Way to Go, Bibi, You Malignant Jerk

 Hamas has just engaged in an act of such subhuman brutality that it should have established in everybody's mind the understanding that they are nothing but a monstrous criminal gang which has reduced their own people to poverty and hopelessness to sate their own greed, and has always intended to do the same to the Israelis.  There should have never, from this point on, been a question in the eyes of the world, about who the good guys are.  But instead, Netanyahu seems determined to squander that long awaited awakening in a tantrum of violence as destructive of innocent lives as Hamas leaders could have ever dreamed of.

Because, let's be clear here.  Netanyahu can level every single building in Gaza, but he is utterly impotent to stop the absentee Hamas leaders, and their backers in Iran and throughout the Arab world, from continuing to sate their hunger to destroy Israel.  And in the meantime, Netanyahu has gifted them with a thousand images like this one, to bolster their argument that the Israelis are as degraded as they are, images which will survive long after the memory of Hamas butchery has faded away:

And sure, Hamas has spent decades interweaving its military apparatus so thoroughly into its civilian infrastructure (a war crime in itself) that no attack on Hamas' military can happen without widespread civilian destruction.  But the fact of that destruction remains, and these images will always exist.

And this is because Netanyahu has no answer.  In fact, seventy years of struggle against the evils of mindless Islamist expansionism have pretty come up with no answer ever.  Playing the nice guy hasn't worked, retribution hasn't worked, even such a non-aggressive act as bulding a wall around Israel's border is treated like a war crime, despite taking place in the face of hideous butchery like we have just seen.  Well, I certainly don't have an answer either, but then I am nothing but some random guy online, not a man who has ascended to lead his country multiple times, through the absolute promise that he did have the answer.  So here we are, and it turns out that the only "answer" Bibi has to offer is a ruinous rampage that we all know will only end up making things worse.  

Because, the world is (to use a Lovecraftian turn) not yet prepared to accept the fact of Islamist expansionism, the intent of a very large part of the Islamic world to violently force its religion on the entire world- something which has existed since the time of the prophet, who himself led armies to force the conversion of non-Muslims.  A couple of years ago, I showed the following map:

It features the Muslim world in green.  The little symbols represent the major conflict zones in the world at that time.  One or two might have changed, but the significance of this map remains.  Of the 27 conflict zones shown, 20 of them, or virtually three quarters, were areas where Muslims were warring with others, or with themselves (Sunni versus Shiite) to violently establish religious domination.  And none of these conflicts enflames Muslim hatred like that to eradicate the one tiny successful non-Muslim country, right in the center of their whole world, which is an insult to their sense of manhood.  Because let us be clear, that is what this is about.  They can carry out the hateful war in Nigeria, or India or Somalia or in many more places, but only here, in their inability to destroy Israel, do they feel reduced to impotence, generating a rage which is as old as mankind, and certainly will not easily end with this struggle.

Well, as is obvious, Netanyahu has no answer to that, so he is giving in to a rage that bids fair to match the insanity of Hamas itself.  Netanyahu does not have the answer, and the "answers" he does have are born in such infantile stupidity that they can never do anything but make things worse.  It is long past time for him to go.  No, in fact, he should have never been able to have baited and lied and smeared his way into the leadership of Israel, but then we in the United States can hardly be surprised at the success of a lying, vicous, sociopathic leader who came to power through appeals to the worst in his people.  But the price for Israel has grown far too great.  It bids fair to strip Israelis not just of their safety but of their decency.  Israel needs adults in charge now, and we can only hope that can happen soon, because under Netanyahu things will only get worse.