For the past week, Israel and Hamas have been engaged in an energetic exchange of ordnance. The catalyst for the current rejuvenation of Hamas’ terror campaign against Israel is unclear but the reason it is happening now and not one or two or three or four years ago is crystal clear. Unhappy at inheriting a quiescent Middle East where Israel and the Arab world are developing economic, security, and diplomatic ties and Iran is so cash-strapped that it is finding it difficult to fund its terrorist operations, the Biden bunch is, in a flashback from the Obama administration, attempting to bolster Iran as the regional superpower while limiting assistance and cooperation with our Arab allies and with Israel. The same sort of big-brain thinking that gave us the Arab Spring, a terrorist state in Libya, ethnic cleansing and genocide in Syria, and made Iraq into a de facto Iranian satrapy is now trying to encourage the Palestinians to engage in a new intifada.
They are conspicuously attacking civilian targets within Israel. Both actions are crimes against the law of armed conflict but they are shooting at Israelis so no one cares.
What has made this conflict less harrowing for Israeli civilians is a missile defense system called “Iron Dome.”
If you were alive during the Reagan era and can remember MIT physics professors yammering on and on about how the Strategic Defense initiative could never work because it required “hitting a bullet with a bullet,” you probably enjoy their repudiation as much as I do. Nearly every day we see video evidence that Iron Dome overmatches Hamas’ rocket inventory, see Israel Moves Armor Towards Gaza as Hundreds of Rockets Are Launched by Hamas — Iron Dome on Display Again and Remarkable Videos of Israel’s “Iron Dome” Stopping Rockets Fired From Gaza — Where Is the Biden Administration?
The success of Iron Dome and the astonishing lack of casualties on both sides should be a cause for hope and celebration among sane people but such folk are in short supply on the pages of the Washington Post. For instance, there is this from the Washington Post’s aptly named “Monkey Cage” section that purports to provide “Analysis:” Israel’s Iron Dome defense system protects Israeli lives. It also perpetuates the Israel-Gaza conflict.
Here’s the ironic outcome: Even as Iron Dome enables devastating Israeli bombardment from the air, it protects Gazan civilians from potentially devastating outcomes of an Israeli ground offensive, which would be the likely alternative. The increasing legal scrutiny of Israel’s wars, from the U.N. investigations that followed the earlier operations and the current attention from the International Criminal Court, gives Israel an interest in diminishing global pressure for military restraint and a political resolution……..…
Iron Dome up to this point has saved Israeli lives from Gaza rocket attacks, while enabling air campaigns against Palestinian citizens. But the reduced pressure to resolve the conflict with Gaza also means Iron Dome gives Israelis a false sense of security, based on technological success — which isn’t guaranteed forever — rather than political solutions.
Consider this for a moment. You have a defensive system that protects Israelis from Hamas terrorism and because it is damned effective, there is no political pressure on the Israeli government to conduct a punitive expedition into the terrorist stronghold of Gaza. This saves the lives of Israeli soldiers and Gazan civilians. Yet, the system is bad because it saves lives, renders Hamas terrorism ineffective, and Israel is not bludgeoned into accepting a victory by the terrorists. This is an incredible admission that the Washington Post stands foursquare with Hamas terrorists and their methods and endorses the idea that the more people killed the better.
