In Islamic law one only concludes a truce with a non-Muslim enemy if one believes the enemy is going to convert to Islam, or in order to gather strength to fight again more effectively. The latter, obviously, is the more common reason, and here we see it playing out again.
And the coverage, as usual, is abominable. The jihadists started it up again by killing an Israeli soldier, and Israel retaliated. So what is AP’s headline? “Deadly bombing, Israeli airstrike shake Gaza truce.” I.e., the Israelis broke the truce.
“Deadly bombing, Israeli airstrike shake Gaza truce,” by Matti Friedman for Associated Press, January 27:
JERUSALEM — Palestinian militants detonated a bomb that killed an Israeli soldier patrolling near Gaza on Tuesday and Israel responded with an airstrike, straining the fragile cease-fire on the eve of a visit by President Barack Obama’s new Mideast envoy.
The violence jolted the calm that has largely prevailed since Israel ended a devastating three-week offensive in Gaza on Jan. 17. Since withdrawing its troops, Israel has threatened to retaliate hard for any violations of the truce….
But the New York Times headline is “Two Killed in Violence on Gaza Border,” by Taghreed El-Khodary and Alan Cowell, January 27. The story is accompanied by a photo. Caption: “Relatives mourned at the funeral of Anwar Zaid Sammor, a Palestinian farmer who was killed by gunfire on Tuesday after an explosion across the border in Israel that killed one Israeli soldier.”
GAZA “” An Israeli soldier and a Palestinian farmer were killed along the Gaza-Israel border on Tuesday in the first known fatal breach of the cease-fires that brought a halt to the Gaza war 10 days ago, according to Israeli officials and Palestinian witnesses. It was not immediately clear how the deaths would affect the truce.
A soldier was killed on one side and a farmer on the other, see? The wicked Zionists are wantonly killing civilians again, see? Not a word, of course, about how Hamas boasts of using civilians as human shields, or any investigation of what this “farmer” might have done in his spare time.