A fake targeted headline in the Los Angeles Times this morning reads “Deaths mount as Israeli jets respond to Gaza rockets”
This makes it sound as if the Israelis have responded to Hamas rockets when they started and continued their blitz of Gaza. That is the type of headline that dominates in almost all U.S. newspapers. It is false and possibly deliberately designed to give the impression that this war started from Gaza (not that Hamas would not start a war if it could guarantee the results). This war started with Mr. Netanyahu claiming he was responding to the still-unsolved killings of three young Israeli settlers near Hebron. He blamed Hamas but has shown no evidence, since it is Israel and the PLO that control the West Bank. This war was allegedly a response to punish Hamas for those killings, allegedly.
In reality this new Gaza battle seems to have two goals: (1) To kill the doomed new accord between Hamas and the PA/PLO. That was not necessary, since I have assumed that this accord was DOA (Dead On Arrival) from the beginning, like others before it; (2) To drastically reduce the missile supplies of Hamas, based on the assumption that they are mostly imported.
Interesting but not surprising that like the previous Gaza war and the war on part of Lebanon (2006), the Arab establishment from Cairo to Riyadh is pretending reluctant outrage, but the potentates are “relaxing and enjoying the experience”. Not-so-secretly cheering this blitz as they did the others before it, hoping that Mr. Netanyahu will do “the job” for them in Gaza. His military has been consistent in Lebanon: it has always failed in Lebanon even as it easily crushed all regular Arab armies. In Gaza he probably will achieve at least one of the goals I mentioned, but it is unlikely that he will achieve the goals of the Arab potentates ruling Cairo and Riyadh and a few other places.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum