No, I have no neighbor named Hamas. But there are a couple of million peaceful Gaza Strip residents who do. This exercise in rational thought is mostly about them.
Let’s suppose that my actual neighbor is seen launching mortar rounds toward City Hall and doing so from his backyard. I may dislike City Hall, but I must know what’s coming. I mean the certainty of retaliation from City Hall. The last thing I want is to be collateral damage when that retaliation comes. Maybe I can run. Running may protect me but not my house.
I know that City Hall will bomb, raze, or bulldoze my neighbor’s house. If it gets the chance, City Hall will execute my neighbor. What I cannot know is how many other homes will fall and how many other neighbors will be in the line of fire when City Hall comes for the mortar launcher.
I may be able to save myself by running, though doing so would most likely sacrifice my house. To save myself, my house, and my neighborhood, I need to kill the mortar launcher. And I need to show City Hall that the mortar launcher is dead.
Before launching the mortar rounds, my neighbor did not ask my advice or solicit my permission. He knew that the entire neighborhood would be within the field of City Hall retaliation. Still, he launched. His hatred of City Hall was so intense that his neighborhood could be unwittingly sacrificed. I must kill my neighbor, and I must tell City Hall.
From time to time I hear the adage that we get the government we deserve. Still, it is hard to imagine that peaceful residents of the Gaza Strip deserve government by Hamas. Will any of them rise up and slay the mortar launcher to save the neighborhood? I think not, in that they hate City Hall almost as much as the mortar launcher hates City Hall.
The City Hall retaliation on Gaza City will be biblical in its scale. No stone will be left upon another. But the mortar launcher is most likely to survive, and the neighborhood is most likely to blame only City Hall for the destruction. Until they rise up against their warmongering neighbor Hamas, Gazans may deserve no better than their sorry fate.
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