After sacrificing fifty of their prized terrorists in their latest stunt to discredit Israel in the past week, was it really worth it to Gaza's Hamas rulers?  Based on at least one surprising press account describing the phony staged event, it looks as if the trick fell flat.

Get a load of what the liberal-lefty, hoity-toity, Euro-infused Economist is reporting about it:

Every state has a right to defend its borders.  To judge by the numbers, Israel's army may well have used excessive force.  But any firm conclusion requires an independent assessment of what happened, where and when.  The Israelis sometimes used non-lethal means, such as tear-gas dropped from drones.  But then snipers went to work with bullets.  What changed?  Mixed in with protesters, it seems, were an unknown number of Hamas attackers seeking to breach the fence.  What threat did they pose?  Any fair judgment depends on the details.

See?  They are admitting that the Hamas "protesters" were basically terrorists.  And it's normal to get rid of terrorists, especially if they are on the attack.

Sounds as though someone's waking up to the garbage going on, and Hamas's expectations of winning the hearts and minds of the Eurotrash has fallen flat.  Not even the Economist is supporting it.

The Economist has a lousy headline to its piece which blames Israel, but the article itself is far more factually oriented, and it's likely that the Economist's unsigned pieces are group efforts, meaning that the guy who wrote the headline in some place like London is not the same person as the guy on the ground who went out and gathered the facts.  Its blame to Israel is namby-pamby boilerplate, but its indictment of Hamas is the genuine article, and it clearly shows how the wretched situation is the terrorists' own doing:

Hamas bears much of the blame, too.  It all but destroyed the Oslo peace accords through its campaign of suicide-bombings in the 1990s and 2000s.  Having driven the Israelis out of Gaza, it won a general election in 2006 and, after a brief civil war, expelled Fatah from the strip in 2007.  It has misruled Gaza ever since, proving corrupt, oppressive and incompetent.  It stores its weapons in civilian sites, including mosques and schools, making them targets.  Cement that might be used for reconstruction is diverted to build underground tunnels to attack Israel.  Hamas all but admitted it was not up to governing when it agreed to hand many administrative tasks to the PA last year as part of a reconciliation deal with Fatah.  But the pact collapsed because Hamas is not prepared to give up its weapons.

The Economist slides into naïveté with this, apparently unaware that when a situation gets this far gone with an entrenched one-party state (Have they not heard of Zimbabwe, California, or Venezuela?), getting rid of such rulers who won't get out isn't solved by gentle elections to change power.

Israel, Egypt and the PA cannot just lock away the Palestinians in Gaza in the hope that Hamas will be overthrown.  Only when Gazans live more freely might they think of getting rid of their rulers.  Much more can be done to ease Gazans' plight without endangering Israel's security.  But no lasting solution is possible until the question of Palestine is solved, too.  Mr Netanyahu has long resisted the idea of a Palestinian state – and has kept building settlements on occupied land.

But The Economist does move back to hard realism by pointing out that the stunt is failing, not just as a result of the facts on the ground, but based on other things not moving in Hamas's favor:

As Israel marks its 70th birthday, the economy is booming.  By "managing" the conflict, rather than trying to end it, Mr Netanyahu has kept Palestinian violence in check while giving nothing away.  When violence flares Israel's image suffers, but not much.  The Trump administration supports it.  And Arab states seeking an ally against a rising Iran have never had better relations with it.

Then it calls for a "peace movement," which is ridiculous, given the orientation of the thugs ruling Gaza.  Good luck with that one.

What can be clearly drawn from this is that the kill stunt we were all supposed to coo over and condemn Israel for is a failure.  Everyone, even The Economist, can see that it's a cynical political tactic by sworn terrorists who still fancy themselves military fighters, while hypocritically and mendaciously calling themselves "peaceful."  Blaming Israel cuckoo clock-style for whatever happens as a result of that isn't working anymore.  What a dose of stupidity these terrorists have thrown out there for themselves.  The best thing to do with Hamas is to get rid of it, but if that can't be done, throwing these terrorists out from power by force will do.