Palestinian animals have fired five Kassam rockets on Monday, most landing near or in a child’s day care center, populated with little children. Imagine the outrage if Israel had fired a rocket that exploded near a Muslim day care center. Get my analogy? If you’re an arabist, you probably didn’t. From Waiting for Babies to Die Is No Strategy:
Imagine if, God forbid, 12 children had been killed Monday in the rocket attack on a Sderot kindergarten instead of “just” being sent to Ashkelon’s Barzilai Hospital and treated for shock. Former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit, now chairman of the Institute of Counter Terrorism at IDC Herzliya, said, “Our strategy should be one of offense, not defense….When we were hitting their political leadership, military leadership, and weapons experts, Hamas looked for a cease-fire. The answer is not to send in divisions and occupy Gaza again, but to attack the terror leaders and the infrastructure in a smart, sustained manner. We need to change the equation from one of ‘they fire at us and we respond,’ to ‘we attack them and they go into defensive mode.'” The real solution to the problem of rocket attacks, according to Shavit, must be a “war to the end” on the terror leadership and infrastructure in Gaza.