Gaza was battle in bigger war

Cliff May:

What took place in Gaza and Israel over the past three weeks was not a war—it was one battle in a war. Or, to be more precise, it was one battle in what the soldier/scholar John Nagl has described as a “global insurgency” aimed at overthrowing the existing order, what we used to call—in a more confident era—the Free World.

“Yes, Allah is greater than America.” Hamas supreme leader Khaled Mashaal said on al-Jazeera television a few years ago. “Allah is greater than the superpowers. We say to this West: By Allah you will be defeated.”

Too many people refuse to understand: Hamas is not fighting for a Palestinian state. Hamas is fighting for the annihilation of Israel which it would replace with an Islamic emirate. Not the same thing at all.

Hamas takes inspiration, funding, and instructions from the ruling mullahs of Iran, heirs to the Iranian Revolution that erupted 30 years ago next month when the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in France and established his theocratic regime. In the years since, Syria has become Iran’s client; Hezbollah, based in Lebanon but with terrorist branches as far flung as South America, its proxy.

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Sometimes the focus on the battle itself loses track of the big picture that May captures here. What remains incomprehensible is the belief of many that something can be accomplished by negotiating with a nihilist death cult. The religious bigotry of the enemy cannot be negotiated away. Why do they hate us? Because we will not accept their weird religious beliefs.