“Barak: My gut reaction is to respond”

I. “Barak: My gut reaction is to respond”, JPost.com, May 15, 2008

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1210668640449&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

II. On Wednesday, May 14, The Hamas, in Gaza Strip sent a rocket into Israel, which hit a shopping mall and injured 15 people. Ehud Barak, the Defense Minister of Israel says that he wants to strike back as soon as possible, but that wouldn’t be the smart thing to do. Instead, they should wait for the right moment to strike, when they know further how to handle the situation. As a result, the IDF launched an airstrike on a Hamas observation, in which two operatives were killed. Mortars are continually being fired each day.

III. A.)The AP World History theme that is seen in this article is state-building, expansion and conflict because it shows the conflict between two different countries and groups of people.

B.) For a long time, the Jews from Israel and the Arab countries have been fighting over who controls a particular stretch of land. There have been many attempts at peace; however, the violence still occurs very often. The Hamas are a Muslim political and military group whose goal is to bring down Israel.

C.) The point of view of this article is from insiders, since it was written by JPost authors. They are all most likely from Israel, since it is an Israeli newspaper.

D.) There is somewhat of a skewed point of view, in that the whole article discusses the Israeli losses, but does not go into detail of the Hamas that were hurt.

E.) A missing voice in this article is that of any Hamas official or member, who could explain why they were bombing Israel, and if there was retaliation. It would also be helpful to hear from a Palestinian leader to see if these bombing were approved.

F.) I think that Israel should take immediate action on these bombings, to get their people out of harm’s way and take down the Hamas. Also, the Palestinian government should step in and order the Hamas to stop what their doing, which there seems no effort. It is very smart of Barak to refrain from retaliating right away, and seeing what the best action would be to take.