PA daily columnist: No one denies that Israel “murders children, women and elderly in cold blood”

Op-ed by Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, columnist for official PA daily. This article was published as Hamas was firing thousands of rockets at Israel and as Israel was responding with Operation Protective Edge, which aimed at destroying Hamas' terror infrastructure and ability to launch rockets at Israel.
     “No one denies the resistance and its national status and importance. No one opposes the logic that says that Israel is a [morally] deviant and criminal state, hostile to the Palestinian people and to the peoples of the Arab nation; that it is the state that occupies, confiscates and Judaizes lands, murders children, women and elderly in cold blood, brings homes down on the heads of the defenseless citizens living in them, and so on in a long list, confirming that the struggle against Israel, which has rejected and continues to reject peace, comes first.
Yet an objective examination of the background of some of the forces involved in fighting in the name of the ‘resistance’ will force [our] people’s collective consciousness to rouse itself from its deep slumber, and to carefully examine the cheap sectorial considerations of some of the forces, especially Hamas, at the expense of Palestinian blood. For these forces are acting in coordination with Israel, contrary to the demagogical statements they make, [just] like all the terrorist organizations, which were selected by Israel and the US and serve their strategic objective of destroying the peoples of the Arab nation.
No citizen defending his political project would agree to harm [any] national faction during the heated struggle with Israel. But if the faction [in question] is involved in the game to increase the scope of the crimes and the trade in Palestinian blood, out of narrow interests, and to serve the goals of the US and Israel, then it is incumbent [on us] to speak the truth – even if some will consider it harmful and unacceptable in difficult times; for the people’s primary interests are more important than any ephemeral considerations and sentiments, as it is the entire nation, and not just one faction, that will be forced to bear the consequences.”