Wente Goes Wrong

Globe and Mail opiner Margaret Wente, who gets it right more often than not, gets it wrong today with this:

It’s hard to figure out why Hamas would launch a missile attack against Israel. They can’t possibly win. Their missiles are useless, and seldom hit anything before the Israelis blow them up. If they wanted to, they could crush Hamas like a bug. 

What Hamas does get is good PR.

 If she's read the Hamas Charter, it isn't hard at all to figure out why Hamas would launch a missile attack against Israel. Not for the purposes of "good PR" but because, to repeat an oft repeated phrase, "it's the jihad, stupid."

Wente also gets it wrong when, in summing things up, she succumbs to a lazy bit of moral equivalence and claims that

the younger generation of Israelis isn’t all that interested in peace. Nor are the kids on the other side.

Actually, the younger generation of Israelis would love nothing more than to live in peace. You would expect Wente, of all people, to "get" that. Why she doesn't is more than a little hard to figure out.