Amen I say to you...Amen

This is the Op Ed piece on the nY Post 1/7/08 ...if your not reading the Post everyday , YOU are part of the problem....Amen

Add one more atrocity to the blood- soaked history of Hamas: Yesterday, the cowardly brotherhood managed to kill dozens of Palestinian civilians at a UN school in Gaza.

And it used Israeli armor to get the job done.

Israeli tanks, it's true, fired on the school, which the UN says it operated as a refuge for civilians - but only after coming under fire from the school.

Indeed, Israeli soldiers reportedly found dead Hamas fighters and their weapons in the building's rubble, along with the bodies of scores of civilians, as the ground assault against Hamas positions outside Gaza City continued.

No surprise there.

Heavy civilian casualties would be entirely in keeping with Hamas' longstanding practice of using women, children and the elderly as human shields.

Which means that responsibility for the deaths lies squarely at their feet.

The contrast couldn't be greater: Israel has taken all steps to avoid civilian casualties, including extensive leafletting and sending text messages to Palestinians near its Hamas targets, while Hamas seems bent on seeing as many of its own people as possible die.

There is a purpose to such barbarism.

Recall that similar civilian casualties - precipitated by similar enemy cowardice - helped bring international pressure against Israel to prematurely end its war against Hezbollah in 2006.

Hamas, and its paymasters in Tehran, are hoping for a similar outcome this time around. That musn't be allowed.

Indeed, Hamas' willingness to terrorize its own people, let alone Israeli civilians, is all the more reason for Israel to effect the organization's speedy destruction - and for the world to support such an outcome.

And, lest anyone forget Hamas' ultimate intentions, a spokesman yesterday called on Islamists to target Jewish children around the world.

"They have legitimized the murder of their own children by killing the children of Palestine," he said.

That's about as evil, and cowardly, a statement as they come - even if it weren't so preposterous.