Absolutely horrific violence. And even looking at it from the most cold and calculated perspective, it seems like a pretty terrible strategic error by Hamas. Sure, they'll get some prisoners back with the hostages they took, but the blowback is going to be enormous.
Unfortunately, like the Taliban, Hamas is another example of the side effects of encouraging religious fanaticism in order to fight communism. In the '70s and '80s, Israel tolerated and even supported the movement among fundamentalist Muslims that led to Hamas as a means of undermining the more secular PLO.
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