Hamas Attack Illustrates the Difference Between Resistance and Terrorism

My formal foreign policy experience is best described as “scant”. As a state legislator, I mostly just voted on creating sister cities around the world. (Emmaus will never forget you Ulan Bator!).

With that caveat stated, I have long been a student of the situation in the Middle East. I have been to both Israel and the Palestinian Territories numerous times and met with policy-makers there. On the neophyte-to-expert continuum I am a bit north of center. So knowing that, you can give whatever weight to what I say you feel to be appropriate.

Obviously, yesterday’s attack on Israel by Hamas didn’t occur in a vacuum, and, like all world events, there is historical context to be considered. My purpose is not to opine on said historical context. That is the subject of a separate, much longer and less readable column to come.

Whatever your view of the relative merits of each side’s position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there can be absolutely no denying the horrific inhumanity of Hamas incursion.

Without getting into overly blood-curdling detail, suffice it to say that men, women, children, the elderly, were brutally and indiscriminately murdered in the hundreds, perhaps thousands. Still more untold hundreds were kidnapped to be taken across the…