More on the Gaza border violence - aka the "Return March" - from Eli Lake. Casualties Are No Accident for Hamas:
Leave it to Hamas to make nonviolence violent.
This is what happened over the weekend as thousands of Gazans swarmed the Israeli border crossing on what they called a "march of return." It's not just that the Israeli Defense Force claims to have video showing peaceful marchers interspersed with militants wielding Molotov cocktails and burning tires. The organizers of this civil disobedience, Hamas, are themselves devoted to bloodshed.
As the Qassem Brigades helpfully announced on Sunday, five of the 16 marchers killed during the march were members of this Hamas militia -- which shares a name with the short-range rockets its members launch at Israeli towns and cities. You may remember them. In 2014, their kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenagers sparked the last major war between Israel and Hamas....
For this group, any Palestinian casualties in the march were a feature and not a bug. Like its tactics in previous Gaza wars, where it launched rockets from apartment buildings and schools, Hamas seeks Palestinian casualties to earn legitimacy for its armed struggle....
Hamas is not the only culprit. Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority also share blame. But it is Hamas that has turned Gaza into a military staging area at the expense of the population. It is Hamas that kidnaps soldiers and civilians. It's Hamas that builds tunnels to infiltrate commandos into Israel to kill Jewish civilians. It's Hamas that venerates teenagers who killed themselves to bomb markets and restaurants.
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