Although Hamas has fired over 4,000 rockets at Israel, casualties have been few, and the IDF appears to have done much in the past two weeks to degrade the terrorist group’s military infrastructure. But Hamas could do much more damage in the future if Hizballah and other Iranian proxies join in the fighting. David Horovitz argues that the Jewish state’s tactical superiority doesn’t eliminate the need to create a better strategy for containing its dangerous neighbor:
[T]he complexities of attempting to thwart a terror-state’s rocket fire, cynically launched from the midst of a civilian population, have undermined Israel’s international standing, with numerous world leaders and opinion-shapers maliciously or lazily comparing death tolls and concluding that because Israel’s is lower, it must be the aggressor. . . . How dare Israel have an Iron Dome missile-defense system, these critics object—implying that if only Israel were suffering more fatalities, this might be a fairer fight and Israel might merit less castigation.
Also to Hamas’s delight, the tide of hostility to Israel, which even the best public diplomacy could only partially alleviate, is playing out in displays of anti-Semitism, deeply troubling and discomfiting Diaspora Jewry.
From round to round of conflict, Hamas has grown from a dangerous terrorist organization to the ruler of a terrorist state with what amounts to an army—funded in part by the money that Israel has allowed Hamas’s Qatari patrons to deliver. It is increasingly dominating the Palestinian cause, harming Israel’s international standing, and demonstrating the capacity to stoke violence against Israel on multiple fronts. The people of Israel are indeed strong and courageous, and disciplined and resilient under relentless fire.
But our enemies in Gaza have not yet concluded that they’re wasting their time. To use the metaphoric fable, they think of Israel as a frog in slowly boiling water. They must be disabused. What’s required is a sea-change in which, rather than allowing Hamas to cast us into rounds of chaos at moments of its choosing, with ever-widening repercussions, Israel determines its long-term goals, sets about achieving them, and reasserts control of its own reality and destiny.
Read more on Times of Israel: https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-next-round-will-be-worse-unless-israel-reasserts-control-of-its-destiny/