The latest offensive between Israel and Hamas may only just have begun. But already a set of the usual lies have entered the British coverage. Let me pose a few questions to the people who are propagating them.
1) Why are Hamas firing into undisputed Israeli territory?
The territory that Hamas are firing rockets into is not disputed territory. They are firing into Israel proper – that is, into land which absolutely everyone except for Israel’s annihilationist enemies recognises is the land of Israel.
Is this Hamas’s way of calling for a two-state solution? Is it their way of trying to persuade Israel to sit down with Hamas’s enemies in the PA? Of course not. The reason Hamas are firing into the heart of Israeli territory is because they do not believe that there is any such thing as Israel. They do not accept that it is there. They do not believe it should be there. They want to do everything they can to ensure that it is not there. The reason Hamas are firing into the heart of Israel is because they do not believe that Israel should exist anywhere at all. Hamas are not quibbling over the 1967 borders, or the Oslo parameters. They are showing that they do not accept the 1948 borders. Hamas do not accept Israel. They say so and, by actions like these, they demonstrate it.
2) What is a proportionate response to Hamas aggression?
Already some people have focussed on the issue of ‘proportionality’. Now that three Israelis have been killed by a Hamas rocket fired towards Tel Aviv these people are presumably a lot more content.
In its most popular version the recently invented concept of ‘proportionality’ seems to assume that there is an obviously acceptable manner in which to respond to Hamas attacks, but that this is not it.
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