The people of Gaza support Hamas in its war against Israel because they perceive it to be part of their war of independence. … Israelis, both left and right, are wrong to assume that Hamas is a dictatorship fighting Israel against its people’s will. Hamas is indeed a dictatorship, and there are many Palestinians who would gladly see it fall, but not at this moment in time. Right now I have no doubt that most Palestinians support the attacks on IDF soldiers entering Gaza; they support kidnapping as means to release their prisoners (whom they see as prisoners of war) and the unpleasant fact is that most of them, I believe, support firing rockets at Israel.

“If we had planes and tanks to fight the IDF, we wouldn’t need to fire rockets,” is a sentence I have heard more than once. As an Israeli, it is unpleasant for me to hear, but one needs to at least try and understand what lies behind such a position. What is certain is that bombing Gaza will not change their minds. On the contrary.

Meanwhile, Francesca Albanese wonders why the Hamas 10-year peace proposal has been greeted with deafening international silence. And Jamelle Bouie demolishes Thane Rosenbaum’s WSJ op-ed, which rehashes the argument that Gazan civilians are legitimate targets because they voted for Hamas and harbor militants in their homes and neighborhoods:

For comparison’s sake, here’s Osama Bin Laden attempt to justify the Sept. 11 attacks:

[T]he American people are the ones who choose their government by way of their own free will; a choice which stems from their agreement to its policies. Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinians. The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if they want.

For both Rosenbaum and Bin Laden, the situation is straightforward: Because a majority of Gazans/Americans voted for leaders who used violence or waged war against Israelis/Muslims, both have forfeited their claim to noncombatant status. After all, if they wanted to avoid conflict, they wouldn’t have elected those people in the first place. If you recoil from this logic, your head is in the right place.

(Photo: People frantically attempted to to pick up the dead and the wounded in the blood strewn area while plumes of smoke from the recent Israeli shelling lingered in the air on July 20. By Mahmood Bassam/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.)