Israel and Gaza: No way out

"That makes a lot of sense, but what was Israel's alternative?"

To answer that question, you have to go back to pre-1948 events, Rod.

Israel should do what it is doing: defend itself. And if that requires killing every single Hamas member and Hezbollah member, then so be it. Hamas and Hezbollah bring death and destruction upon themselves and those around them. It is their choice.

Rod, you are better than the Zionist platitudes you are spewing.

The original crime was for a bunch of atheists to decide, in the name of the false religion they rejected, that they had a right to retake a country where their putative ancestors had been defeated in AD70, whether the present inhabitants liked it or not. That claim is not religiously supportable by any of the Abrahamic religions as traditionally understood.

The conflict derives from that fundamental fact.

The crimes of both sides since then flow from it.

Crimes such as both sides are committing are probably inevitable, but let them do their worse without our weapons and money.

Grumpy Old Man,
My Christianity is based on God's compassion for us. That is why he sent Jesus, a Jewish Rabi, to save us from ourselves.

What is the basis for your Christianity, apart from defining yourself through your considerable hatred for all and sundry?

Inquiring minds would like to know!

It is hard for me to see how a state can effectively grind down a people who have embraced suicide killers as heroes.

But the Russians have done so splendidly in Grozny. It's all a question of will power.

You can sum it up in two minutes flat. Hamas are a terrorist organisation with a sworn agenda. Remember when Neville Chamberlain appeased Hitler, Hitler went back for more. Hamas and their allies are not different. Given half the chance Hamas too would stoke up the boilers and engage in the final solution where Hitler left off. Israel has every right to protect its citizen’s regardless of the Palestinian cost. If the Palestinian are so stupid that they support the Hamas ideology then so be it they must pay the price. Remember Turkey in 1974 evicted 211000 citizens from their Northern Cyprus homes never to return. Today Turkey has the audacity to condemn Israel when Turkey is still illegally occupying Northern Cyprus with at least 40,000 armed personnel. In 1974 Turkey had the backing of both the USA and Britain. Today the USA and Britain have impudence to lobby for Turkey to become a member of the European Union even tho Turkey is still illegally occupying northern Cyprus. There can be no doubt that if Israel got serious the 1.5million people on Gaza could be eliminated with in hours. Fortunately Israel is only eliminating the leaders of Hamas and only a few civilians on the way through. Had they not had the sophisticated weapons the death amongst civilians would have been huge. May be the Israel should get some rockets of the type being used by Hamas to fire into Israel. The Israelis could then fire them back at the same rate as Hamas. I know for sure that the death rate on Gaza would have been catastrophic in comparison with the current results.

It has never been clear to me what political theory people use when they speculate that depriving a population of basic supplies will provoke dramatic political change for the better. Grinding a people down does not cause them to see the bankruptcy of their own leadership, but causes them to cling to it all the more as their last resort.

This is nonsense. A denial of history, reality and human nature. It is why he can not grasp the situation. The extended length of the conflict, short human memories, and rewriting history has resulted in a very distorted narrative being accepted.

Peoples that haven't had their will crushed will rise up and attack again.

Saddam is a good example. He rightfully felt he wasn't defeated in Desert Storm and his belligerence continued.

The Israelis have prolonged this conflict by not handing the arabs a decisive defeat. Instead they have allowed the hope of destroying Israel to continue. Every decision that results in that hope staying alive prolongs the conflict.

If I beat her down I'll be the biggest !@#$%^& for beating up a girl.

So the arabs(palestinians,)who declared openly, prior to the founding of Israel(1948) that they would never allow a Jewish state to be established and then once it was(on a tiny indefensible spot of land) that they would destroy it are comparable to a tough school girl daring a boy to break tradition with chivalry and have a round in the ring?

That is not credible.

"Twenty or so years ago, a (secular) friend of mine visited Ireland, and told me upon her return how startled she was to run across beautiful old buildings in Dublin that were being allowed to fall into ruin. She'd ask people why those buildings weren't being cared for, and was told that those buildings were British -- IOW, memories of the British occupation were still so raw that the Dubliners would rather see all reminders of the occupation fall to pieces than preserve something useful and beautiful.

That doesn't make the Irish uniquely evil. It just makes them human. Stupidly human, from a certain point of view, but human all the same."

A nice story but, writing from Dublin, it is - like the point it is supposed to illustrate - complete and utter nonsense.

Rod says;

"And it is Israel's miserable fate to have to live next to such a people[those who prefer suicide bombing to peace]."

That may be Israel's miserable fate, but that's not where most of the problems stem from. The problems stem from Israel's CHOICE to live among those people. Settlements are the issue. I'm not claiming that Hamas would all of a sudden start to be peaceful...they wouldn't. But if the only time there was Israeli soldiers interfering in Palestinian lives was when Hamas fired rockets at Israel, Palestinians would start to see the problem too. But, that's not the reality they face. They face the reality that Israeli settlers can move in wherever they want, even illegally, and wind up being protected by the IDF. Including the IDF now disrupting their lives in order to protect the illegal settlements. I've said it before and I'll say it again. If the IDF used the same tactics on illegal settlers it does on Palestinians, I would have no problem with their actions....but they don't.

Unfortunately, Your Name (and would you mind terribly taking on a screen name? "Your Name" makes it awfully hard to follow comments. Thanks!)
Anyway, unfortunately, the Germans saw very early on that the Nazis were a bad mistake. But it was too late by then to change things, the Nazis had a death grip on the police and all organs of protest.
This is precisely the problem with imposing religious beliefs such as denying the human and civil rights of gays upon government. Today, it is the fundamentalist/conservative/literalistic/followers-of-ancient-traditions Christians who have the upper hand. But tomorrow, it could well be enemies both of that group of Christians as well as those who oppose Christians such as myself who don't seek to usurp God's authority.
A point which is impossible to make to some people.

I support Israel. Not out of funky-wishing-to-force-God's hand grounds as so many fundi-s do, but because the Jews have built a fair, free, open, tolerant honest democracy. They didn't 'take' anything from the Arabs, they paid for it in honest currency.

The Arabs could have had peace and profited if they had not fallen victims of the same fundamentalist mindset as we gays are fighting against here.

Res: Pre-1948 history, sorry, CE - I am too prejudiced against Islam and Arabic culture to give you a neutral, unbiased view. Try reading several different sources on the matter. Basically, much of this conflict stems from decisions the British made in the 19th century, compounded by decisions taken immediately following on to WWI.

Yes, I know the story of Panthera, but that was not the source of my screen name. I would not be so arrogant. My very devout Catholic Grandfather used to call me his little Panthera as a child, his favorite Uncle's proper name was Panthera.

Here and now, Israel is caught between an implacable, virulent ideology and its adherents on one side, with unrealistic world opinion, fed by Israel's battlefield missteps, on the other.

And world opinion accounts for what? Nothing. How can it be an impedement to Israeli victory when it is nothing more than moral preening. No action will come of it. Except more condemnation.

Israel is not trapped by world opinion. They are trapped by their unwillingness to defeat the arabs in the war that started 60 years ago.

Israel values world opinion at their own peril. They need to ignore it.

The irony of all this is that Hamas was essentially created by the Israeli secret service back in the 60-70's as a counterweight to Arafat's PLO. The PLO was a secular Arab organization that included all Arabs, Moslem Christian, secular etc; The Israelis thought that Hamas, at the time a very small fundamentalist Moslem organization and quite innefective, would be an ideal organization to use as a wedge to divide the Palestinian nationalist. So they gave money, arms, trained the Hamas fighters, advised on political strategy etc;
The results are what you see know.

Kinda like what happened with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Creating Frankenstein monsters seems to be the foreign policy of both Israel and the U.S.

Dear Your Name
January 2, 2009 2:39 PM,
The irony of all this is that nobody cares what people have to say when they don't even enough respect to post a screen name.

To the alterntive sentiment sense in Larison's column: What took you so long?

When one can, go see the marvelous Israel (animation) short film, "Waltzing With Bashir".

panthera January 2, 2009 2:11 PM This issue is inextricably intertwined with two pseudo-Christian themes. First, the nasty old 'Jews killed Jesus' refrain. Second, the 'since the last war will be in the Middle East, let's hasten it and force God's hand'. I find both distasteful, neither is can be justified.

Well, it's not like "the nasty old 'Jews killed Jesus' refrain" was manufactured out of whole cloth. I.e.:

Matthew 27:1 Early in the morning, all the chief priests and the elders of the people came to the decision to put Jesus to death. 2 They bound him, led him away and handed him over to Pilate, the governor.... 24 When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. "I am innocent of this man's blood," he said. "It is your responsibility!" 25 All the people answered, "Let his blood be on us and on our children!"

Acts 3:12 When Peter saw this, he said to them: "Men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? 13 The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. 14 You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. 15 You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.

Acts 4:8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: "Rulers and elders of the people! 9 If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and are asked how he was healed, 10 then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed.

I Thessalonians 2:14 For you, brothers, became imitators of God's churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own countrymen the same things those churches suffered from the Jews, 15 who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to all men.

Etc.

I.e., it's part and parcel of the Church's Holy Scriptures, even if you delimit "Jews" to "the Jewish leaders" as some translators/commentators now do.

@celticdragon

You mistake "grinding down" through ... last bamboo spear was broken.

I read 'grinding down' to mean crushing their will. I don't see how it specifies air power or ground force.

It is dangerous to use historical ...are not really similar. The Palestinians have embraced a nihilistic, murderous form of martyrdom and their irrationality is strengthened by Israeli attacks.

And the Japanese didn't embrace a suicidal mindset? It took two nuclear weapons to convince them to surrender did it not? The losing side almost always rallies support before the defeat.

I write in some detail here at my blog from a couple of years ago.

I think that premise has been disproved by Gen. Petraeus. Al-Qaeda in Iraq, a stateless actor, has been defeated in battle.
Any group can be defeated regardless of origin, stateless or not. Human nature transcends culture, religion, and training. No human has infinite will. There is no new paradigm of war. It is still fundamentally about breaking the will of your opponent.

The Israel / hezbollah war is not a good example because Israel did not apply overwhelming force to hezbollah. Instead they applied force to the host country which wasn't in a position to control or defeat hezbollah. This left hezbollah relatively unscathed and able to fight another day.

Well, many evangelicals and fundamentalists say that this particular confict and spin-off conficts is the pathway to the end times.

I can see a scenerio possibly developing in 2009-2011 with this Hamas/Iran/Russia/Israel mixture than could well make such a thing a reality.

What is Israel supposed to do? Well, for one thing, precision target only enemy fighters. I understand it's a bit difficult to differentiate in an organization like HAMAS, but to start with, go for the mid-level guys, the guys actually responsible for obtaining and distributing rockets, for recruiting and deploying suicide bombers. Low level guys are too replaceable, high level guys could possibly be turned, along with those fighters they have influence over. This is best done from the ground, which is why I almost find myself advocating Israeli ground troops going in, though God knows that's not going to look good on Al Jazeera....

Simultaneously, there has to be, for want of a better term (and I don't like the term much) a "political" settlement. And I'm not talking about settling once and for all the division of Jerusalem or the right of return for refugees. God knows that's above the paygrade of HAMAS politicos. I've outlined a possible thread to take with the people of Gaza, about how HAMAS, while inspiring, is only leading to more insecurity and harder times. This idea has to spread at the grassroots level, and be authored and advocated by other Arabs, not Israelis. If this takes off at all, the Israelis have to be willing to talk with some pretty nasty sorts, on some level.

It's possible none of this will work. What's going on now is just adding fuel to HAMA's fire, though, so I'm just throwing out some CounterInsurgency ideas. The Israelis know what they're doing, though, so advice from a severely low level military intelligence type from the States is probably not helpful anyway! ;)

"There is no new paradigm of war. It is still fundamentally about breaking the will of your opponent."

I beg your pardon?

You seem to confuse an objective of war with the nature of war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Clausewitz

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"Clausewitz used a dialectical method to construct his argument, leading to frequent modern misinterpretation. As described by Christopher Bassford, professor of strategy at the National War College of the United States:

One of the main sources of confusion about Clausewitz's approach lies in his dialectical method of presentation. For example, Clausewitz's famous line that "War is merely a continuation of politics," ("Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln") while accurate as far as it goes, was not intended as a statement of fact. It is the antithesis in a dialectical argument whose thesis is the point—made earlier in the analysis—that "war is nothing but a duel [or wrestling match, a better translation of the German Zweikampf] on a larger scale." His synthesis, which resolves the deficiencies of these two bold statements, says that war is neither "nothing but" an act of brute force nor "merely" a rational act of politics or policy. This synthesis lies in his "fascinating trinity" [wunderliche Dreifaltigkeit]: a dynamic, inherently unstable interaction of the forces of violent emotion, chance, and rational calculation.[1]

Another example of this confusion is the idea that Clausewitz was a proponent of total war as used in the Third Reich's propaganda in the 1940s. He did not coin the phrase as an ideological ideal—indeed, Clausewitz does not use the term "total war" at all. Rather, he discussed "absolute war" or "ideal war" as the purely logical result of the forces underlying a "pure," Platonic "ideal" of war. In what Clausewitz called a "logical fantasy," war cannot be waged in a limited way: the rules of competition will force participants to use all means at their disposal to achieve victory. But in the real world, such rigid logic is unrealistic and dangerous. As a practical matter, the military objectives in real war that support one's political objectives generally fall into two broad types: "war to achieve limited aims" and war to "disarm” the enemy—i.e., “to render [him] politically helpless or militarily impotent." Thus the complete defeat of one's enemies may be neither necessary, desirable, nor even possible."

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Take particular note of the final two sentences. Martin van Creweld at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem has moved away from the Clauswitz model to take modern constraints into account.

From "The Coming Anarchy: Shattering The Dreams Of The Post Cold War" by Robert Kaplan.

"Just as it makes no sense to ask 'why people eat' or 'what they sleep for',"writes Martin van Creweld, a military historian at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, in 'The Transformation of War' "so fighting in many ways is not a means to end but an end. Throughout history, for every person who has expressed his horror of war there is another who found it the most marvelous of all the experiences that are vouchsafed to man, even to the point that he later spent a lifetime boring his descendants by recounting his exploits." When I asked Pentagon officials about the nature of war in the twenty-first century, the answer I frequently got was "Read van Creweld." The top brass are enamored of this historian not because his writings justify their existence but, rather, the opposite: van Creweld warns them that huge state military machines like the Pentagon's are dinosaurs about to go extinct, and that something far more terrible awaits us.

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If you are going to debate this, it would help if:

A. You read some of the relevant material and...

B. You could cite such material to back up your argument.

The original crime was for a bunch of atheists to decide, in the name of the false religion they rejected, that they had a right to retake a country where their putative ancestors had been defeated in AD70

Grumpy Old Man (or should I say Grumpy Old Jew Hater),

Do you sleep well at night knowing that you say the same things the Nazis did?

Just curious.

EricW,

It’s your responsibility – not the Jews' – to deal with those chapters from your bible. Those chapters have inspired Xians throughout the ages to torture and murder Jews. While we suffer physically, your souls are poisoned for not purging that hatred.

"This is how the Palestinians have come to make cultural heroes of their suicide bombers. And it is Israel's miserable fate to have to live next to such a people."

The Palestinians fight the war with their means. What else can they do against Israels overwhelming military force? I think Israel is the major agressor in this conflict. 5 Israelis and more than 500 Palestinians died in this conflict. Or is a Jewish life more worthy then a Palestinian one? It is the Palestinians fate to live next to such aa people.

US and European people pay tax and their governments give it to Israel to kill women and innocent children. Hamas was selected with Palestine nation vote. Why Israel surrounds Gaza and don't let wounded persons receive food and drug? Isn't Israel a occupier?? Isn't this an unfair war? Who has equipped Israel with F16 fighter plane?
I think Democracy and Human right is a big lie in West.