality. Such adiabatic thinking would be merely quaint or pixilated were it not potentially calamitous.

When one reflects that Hamas has not only fired missiles at Israeli population centers but has deliberately targeted the Dimona nuclear site in the Negev, we are experiencing what is called a “game changer,” rendering all presumably rational temporizing null and void. Hamas is not trying to prevent or preempt an Israeli nuclear strike, which it knows is not going to happen; it is, rather, hoping to create mass civilian casualties via the diffusion of nuclear waste materials. A red line has been crossed — and it is not an Obama red line the world has learned to safely disregard. In the words of Michael Snyder, editor of The Economic Collapse Blog (ECB), “The fact that Hamas is attempting to create a nuclear holocaust is essentially an act of genocide”; indeed, it is an act of nuclear terrorism as defined by the United Nations ^[3].  As reported in Breitbart ^[4], “Article 2 (1) of the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism states ^[5]:

Any person commits an offence within the meaning of this Convention if that person unlawfully and intentionally…(b)…uses or damages a nuclear facility in a manner which releases or risks the release of radioactive material: (i) With the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury; or (ii) With the intent to cause substantial damage to property or to the environment; or (iii) With the intent to compel a natural or legal person, an international organization or a State to do or refrain from doing an act.”

In light of the above, I submit that Hamas is not the more manageable of several malignant options, i.e., one that should be spared in order not to exacerbate a deteriorating situation. The future, by definition,  is a volatile quantity and should not be recruited as a reason or an excuse to avoid acting decisively in a demonstrably incendiary present. Such deferral is all too often the expression of a natural reluctance to defray expenditures of risk, effort, exposure and security — when not to do so is manifestly counterproductive. There are times when putting things off to tomorrow may work against that tomorrow ever coming. An avowed enemy that aims its rockets at your nuclear installations will persist in doing so until it acquires yet more sophisticated ordnance and eventually scores a direct hit. The very prospect is enough to demolish all arguments for comparative leniency and the preservation of ostensibly less toxic alternatives to the current imbroglio.

Hamas has shown its hand; as Koranic Sura 5:33 stipulates, it must be cut off.