Posted on 06/20/2002 4:34:07 AM PDT by Clive
A case can be made that Israel is to blame for the escalating violence by homicidal Palestinian suicide bombers -- of which this week's incident of 19 killed and 50 wounded in a bus bombing is only an especially grisly incident in this continuing war.
Personally, and as one who has done a lot of reporting from past crises, wars and revolutions in the Middle East and elsewhere, I think Israel is partly at fault for today's situation -- not because it's been too tough and uncompromising, but because it's been too gentle, too concerned with international opinion, too restrained in its response to violence and terrorism.
Even now, there are those who argue that more compromises might bring peace, such as agreeing to an independent Palestinian state with Yasser Arafat as president.
This won't work. Arafat is the problem, not the solution.
And rubber bullets and lightning raids into terrorist havens by the Israeli military, ever careful about inflicting harm to children and civilians, isn't an answer. Restraint not only hasn't worked, it has encouraged greater violence. A gentle enemy is a soft enemy, or so the thinking goes.
Look at it this way: If your family is attacked, your children killed, a normal reaction is to do whatever you can to protect your family and fight back against the perpetrators by any means. Your immediate concern is not what anyone outside your family might think. You defend your own with every means at your disposal.
Period.
Israel doesn't do that these days. Yes, it takes limited action and pleads for understanding. Israel doesn't seem to fully realize that there are elements in the outside world, even in friendly America, Canada and the generally sympathetic West, that cannot be appeased, no matter what it does.
Many Jews equate hostility towards Israel with anti-Semitism. I don't. I think the types who hate Israel overlap with those ideologues who hate everything about America, and see virtue in every enemy of democracy and freedom. Some are wishful thinkers, like the NDP loony, Svend Robinson.
You can see this manifestation in the hullabaloo over an alleged Israeli massacre at Jenin, where Israeli troops were ambushed and lured into a booby-trapped residential area by Palestinian women and children assuring them the shooters were out of ammunition and had fled.
Think-alikes
Israeli troops bulldozed the booby-trapped area, and the cry went up of "massacre." An international investigation was demanded, comprising think-alikes whose minds are made up.
After initially okaying an inquiry, depending on who comprised it, Israel smartened up and refused to cooperate, which was interpreted as more proof of massacre.
It now turns out, from journalistic reports and independent observers on the ground, that not only was there no massacre at Jenin, but Israeli troops went to great lengths to ensure civilians were not casually targeted.
Jenin fizzled as a massacre -- unlike fake massacres in Kosovo that are still listed as war crimes.
Israel now plans a 200-km fence separating the West Bank, and seizing land when bombings occur. Not enough. Since Hamas takes credit for the most recent bombing, I'd argue that Israel should declare war and move into Hamas areas, prepared to kill every Hamas member. All are potential suicide bombers.
As for Arafat, it's now abundantly clear that he should have been eliminated long ago -- not exiled or arrested, but killed. The blood of innocents saturates his psyche. Israel was persuaded to deal with him.
It's up to Palestinians to curb their terrorists.
Until a new Palestinian leadership is prepared to do that, tough bananas on peaceful Palestinians who come into Israel from the West Bank to work. Let them pressure terrorists to desist.
The likes of Canada's wishy-washy Foreign Minister Bill Graham urging restraint and a Palestinian state is more evidence that there's no understanding of reality.
If she listens to friends like these, Israel is doomed.
"Israel is the Canary in the Mine..."
... an early warning system for America and Americans.
What you see happen in Israel will one day come to our shores, unless we
1- free Israel to do what she must do for national security,
2- hammer our enemies and their enablers so hard that they whimper in their sleep when they even dream of trying to hurt us, ever again.
Fire and Iron, Hammer and Anvil, until they drop the idea of bringing us harm. There is no other way.
The U.S. should take heed of this advice. We are dealing with a medieval mindset and our responses, regretfully, need to be disproportionate. We have not come close to what we need to do.
Am I the only one who agrees with this? It seems like every freaking bombing is claimed by Hamas, then waste 'em. Take them out! If they want to meet allah so bad, Israel should help them do it.
To retake a small piece of the Arab infested Samaria and Judea every time a palie terrorist attack occurs is the last idea on the Israeli responce to violence. It's a good one, but it isn't quite sufficient. Retake this village or town or area - and get rid of all the palie lowlife in it. You even don't need to kill them (though in certain cases it's preferable). Just expell them all to the Gaza strip. If another terrorist attack happens, repeat the exersize. Thus you hit two birds with one stone: create "facts on the land" (no Arabs, whom to return the territories to?) and give the diaperheads an opportunity to feel what does it mean to live in real refugee conditions... and if they don't like it in the overcrowded Gaza, they're free to leave for an Arab shithole of their choice. Or, in the end of the day, Israel could pull a great trick: a reverse annexation of Gaza, i.e. annex it to Egypt errecting a wall between herself and the latrine.
The above is the single most important remark thus made by anyone.
TO Israel: JUST DO IT!!!
True, but they won't do it. IMHO, Israel should order the Mossad to begin covert and systematic assassinations of members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad (and whatever other gangs of terrorists that exist), starting at the top and working down to the last slimy little cockroach.
yes, a basically accurate metaphor for U.S. security issues.
Peace is made by victory, and defeat.
Wars have to have a certain symmetry, or they can go on forever (well, almost). The Palestinians are fighting for three things: 1) Kill as many Israeli innocents as is feasible, given their stone age technology, in order to 2) Break the will of the Israeli civilian population to resist, 3) Their voluntary or involuntary if necessary expulsion from the Middle East, or, failing that, their extermination.
These Palestinian battle objectives are all achieveable (not to say that they will be achieved, only that the means at hand have some chance of accomplishing the desired results).
The Israelis are, so far, fighting to change the Palestinians minds-not to kill their women and children, not to demoralize the population, not to expel (or kill) all of them.
Under these conditions, even the tremendous Israeli material superiority may not suffice. It may not be unreasonable for the Palestinians to expect Israelis to find their FW DeKlerk, and to just surrender to their fate.
B-I-N-G-O. Gosh backhoe say something I don't agree with once in a while just so I know you're not my clone in some kind of strange mirror universe that I've contacted through cyberspace.
Those that are trying to beat this enemy through conventional military tactics and law enforcement techniques haven't a clue. We'll only win by advancing through their brains. I know this is fiction, but I can't find anyone who has said it better.
It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face...And you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces...Seems a thousand centuries ago...We went into a camp to innoculate the children. We left the camp after we had innoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every innoculated arm. There they were in a pile...A pile of little arms. And I remember...I...I...I cried... I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized...like I was shot...Like I was shot with a diamond...a diamond bullet right through my forehead...And I thought: My God...the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we.
Colonal Kurtz (Marlon Brando) - Apocalypse Now
We're not giving our enemies the respect they deserve, if we were they would be suffering in a historical fashion.
1- identify
2- isolate
3- destroy
There is no "Second Place Winner..."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.