The Washington Post has a story about the terror inflicted on ordinary Palestinians by Israel’s airstrikes on Hamas targets, and the growing humanitarian crisis: Food and Medical Supplies Grow Scarce in the Gaza Strip.

NIR AM, Israel, Dec. 28 — The family of Um Shadi al-Bardaweel did not sleep. The Israeli airstrikes and the explosions, the sirens and the screams of strangers outside their house near the Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip kept them awake into the predawn hours Sunday.

At the first light of dawn, the mother of five sent her son to the bakery to buy bread. Hundreds of Palestinians had the same idea, joining a never-ending line. “There’s no food in the market,” Bardaweel explained in an interview with a reporter. Her son did not return until nightfall.

Then came another airstrike close to their camp, rocking the house and shattering the windows. “Our children started screaming in a crazy way,” she recalled. “After each airstrike, my sons ask me: ‘Why are we targeted? Will they arrest us? Will they come after us?’ I tell them not to panic. We are far away from the shelling. But then tonight, the bombing reached our doorsteps.”

At some point, though, don’t we need to ask, “How innocent are those ordinary Gazan civilians, anyway?” Just two weeks ago, tens of thousands of these civilians attended an enormous Hamas rally glorifying the Qassam rockets they launch into Israel. The entertainment was an ugly “play” in which a Palestinian dressed as kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was “humiliated” onstage.

How innocent is this? Is “the family of Um Shadi al-Bardaweel” somewhere in this cheering crowd?

Instead of crying when Israel finally takes action against the terrorists of Hamas, the family of Um Shadi al-Bardaweel would better serve themselves and their society if they stopped voting for and supporting those terrorists. If that ever happens, they won’t need to ask, “Why are we targeted?” — a question for which they should already know the answer.