Nice shooting (2)

A very good followup to my last Nice Shooting post....

A Hamas operative was killed Tuesday when an IAF aircraft fired a missile at a Hamas post in southern Gaza, officials from the group said....

The latest airstrike came after ten Islamic Jihad operatives were killed overnight Monday and early Tuesday as the IDF stepped up its operations against terrorists in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

...Palestinians also reported that the brigades' Jenin commander, Tarik Abu-Ra'ali, was killed during an exchange of fire with troops in Kabatiya.

Ha'aretz counts 13 terrorists, zero civilians. This is a record that is enviable for any moral army on the planet (excluding, of course, Arab armies whose goal is to kill civilians.)

Ha'aretz' Bradley Burston, hardly a right-winger, comments:

The IDF, it must be said, killed the Islamic Jihad men without shedding the lives of innocent Gazans. One of the men killed, Majed Harazin, has for years been one of the central commanders in the Jerusalem Brigades, the Jihad's armed wing. He and another Jihad commander killed in the Monday night raids were key figures in Qassam production, targeting, and launch against civilian targets and innocent populations. A third Jihad man killed was the wing's commander in the northern West Bank.

They were war criminals. More to the point, they were also soldiers. Soldiers in a war in which they are declared combatants, and in which we, civilian non-combatants, are the declared targets. It was our right to kill them. It was our responsibility.

After the deaths of Harazin, rocket mastermind Karim al-Dahdouh and the others, the Jihad e-mailed reporters, threatening to retaliate with a wave of suicide bombings inside Israel, effectively greatly escalating attacks against Israeli civilians. "The assassination of the general commander will open the door wide to a wave of martyrdom operations," the e-mail read.

In a second announcement, Jihad spokesman Abu Hamza told reporters at a mosque, "The blood of our comrades will be the fuel for the rockets that will bring death and destruction to the Zionists."

That how it is with lies. You can't have it both ways. You can't call yourselves Soldiers for Palestine, lovers of death, cravers of martyrdom, incinerators and dismantlers of Israel and the Zionist enterprise, and, at the same time, profess outrage and anger that we would have the temerity to kill you.

You're soldiers. Grow up.

The New York Times reports that the Islamic Jihad commander's car appeared to be filled with explosives, and the secondary explosion wounded some passers-by.

Time to send the IDF some more congratulatory pizza.