Among the defenders of Israel’s incursion into Gaza, which began with shelling the area last week, you are sure to hear Hamas described as cowards. They are firing rockets into towns in southern Israel from within the tightly packed Palestinian enclave (home to 1.5 million people) and hiding behind the skirts of their women, they will say.  The Israeli army, sensitive to its nation’s image abroad as hospitals in Gaza fill up with wounded civilians, issued a statement reminding the world that “the Hamas terrorist organization operates among civilians, using them as human shields.”

No doubt. Just as Hezbollah did during the ’06 Israel-Lebanon war, Hamas is clearly hoping that Israel would not be so indiscriminate in its retaliation for the ongoing rocket strikes when women and children were at risk. (Whoops!) The imagery is meant to invoke the bad guy at the end of a million movies and TV shows who uses a woman or a child as a hostage. “One move and the kid gets it!”

Except in those dramas the good guy stands down; he does not blast away, making a pink mist of the innocent bystanders. Of the 500 reported Palestinian deaths to date, over 100 have been civilians, and of the thousands injured the collateral damage is even greater. Amputations are rampant as families searching for loved ones are also left to search through the rubble for missing limbs. 

Nothing about the nation of Israel — not its special status as US friend, not its history, not the Holocaust — allows them to react as disproportionately as they are now. Before the assault began last week the rocket fire had yielded no casualties. Now Israeli soldiers have begun to fall (only one casualty as of this posting) and more surely will. But the killing won’t stop there. As a Hamas leader promised,  “The Zionists have legitimized the killing of their children by killing our children. They have legitimized the killing of their people all over the world by killing our people.”

Bring out your dead.