Spare me the tears

With Israel making incursions into Palestine, we’re already getting the obligatory stories about the Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire:

With mourners chanting calls for vengeance, the funeral procession wound its way through dusty streets on Sunday, bearing the shrouded bodies of a Palestinian mother and her two children.

Civilians are increasingly at risk in Israel’s nearly 2-week-old military offensive in the Gaza Strip, which in recent days has encompassed the use of heavy battlefield weapons such as tanks, assault helicopters and artillery on the edges of densely populated neighborhoods.

Most of the more than 50 Palestinians killed to date in the incursion have been militants, who have rushed to confront Israeli troops.

But civilians account for a growing proportion of those injured in the close-quarters fighting, according to Palestinian medical officials.

Israel launched its offensive after Palestinian militants seized a 19-year-old Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid on June 25. A dual aim of the military operation has been to rescue the soldier and halt rocket fire by Palestinian militants at Israeli cities and towns.

Many Palestinians believe that if the incursion grinds on for days or weeks, and if Israel pushes deeper into the crowded territory after largely confining itself to the fringes of cities and towns, the fate that befell the Hajaj family will become more common.

In no particular order, let me do a short list detailing why I’m not as sorry as I should be for those civilians caught in the crossfire:

1.  70% of those adult civilians voted for Hamas.  Hamas was not secretive about its goal of open warfare that it hoped would lead to the annilation of the Jewish population and the destruction of Israel.  These “innocent” civilians wanted war when they voted for Hamas and, by God, they got it.  Indeed, even now, while they’re feeding pity stories to the credulous Western press, they’re still wholeheartedly supporting Hamas policies.
2.  These are the same people who dance in the streets and celebrate every time Israeli civilians are blown up.  It’s not a good way to earn my pity when they face the same fate.  I’ll also note that, while these people target civilians, the Israeli army goes out of its way to avoid targeting civilians.
3.  Normally, I’d feel bad for the children.  However, these children are not normal children.  Instead, by the time they’re 9 or 10, they’ve been indoctrinated in the evil that is their society — and they actively court death.  Given this last fact, while I can feel anger at the adults who destroyed the children’s sense of humanity and self-preservation, I can’t feel distraught when these murderous little cyborgs are among those caught in the cross-fire.  What I really want is a total Israeli victory, akin to the Allies’ destruction of Nazi Germany, that allows the next generation of children to be raised without this blighting ideology.