No, this isn’t about Russia that traditionally is called a Bear but Israel. An old adage is don’t poke a bear because its reaction won’t be pleasant. The moral is to think before acting and think what the results could be. Sometimes the reaction seems like an immediate mistake but will actually get the long term desired result.

Hamas poked the Israeli Bear hoping to get the desired backlash of death and destruction to the people in Gaza. Around the Arab world the people are protesting by the hundreds of thousands in their capitals. How can their leaders stay in power and work with Israel? Saudi Arabia and some other Arab countries were opening diplomatic offices with Israel and negotiating trade relations.

If Hamas gets the Israeli army to invade the Palestinian civilian deaths will skyrocket creating more dissent causing problems for Arab and Israeli leaders. History shows urban warfare is a disaster for both sides – think Stalingrad or our misadventure in Iraq.

Continued bombing of apartment buildings kills civilians which generates greater dissent and pressure for other organizations like Hezbollah to join the war. They have over 160,000 missiles to fire at Israel and the army should it invade Lebanon. The last time Israel went in they pulled out after a couple of months. They claimed victory but it was a bloody stalemate. It would be much worse this time because Hezbollah has many more well-trained troops and much more Iran-supplied equipment designed to fight Israel’s army and air force.

Hamas poked the Bear and hasn’t yet got all the results they wanted but those results may be imminent. So far, the PLO on the Eastern side has just been protesting but if all three organizations gang up on Israel it would be very bad for the bear.