The defeat of Hamas is a humanitarian cause

There’s very little to add on the situation in Gaza that hasn’t already been said by James and Daniel, both today and yesterday. Although I would like to remind CoffeeHousers of the post I wrote earlier this year from the Israeli town of Sderot – you can read it here.  For those who haven’t heard the name before, Sderot sits near the Israel-Gaza border and is under frequent rocket attack by Hamas.  Its citizens live under a constant pall of fear and helplessness; something that was brought into sharp focus for me when I witnessed the immediate aftermath of one of Hamas’s random barrages.

Of course, the situation’s horrible inside Gaza too, and its residents are most likely just as fearful.  But it can’t be underestimated how much this is down to Hamas and the fact that their “administration” of the area is geared wholly towards the destruction of Israel.  Rockets are purposefully fired from residential areas, to increase the chances of innocent casualties should Israel retaliate.  And, according to Israeli officials I spoke to, Hamas tears up Gazan infrastructure – its sewers, its drains, its traffic lights – to create even more ways of raining death down on Sderot and other nearby towns.

Hamas are the real aggressors here, but all-too-often it’s the Gazan people under them that pay the price for that aggression.  It’s that sad fact that motivated one Sderoti girl to tell me:

“We’re hostages … we’re trapped in the same situation … and we know that’s true for the people in Gaza as well … we cry when their babies die.”