Like any other reasonable and moral person, I would much rather see the various peoples of this Earth walk the Derech HaShalom, the path of peace. Unfortunately I am also aware that to make a lasting peace between people’s requires goodwill along with the willingness to make peace present on both sides of a particular conflict.

In the Middle East, Israel has consistently desired peace and openly stated this desire. Israel has made a great many sacrifices in order to try to make peace with it’s often hostile neighbours. Israel has even tried to make peace with nations that are founded on ideologies that have at their heart the exhortation to ‘kill the Jews’. Over the decades Israel has made offer after offer for peace and has been rebuffed every time. The Gaza strip, effectively disengaged from by Israel in 2005, has not reduced conflict but instead has become a haven for genocidal Islamic terrorists whose rockets have brought great grief and tribulation to the people who live in towns and cities in the South of Israel.

Whole communities in the South live in fear of their homes or their children’s schools being hit by a rocket fired by the Jew-hating Muslim savages of Gaza. At the height of the barrage of rockets, five pieces of Hamas ordnance were falling on towns like Sderot and Ashkelon every day and although there are less of these rockets these days, they are no more deadly. According to some of the reports I’ve seen coming out of Israel at least one man is dead and there are reports of serious injuries following an attack by Hamas on Israel, in retaliation for an anti-terror raid that Israel undertook. 400 rockets were said to have been fired by Hamas and Israel is in the process of retaliating for the Islamic violence.

Those who say that Israel should try to make peace with Hamas are either on the side of the terrorists or are fools. Hamas have consistently shown themselves to be unwilling to make a lasting peace with Israel. For Hamas the conflict is not about land or access to services or economics, it is about their absolute and identifiably Islamic desire to kill Jews,nothing more nothing less. Israel has been remarkably restrained over the last decade and more with the terrorists of Hamas. Israel has used the minimum force necessary and has endeavoured to avoid as many civilian deaths as possible. This restraint has not brought peace, just time for Hamas and the other terrorist entities in Gaza, to regroup and rearm. Until the residents of Gaza repair the Derech HaShalom and actively choose peace over war then this conflict will continue. The blame for any retaliation that Israel makes on the Gaza strip terrorists is not down to Israel, but to those in Gaza who have rejected peace and wish to continue with their obsessive desire to kill Jews. There can be no peace with Hamas.