Last week, demonstrations spread throughout the Gaza Strip demanding improved living conditions and an end to gas and electricity shortages. Crowds chanted “Let us live!” and some even called for an end to Hamas rule. The terrorist group responded by sending hundreds of armed men into the streets on Friday, successfully bringing the protests to an end. Bassam Tawil writes:

At the same time as the Palestinians were demonstrating in the Gaza Strip, armed clashes erupted in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, where at least eleven people were killed, including a senior Palestinian security official, and several others were injured. . . . . According to Palestinian sources, several protesters were wounded, some critically, when Hamas security officers used force to disperse the protests in the Gaza Strip.

Reports from the Gaza Strip—almost completely ignored by the international media—said that Hamas security officers stormed the Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah and abducted three Palestinian men who were wounded during the protests. . . . Hamas officers also physically assaulted the Palestinian journalist Walid Abdel Rahman, a correspondent for the Palestinian Authority’s Palestine TV, while he was covering the demonstrations in Jabalya. Abdel Rahman said he was beaten by officers who identified themselves as members of Hamas’s Internal Security force.

It is no secret that Hamas has been investing millions of dollars in building tunnels and manufacturing weapons to attack Israel, while ignoring the dire economic crisis in the Gaza Strip.

The voices of the anti-Israel activists around the world who regularly rush to condemn Israel for seeking to defend itself against Palestinian terrorism have gone silent when it really comes to protecting Palestinians. The activists, who describe themselves as “pro-Palestinian,” do not actually care about Palestinians, especially those living in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon’s refugee camps. If Israel cannot be blamed, the world does not care.

The former Israeli chief justice Aharon Barak recently warned that the country could be headed toward civil war due to Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to fire the head of the Shin Bet, and the opposition thereto. To Amichai Attali, such comments are both “out of touch with reality” and irresponsible—as are those of Barak’s political opponents:

Yes, there is tension and stress, but there is also the unique Israeli sense of solidarity. Who exactly would fight in this so-called civil war? Try finding a single battalion or military unit willing to go out and kill their own brothers and sisters—you won’t. They don’t exist. About 7 percent of the population represents the extremes of the political spectrum, making the most noise. But if we don’t come to our senses, that number might grow.

And what about you, leader of [the leftwing party] The Democrats and former deputy IDF chief, Yair Golan? You wrote that the soldiers fighting Hamas in Gaza are pawns in Netanyahu’s political survival game. Really? Is that what the tens of thousands of soldiers on the front lines need to hear? Or their mothers back home? Do you honestly believe Netanyahu would sacrifice hostages just to stay in power? Is that what the families of those hostages need right now?

Israeli democracy will not collapse if Netanyahu fires the head of the Shin Bet—so long as it’s done legally. Nor will it fall because demonstrators fill the streets to protest. They are not destroying democracy, nor are they terrorists working for Hamas.