It's A Family Feud

Once again the Palestinians turn the heat up in Gaza.

GAZA (Reuters) - Israel killed four Palestinian militants and wounded half a dozen others as it pursued air raids in Gaza for a third day on Saturday, responding to increased rocket fire out of the territory, local medics said.

Militants in the Gaza Strip, ruled by the Islamist Hamas, continued striking Israel's south with rockets, wounding five Israelis at around daybreak, according to Israeli media reports.

Israeli forces killed a local Hamas commander in the southern Gaza town of Rafah bordering Egypt, as well as two of his bodyguards, in a targeted strike on a vehicle, medics said. Israel blamed the slain commander for a rocket strike on its port of Eilat launched from Egyptian Sinai some months ago.

Five militants were wounded in a second air raid in northern Gaza. Another air strike at daybreak killed a further militant.

Cross-border violence has surged since Hamas militants fired an anti-tank rocket at an Israeli school bus on Thursday, wounding two people including a teenager, who was listed in critical condition.

[...] Gaza militants have fired over 70 rockets and mortars into Israel since Thursday, damaging a house, police said. Israeli media said half a dozen people have been wounded.

And what's even better is that Hamas doesn't want the West to know what they're doing.

Hamas in Gaza: Minimal coverage of serious freedom of press violations

Scattered references in British media to allegations that Hamas has committed serious violations of freedom of press, including threatening to throw a Reuters journalist out of a window.

There is nothing new here. If it didn't happen today, it would happen next week. This conflict is a family feud that makes the Hatfields and the McCoys look like like two octogenarians fighting over the last box of Depends™ at Walmart.

It started about 4,000 years ago during the Age of the Patriarchs. Abraham's wife, Sarah, was barren and she urged Abraham to have a child by her Egyptian maid, Hagar. Under the culture and laws of the time (Code of Hammurabi) this was kosher. God sent an angel to speak to Hagar:

"You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” (Genesis 16:11-12 RSV).

Isaac, Sarah's only son by Abraham, was born thirteen years later and the mideast has never been the same. The only time they ever agreed on anything was where to bury Abraham when he died. From a wild ass of a man, Ishmael, we now have wild, crazy, murderous adherents to a moon cult. From Isaac, the Savior. Go figure.

Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness

by Karel Dujardin (1626–1678)