Once Hitler decided to embark on the industrialized slaughter of Jews and other disfavored people (e.g., Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally impaired), that actually became his primary goal. He took trains away from his troops so that he could ship more people to the concentration camps. I thought of that genocidal mania when I read that Hamas documents revealed that it had no intention of hitting military targets when it raided Israel last weekend. Its goal all along was to target civilians…the younger, the better.

That information comes from—of all places—NBC News. And I say “of all places” because the media’s sensibilities have long leaned away from Israel and toward her enemies. However, Hamas’s Nazi-esque tactics have horrified people so badly that many of the usual institutions are realizing that they’re making a mistake if they show sympathy for the killers. Rather than making the killers look good, it makes them look bad.

That may explain this NBC report:

Documents exclusively obtained by NBC News show that Hamas created detailed plans to target elementary schools and a youth center in the Israeli kibbutz of Kfar Sa'ad, to “kill as many people as possible,” seize hostages and quickly move them into the Gaza Strip.

The attack plans, which are labeled “top secret” in Arabic, appear to be orders for two highly trained Hamas units to surround and infiltrate villages and target places where civilians, including children, gather. Israeli authorities are still determining the death toll in Kfar Sa'ad.

The documents were found on the bodies of Hamas terrorists by Israeli first responders and shared with NBC News. They include detailed maps and show that Hamas intended to kill or take hostage civilians and school children.

[snip]

The Israeli officials said that the wider group of documents show that Hamas had been systematically gathering intelligence on each kibbutz bordering Gaza and creating specific plans of attack for each village that included the intentional targeting of women and children.

[snip]

The plan of coordinated attacks flies in the face of recent claims by Hamas that it did not kill children. A video released by Hamas on Friday showed armed terrorists holding and feeding Israeli children taken hostage, including babies.

Image: Hamas battle plan targeting civilians.

War is always a miserable, dirty, bloody job. Civilians will always suffer, and many will die.

Indeed, as the American Civil War showed, civilians must cease to support their military before the military will surrender. Sherman’s March through Georgia broke the civilian support for the Southern war effort, and the Confederate military’s collapse followed.

Terrible though that was, what Sherman did was intended to effectuate a legitimate military goal to end a war that had dragged on for four years. Moreover, Sherman didn’t slaughter civilians; he laid waste to their infrastructure.

Those same rules of warfare apply in the more civilized parts of the world today: We do not target civilians, although we recognize that we may affect them in terrible ways to achieve legitimate military goals.

That’s not how Islamists (i.e., fundamentalist followers of Muslim doctrine) fight. Their goal is not to win a border war. Their goal is genocide. They are every bit as crazed as Hitler. With the weapons they had, the number of troops, and the discipline and training they showed, they might have successfully attacked the Israeli military or taken down vital Israeli infrastructure.

However, that’s not what they wanted. Instead, their primary goal was genocide, one dead baby at a time. We no longer have to “guess” that from looking at the bloody handiwork they left behind. Instead, their pre-battle plans prove it.

Islamists are Stone Age monsters in the modern world. They must be defeated decisively, or they will bring this pain wherever they are…and they are wherever you are.