Hamas' war strategy works like this:

- Episodically attack Israel's civilians in such as way as to provoke a counter-attack.

- Hide behind Palestinian civilians (preferably in crowded neighborhoods, schools, and hospitals), while encouraging them, even forcing them, to stay, guaranteeing that the return fire wounds or kills civilians and damages civilian structures.

- Encourage the Western news media to play up the civilian suffering, play down Hamas' role in it, and accuse Israel.

- Conjure a firestorm of outrage around the world that eventually pressures Israel into desisting from counteroffensive measures.

- Survive to reap the propaganda victory and prepare the next round of hostilities.

- Repeat, with each exchange hurting Israel more, and each round of international news coverage further savaging the Jewish State's international reputation.

No matter what the Israeli response, the Hamas strategy is win-win. If the Israelis abort a strike to avoid civilian casualties (as they often do), then Hamas is spared the blow; if an Israeli strike causes civilian casualties, Hamas has dead babies to parade before the cameras. And eventually, the bloodletting will get so bad, the pictures so damning, that Israel will stop. Hamas' endgame goals, at least at this stage of its asymmetrical war, are actually threefold: tie Israel down with constraints on its use of power, delegitimize and demonize it in the eyes of the world, and stir an aggressive "Muslim Street" in the West, where genocidal chants can lead to pogroms against the Jews worldwide.

This time, however, this "dead baby" strategy, despite a pedigree of decades, has become increasingly apparent to the observant, perhaps because Hamas has resorted to ever-more obvious tactics to victimize their own people: storing its weapons and firing them from residential areas, hospitals, schools and mosques and even, hiding its leaders under Shiffa hospital. Asked about this, UN official John Ging readily admits: "Yes the armed groups are firing their armed rockets into Israel from the vicinity of UN facilities and residential areas, absolutely." Indeed, in some cases, while journalists speak to the camera, often following Hamas' script, Jihadis fire rockets right nearby—live, as it were.

The pattern consistently demonstrates what one Gazan from Tal Awad described to an Italian journalist in 2009 during Operation Cast Lead: "They wanted the [Israelis] to shoot at the [the civilians'] houses so they could accuse them of more war crimes." The importance of these rockets is not where they're aimed, but whence they're fired. They're a reverse target, designed to create the carnage that will rouse Western indignation.

How the media helped Hamas in the third Gaza War