Hamas launches rockets from Rafah at Tel-Aviv

Despite demands from the UN and various countries for Israel to cease fire in Rafah, Hamas terrorists are intent on using the southern Gaza city as a war zone, launching their largest rocket attack in four months – targeted at Tel Aviv – from the security of mosques in the heart of Rafah. The attack on Sunday highlighted the folly of those who believe Israel has any alternative but to destroy Hamas in its last stronghold.

In Australia, the ABC, sounding like apologists for Hamas, described the rocket attacks as “a show of resilience more than seven months into Israel’s massive air, sea and ground offensive”. That so-called “show of resilience’’ was an act of war, aimed at causing mass civilian casualties and devastating Israel’s international airport.

The Jewish state’s ingenious Iron Dome system meant the eight long-range missiles, almost certainly supplied by Iran, were largely neutered. There was little damage and no serious injuries, but Hamas’s determination to force Israel to abandon its assault on Rafah and take the heat off murderous terrorists hiding among civilians and Israeli hostages is clear.

So is the need for the international community, including Australia, to grasp the existential threat Israel and its people face.

There can be no conceivable end to the conflict – and the terrible suffering of Gaza’s civilians – while Hamas remains able to launch potentially devastating onslaughts. Yet in the aftermath of the attack, global focus was not on the terrorist propaganda machine’s claims of a “horrific Zionist massacre”, allegedly of 35 civilians, when Israel launched an assault on Rafah’s Tal al-Sultan civilian encampment, successfully targeting the head of Hamas’s West Bank headquarters, Khaled Najjar, and another senior member of the unit hiding there.

The Biden administration opposed an Israeli invasion of Rafah because it believed Israel had “no credible plan” to evacuate the city’s 1.3 million civilians. But the Israelis proceeded to safely evacuate about 950,000 people. The international community, understandably, wants an end to the conflict. But it needs to be clear-headed about the threat facing Israel from what, in essence, is no different to the Islamic State-style terror the world united to defeat in Iraq and Syria.