Spiritual defender: Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to bomb Hamas militants in Gaza will leave Israel more isolated, insecure, and alone.

Monday, November 19, 2012

Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to bomb Hamas militants in Gaza will leave Israel more isolated, insecure, and alone. - Slate Magazine

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RAYLOKENovember 19, 2012 at 8:15 AM
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Palestinian rockets are terrorizing Israeli towns. Israeli jets are pummeling the Gaza Strip. Thousands of Israeli reservists have been called up for a possible ground invasion. Twenty-one Palestinians, among them small children, and three Israelis are dead, and the toll is sure to rise. Four years after the Israeli military unleashed a punishing attack on Gaza, Israel and Hamas are once again on the brink of war.

The fresh round of Israeli reprisals follows an uptick in attacks from militant groups in Gaza. It began last Saturday with the firing of an anti-tank missile at an Israeli army jeep that wounded four soldiers. Several days of intensive rocket fire from Gaza followed. Israel responded by assassinating Ahmed Jabari, the head of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza, and launched an air campaign to try to destroy as many weapons depots as possible.

In 2012, there’s barely been a week when at least a handful of rockets haven’t been fired from Gaza into Israel. Every month or so there is an escalation, like during one six-day period in June when 162 rockets landed in Israel. “No government would tolerate a situation where nearly a fifth of its people live under a constant barrage of rockets and missile fire,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the foreign media on Thursday as he authorized more intensive strikes in Gaza.

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Netanyahu is surely right. Israel’s response to these ongoing rocket attacks is justified. But being justified isn’t the same thing as being smart. The truth is Israel has been engaged in a low-grade war with the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip for five years now, with no plan besides a misguided military strategy for how to end it.
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