Fitzgerald: Israel to Gaza: Just Leave Us Alone

Fitzgerald: Israel to Gaza: Just Leave Us Alone
By Hugh Fitgerald

Israel, of course, is forced to fight with one hand tied behind its back -- tied by the so-called "international community" that puts enormous pressure upon it, and even convinces the weak-minded in the American government to join in, when the Israeli goal is actually quite simple and straightforward.

That goal is to stop the sending of thousands of rockets indiscriminately (or discriminately, for that matter) into Israel, into such major population centers as Ashkelon, Ashdod, and now Beersheva, requiring nearly a million Israelis to have to worry all the time about the 15 seconds they have to find shelter against incoming rockets. It's a very simple demand.

It has nothing to do with changing the immutable ideology of Hamas. It has nothing to do with winning unwinnable -- because firmly inculcated with Islam -- hearts and minds. It is purely a military matter: is Hamas going to be allowed to continue a gigantic, a truly monstrous arms buildup, with every kind of missile that the Iranians or others can supply them with, or is it not?

(snip)

Just keep this in mind: if there were no rockets shot into Israel, no fantastic arms buildup of military equipment, smuggled under several hundred tunnels that have been carefully constructed (and from the secondary explosions that you can see from the bombing of them, these places were full of arms), then there would be nothing, absolutely nothing, not a gun, not a tank, not an airplane, not a paper airplane, from Israel going into Gaza.

It is a simple choice. It is the most understandable and basic request: stop sending rockets, stop spending all of your energies making war or preparing for war. Leave us alone. That's all. Just leave us alone. That is what any country -- even besieged and thrown-to-the-Muslim-wolves Israel -- has a right, and a duty, to demand.

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http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/024176.php