Is Hamas Stupid or Just Very Clever?

When Israel was in its infancy the Arab nations were stunned when the Israelis actually fought back. For thousands of years the Jews, having no means to fight back, were victims and this situation was taken advantage of by all types of tyrants. However, Jewish resistance grew out of the Holocaust and matured during the Israeli fight for independence. Always willing to learn the hard way, Arabs ignored these signals and when they attacked, first small outposts and then the new country itself, their noses were bloodied and territory was lost.

So, when Hamas decides to not renew the truce (if you can call it that) with Israel and then begins firing Kassam rockets at southern Israel didn't they realize what was going to happen? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps Hamas is so clueless that it just didn't enter into their heads that Israel would hit back, and hard. Or, perhaps Hamas was baiting the Israelis. Hamas's power is derived from its militancy; with no war to fight they have no purpose. In this way they are similar to the Irish Republican Army (and, perhaps its Protestant equivalent) since all the IRA knew was how to fight (until Sinn Fein came to life). Yesterday evening, during an interview on NPR, the spokesman for the leader of Hamas blamed "Israeli collaborators" for launching the rockets under the theory that Israel was just looking for a reason to hammer Gaza and so arranged for a few pro-Israeli Palestinians to take on this task. In a round about way this is a tacit admission that maybe, just maybe, Hamas screwed this up.

As hard as this is to suggest, maybe the Israelis should have just ignored the Kassam rockets and just laughed at the Hamas leadership. Or maybe, they could just throw a bunch of shoes across the border.

As someone once said about the Palestinians, "they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."