22-Sep-10: Doing what comes naturally

Bibi Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, paid a visit yesterday (Tuesday) to the southern Israeli cities of Ashkelon and Sderot, doing what comes naturally. Pressing the flesh, eyeballing the locals, he said what you need politicians to say when there's trouble with the neighbours: "I advise Hamas and other organizations not to test our resolve to react with fire... Our commitment is first and foremost to security... We responded to recent shooting by hitting Hamas targets, including a senior Hamas official. We will continue with this policy... Rocket fire warrants an immediate response, and this has reduced the fire. "
 
In a time-honoured custom and doing what comes naturally, the local leadership handed him a memento of the visit - a small collection of missile parts that were recovered from some of the many rockets fired in past months in their general direction. 

Some hours after the prime ministerial visit, yet another in the appallingly lengthy list of Gazan Qassam rockets (almost never reported anywhere other than in Israeli news media channels) exploded in the vicinity. Turns out this Qassam rocket, like a significant number before it, landed on the Gazan-Palestinian side of the border fence that keeps the Gazan jihadists away from civilization. No one really knows whether the own-goal caused casualties among Gaza's Palestinian Arab communities because - invariably - there are no media reporters around when its Arab-on-Arab violence. The reasons why this is so are plain, depressing and usually misunderstood. 

Terrorists, doing what comes naturally, don't give a damn whether their victims are military, civilians or their own neighbours. This is true here, there and everywhere. In this ongoing war waged by the terrorists, there is no such thing as an innocent bystander. It's the bystanders, no matter who they happen to be or where, who are the target, always.

It's simply not possible to defeat the terrorists without internalizing this truth.