8-Apr-11: Gazan jihadists, in busy morning, declare truce and fire rocket volley into Israeli towns

Terrorism is like conventional war in the way people suffer and die, but different in that the terrorists place themselves entirely outside system of rules. They say X and do not-X. They wear no uniforms, and operate from inside civilian lines. By and large they direct their fire at the enemy's civil lines as the principal target. Fighting them means understanding at least these basic notions. And when their terrorist ideology is an iteration of a theology, be ready for great confusion, ignorance and criticism on the part of onlookers unthreatened (at least for now, and at least in a direct sense) by the terrorism and the fire emanating from their quarters.

This morning, a beautiful Spring Friday morning, the terrorist hordes operating from within the Hamas failed-statelet of Gaza fired off a volley of a dozen mortar shells. These were not directed (and are never directed) at a military or strategic target. The goal, as always with terrorists, was to inflict pain and damage on anything on the enemy's side of the fence. The bombardment from Gaza this morning landed in open areas in the Eshkol region; no injuries are reported, and there is some property and infrastructure damage.

Last night, after a day in which 45 missiles indiscriminately rained onto Israel from various parts of Hamas-controlled Gaza including a vicious anti-tank guided missile attack on an unarmored school bus (as we reported yesterday - a teenage Israeli boy is lying in hospital today critically injured as a result), the Palestinian terror groups collectively notified the news media they were declaring a unilateral ceasefire. Ynet points out that this was evidently in order avoid Israel striking back.

This Hamas strategy is part of an ongoing tactic by which the Palestinian Arabs more-or-less-successfully present themselves to the more gullible branches of the news industry as simple, peace-loving souls residing in the path of a ruthless Jewish neighbourhood bully. Thus in today's crop of headlines, we have such insightful items as "Gaza violence: Hamas declares ceasefire with Israel" from the BBC, and "Israel kills two Hamas militants hours after truce" from AFP. Astonishing really how simple it is for the terrorists to persuade some of the world's most sophisticated editors and reporters of how real their fantasy truces are, as exemplified by this gem from the BBC this (Friday) afternoon:

On a more reality-based plane, a Washington Times backgrounder today describes how Israel’s security agencies are stepping up finely targeted attacks on Hamas‘ leadership wherever they can be located.

The article quotes an Israeli official terming this “intelligence-based prevention.” As examples, in the past two months, Israeli operatives have intercepted a German ship in international waters, fired a missile at a suspected Hamas leader in Sudan, and captured a Hamas engineer in the Ukraine, according to Israeli and Western officials and press reports from the region. Last month, Israeli commandos boarded the Victoria, a German ship carrying Chinese-made land-to-sea rockets from Iran and to Gaza. It quotes an IDF spokesperson:

“We consider Hamas accountable for any rockets fired from Gaza into Israel... We are not looking only for Hamas leaders. If we find a three-man rocket team, they will be targeted whether or not they are leaders. This is to prevent rockets from coming down on Israeli civilians... We are not looking for any escalation. We do have operational plans in our drawers. Hopefully, we won’t have to pull them out, but we will not tolerate these kinds of attacks against Israeli civilians.”

Israel's calculated, rational and lawyer-aided non-stop strategy to blunt the ongoing attacks of the jihadists goes largely unreported and/or unappreciated by the reporters who ply their trade for the brand-name news channels. Which of them, for instance, has given coverage to the several dozen Israeli families whose children were on the school-bus that was hit by a Hamas anti-tank missile yesterday? (Answer: not one.)

It falls to the Jerusalem Post to try to redress the imbalance with a Tovah Lazaroff article today appropriately entitled "A terrible day that could have ended still more tragically". She allows Israeli parents living in Israel's beleagured southern communities to express what so many of us feel: that the fate of a child hung on such small details as how long the bus stood in traffic, or the amount of time it took the children to board. Had yesterday's trip had taken even a little longer, had they stopped along the way, the jihadists would probably have had a jolly time celebrating the outcome, the reporters and editors would have pseudo-solemnly intoned about the inane concept of some illusory 'cycle' of violence and the rest of us might have been asking ourselves for the umpteenth time how far the mindless, religiously-inspired hatred that infects every inch of that jihadist society will take them on their descent into the dark void.