by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n The world reacts<\/strong><\/p>\n I spent today reading accounts of Gaza \u2014NY Times, AP, Reuters, etc. There are no terrorists, just militants. Not much about past rocket attacks on Israel \u2014 most everything on the crowded conditions of Gaza. Iranian aid is rarely elaborated on; stories about quiet Arab support for defanging Hamas are likewise rare; common is the buzz about protests in Europe. In reaction, I jotted down the following random thoughts.<\/p>\n Gaza as Monte Carlo, perhaps Hong Kong, or is it to be Switzerland of the Mediterranean?<\/strong><\/p>\n Gaza is a sort of lab experiment in the Middle East. Recall for a minute: the Israelis withdrew\u00a0en masse<\/em>, a so-called \u201cretreat\u201d that reverberated all over the Middle East. The West supported free and open elections that gave Hamas their legitimacy, such as it was. Gaza is strategically placed on the Mediterranean with a prime shoreline. It borders Egypt the traditional center of the Arab world. Hundreds of millions of dollars of Middle-East oil money, and Western relief donations have poured into the tiny state. Israeli clearly wants no more of it, and would love to let Gaza alone to be Dubai.<\/p>\n The result?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Hamas with its serial rocket attacks on Israel interprets all of the above not as an opportunity for prosperity, but as a stage one for the great accomplishment of its generation \u2014 the absolute destruction of the Jewish state. Its agenda is clear and unambiguous, and apparently shared by millions of elites in the West itself, without whose support Hamas could not exist. The common theme of Western press coverage is the misery of Gaza, never the misery of Gaza as a product of the garrison-state mentality of Hamas\u2019s radical Islamic vows to wage perennial war against Israel.<\/p>\n The enablers<\/strong><\/p>\n Hamas counts on the fact that its own losses will be characterized as a \u201cholocaust\u201d and appear comparable in the Western media to something like Darfur or the slaughtering in Zimbabwe, or the usual carnage that we wake up to on the news. Take away Western press attention from Gaza, and Hamas is just another violent, illiberal regime that impoverishes its own people while seeking victim status in the West.<\/p>\n Is that too harsh? I don\u2019t think so. Again, if it were to call a one-year truce with Israel, seek normal relations with Egypt, and swear off Iranian-Hezbollah terrorist aid while it sought to rebuild infrastructure, ensure security, and recruit foreign capital, then there would be no more world attention, and its cadres of hooded youth would lack the pizzazz of \u201cmilitants.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The world reacts I spent today reading accounts of Gaza \u2014NY Times, AP, Reuters, etc. There are no terrorists, just militants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[725],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-N3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3039,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-gaza-rules\/","url_meta":{"origin":3041,"position":0},"title":"The Gaza Rules","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The Israelis just struck back hard at Hamas in Gaza. In response, the United Nations, the European Union and the Arab world (at least publicly) expressed their anger at the killing of over 300 Palestinians, most of whom were terrorists and Hamas officials.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2009"","block_context":{"text":"January 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/january-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7737,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-stronger-israel\/","url_meta":{"origin":3041,"position":1},"title":"A Stronger Israel?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 5, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Elite opinion believes Israel will lose \u201clong-term\u201d whatever happens in the next weeks. 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But in such a mindless\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via NRO","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/pic_giant_080514_SM_Israel-Flag-500x291.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":184,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/t-ball-war-in-the-middle-east\/","url_meta":{"origin":3041,"position":2},"title":"T-Ball War in the Middle East","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Classical explanations of conventional wars run something like this: An aggressor state seeks political advantage through military force. It has a hunch that the threatened target will likely either make concessions to avoid losing a war, or, if war breaks out, the resulting\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3935,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-options-are-left\/","url_meta":{"origin":3041,"position":3},"title":"What Options Are Left?","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 24, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Arab Nations Show No Sign of Concessions or Desire for Peace. by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The conventional wisdom is that the\u00a0United States\u00a0is so tied down that it can't do much about the rocket attacks on\u00a0Israel\u00a0, the blatant sponsorship of terrorists by\u00a0Iran\u00a0and\u00a0Syria\u00a0, or the Iranian nuclear program. 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