Generating outrage with Hamas victim offensive

Joel Mowbray:

The international outrage machine is ginned up again, and all but seven members of the U.N. General Assembly recently voted to condemn Israel for its military incursion into Gaza. The buzzword — recycled from Israel's summer war with Hezbollah — is "overreaction."
To what is Israel "overreacting?" Hamas, using the tactic that Hezbollah licensed from it this summer, is indiscriminately launching rockets into civilian areas, hoping to kill as many innocents as possible.
Israel's current military action is far from an overreaction. It is, in fact, a delayed reaction. Rockets have been raining down in southern Israel for years now, and only this summer did the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) finally execute a sustained response.
For more than five years, the residents of Sderot, a small development town of 26,000 in the Negev desert near the Gaza border, have been subjected to a constant barrage of Qassam rockets fired by Hamas, or the democratically elected government of the Palestinians. More than 3,000 rockets have hit Sderot and the roughly 45 smaller communities in the area.
Though former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his successor, Ehud Olmert, both had promised a strong response to attacks against civilians launched from Gaza, Hamas had suffered little more than the occasional military strike against its terrorists following a particularly "successful" Qassam strike. (One such response came after a Qassam exploded meters from the personal residence of Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz, who lives in Sderot.)
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To appreciate just how much a daily fact of life Qassams have become, Sderot's school playground has four above-ground, concrete bomb shelters. The rectangular tunnels sit on each corner of the relatively small playground. So many are needed so close together because there is typically just 10-15 seconds warning, if any, before a Qassam hits.
Qassams have hit all around the school. Remnants of several rockets can be seen in the street in front of it. Shrapnel is lodged in the sidewalk railing meters from the playground. Shrapnel is even on the playground itself.
Not surprisingly, the residents of Sderot are both bitter and angry. Even with the recent military actions, they feel forgotten. Actually, they have been forgotten.
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The misplaced outrage here is aimed at the wrong "victim." The Palestinians are in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions with their attacks aimed deliberately at civilians in Israel and the response to it has been to target those firing the rockets. When an artillery attack on those responsible for the attack accidentally hits some place other than the target, that is a part of the friction of warfare. The Palestinian "victims" of that attack are in reality victims of the unlawful combat tactics of those firing the rockets. Those who think that the Gevea Conventions are important have an obligation to condemn the Palestinian rocket attacks and not the Israeli response to it. If they do not they are demonstrating their hypocrisy.