Hamas has declared war on Israel - how should Israel respond?

Article 51 of the United Nations Charter guarantees its members "the inherent right to...individual self defense" against "an armed attack." In January 2006, Hamas was elected to govern the Palestinian Authority. After Israel ended its occupation of Gaza and removed all of its settlers, Hamas threw the Palestinian Authority out of the Gaza and assumed de facto as well as de jure control over the entire Gaza Strip. Its leaders then instructed its military wing to direct rockets at civilian targets in southern Israel. At first these rockets were Kassams with a relatively short range. Now they include Katyushas, which can reach Israel's large cities, including Ashkelon, with its population of 120,000 civilians. Hamas has officially declared that its policy is to develop or smuggle even longer range missiles capable of reaching Israel's largest city Tel Aviv and its lifeblood, Ben Gurion Airport. It has promised to keep aiming its missiles at civilian targets until the Jewish state is finally destroyed.

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The int'l media's silence on targeted killings

Sometimes what the international press does not cover reveals as much about its biases as what it does cover. When Israel was engaged in a campaign of targeted killings against Gaza terrorists during the height of the Palestinian Intifada, the press eagerly reported on every civilian casualty.  Human rights organizations had a field day criticizing Israel for its failure to pinpoint legitimate military targets and the large number of collateral deaths its campaign of targeted killings was producing. In those days, especially in 2002-2003, approximately half of the people killed by Israeli missiles were civilians. The other half were terrorists who were engaged in trying to kill as many civilians as possible.

Sometimes the civilian casualties exceeded the legitimate military killings. The most notorious such case was the targeted killing of Salah Shehadeh, a terrorist commander who was responsible for hundreds of Israeli deaths and who was actively involved in planning hundreds, perhaps thousands, more.  After several failed attempts, a targeted rocket attack managed to kill him and few tears were shed over his well-deserved demise.  But in the process of killing him, his wife and daughter were also killed along with 13 other civilians. This caused an enormous outcry, not only in the international press, but among Israelis as well. Even though Shehadeh's death may well have prevented the deaths of many more Israeli civilians, still the cost in Palestinian civilian casualties was too high for most Israelis to accept and for the international media to tolerate. 

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