Now What?
The notion that the Palestinians “Never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity” has become so cliched, we almost take it for granted. Tonight in Tel Aviv, a suicide bomber struck injuring as many as 28 30 33 38 40 50 people and killing 3 4 (so far). The explosion took place on the Herbert Samuel street promenade at around 11:30 p.m. near the Sage night club, a dumb karaoke joint. So now what?
Haaretz reports that the geniuses at Islamic Jihad have claimed responsibility for this cowardly and totally ill conceived attack. They further report that militants in the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claim that Hezbollah was involved in suicide bombing as well. As of now there has been no response from Mahmoud Abbas, although ousted PA cabinet member Saeb Erekat condemned the Tel Aviv suicide bombing “in the strongest possible terms.” What else is new? Seems just like old times.
Speaking of old times, Soviet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that his country is considering the resumption of arms sales to the Palestinians. In what has got to be to stupidest and most ill-timed announcement ever, he stated:
The Palestinian leadership has proven its ability to keep the situation under control … It has also proven its ability to coordinate the activities of all Palestinian organizations, including those who hold tough positions toward the Israelis.
From now on, any similarly ill-timed statement will be described as Pulling a Lavrov.
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One word, people.
Amalek.
Figure it out.
The storm over Salah has not died. I hear about those 14 kids all the time. But of course, I hear about it from gentiles and do-gooder naive Jews so it must not matter.
I understand collateral damage well and the concept is acceptable as long as you act as morally as you can. I’m sorry, but Hamas uses the collateral damage argument as well, saying that since there are probably reservists in that restaurant they blew up, any other victims are collateral damage. Any moral state and army need to strive to minimize collateral damage and that’s exactly what the IAF did in that half-ton strike.
As for your story about America, please remember that it’s America, the world’s strongest military, the world’s largest economy, and a country that has, as a result, a little bit more clout than Israel. Israel is not free to act in the same way the US is, nor will the consequences be the same if it does.
Your argument about minimizing risk to your own men is fair and valid. I don’t disagree at all and actually agree whole-heartedly. It is a fine line that you have to tread sometimes, and not an easy one to figure out. Should they have aerially bombarded Jenin before going in there? I don’t think so. Should have started off bulldozing houses instead of going door to door? Perhaps. In hindsight I ‘m a genius just like you. But if I’m doing the planning for the operation, it is not a foregone conclusion that there is one way to carry out the operation.
We are not animals. We are human beings, and we are Jews. We need to be moral and we need to be just. Otherwise, we go against our own values, and frankly, would not have a right to complain when others treat us poorly.
IDF is being merciful when its supposed to be cruel.Thats no something to be proud of.Its not moral.Its idiotic.
No see we are arguing about IDF’s “morality”, we arent discussing its military competence,so your bringing up the Hagana’s failures is completely irrelevant. In that case their failure had nothing to do with them not using full force for moral reasons.Also what you dont seems to understand is that unlike your prisoner example ,the result of IDF’s misguided mercy (increase in terrorist attacks) is very direct and predictable.
yeah the IDF waited after those terrorist leaders perpetrated a few more terrorist attacks ,and then on the next day when they finally felt they had the moral high ground they killed them.As if before they somehow didnt deserve to die.But of course America was “still troubled”,and Europe went into shock. Anyway the Army’s first priority is to minimise risk to its own men and to the people it’s supposed to protect, and not to minimise international condemnation.By acting the way it does it raises the risk of a terrorist attack.The “storm” over Salah Shehada died in a few days. And you know what? I care as much about “the terrible civilians casualties ” among Palestinians as I do about German and Japanese civilian losses in WW2. They are collateral damage.Thats what happens in every war.
America acts with far more impunity in Iraq ,there it uses bombs heavy artillery ,it killed more Iraqi civilians(who truely never had anything to do with terror against America ) in a week then Israel killed in years,and I feel its plenty moral. And I can only imagine America’s response if there would be a terrorist attack in Ny every month. the perpetrators would be erased from the face of the earth.
Boss, do you want an answer with the hindsight of the failed attempt or do you want an answer as to what I would have done prior to the failure and knowing what they knew?
I mean, gosh you are so smart to bring up operational failures after the fact.
I know, Gush Etzion and the Old City fell! Your comment: those damn weak Hagana fighters weren’t vicious enough; Ben Gurion is a poor battle commander from the Left.
I know, a prisoner was released and became a terrorist. Your comment: we should kill all Palestinian prisoners.
I know, that Palestinian farmer is picking olives from his olive grove. Your comment: What’s he doing there, uproot his grove now.
As far as I know, the reasoning of the IAF to use a half ton bomb instead of a one ton bomb resulted from two key issues: the horror of killing 14 children in order to get one terrorist leader; the international firestorm and sea of negative publicity that followed its dropping a one ton bomb and killing these 14 Palestinian children in surrounding buildings just to kill this known Palestinian terror leader.
The IAF, wisely and to its credit, attempts to see how many civilians are in a prospective attack zone so they can minimize the innocent casualties. This is also what separates us from the Palestinians, this notion of fairness and that only their terrorists and militants should be killed. We don’t try to kill civilians and attempt to minimize their losses.
In this instance, the IAF carefully evaluated the possible deaths of innocents, the bad publicity and black eye Israel woudl get versus the benefit of killing a few people who could be killed another day in less trying circumstances. They tried the half ton bomb that caused damage but ultimately didn’t harm the Hamas pigs – or anybody else. Then they came back over the next months and eliminated some of these leaders anyway.
What a moral story. What a moral army. How proudly we can hold our heads up – to ourselves – that our military successfully concludes missions, even in trying environments, while seeking to maintain a base standard of morality that makes us all proud…and still achieves its defense objectives.
I repeat do you think it was ok to use a smaller bomb and as result miss a golden opportunity to kill all of hamas’s leadership while knowing full well that killing those scum would save many many lives?
but active terrorists who were left alive because of misguided Israeli “morality” dont kill by accident.
Hee hee. Transfer. How quaint. T_Y, you don’t know Kahane. As T_M amply pointed out, over and over again, Israel does not exist in a vacuum. Forced transfer of civilians will simply NOT work. You think we have a problem with refusenicks now? Hoo boy. Come on man, forget the pie in the sky fantasies.
🙄
Kahane was right!!! Transfer is the only solution!!!! OF the TERRORIST Arabs. That’s the plan. The only plan that will work. Face it ck and TM.
So let me get this straight, if an excellent IDF officer was killed because he stood on the wrong side of a house being demolished, and I support terrorist home demolitions, I support and advocate for this officer’s death?
If a shin bet officer didn’t shoot a bomber who happened to hide his explosives in his groin where he wasn’t searched – because, you know, he wasn’t sure this guy was a killer and assumed he was a, uh, regular human being civilian type – and the bomb exploded and this officer was killed, then I support his death because of my skewed morality?
Here are a couple of words with which you should familiarize yourself: black; white; gray. Especially the last word.
these are your exact words
” Where we agree is that we do a half-assed job in that we are nowhere near as aggressive as we could be. But I’m proud of that. It’s why I can support Israel and the IDF unequivocally. In the face of adversity and very challenging circumstances, they maintain civility and morality. The result, however, is that they don’t fear us as they should. I think that’s the trade-off and I’d rather be moral and just than the opposite.”
Meaning you are ok with the fact that 23 soldiers needlessly died in Jenin because they were sent in to conduct house to house fighting instead of artillery strikes.It means that you are ok with the fact tha the IDf missed a golden opportunity to take out the entire leadership of Hamas because it didnt use a big enough bomb. And of couse you have no problems that the enemy no longer fears the IDf and sees no reason to stop engaging in terrorism.So logically it follows is that you have no problem that more Jews were victims of terrorism as result of these half assed yet “just” actions. After all its a fair trade off,right?
Yeah. I don’t recall T_M ever saying a totally un-jewish thing.
Alex, where did I write such a thing?
If you had read my post carefully T_M you would see that I wasnt making an argument on the disengagemtn plan or even proposing a solution ,but was commenting on your preference of having more dead “moral”Jews rather then an army that acts forcefully to protect its citizens.
Chilling. Thanks T_M for a well written comment that really ought to be its own post.
Alex and TY, thanks for the kind words. Now try to post your plans for what Israel can do. Thanks.
Josh, we’ve been over some of your comments before and we disagree on things like population growth among Palestinians. Gaza is not the West Bank. Gush Katif is not Maaleh Adumim.
Your plan is to keep doing what we’re doing. That’s a road to disaster. Israel’s economy is in lousy condition. The poverty rate is way too high and a ton of kids are affected. Israeli society is torn because of the lack of common values regarding our presence among the Palestinians. A culture of intolerance and violence has entered civic society so that you have violence in schools. The IDF finds itself stretched and reservists find themselves pushed to unreasonable lengths.
And that’s just the beginning of the problem. Israel is a small island in a sea of hostile countries. Since it does not have economic, academic, cultural or diplomatic relations of any consequence with its surrounding countries, it must rely upon the US, Europe and other trading partners for these relationships.
Except that our presence in Gaza and even the West Bank is having a serious and detrimental effect on those relationships with these countries. We are seeing a divestment movement hitting large U.S. church groups and entering normal discourse in societies like Scandinavia.
Academically, there is already a great deal of hostility to Israelis and their scholarship – sometimes outright bans – in Europe, and in the U.S. there is already a very strong anti-Israel presence on most campuses’ faculties.
Culturally Israel no longer has the same impact we had even as recently as the the 80s, unless you consider seeing tanks inside civilian population centers in people’s living room tv sets some sort of cultural success (consider the Lebanon War a turning point).
Diplomatically, we carry little weight anywhere and far less weight than we would like in the U.S.
As this happens, our young are turning away from Judaism, as well as Israel, in part because of the sophisticated and relentless campaign against Israel and its supporters that we get from pro-Palestinians and Lefties. The poor 20 year olds have a tough choice to make, they could identify with a “monstrous” country, or remove themselves from the clan and get laid more often. This, in turn, is filtering upward to older generations so that you see far fewer people supporting Israel than in the past, or you see support that is lukewarm.
This is just the beginning. In 20 years, unless something dramatic changes, we will see a true decline in American Jewry and certainly in its ability to support Israel. The rest of the population, that either does not care about the ME or has little interest in Israel, will certainly not be any more supportive than it is today, and on the basis of their exposure to pro-Palestinian sources, I would say far less supportive if not hostile.
Now I don’t mean to say that Israel’s presence in the territories is the sole cause for all of these issues, BUT IT IS A VERY SIGNIFICANT PART OF THE PROBLEM.
Gaza gives us nothing. I’m sorry if that hurts people’s feelings, but it is more of a problem than a help to Israel. The West Bank is a different story, as we’ve discussed, but it still hurts us more than it helps.
What we need is for Israel to become a country that allows and enables the Palestinians to have their state so that their “story” is “resolved.”
What we need is for our soldiers to get out of there so we don’t have morally questionable incidents.
What we need is for Israel to retrench along lines that are defensible and with a large security barrier so that we keep most of the settlers with us (80% if you stick to the Taba talks), and begin to live our lives again.
Internal rifts within Israel will begin to heal, finally, and the government will be able to focus on internal development and the economy.
The economy will grow as countries shed their current inhibitions in dealing with us because right now we have tanks that enter Palestinian villages and these countries’ citizens don’t approve and don’t care about the complexity of the situation. Tanks in villages are a reminder of bad things.
Do you notice how I haven’t even brought up the Palestinians? You know why? It’s because we are shooting ourselves in the foot with our own foolish behavior. We don’t need the Palestinians to be our enemies, we are doing quite fine in hurting ourselves. The fact is that world does have a consensus about the Green Line and that some territorial negotiations will take place to conclude peace with the Palestinians. As time passes with us in the territories, that consensus falters. Instead of taking what we have and hugging it close for all of its preciousness, we are playing double or nothing.
People like me have a plan. You may not like it, but it’s a plan. It’s sad, but pragmatic. It hurts some people, but helps the majority. It isn’t a perfect solution, but it makes a lot of sense and will provide a healthier answer than bullshit about how targeted killings will win this for us. We are already chasing and killing terrorists.People like you, Josh, Ephraim, Alex and TY, are proving yourselves great at silly insults or plans that maintain the status quo indefinitely. There is no indefinitely. There is a limited time horizon and we are fucking around even with that. It’s not I who has to wake up, it is the lot of you. Israel is being destroyed not by the Palestinians, but by us. We need to stop this now and yes, Gaza is only the first step. Next will be most of the West Bank, except for about 3-7% of it. If we do that, we might yet save Israel. If we don’t, this long decline will continue until we end up losing everything. The Palestinians believe time is on their side, maybe you guys need to figure out why.
T_M well all I can say is that you should join Jewschool. The purpose of any army is to use full force to protect the people and as the mayor of Sderot said ‘a state that doenst act with full capacity to protect its citizens doesnt have the right to exist”. Israel has absolutley failed in its purpose.Your logic is so twisted its not funny. Apperently you think that its ok that Jews die as long as no pure innocent terror loving,suicide bomber supporting “civilians” are killed. Jews certainly held the moral high ground when they went to gas chambers.thats the way the whole world liked it.I guess that was ideal Jewish behavior,right?
T_M,
I don’t have to chop off my leg to know that it will cause pain, bleeding, and probable death. I know this from basic common knowledge, founded on medical history.
We don’t need to give away Gaza, Judea, and Samaria to know that it will cause pain, bleeding, and death. Again, a simple glance at the headlines since Oslo (even those of Maariv and Ha’artz) will clue you in to the ensuing events.
Maybe the terrorist should be likenned to a nasty infected toe. I would much rather take a powerful antibiotic than undergo an amputation. Kill the parisites, not the host.
T_Y
According to you, however, since they launch attacks there, we should not leave Gaza even if it’s in our interest.
It’s not in our interest.
No, according to you, we should keep doing what we we’ve been doing all along, perhaps more aggressively, until they are worn down.
Yes, yes, yes. We practically have them in that corner right now. Their original terrorist leadership is practically decimated, and what’s left is on the defensive hiding by moving from safe house to safe house wasting valuable time that they’d prefer to be using to plan on killing more Jews. But everytime they yell ‘hudna’, we accept, they rejuvenate their forces a bit, and then attack again. Ephraim got it right, ‘let them sue for peace’.
In the face of adversity and very challenging circumstances, they maintain civility and morality.
Which should give you all the more confidence in the IDF to wage war and finish this conflict effectively and efficiently with as little civilian casualties as possible.
The security barrier is a psychological border…It demarcates a line they cannot cross
Wrong,
The security barrier is mostly just a fence, they can still march on it and pass it if they really wanted to en masse. Another thing is that this retreat plan actually unilaterally promises to increase the number of Palestinians entering Israel and to ASSURE an open border. The psychological use of the barrier is the crashing of the dreams to go back to their lands of pre-48 inside the green line; The forced realization that we are here to stay. I’m against the barrier, but admit to this specific advantage of it.
While you wait, they gain strength in demographics,
plunging birthrates and steady continued voluntary emmigration void your claim,
in international support,
one of our victories rarely heralded is the fact the world is much more fed up with the Palestinians than ever. We’ve managed to expose the corruption, the lies, and the voluntary blindfolds the world uses to look the other way. If we start/continue to demand Palestinian compliance to past agreements, this will continue to work to our advantage.
in military expertise,
True, and their knowledge to fight will increase exponentially when we leave those areas.
in access to the U.S. administration. This one is a big question. The US supposed likes us, but the inforned person understands this to be a relationship of interests, not empathy.
While I take the initiative, I neutralize them and disable their progress.
You empower them by caving in to their demands. It is widely known that their are more retreats planned. The real left (Beillin, Avinery, and Barak) hates this plan because it negates their dream for an agreed settlement. The current retreat plan makes the dangerous precedent of giving back ‘the last centimetre’. From every view point, there’s no reason to retreat from the three northern gaza stip settlements since the border already exists there. But for some reason, we justify the ‘this land is your land’ claim by retreating even from there.
Do you really think that Israel has any justification for keeping ANY post-67 land now after presenting this plan? No. If this nightmare goes through, we will be pushed all the way back to the green line.
Targeted assassinations; quick raids by hit squads; bombing of known terrorist facilities regardless of who happens to be in them at the time; sudden attacks on the barracks, training facilities, etc., of all organs of the PA, in particular the PA “security services”; a shoot-to-kill order for any palestinian seen either in a uniform or carrying a weapon; unceasing manhunts for known terrorists with a standing “shoot first ask questons later” policy, and, when necessary, attacks like the one undretaken against the terrorists in Jenin, except I would not send in the infrantry until the place had been softened up by artillery or aerial bombing. Give as little opportunity as possible for surrender, but if they do surrender, expel them to Syria even if the Syrians won’t take them.
I realize that there would be some civilan casualties, and I would of course expect any and all militarily reasonable measures to reduce such casualties so long as they did not endanger IDF soldiers to be taken. However, the fear of civilan palestinian casulaties cannot be a reason for refraining from protecting Jews. If your criteria for acton is only when there is a 100% certainty that no civilians will be endangered, you might as well disband the IDF now and get on the next boat back to Poland. I do not believe that the accidental deaths of civlians that occur as a result of legitimate self-defense makes the IDF as culpable as the terrorists. Hiding military assets among civilians is in contravention of the Geneva Convention, so any palestinian deaths are morally the reponsibility of the PA not srael.
This stick should be accompanied by the carrot of “we will stop this the instant you agree to a real peace”. But Israel should not let up until that happens. Anyone who has been following this knows that it is precisely when the Israelis ease up and start “making gestures” to the PA that people start geting blown up. When Israel is on the attack, Jews can go to the cafes in peace.
Just to be clear: I do not advocate a policy of waiting for an outrage and then retaliating for it. I advocate a policy of ongoing military operations until the PA lays down its arms. I believe that this is possible because I do not believe that Israel has exercised even a fraction of its real military capabilities against the terrorists. They have been blinded by a the hope of a bogus peaace and as a result have let their enemies dictate the terms of the engagement. This must stop.
In any case, this is, it is to be hoped, quickly becoming moot. The dominos are falling, and Syria will either be the next to go or it will cave to US pressure and take itself out of the fight to save itself. This will be the end of Hizb’allah, which will knock one of the last remaining legs out from under the palestinian stool.
why cant the PA make some real reforms before any pullout? Theyve done nothing (real at least). They should at least completly aliminate all hate in text books and on tv for a start – a peice of paper saying peace will mean nothing if your teaching your people to hate…
But anyway this isnt a real pullout, Israel will still have control of the area (just not so clearly or to the international eye at least)..so i guesse aslong as we dont completly let them run wild and let the extremist turn it into a terrorist state its not that bad…but then again not that good….i think the word is suvlanut?
but can some one tell me what we are actually getting from this? (NOT what you HOPE we will, what we WILL?)…..my answer is nothing but im wondering if anyone can enlighten me?
anyone read this? – http://www.arutzsheva.com/news.php3?id=77611 – Ehud barak against disengagement….
Ephraim, tell me how you would take this fight to them differently than you do now? What are you going to do about the fact they hide and fight within a crowded civilian population?
Sorry, I hit the wrong key while editing my previous message and it was posted before I was finished.
Anyway, my plan is simple and I have stated it before: engage the palestinians in battle and punish them militarily until they surrender unconditionally and sue for peace. Do not retaliate or wait for them to do something, carry the fight to them and let them shake in their boots for a change. The course you advocate, or, more particularly, the reasons behind your advocay of uilateral surrender, make it obvious that you believe that there is no way for Israel to win and that therefore she must retreat and hope for the best. This is like throwing raw meat to a starving hyena. The palestinians are just like the Nazis, of whom Winston Churcjhill famously said: “The Hun is either at your throat or at your feet.”
Your plan is a recipe for a war, TM. A person is considered insane if they continue to do same thing and hope for a better result. You advocate a complete unilateral retreat with no promises of anything from the Arabs and just sort of hope that it will make things better. Where have you been since Oslo? You are obviously out of your mind.
You say that you prefer a “moral” IDF to an effective one and take pride in the inability of the IDF to carry the fight to the enemy. Are you incapable of understanding the inevitable consequences of the actions you advocate? If you want to commit suicide on your own, don’t let me stop you. But to advocate such a policy for Israel puts you in the company of all the people who want Israel to disappear.
You say that Isael getting out of the palestinians’ lives will cause them to concentrate on ther own developement. Why do you believe this? Oslo resulted in over 90% of the palestinian popultion coming under PA jurisdiction. What did Arafat do? He turned the whole place into a terrorist training camp and used all of the money he extorted from the West to finance it. There is no evidence to support any of your pipe-dreams. All you have is a misplaced, weak-kneed sentimental desire that something like tis will magically bring about the desired result.
You say that the reason the palestinians hate Israel is because Israel interferes with the palestinians’ lives. Why then was there no peace before Yesha came into Israel’s possession? The Arabs hate Israel because they hate Jews and because the idea of a Jewish state is an insult to their manhood and their religion.
I can understand the desire to separate from the palestinians, and even from a tactical and strategic perspective I think it is at least theoretically possible to make a case for it. However, the reasons you give for your plan and the way in which you would go about it reveal it’s fatal weakness, and this will be obvious to everyone: you advocate retreat because you want the IDF to remain moral rather than effecive. What this means, of course, is that when the palestinians inevitably find a way to get around, under, through, or over the fence, you will advocate more concessions since you will not be able to bear the idea of using the IDF to actually attack and kill the enmies of Israel and the Jews people like you .
yOU AKS FOR A PLAN AND A SLOUTION. i HAVE ALREADY GIVEN ONE. dISAVOW THE BOGUS AGREEMENTS WITH THE TERRORIST pa, ENGAGE THEM IN BATLLE, AND KIL, CAPTURE, AND EXPEL AS MANY OF THEIR FIGHTERS AS IS =HUMANLY POSSIBLE
Okay, so you don’t have a plan. You want things to change and refuse to budge until they do. You think they want to kill us no matter what and we’re not doing enough about it.
I still don’t see a solution. Saying that you want to see Israel on their maps as a starting point is quaint but has nothing to do with a plan or a solution. You want them to change their mindset but under circumstances where you change nothing.
I won’t speak for ck, but I don’t advocate weakness. I also have no interest in even one more Israeli death at the hands of Palestinians. However, I think there will be fewer deaths and a smaller burden on Israel if we’re outside of Gaza. I believed this in 1999 and 1993 as well. According to you, however, since they launch attacks there, we should not leave Gaza even if it’s in our interest. No, according to you, we should keep doing what we we’ve been doing all along, perhaps more aggressively, until they are worn down.
I think that’s unlikely to happen. They keep having little children and those kids are taught to hate not only by their teachers and leaders, but by our presence among them. No matter how justified, we send our men with guns and our tanks into their towns.
Where we agree is that we do a half-assed job in that we are nowhere near as aggressive as we could be. But I’m proud of that. It’s why I can support Israel and the IDF unequivocally. In the face of adversity and very challenging circumstances, they maintain civility and morality. The result, however, is that they don’t fear us as they should. I think that’s the trade-off and I’d rather be moral and just than the opposite.
But…and this is a big but, I have a plan. My plan removes us from most of the territories. I don’t care if the Israelis who live there remain, I hope they will have the choice to do so. However, my plan is that Israel and the IDF will remove themselves from the majority of Palestinian life. We will allow them to govern themselves in good faith. We will have a fence and barrier dividing them from us. We will retrench our forces on our side of the fences. We will then work on improving ourselves as a country – society, economy, infrastructure, political landscape.
My thinking about this is that the Palestinians might attempt to continue attacking, but that they are more likely to focus on their own internal development, and might even find themselves drawn to…Jordan. The security barrier is a psychological border, not just a physical one. It demarcates a line they cannot cross and gives that line a physical presence. This is one of the key reasons the Palestinians are so opposed to this barrier. They understand that it crushes their dream of walking across into Israel en masse.
My plan may not be perfect, and I’m happy to hear suggestions that might enhance it, but it is a pro-active plan where I dictate what happens and how. You have no plan, and you are simply reacting to their moves. I’m ahead of the curve and you are always behind. While you wait, they gain strength in demographics, in international support, in military expertise, in access to the U.S. administration. While I take the initiative, I neutralize them and disable their progress. This isn’t a charity, and this isn’t about giving in to anybody or risking lives. This is about being moral, just, and very pragmatic so that we save Israel, Israeli lives, and even Palestinian lives.
TM,
I’m not going to put together a plan because I don’t think that ANY ‘one’ plan will work.
A plan can’t force people to change attitudes and actions in the short-term and Oslo proved it. Instead, a strategy for peace, not phony quiet, must be pursued. On our part, Israelis (and galut Jews) should start respecting themselves instead of allowing subsquent weak Israeli governments to humiliate Jews around the world by not asking for compliance of agreements signed with the Arabs. It’s happening again; the Palestinians are shopping for heavy weaponry, and the government doesn’t say anything. The Palestinians kill us, and we say that we’ll concentrate on the diplomatic angle. We’ll run to the Americans and show them intelligence data. Do you really think they care? Will it change anything? No. We knew the Palestinians were smugling back in the 90s and we did nothing, Dennis Ross confirms that the US turned a blind eye because Israel did too.
So Sharon ‘threatened’ the Palestinians, after five more Israelis were killed and a few dozen injured, that we’ll stop our unilateral prisoner releases and unilateral handover of more ‘Palestinian’ areas. Big deal. Been there, done that, the t-shirt is stained already with the blood of thousands of Jews since the government has said this so many times in the last few years. Mark my words; no one will remember this attack next week, the Palestinians will not arrest anyone for murder (perhaps ‘harming Palestinians interests’ and then released). Has anyone been arrested for killing Americans coming to hand out scholarships not to long ago? No.
I’m sick of making concessions. I want something in return before we do anything else. I want the Palestinians to accept that Israel exists, to put it on all their maps, and that is the starting point. This is not a concession. But we act as if we need to beg for it even after apparently winning the war. Nothing procedes without that. That’s the first step in the strategy. Anything else is just fooling ourselves o n e m o r e t i m e.
Unilateral actions are stupid (this is the perfect word). One of the ‘reasons’ trumpeted for the retreat plan is that ‘we’ must take the initiative, and ‘we’ can’t wait for them. Bullsh-t. There is no doubt that the terror will cease, there is no doubt that they will continue their weapons and explosives buildup. The outgoing head of the Shabak confirms this at every oppurtunity. And there is no doubt that it is only a matter of time before more Jews are killed.
Don’t support the retreat. It shows weakness on our part.
TM, CK, aren’t you sick of watching Jews buried?
ck: It may be something like what happens when matter and anti-matter are combined 🙂
” Wake up!!! We have no partners in peace. We just have varied degrees of terrorists working on different time tables. That Abbas wears a suit and not not carry a side-arm does not make him less of a terrorist than Arafat. He just has a higher degree of education in Jew-hatred.
Please, please……wake up before we are all killed. Realize that the arabs are never going to be satisfied until Israel is completely destroyed.
The fact that this Friday attack was orchestrated by Syria with Islamic Jihad should not lessen the level of complicity that the PA shares. It only highlights the fact that what has happened in Lebanon, is happening in Gaza and the PA controlled area”
Amen!!! I hope these young Israelis didn’t die in vain, any maybe some people reading this will realize the futility in dealing with the PA, as history as proven time and time again. There is lawlessness within the PA and Mazen has already stated how he will not forcibly demilitarize the terrorists.. What does that mean, more empty PA promises and more dead Israelis…..
No sense dignifying that rant with a response T_M.
My “blather” has been absent because I’ve been busy and because I’m waiting. Unlike all the geniuses who know exactly how this will play out and what the future brings, I’d like to see what transpires before I determine anything about what the Palestinians are doing. If you think about it, losing Arafat from the picture is a significant change for everybody.
As for the unilateral disengagement, I still support it. I also have yet to see anybody on this site, or in any other forum, who disagrees with the disengagement, offer a reasonable alternative that includes a long range plan for peace and normalization of life for Israelis.
What’s yours, T_Y? What’s yours, Josh? I’d like to know how you see a resolution. Answers that are unacceptable because they are either false or too damaging to Israel in the long run: there is no possible resolution; there is no demographic problem; there is no problem with the Palestinians and things can continue as they are.
Isn’t it interesting that that ck’s and T_M’s blather about the great merits of the expulsion plan has faded away? Can this be attributed to them finally coming to their senses and realizing that the expulsion for Jews from thier homes in Gush Katif is not the great pancea that its cracked up to be? Or, have thier nargillas finally kicked?
Wake up!!!! We have seen from Oslo I, Oslo II, Wye, and the rest of the so called peace process, that every time Israel is suckered in to signing a deal, the arabs give death back. Wake up!!! We have no partners in peace. We just have varied degrees of terrorists working on different time tables. That Abbas wears a suit and not not carry a side-arm does not make him less of a terrorist than Arafat. He just has a higher degree of education in Jew-hatred.
Please, please……wake up before we are all killed. Realize that the arabs are never going to be satisfied until Israel is completely destroyed.
The fact that this Friday attack was orchestrated by Syria with Islamic Jihad should not lessen the level of complicity that the PA shares. It only highlights the fact that what has happened in Lebanon, is happening in Gaza and the PA controlled area. All the more reason to never give the PA “control” of any area.
What a sad joke. Giving Gaza to a pack of terrorists with control of the Egyptian border so that they can import deadlier, more powerful weaponry…..Learn from history. Very, very recent history.
Or have you completely fried away your short term memories?
Neocon: Hey! That is pretty funny. Is this a case of great minds … or are you actually suggesting something a little shadier? As for posting on Jewlicious … Hmmm. I wonder what it might be like to throw a Neocon into the mix?
Seriously ck, if you want me to post on your blog, just let me know 😛
Things we wil be told in the next day or two:
-this attack was against Mazen and the new PA government as it was against Israel,
-we must give Abu Mazen more time to deal with the militants,
-the attack is ‘the exception that proves the rule’ – the secutiry fence works,
-we must not let this get in the way of the ‘disengagement’ plan (or in other words – Israel will not let terrorists decide on its policy),
-only 4 were killed, we should be thankful, it could have been more,
-the PA has made arrests, more to come,
-or ‘Abu Mazen cracking down on ‘hard-liners’,
-leaving Gush Katif will prevent these attacks,
-some bullsh-t finger-pointing about how the club security and/or police messed up/could have prevented this,
-there was no warning ahead of time that an attack was apparent,
-the ‘extreme’-right-wing convention provoked the Palestinians to attack,
-a short video clip of Sharon, surrounded by security officers, hopping along to the weekly Sunday morning cabinet meeting (to give the aura of being ‘concerned’),
-etc, etc…
I suggest that instead of hearing and re-churning old discussion, that everyone here takes a few seconds/minutes to pray, study torah, do an extra mitzvah they hadn’t planned on doing, kiruv, whatever. That’s how we’re going to win this war.
Shavuah tov, this week will be better than the last.
This is still how i feel
Why is the russian gov’t such a bunch of a**holes? And why on earth can anyone believe that abu mazan is going to do anything other than continue to try and drive every last one of us ‘in to the sea’? I feel like I’m takin’ crazy pills.
You’re dreaming, TM. You aren’t actually falling for that “good cop, bad cop” charade they’re playing, do you?
Such a thing is never going to happen. Don’t you listen to what Abu Mazen says? He has stated plainly that he is not going to disarm or confront anyone.
Wake the hell up, would you?
How Yids like Brown/Oofnik can sing their tune after shit like this (and not just this one terrorist act, but all of them) is beyond my wildest dreams. Which is why I believe that Finkelstein/Chomsky/Oofnik/Brown…etc., etc. never truly had a warm shabbos meal, an invigorating Jewish education….while they were young. Nothing else explains their overly sympathetic nature with suicide bombers.
1. The russians have also just signed a nuclear pact with Iran.
2. Unlike Ephraim, what I hope to see is the PA police taking out some Islamic Jihad terrorists.
and you know what? this only makes me want to go to Israel that much more. Those bastards will not scare me off. They will not win.
Those affected will be in my heart and prayers…
If I hear anybody mention the cycle of violence w/i the next 48 hrs they’re going to get a mouthful from this Jew.
What now?
Unleash the IDF.
The next headline I want to see is not “20 Jews Dead in Bombing”, it is “200 Terrorists Killed by IDF in Pitched Battle”
Get going, dammit. Are you just going to sit around and let them blow people up?