Deja vu

That Israel has succeeded in neutralising much of Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s (PIJ’s) leadership in the Gaza Strip is good news. But what has changed?

Gaza is still ruled by the brutal Hamas, a totalitarian genocidal terrorist organisation with close links to Iran. PIJ, meanwhile, operates effectively as an Iranian proxy. The two groups, who coordinate with each other, are both sworn to Israel’s destruction and its replacement with a fundamentalist Islamist state between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea.

New PIJ leaders will step into the shoes of those who have been eliminated. Hamas has sat out the last two rounds of cross-border skirmishes but is merely biding its time. The next flare-up of rockets and/or Israeli strikes to curtail them is a matter of if, not when.

Every rocket launched from Gaza is a double war crime, targeted at Israeli civilians and launched from heavily populated urban areas in the coastal strip.

We stand staunchly with Israel in its right to defend itself against these projectiles of death, which killed 80-year-old Inga Avramyan last Friday as she was helping her disabled husband to their bomb shelter in their Rehovot apartment.

We of course also mourn the innocent casualties in Gaza, who did not choose to be ruled by terrorists, to live next door to them, or be fathered by them.

Peace will be elusive as long as the hate propagated by those who incite and carry out violence against the Jewish State continues.

Those who call for “both sides to exercise restraint” – even if well-meaning – entirely miss the point. There is no chance of Hamas or PIJ abandoning their raisons d’etre, shared with their enabler and funder Iran, which is the destruction of the State of Israel.

Israel has a responsibility – as any sovereign nation does – to protect its citizens.

That some public commentators and sections of the media continue to paint the actions it undertakes to do so as somehow tit-for-tat while ignoring the bigger picture only emboldens Hamas, PIJ and Iran in their quest of elimination.

And those who pipe up at times like this to falsely accuse Israel of every crime under the sun are openly sprouting these evil actors’ propaganda.