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There is no kind way to describe today’s Washington Post editorial Israel Strikes with a subtitle:
Hamas suffers a serious blow — but the real winner may be Iran.

ISRAEL’S AIR offensive against the Gaza Strip yesterday should not have been a surprise for anyone who has been following the mounting hostilities in the region — least of all the Hamas movement, which invited the conflict by ending a six-month-old ceasefire and launching scores of rockets and mortar shells at Israel during the past 10 days. The initial Israeli strikes appeared to deal a punishing blow to the Islamic movement, reportedly killing several of its leaders and dozens of other militants and security force members. Inevitably, however, civilians were among the more than 200 reported Palestinian dead, and renewed Palestinian rocket fire against Israeli cities killed at least one person. While Israel could justifiably describe its action as one of self-defense, it’s far from clear that it will end up improving the country’s security — even as it risks a wider conflict.

What’s missing here?

Hamas did not invite the conflict by ending the ceasefire. It invited the conflict by using the ceasefire to build up its offensive capabilities against Israeli civilian targets. More than a year and a half ago the New York Times reported:

The concerns of Shin Bet and the army, their officials say, include the following: as much as 30 tons of weapons-grade explosives smuggled into Gaza from Egypt, either through tunnels or through the desert; new rocket-building expertise from non-Gazans smuggled into Gaza or from Gazans who received training from Hezbollah or in Syria; a small but unknown quantity of better antitank missiles, of the general kind used so effectively last summer by Hezbollah against Israeli armor and Israeli troops sheltering in houses; a small number of ground-to-air missiles; and the construction of Hezbollah-style concrete bunkers and tunnels in crowded Gaza that will make any Israeli infantry operation harder to carry out.

And while the tone of the article is “Israel says this …” rather than “Hamas has done this …” it’s interesting to note that the beginning of the article reports:

The commander, who gave the briefing at the request of The New York Times and spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Hamas’s improved rockets had a range of about 10 miles, which would allow them to hit the Israeli town of Ashkelon.

This assessment has proven all too true, so it’s reasonable to assume that the rest of the Israeli security assessment has been on target.

Furthermore, Barak Ravid’s important article in Ha’aretz makes clear that Operation Cast Lead was not some hastily drawn up attack launched for electoral advantage, but rather a carefully designed attack aimed at reducing Hamas’s ability to threaten tens of thousands of Israelis. The IDF’s catalogue of Hamas controlled targets provides further evidence of the care that went into planning the attacks.

So while the Post may note “… Inevitably, however, civilians were among the more than 200 reported Palestinian dead …” it is silent on who’s at fault. That silence may be fairly equated with excusing Hamas for its tactic of placing its troops and munitions among civilians.

Israeli officials say the aim of the attack is a modest one: to force Hamas to return to the uneasy and informal truce, under which Palestinian rocket and mortar fire was curtailed if not entirely stopped and Israel relaxed but did not lift its economic blockade of Gaza. Hamas’s Damascus-based leadership, which ordered an end to this “calm,” as Israel calls it, also seems to have a relatively limited objective. It demands an end to all Israeli (and Egyptian) restrictions on movement in and out of Gaza in exchange for more quasi-peace. One considerable obstacle to such an outcome is that Israel is engaged in an election campaign in which the various candidates — including the serving defense and foreign ministers — are staking out hawkish positions. The outgoing Bush administration, for its part, was quick to offer support to Israel yesterday and to blame the conflict on Hamas.

And good for the Bush adminstration for doing so. And shame on the Post for covering for Hamas.

Over time, however, a fight in Gaza could be costly for Israel. Military commanders have repeatedly warned that it could lead to punishing attacks on Israeli cities, spread to the West Bank or Lebanon, or force a ground invasion that would cause thousands of casualties and leave Israeli troops stranded without an exit strategy. Israel cannot stop rocket attacks by military action alone; eventually a political deal will be needed. And any hopes its leaders have of overthrowing Hamas’s government in Gaza are probably illusory, unless a long-term reoccupation of the territory is undertaken.

Yes, a long term fight in Gaza could prove costly to Israel. But there comes a point when any responsible government must say, “no more” and protect its citizens. I think that the Israeli government waited way too long, the Post disagrees. But an “exit strategy” is hardly Israel’s biggest problem. The Post lauded Israel’s “exit strategy” from Gaza in 2005. But as Eric Rozenman of CAMERA noted:

… according to the editorial, the success of the Gaza disengagement depends not on Abbas stemming terrorism from the Gaza Strip but on Israel clarifying that it will make “further territorial concessions” regardless of what the Palestinian Arabs do.

If the editors of the Post were truly concerned with peace in the Middle East, they’d be as demanding of the Palestinians as they are of Israel. But of course, the onus falls on Israel, and the “exit strategy” of 2005, has now led to an “entrance strategy” 3 and a half years later.

One of the great untold stories of the “Aqsa intifada” is that Israel defeated it. Yes it was costly. But when Israel defeated Fatah, in Operation Defensive shield, it greatly reduced terror attacks. As I’ve noted previously:

What did work? The military solution as Moshe Arens recalled last week:

But once the Israel Defense Forces and the security services began to seriously tackle Palestinian terror, following the massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya in the spring of 2002, it quickly became clear that terror could be defeated by force. As a matter of fact, it could be defeated only by the use of force. The terrorists view any hints of Israeli willingness to give in to a portion of their essentially limitless demands as a sign of weakness, which only serves to encourage further acts of terror.

Noah Pollak, who linked to Arens, observed:

The extent to which Israel’s military victory in the intifada is simply not acceptable for discussion in enlightened quarters is amazing as a matter of cultural psychology. But this refusal also has a crippling effect on Israeli politics, as the military option against Hamas is continuously framed as a foreordained failure.

Operation Defensive Shield, did roll back the terror capabilities of Hamas and Fatah. It also was very costly in terms of lives. But that doesn’t mean that it was a failure; the actions that necessitated Defensive Shield were the problem.

The Post certainly isn’t concerned with Israeli casualties or exit strategies, it is caught up in its own myopia about the ineffectiveness of military operations when launched by Israel, so it presumes military operations – even carefully considered ones – will never work and then comes up with a few boilerplate terms to justify its objections.

While the fighting lasts — and Israeli officials were warning yesterday that it could be prolonged — Hamas’s principal sponsor, Iran, will have achieved a tactical success. Israeli diplomats have been working feverishly in recent weeks to focus international attention on the Iranian nuclear program as the Obama administration prepares to take office. They’ve been warning that the new U.S. president will have to act quickly if an Iranian bomb is to be stopped. Now, for weeks or possibly months to come, all eyes will be on Gaza — on the fighting, the continued suffering of civilians and the need for a fresh settlement. Israel might have avoided this fight, and gained a diplomatic advantage of its own, by relaxing the economic blockade. Now it will be embroiled in a costly battle that, in the end, is a distraction from the most serious threat it faces.

The illogic of this final paragraph is astounding. First of all, just because Israel faces a threat from Iran, doesn’t mean that the threat from Gaza doesn’t exist. Second of all, Israel’s failure to destroy Hezbollah in 2006 strengthened Iran’s hand in the region and emboldened Hamas to imitate Hezbollah’s success. Hamas’s efforts to build its terrorist infrastructure were copied from Hezbollah.There’s no need for a “fresh settlement” unless one believes – as apparently the editors of the Washington Post do – that terrorists who threaten innocents ought not to be defeated but given an “exit strategy.”

Worse, the Post’s editors claim that there’s an “either … or” here that will allow Iran to escape scrutiny for its atomic program. Maybe the Post could devote more resources to determining how close Iran is to developing an atomic weapons and fewer towards finding fault with Israel’s efforts to defend its citizenry. In other words, the Post has the power to scrutinize on Iran’s mischief, but since that would require some real reporting instead of simply finding critics of the Bush administration. It takes a special level of chutzpah for the Post to blame Israel for diverting attention from the Iranian threat, when its own reporting on the threat has been incredibly superficial.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.