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A Moment of Truth in Israel

Seven years ago the Israeli government decided to forcibly evict the Jewish residents of Gaza and withdraw all bases and forces from the area. The experts, some with the government and some with the media, assured everyone that it would be for the best and that withdrawal would actually improve the security situation in the country.

It was put about that resources and lives were being wasted protecting Israelis living in Gaza, while those Israelis insisted that their presence in Gaza was protecting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The experts laughed at them. Now the experts are keeping an ear open for air raid sirens because as it turned out, those farmers and teachers, those men and women growing lettuce in greenhouses and building homes on hilltops, from which rockets are being launched, were the ones protecting Tel Aviv.

"They are now being asked to relinquish these accomplishments for the greater good," the government press release said of their houses and farms, of their synagogues and greenhouses. And the greater good was served. The greenhouses were turned into Hamas training camps and the synagogues were burnt to the ground. Rockets fly into the air from the ruins of broken houses.

No longer will your sons have to die in Gaza, the experts said. A month later rockets were falling on Sderot. A year later Gilad Shalit had been kidnapped and Israeli soldiers were back again, dying in a Gaza that was now run by Hamas.

Among the bundle of promises from the Sharon government, was that the Gaza withdrawal was part of an oral agreement with the United States limiting further withdrawals and concessions. That agreement lasted for another few years until Obama took office and no one in his administration could ever remember such an agreement or accept its validity.

"The moment of truth has arrived," Netanyahu said, on resigning from the Sharon government. "At the moment of truth, a man - especially a leader - must ask himself: 'What are you doing, what do you stand for, what are you fighting for?'"

These moments of truth come fast and furious in Israel, but hardly anyone waits around for an answer. Not even Netanyahu, who knows better.


Hamas' objectives have always been straightforward. Its commanders and suicide bombers, its militia members, bomb experts, smugglers, launchers and embezzlers know what they are fighting for.

"Our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave," the Hamas charter says. "Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims." It has the simplicity that you would expect from the Muslim Brotherhood, a fascist organization that drew equal inspiration from the Koran and Nazism.

What however is Israel fighting for? Since Oslo, the slogan of Israeli moderate conservatives has been "Peace with Security" even though it was quite clear that you could pursue peace and have neither peace nor security, or you could pursue security and have peace. Their slogan was muddled and their policies even more so.

Israel may have superior firepower, but like most Western countries, its policymakers are too muddled to be able to apply that firepower in a useful way. The limited scale warfare that has been adopted by America, including drone assassinations and extensive security measures, came out of Israel's futile efforts to find a more humanitarian style of warfare that would limit civilian and military casualties. But all that these measures really did was make life with terror more manageable.

Withdrawals and a variety of defensive measures such as Iron Dome made it seem like Israel could maintain the status quo. Peace with Security meant no peace and no security, but enough of the illusion of both that it would seem as if the slogan had been fulfilled. Suicide bombings dropped and the terrorists were forced to resort to rocket attacks and drive-by shootings with much lower casualty rates. Rates so low that those who didn't live in Sderot or Samaria could ignore them.

Instead of ending the threat, Israeli conservatives had found a way to live with the pain of terrorism while turning their focus to economic reforms. The left with its emphasis on finding a permanent solution through appeasement and withdrawals was discredited and collapsed. But the problem had not gone away.

While Israel slept, the makeup of the region changed. Hamas had formerly been strongly backed by Syria and Iran, with some support from more distant Islamist Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Egypt and Jordan were both wary of Hamas because their governments were concerned about being overthrown by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Arab Spring put Islamists into power in Egypt. Suddenly the Muslim Brotherhood was running things on both sides of the Rafah Crossing. Hamas switched its allegiance from the shaky Shiite axis of Iran, Syria and Iraq over to the rising Sunni Islamist axis of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Egypt. The Islamist terrorist group was no longer an isolated arm of Iranian foreign policy, it could count on the backing of Turkey, Qatar and Egypt.

Not long after Qatar's leader paid a visit to Hamas, this latest war began. Like so many conflicts with terrorist groups, it isn't about any specific domestic objective. The objectives are regional and now international. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood regime is looking shaky and the Gaza lifeline has come at a perfect time, allowing Morsi to turn the attention of Egyptians away from the shaky economy and some dubious proposals, including early store closings, over to familiar territory denouncing Israel.

Under Iran or Egypt, Hamas is not fighting for Palestinian nationalism, which was already a fiction manufactured by Soviet propagandists looking up to prop up a Greater Syria, but to support the aims of Iranian and Egyptian domestic policy. And suddenly those aims were uncomfortably close.

Terrorist militias serve an ideology, but function as a business. Al Qaeda, Hamas, Fatah or any other of the many groups blanketing the region, need money and weapons to be viable. They need state sponsors and the states that sponsor them want something in return. Terrorist groups find sponsors the way that Renaissance artists found patrons, they show off their skills and wait for someone to come calling with money and guns. And then they perform for their patrons.

Israel's terrorist problem is unsolvable through any form of peace negotiations because there will always be sponsors. A terrorist group may sign a peace agreement, but then it quickly gets on the phone to its sponsors to assure them that it will go on committing acts of terror. Its militias are spun off into "separatist" or "splinter" groups that go on doing what they did before. And the group then asks its new friend American and Israeli friends for guns and money to fight these extremists. That way the terrorist groups get twice the money for terrorism and a farce of counter-terrorism.

Even if a terrorist leader is sincere, his movement is nothing but an umbrella group for terrorist militias. If the umbrella group stops funneling money from state sponsors to local militias, the militias go into business for themselves. And there is such a demand by sponsors for more and more "extreme" militias, that even the existing terrorist groups find themselves having to compete with newer and more violently Islamist militias.

Peace is useless and hopeless under these conditions. Fatah claimed that it could not control Hamas. Hamas claims it cannot control the men shooting rockets out of Gaza. The people shooting rockets out of Gaza will claim that they cannot control their fingers on the trigger. It's plausible deniability all the way down when it's convenient, but the real control is in the hands of regional regimes who feed coins into the slot and get out terrorism.

So what then is Israel fighting for? Peace with security. Which means slapping down Hamas hard enough that it will have to wait another 3-4 years before trying the same thing again, this time with bigger and better rockets. That was the policy six years ago and it's the policy today.

Israel will bomb Hamas targets, kill some of its senior leaders and destroy some of its weapons stockpiles. Its soldiers will enter Gaza, arrest some more senior leaders, walk into traps that will kill some of its best and brightest, and then withdraw again while Hamas celebrates its victory in the Battle of XX or YY where five or six Israeli soldiers were killed, along with ten or fifteen Hamas terrorists. And then the Battle of XX will become the Massacre of XX and lead to a documentary that will be doing an extended tour of American and Canadian campuses during the next Israeli Apartheid Week.

This is the status quo and it cannot be maintained indefinitely. The air raid sirens going off in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem warn that the war is heading into unsustainable territory. As Iran goes nuclear, Hezbollah is trying to become another Iran and Hamas is trying to become another Hezbollah. It is not a nuisance that can be ignored. Israel has no answer to the growing threat except to try and contain it through the same old methods that have now put Jerusalem and Tel Aviv into the line of fire.

Since 1992, Israel has been retreating and those retreats have replaced secure borders with borders of terror. Rather than reversing those withdrawals, the right has been satisfied with trying to stabilize them. But that has only created safe spaces for terror while setting the stage for the next round of retreats by the left which will create even broader territories of terror. These territories are staging areas for the next invasion, which will come not from Hamas, but a Muslim Brotherhood Egypt and an Islamist Turkey, once Israel has been sufficiently softened up.

The only way to end the threat of Hamas in Gaza is by retaking Gaza, but no such policy is on the table. Like America, Israel responds to terrorism not with the aim of achieving decisive victories, but with a policy of intimidating the terrorists into scaling down their attacks. This is a political policy of political generals and leads to terror becoming a permanent institution.

Israel has tried negotiating its way out of the terrorist trap. It has not tried fighting its way out. Israel has tried to escape the occupation, but in a region where you are either the occupier or the occupied, it may have no choice.

Any moment of truth must begin and end with a realistic assessment of the realities that you face. Israel faces a proxy war by its neighbors and like most proxy wars, it is the opening round to a true war ending in true occupation and genocide. Its neighbors know what they are fighting for. They are fighting Israel for the same reason that Shiites fight Sunnis and that Sunnis persecute Christians. They are fighting Israel because "by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population" it is different and must be crushed for the national and religious aims of any proper Islamist country.

But what is Israel fighting for? Like so many modern countries it is fighting so as not to fight. It is fighting for peace. It is fighting to escape from fighting. And so like many modern countries it cannot bring itself to fight hard enough to break the cycle. Instead it fights just hard enough to defer the fight by another few years and the cycle continues.

Israel can retake Gaza once. Or it can retake Gaza every few years. It can have soldiers patrol Gaza or it can have rockets falling on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The options are as unfortunate as they are clear. The only hope for peace lies in driving out the terrorist militias who have turned Gaza and the West Bank into their own Somalia and Afghanistan and reclaiming the terrorists. Because after this fight is through, the next generation of rockets will go on being built and smuggled. And they will not fall in empty fields.

There can be farms and greenhouses on the hilltops of Gaza. Or there can be rockets.

Comments

  1. Charles18/11/12

    Israel lives in a very tough neighborhood. Unfortunately, since shortly after 1967, Israel has continued to dig itself into a deep hole. Massively disproportionate prisoner exchanges, the disastrous Oslo concessions, and withdrawals (Sinai, Yamit, southern Lebanon, Gaza, and Golan attempts).

    Israel can get out of this hole, but this will require outstanding leadership and a strongly united population that has the strength and determination to overcome the defeatist leftists in the media, academia, courts, military , and government.





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  2. Anonymous18/11/12

    this is corrected copy, remove other post please What Israel and the press call Terrorism is a fallacy, the big lie. By repeating this lie we aide our enemy in his war of propaganda to destroy our credibility.

    This is not terrorism, this is war, and friends, we need to define it as such.

    It is much easier to use war strategy if we begin to identify our enemy for their true essence- they are a military state, backed by Iran, and they intend
    to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. If not today, then tomorrow, they will persist because they are tenacious.

    Life is not precious for them. Egyptians are a dime a dozen, they are 80 million. Look at what they do to their children. I personally saw children begging in the streets of Cairo, with eyes poked out by their parents, to get more sympathy from tourists (byt the Pyramids and SPhinx). Across the street is Colonel Sanders- such a strange place for a nice jewish girl to be. Shalom

    It is up to Israel to put down their foot, and say no more- we will not live in a state of siege anymore- our children are precious to us, more so than anything else in the entire world. Take Aza and Sinai and shut the Philadelphia Corridor. We made a mistake, and it can be rectified, because there really is no choice, this is not 67, 73 91, 2006, etc- this is a technolgical war, I saw the rockets fired, the Iranian ones, and they were stopped by the grace of G-d and the Iron dome. This must be finalized. Shalom

    November 18, 2012 9:11 AM

    Please prove you're not a robot
    reCAPTCHA challenge image

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  3. Anonymous18/11/12

    If we live in a tough neighborhood, then what is the solution Charles? The only way to stop a bully is to knock him down a few notches, give him an attitude adjustment.

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  4. Unfortunately Israel continues to avoid giving its enemies a knock down or an attitude adjustment.
    The response is often weak and lopsided.

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  5. There most certainly is an "escape from occupation", its called "annexation"

    As for the rest, have the area maintained by police, not soldiers. Terrorist crimes should be pursued aggressively by (many and well funded) local police and courts.

    With regards to arab citizens, either drive out a large number, pr begin a naturalization process. Personally i do not care which, but the previous policy was a failure that led to disengagement.

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  6. The part hampering Israel's effective response most is the sensitivity by it's government and populace to "world opinion", which they have never seem to grasp, shall ALWAYS be posed against any of it's military actions, no matter how much "purity of arms" it tries to apply.
    No nation in it's right mind, normally supplying a neighbor with electricity, water and food, continues to do so when constantly violently harassed by this neighbor AND not getting paid for the electricity! But cutting all of this would cause such anti-Israel riots blaming it for indiscriminately punishing those poor, innocent Palestinians that Israel acts counter to logic and it's interests. We Jews want to be seen and to act as the moral light of this world while the world so desperately wants this light switched off.

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  7. We should wish for more Arab-Mideast interclashes between the 3-4 years respite.
    (That's the easiest part)
    But between the 3-4 years respite, the dhimmicrats westerners w/ their mainstream medias (MSM) should also be defeated.

    Joseph E. Givatayim. Israel .

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  8. What is the solution for the constant missile attacks in southern Israel? Those who have a solution are the same people who warned against signing the Oslo Accords, in the first place. These people continue to be sidelined. Clearly, the Oslo advocates have no intention of giving up the profits and perks of the "peace industry" that they have created.
    ...
    On Tuesday of this week, I was at a campaign rally in Sderot. "I would like to ask what some of you may see as a strange question," I said to the audience in the packed hall. "In the war that is raging right now (this was before the major fighting began on Wednesday) between us and the Gazans, who is right?" The hall fell silent. The audience looked uncomfortable and curious. "They are right," one woman said. "We are right," said another. Most of the audience just looked baffled. "Look at what is happening ", I continued. "Even here in Sderot, we cannot get a clear answer to the most fundamental of questions. So who is right?"


    Moshe Feiglin • Baffled in Sderot • 16-Nov-2012 | Makor Rishon

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  9. Sderot's problem is not military in nature. Clearly, we are stronger than they are. The reason that we cannot deal with murderous attacks on our citizens is not military – it is spiritual. We have lost our belief in the justice of our cause. A mistake of this proportion cannot be rectified with shortcuts. We must return to the point at which we strayed from the path. That point is Oslo. It is there that we declared that this land is not our land. It is there that we recognized the rights of a different sovereign on our country's heartland. It is there that we lost the legitimacy for our existence in Sderot and as a result, the ability to fight against an enemy who does believe in the justice of his cause.

    Moshe Feiglin • Baffled in Sderot • 16-Nov-2012 | Makor Rishon

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  10. "The Jew is constantly searching. He is imprinted with a soul that comes from an ideal world and this leaves a deep, usually unconscious, impression of another reality. This soul continually pushes him to go further and never be satisfied with any contemporary human reality"
    Moti Karpel • The Belief-Based Revolution • 2003 • Russian | Google-translation Ru-En

    I am not aware of English translation of this book, but I guess Google Russian-to-English translation comes close enough.

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  11. It is not my intention to steer the discussion towards various related articles and books, but IMHO this one is among a few most important (published in 1962): Max Dimont • Jews, God, and History • 2nd Edition, 2004

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  12. The world media offer enough information regarding WHAT is currently happening in Israel (rocket attacks from militant arabs, retaliatory counter-attacks from IDF, or vice versa, depending on affiliation). And almost zero useful information regarding WHY (the essence of the matter). So let's keep digging for clues:

    If our nation is ever going to successfully defend itself from terrorism committed by Muslims, we need to come to grips with the unpleasant reality that the doctrines of Islam animate this behavior.
    ...
    The 9/11 Commission Report goes so far as to make this statement (p. 363): Islam is not the enemy. It is not synonymous with terror. Nor does it teach terror. America and its friends oppose a perversion of Islam, not the great world faith itself. Lives guided by religious faith, including literal beliefs in scriptures, are common to every religion, and represent no threat to us.
    John Steinreich | Islamic Terrorism: Ignorance Is Not Bliss | Nov 18, 2012

    However, the observable and discernible reality is somewhat different: Islam is the enemy. It is synonymous with terror. It does teach terror.

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  13. A practical matter though, Israel needs to sever every last material connection to Gaza. No lights, power, fuel, water, trucks or people or anything.

    Everyone is clear that Hamas doesn't want a state it wants dead Jews. ALL the dead Jews, everywhere. None the less they mouth the words of liberal west and the tenured professors who talk about post colonialism etc. So - if we take at their word, even if we know their word is trash, then cut them loose and tell them to make a go of it on their own. Let them keep the lights on the toilets flushing the trash picked up. Let them manage whatever trade with Egypt they need by land or sea. If they decide that the best use of that is to starve their own populace to death while focusing on more weapons a la North Korea, fine. Let them all starve then. In the meantime every projectile flying in to Israel is an act of war and will be met with 10:1 force.

    And then stop entertaining any sort of discussion through third parties with them. Just ignore it and invoke the Khartoum Conference Declaration of 1967 - "The Three No's".

    No further action is required. Israel is permanently at war with Gaza.

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  14. Anonymous18/11/12

    "War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over." --William Tecumseh Sherman

    If one goes to war, then make total war. No mercy, no quarter given.

    Or to quote Conan the Barbarian when asked, "What is best in life?"

    "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women."

    I don't think the Israelis have the will to engage at that level of violence, and that will result in a never-ending war with Hamas, Hezbollah, and the so-called Palestinians.

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  15. Anonymous18/11/12

    I doubt most Israelis consider this to be "A Moment of Truth" You mean more so than Oct 1973 or June 1967 or Summer 1982????? As for West Bank, it is nothing like Gaza. This is just typical hyperbole we hear from some of Israel's US supporters. Most Israelis dont share such views.

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  16. Yup all nonsense.

    Gaza was nothing like Lebanon. There were never going to be rockets from Gaza.

    West Bank is nothing like Gaza. The Galilee is nothing like the West Bank. Jerusalem will never be endangered.

    Air raid sirens in Tel Aviv? You're talking crazy here.

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  17. Anonymous18/11/12

    May God protect and help Israel.

    Luis

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  18. Anonymous18/11/12

    Well all you need is, Tankdozers,flame-throwers, Lots of H-E, tanks and troops.(Oh!! wait you all ready have that) Start at the top and kill everything alive in gaza-EVERYTHING. Then go to the west bank- ECT. and do the same thing.A little nerve gas in the caves and cellers will make things go much faster. Extrminate them. Problem solved forever.

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  19. @ Anonymous: It does not take much brains to kill everything in sight. On the contrary, it takes severe lack of cognitive capacity. Not to mention such silly unnecessary things as reason, beliefs and morals that stand in the way.

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  20. "Yup all nonsense.

    Gaza was nothing like Lebanon. There were never going to be rockets from Gaza.

    West Bank is nothing like Gaza. The Galilee is nothing like the West Bank. Jerusalem will never be endangered.

    Air raid sirens in Tel Aviv? You're talking crazy here. "


    Yes, I too think (hope!) that this "anonymous" was doing irony! ;)

    Sultan Knish: I think that Bibi is as strong a leader as Israel is likely to get at the moment...what do you think?



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  21. Oh, I forgot to state the obvious: Your article - as usual - hits (all) the nail(s) on its (their) head(s). Not that it makes me sleep any easier, but thank you!

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  22. Bibi is smart. Strong, is not the first word that springs to mind.

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  23. Mr Greenfield, you haven't addressed the most interesting question re Hamas, which is 'why now?'

    And the answer is money. And survival.

    Hamas, unfortunately for them, chose what turned out to be the wrong side to support. As you say, Iran is now well known to be their chief backer. The situation in Syria has made that toxic, so they have been backing away. They can no longer accept support from Iran without being seen as traitors to the Sunni and Brotherhood cause. And because of the war in Syria replacement funding from Sunni's will not be forthcoming.

    Without financial support from donors Hamas will wither in Gaza. They won't be able to pay salaries and will lose supporters to Fatah (who can bring in EU money) and to Islamic Jihad.

    And what brings this to a head now is the upcoming vote on PA observer status in the UN. If Hamas lets this through unchallenged they will lose all chance of power in the West Bank. With their power in Gaza also in danger Hamas almost certainly sees their current situation as being a threat to their existence as a movement.

    How do they keep their position in Gaza and regain financial support from Sunni's? There is one way, and only one way, for them to do this. They must mobilise the Sunni-on-the-street to force support from the Sunni grandees. And the only way to do that is to be on every news report "heroically resisting" the Israeli Army.

    So this whole new conflict is about money and Hamas' fight for its own survival...not against Israel but against the PA/Fatah.

    The bet that Hamas is making is that the Israelis will not do as you say - occupy the whole of Gaza and evict the Hamas leadership - whereupon Fatah would then take over and purge any remaining Hamas supporters. This bet is worth taking for Hamas because without this war in their own estimation they will lose their place in Gaza to Fatah or even to Islamic Jihad anyway. Netanyahu knows this, which is why he is lining up a very very large ground force along the border - to send the message to Hamas that they cannot bank on winning this bet, and must work harder to find a compromise outcome.

    I don't think Hamas can dare compromise without risking their own destruction (due to no money), so I expect Ismail Haniyeh and 'senior Hamas representatives' will soon be visiting Egypt for "extended discussions" in case Israel drops the hammer and takes the Rafah crossing and the tunnels to keep the rats all in, ready for the ratcatchers.

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  24. Israel is going to have borders with Arabs somewhere, and it won't be far from Israels major urban areas. From wherever they are the Palis will launch rockets. Gaza is as good a palce as any.

    My favorite Gaza idea is to have the Egyptians offer the Copts a refuge in Gaza, and move the Muslims to where the Copts are now.

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  25. SoCal Observer18/11/12

    First, Debby, you must have been reading the stuff I have read. Terrorism is a tactic, usually used in guerrilla wars. The terrorists, whether part of a nationalist uprising, outside revolutionary party or whatever need a state sponsor and safe havens to win. The US needed help from France and a large segment of the local populace. Hamas is backed by Egypt and others and has the leftist MSM to boot.

    Sultan, you point out an interesting dilemna faced by Israel. The problem at its most basic is that Israelis in general and Jews in particular tend to be moral people. Like everyone else there are the bad actors, but in general you have no desire to kill or injure anyone unless there are no alternatives. Unfortunately, Israel's neighbors do not see it the same way. There is no sadness or regret when women, children, babies, or babushkas get murdered by Hamas or the Jihadi du jour. Had the Israeli's cleared Gaza and the west bank in 1967 like they did the Golan, there would have been a world wide moan and groan, but soon the world would have found something else to get excited about.

    Unfortunately, the mess is far more complex now and there really is no easy answer. Ultimately, something will have to give. At $40,000 a pop, the Iron Dome is only temporizing and can be overwhelmed. Eventually, I suspect that eventually Egypt will roll it's big US tanks and when that happens, it will not be pretty. You can bet the US will be drawn in, regardless of whether BHO, Romney, or Yogi Bear is in the White House.

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  26. Invade, crush Hamas, I. Jihad etc. Annex Gaza and put up some nice resorts on the beach, let the current Gazans go back to Egypt. It seems that is what THEY want, and too bad if it is not.

    It took the complete wipeout of Berlin to end the 2nd World War, and then 2 nukes on the other side of the world, because the leaders in both Germany and Japan cared nothing about their people. Hamas is no different. End this thing already. We already get all the opprobrium, so who cares already?

    End this. Do what is needed to be done. And it will send a better message to Nasrallah and the rest of the scum.

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  27. Anonymous18/11/12

    God will help and protect Israel. One of His wishes may be for Israel go retake Gaza and repopulate it with productive Jews. Driving out militants without returning Gaza to Israel is naive and futile.

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  28. Anony--That's the key.

    But Israelis have to decide if they want to recapture Gaza or surrender it and accept a "Palestinian" state.

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  29. "Cast Lead" was a half-hearted effort. It bought 4 years of semi-peace, notwithstanding a number of rockets, and the Hamasians used the interval to re-arm. All predictable, of course.

    Israel must now absolutely destroy Hamas, despite any objection from Obama.

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  30. 1 - Imagine for a moment that the "palestinian" side of the conflict fully accepted reasonable requirements of Israelis and made peace. And then what, they will suddenly need to learn to live like civilized people, to respect alien cultures, to treat aliens like equals, to change attitude towards their women and children, to work for a living, to produce and to sell goods, to compete in the marketplace, while receiving little or no external aid and support, all that peacefully and without thick fog of physical and propaganda wars? Without the actual cultural and civilizational achievements to use as a foundation, to build upon, and without re-assessing and re-working considerable parts of their "religion of peace" manual and education system, all that sounds pretty much like a science fiction. Remove from Islam its inherent violence and hatred and murder, and how much of substance is left?

    2 - Opinions and perceptions and feelings of bleeding hearts of the world is one thing, and the actual life, well being and long term existence of the Israeli nation is quite another. The disputed territories cannot and will not remain "disputed" forever. Either they will belong to Israel - or they will belong to somebody else.

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  31. Anonymous19/11/12

    Brilliant analysis.

    I have a modest proposal that would provide a permanent and incremental solution for the Gaza problem. See http://eliyahu2u.wordpress.com/, where I start from very similar premises as you, but reach an interesting conclusion.

    Enjoy, Ed

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  32. Israeli leaders could learn a lot if they read the Sultan and took his advice! Farms would definitely be better than launch pads.
    Linked you up, here:
    http://marezilla.com/2012/11/israel-defends-against-annihilation-world-tells-them-to-use-restraint/

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  33. :(

    A gloomy thought but I have a feeling that Gazans and the Islamic world are debating whether to attempt to wipe out the Jewish people in one fell swoop with a nuclear attack or destroy it generation upon generation to prolong the suffering and fuel their sadistic natures.

    Either way, they're holding their own formal or informal negotiations on which approach to take. Either way we're talking about genocide.

    Should Israel fight with victory as its primary objective or surrender? The red flag or the white flag? The answer is obvious.

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  34. It's disheartening to read a headline on A7 about Lieberman threatening to call off the negotiations until the rockets stop.

    Seriously?

    :( Hamas wants genocide and an Israeli leaders threatens to stop talking to them?

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  35. ["Palestinian" Authority] ... despite being the biggest welfare state on the planet, it's still completely incapable of taking care of itself.

    A Badly Invented People

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  36. Anonymous19/11/12

    DP111 wrote..

    The real tragedy is that Israel, has lost the opportunity to acquire strategic defensive land.

    If in the eighties, Israel had openly announced, that terrorism against Israel would lead not just to retaliation, but the permanent non-negotiable incorporation of parts Judea and Samaria into Israel, or Gaza, it would have stopped the Jihad immediately. The Jihadis in Hamas would also have discouraged their Marxist allies to stop provoking Israel, for that would lead to loss of territory. The Jihad ids about territory where sharia can be enforced. Allah is mightily displeased if a once Muslim land is conquered by "Infidels". No houris for the Jihadis.

    Such a policy would have earned Israel not just respect, but strategic as well as historic land, that should be in historic Israel. It would make clear to the America and Europe that Israel was not a pushover but had to be treated with respect.

    Frankly, Israel’s present dire predicament lies not with Hamas or the Lefty Westerners, but with its past leaders, and those who elected them.

    Its not too late to start.

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