The entry of Israeli ground forces last night into Gaza came a full week after Israeli planes destroyed some of the most important strategic installations of the Hamas regime.A week, it needs to be pointed out, in which Israeli forces gradually assembled on the edges of Gaza where it meets southern Israel. A massive, step-by-step build-up of forces. Thousands (we're guessing - this is not 'inside' information) of Israeli service personnel, vast quantities of heavy equipment, the heavy and slow-moving paraphernalia of war.
What exactly did Hamas do during that week?
They don't lack for fighters or equipment. Their strength is formidable. As terrorist organizations go, they have strong, wealthy and dedicated backers, and the terrifying volleys of missiles that were fired into the skies of Israel - missiles that did not grow on the date palms of the Gaza Strip - are evidence of the resources at their disposal.
For a week, they had the Zionist enemy within firing range, just across their back fence. Sitting ducks.
And for a week, all of last week, Hamas did not (as far as we can tell from published reports) fire even a single shot in anger at the assembling masses of Israeli ordnance and fighters a mere stone's throw from their emplacements and towns.
Why not? Because they had far more important targets: the homes and schools and kindergartens and residential suburbs and city centers of Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beer Sheva, Kiryat Gat and of course Sderot.
Not just single shots. Not just a missile or two. Entire barrages, dozens of them at a time, at any target in southern Israel they could reach. They didn't discriminate. They didn't care and never do. But shooting at their enemy's soldiers and bases and military equipment - that somehow did not figure in their script.
The Hamas goal then, and for the past eight years of this ongoing war, was the goal that unites practitioners of terror wherever they operate: find the women and children in playgrounds and crosswalks and cafes and restaurants; seek out the elderly quivering in their living rooms and bus shelters. Shoot and bomb the weak and the defenceless. Those are the quality targets. Those are the true objectives. This is what jihad has come to mean for the fanatics who confront and threaten civil society in every part of the world, and who stole the beautiful life of our daughter.
This is why the Hamas jihadists are terrorist thugs. It's why they must be stopped.
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