Cheerleading for Hamas

Like many of Israel's detractors, Shatz laments the disproportionate casualty ratio in Israel's favor and considers this to be by definition evidence of Israeli aggression. The fact that Israel places a high priority on protecting its citizens and targets terrorists with effective military tools, while Hamas uses its subjects as shields and targets Israeli civilians with less effective capabilities is unimportant to Shatz; only the ratio matters.

Adam Shatz 

Steven Stotsky..
CAMERA Middle East Issues..
21 January '13..

The London Review of Books is nothing if not consistent in its contemptuous attitude towards the Jewish state. A recent article, "Why Israel Didn't Win" (Dec. 6, 2012), by Adam Shatz is illustrative. Ignoring a litany of violent provocations and repeated proclamations by Hamas leaders that "Palestine is ours from the river to the sea," Shatz grasps at the disingenuous figleaf of a "temporary truce" offered by Hamas in order to cast Israel as the villain responsible for last November's intensification of violence. Shatz's argument is shoddy, transparently reversing cause-and-effect. It typifies the diminished quality of analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict coming from The London Review of Books.

A consistent theme running through Shatz's piece is that Israeli leaders are inveterate schemers intent on disrupting any Arab peacemaking attempts. Shatz seems convinced that Israeli leaders like the current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, do not want peace. He imputes a sinister motive to Israel when it assassinated Hamas's expert bombmaker, Yahya Ayyash, and then blames Israel for the Hamas suicide bombings that followed. According to Shatz,

"In 1996, during a period of relative calm, it [Israel] assassinated Hamas's bombmaker Yahya Ayyash, the 'Engineer', leading Hamas to strke back with a wave of suicide attacks in Israeli cities."

Shatz employs a frequently observed tactic of anti-Israel agitators in always pointing to an Israeli action as the starting point of any escalation in violence. In fact, Hamas's suicide bombing campaign was already well underway and the "engineer" Ayyash was targeted precisely because of his expertise in producing bombs to murder Israeli citizens. The implication that Hamas would have restrained itself from further terrorism if Israel had not acted is ridiculous in light of the Islamist organization's implacable commitment to annihilating the Jewish state through force.