Nature abhors a vacuum, the adage goes. And in our increasingly dangerous and violent world, it is too often depraved, vicious men and sadist regimes that fill power vacuums.
Since U.S. foreign policy under President Barack Obama has been nothing more than a years-long blunderfest, and has facilitated instability worldwide, the danger to Israel has increased. While Iran proceeds with impunity in its development of nuclear weapons, the Persian menace is also sponsoring terrorist proxies who smuggle missiles into the Gaza strip and spend their days plotting how to bring terrorist mayhem to Israel. And next-door neighbor Palestinians, who have vowed to wipe Israel from the face of the earth, are also causing trouble.
The latest flare-up between the Israelis and Palestinians started with the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teens by Palestinians in early June, which was followed by the apparent revenge killing of a Palestinian teen by several Israeli teenagers. The Israeli army's efforts to rescue the teens and find their kidnappers led to the predictable indignant reaction from the Palestinians, and things escalated quickly.
Hamas, the duly elected government of Gaza, foolishly decided to start lobbing missiles into Israel, targeting civilian areas. But Israel's "Iron Dome" missile defense system has deflected most of them, and Israel rightfully hit back hard with bombs, missiles and a ground invasion.
Israel has taken it upon itself to clean out the terrorist lairs in the Gaza strip, including an extensive network of tunnels through which Hamas hopes to smuggle weapons, ammunition and suicide bombers.
Regrettably, hundreds of civilian deaths have resulted because, as K.N. McBride noted, Hamas has no compunction about storing missiles, weapons and ammunition inside mosques, schools, hospitals and homes. Human shields are par-for-the-course for the cruel and merciless monsters of Hamas. They don't mind at all if they sacrifice their fellow citizens to score propaganda points. It certainly works with the corrupt American media. ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times, Washington Post and other denizens of the left are practically on auto-pilot with their formulaic coverage of the Palestinian carnage.
The Israelis, on the other hand, even attempt to warn Palestinian civilians in advance of attacks on their neighborhoods. They are killing Palestinian citizens because that's what they need to do to degrade Hamas' military capabilities. At times, the only way to win a war is to kill many, many innocents. (See Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)
Has anyone even considered the galling double-standard: The American media largely ignores far greater carnage occurring daily among Muslims (invariably slaughtered by other Muslims) in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and various African nations including Libya. But when it's Jews killing Palestinians because the Jews are trying to stamp out the tools that would allow Hamas to put its genocidal ideology into action, the press goes ballistic.
This is a similar paradigm to the demagoguery regarding race relations in the United States. When black gang bangers and drug dealers kill each other or murder innocent blacks (routine in many of our inner cities), charlatans like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton don't bat an eyelash. But let there be one example of a white killing a black (George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, for example), and these two race-hustling pimps are all over TV stirring the pot.
Although nations like Saudi Arabia and Egypt aren't exactly trumpeting it from the rooftops, they are actually pleased with Israel's decision to play hardball with Hamas. The Saudis, despite their support of madrasas and extremist Wahhabism, apparently think getting in bed with the devil they know will help them in an inevitable upcoming battle with an even worse devil: Shia Iran, which is close to having nuclear weapons that would menace the kingdom and other Sunni nations.
Meanwhile in Egypt, the military government is leery of Hamas because Hamas is closely allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, which ruled Egypt briefly before being deposed in 2013 after about one year of rule.
One thing is crystal clear (to all, it seems, except for Barack Obama): The United States can try all it wants to fade from the world stage, letting laissez faire diplomacy take its course. But when it does, others will fill the void, for better or for worse. Israel will no doubt fit into the former category. More power to them!
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