Security

Video: Inside a Gaza D.I.Y. Rocket Lab

If you’re at all interested in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, you have two things you need to do right this very second.

First, watch this remarkable video report from Zouheir Alnajjar, an Algerian-born guerrilla journalist who now lives in the Gaza Strip. In it, a pair of Palestinian militants lead him, blindfolded, into their D.I.Y. rocket-building lab. Then they show him how they make their weapons, out of fertilizer and scrap metal. Then they fire the thing off. Check it out – and thank Boing Boing for the heads-up.

Done? Okay, onto assignment number two: Jeffrey Goldberg’s fascinating portrait of Hamas chieftain Nizar Rayyan. He’s a man of murderous acts — and extreme, twisted views.

While "it is not literally true that Jews today are descended from pigs and apes, but it is true that some of the ancestors of Jews were transformed into pigs and apes, and it is true that Allah continually makes the Jews pay for their crimes in many different ways. They are a cursed people," he tells Goldberg.

I asked him the question I always ask of Hamas leaders: Could you agree to anything more than a tactical cease-fire with Israel? I felt slightly ridiculous asking: A man who believes that God every now and again transforms Jews into pigs and apes might not be the most obvious candidate for peace talks at Camp David. Mr. Rayyan answered the question as I thought he would, saying that a long-term cease-fire would be unnecessary, because it will not take long for the forces of Islam to eradicate Israel.

There is a fixed idea among some Israeli leaders that Hamas can be bombed into moderation. This is a false and dangerous notion. It is true that Hamas can be deterred militarily for a time, but tanks cannot defeat deeply felt belief.

The reverse is also true: Hamas cannot be cajoled into moderation. Neither position credits Hamas with sincerity, or seriousness.

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