Self-defense for everyone but Israel - by Jonathan S. Tobin

Israel’s critics talk of a “cycle of violence” in which the Jewish state is blamed for military escalations. But the problem is Palestinian politics and Iran, not Netanyahu.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
13 November '19..

When Israeli forces launched a surprise attack against a senior commander of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza, four likely reactions were expected to ensure.

One was that the terror group would respond to the taking down of this known killer by shooting rockets at Israel in retaliation. The second was that Hamas, the terror group that governs Gaza as an Islamist tyranny and that is responsible for maintaining the ceasefire with Israel, would soon join Islamic Jihad in war crimes by firing randomly at Israeli civilian targets. The third was that much of the world would blame Israel for its initiating another “cycle of violence” in which the Jewish state would be judged as equally if not more culpable as the terrorists. The fourth inevitable action was that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli and American critics would accuse him of ordering the operation in order to advance his political interests.

Within 24 hours of the death of PIJ’s Baha Abu al-Ata—a man whom Israel’s security services rightly described as a “ticking time bomb”—that is exactly what happened.

Palestinian terror groups fired hundreds of rockets at Israel. Air-raid warnings were sounded throughout southern Israel, causing tens of thousands of Israelis to scramble for bomb shelters. Schools were closed throughout the southern and central parts of the country.

Although its apologists like to describe Hamas as a reasonable player with which Israel should negotiate, its participation in the revenge attacks for Abu al-Ata was a given. That’s because the dynamic of Palestinian politics is such that it always rewards violence. Though it is still committed to Israel’s destruction, Hamas has largely observed the ceasefire that has maintained a relative quiet along the Gaza border in recent months, mainly because it’s worried about keeping the peace internally as the Gazan economy has faltered. Its leaders were probably happy that Israel had eliminated one of their rivals, whose activities posed a threat to Hamas rule. But it cannot not afford to stay out of the fighting for long, lest it be perceived as supporting peace as opposed to endless war against the Jews.

That’s why the calls for “mutual restraint” that are always being sounded by critics of Israel are so disingenuous, as well as undermine hope for peace.

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