Some quotes from a man who had some limited experience in war, William T. Sherman:
–”War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”
–”War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.”
–”Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.”

My husband and I just had this conversation this morning. And to our dismay, we didn’t have an answer. Great post. Thanks!

Targeted assassination would be practical, maybe even effective, but who in the world can support death squads?

Hamas is not marching across the border with blazing guns. Rather, they are deploying the blazing guns without the soldiers–same as September 11th. Also like America post-9-11, Israel is faced with a ‘faceless’ enemy insofar as Hamas does not have a country, uniforms, or formal structure.
Actually this looks exactly UNLIKE 9/11. You have one piece of territory that is Israel. You have another piece of territory that is Gaza. The latter territory is firing rockets into the former. The former is responding with airstrikes. That’s amazingly like…conventional warfare!
We have two countries fighting each other. Israel and Palestine. The solution is for them to come to some understanding where they don’t have to fight each other. That’s going to start with the simple act of not firing rockets into Israel. But it is also going to include Israel getting rid of all it’s settlements in both Gaza and the West Bank (and putting an end to the delusional right wingers who think the Bible commands them to build houses in the middle of hostile territory and then insist the rest of the country support them come hell or high water)….and it’s also going to include Israel & Palestine having some type of border system in place so goods can pass into the occupied territories but with Israel secure that it isn’t just another round of building up rocket stockpiles.
That’s the solution to the ‘problem’ and just about everyone knows it. The question is when will the solution be implemented. It will be implemented when both sides are exhausted. There’s not really much anyone can do about it until then. In the meantime we can make demands, request that Israel be even more cafeful about minimizing civilian casualities, try to demand Iran and other Palestinian supporters refrain from sending weapons and so on but this isn’t all that different than the other dozen or so wars or conflicts that are going on at any given moment in the world.

I think you’re assessment about the situation is right, but I think even that would only be temporary, lasting only so long as it took them to rebuild the ranks and reamass arms.
I don’t know. Relations between the North and South have been pretty good for the past 150 years or so, as have relations between the US and Germany and the US and Japan for the last 60. Relations between Britain and France have likewise been pretty good since 1815. I think you underestimate the effectiveness of a complete and total military victory in curtailing future conflicts.
We have two countries fighting each other. Israel and Palestine. The solution is for them to come to some understanding where they don’t have to fight each other. That’s going to start with the simple act of not firing rockets into Israel. But it is also going to include Israel getting rid of all it’s settlements in both Gaza and the West Bank
Hasn’t that already been done for the most part? I seem to remember these settlers you refer to being dragged kicking and screaming from their homes, not by Hamas, but by the IDF. That hasn’t put a dent in the firing of rockets into Israel. The reality is that there is no evidence that Hamas and its backers will settle for anything less than a Palestine that stretches from the Jordan to the Med and the death of all the Jews currently there. That position doesn’t seem to leave a lot of room for meaningful dialogue.
(and putting an end to the delusional right wingers who think the Bible commands them to build houses in the middle of hostile territory and then insist the rest of the country support them come hell or high water)
It is difficult not to notice that these people who merely want to peacefully live their lives and practice their religion in the matter they believe their God calls them, merit much harsher criticism than the other religious zealots in the conflict, who practice their religion by indiscriminately firing rockets into civilian populations. Imagine the outcry if the US responded this way to settlements of illegal Mexicans.

I don’t know. Relations between the North and South have been pretty good for the past 150 years or so, as have relations between the US and Germany and the US and Japan for the last 60.
Is this a random sample of conflicts drawn from the hundreds of ones recorded in world history or are you just giving us all the ones you recall from your 10th grade world history class?
It is difficult not to notice that these people who merely want to peacefully live their lives and practice their religion in the matter they believe their God calls them, merit much harsher criticism than the other religious zealots in the conflict, who practice their religion by indiscriminately firing rockets into civilian populations.
Peaceful is an interesting description….they are peaceful after they’ve taken someone else’s land, dragged the rest of their country into defending them and created a totally unstable and unacceptable situation. You might as well say Hamas would be peaceful if aliens came down from space and gave them the Palestine you describe. Why did the IDF drag them kicking and screaming from their settlements? Because they suddenly decided that they were in love with Hammas?
If you told the US state Dept that you and your fellow followers wanted to go off to some hostile land like Iran, Afghanistan, Tibet, or whatnot and set up a peacefull community and live as you feel God wants you to the response would be, quite properly, ‘best of luck but you’re on your own out there…we can’t and won’t guarantee your safety’.
But more to the point I didn’t talk about what criticism Hamas merits. They merit a lot and there seems to be no problem with them getting exactly what they deserve since the bulk of the casualities appear to be non-civilians.
Imagine the outcry if the US responded this way to settlements of illegal Mexicans.
If Mexico took, say, Los Angeles and started setting up gated communities in the best neighborhoods I daresay there would probably be some type of military response. But this is the problem with people who reason by analogy. Their reasoning is only as good as their education (for people like ucfengr there are few cases where a WWII Analogy can’t be forced to fit) or their creative writing skills (imagine Mexican tanks rumbling through LA!!!)
Israel and Palestine have too much bad blood to be the same country but they are too intimate to not work together. This crap will go on until both sides exhaust themselves & there’s little we can do….except advocate the right thing, perhaps find ways to nudge both sides here and there and keep the proper perspective.

ucfengr writes:
“Hamas has chosen this path and the only way Israel can compel them to end it is to
‘give them all they want’”.
But, like you said, that just makes more martyrs. What we have here is a permanent state of war. Back in the days when the world didn’t watch wars on TV, nations could commit genocide with impunity. If the Israelis finish the job, they will be international pariahs, and rightly so. If they don’t, the attacks will continue. Too bad the nation was formed in the first place. It was a colossal mistake.

Is this a random sample of conflicts drawn from the hundreds of ones recorded in world history or are you just giving us all the ones you recall from your 10th grade world history class?
I think it is fairly representative sample of the past 150 years or so. If you can cite a counter example, please feel free. Perhaps you could regale us with examples from your own 10th grade classes, if you made it that fair.
Peaceful is an interesting description….they are peaceful after they’ve taken someone else’s land,
Yes, that’s how it happened.

Is this a random sample of conflicts drawn from the hundreds of ones recorded in world history or are you just giving us all the ones you recall from your 10th grade world history class?
I think it is fairly representative sample of the past 150 years or so. If you can cite a counter example, please feel free. Perhaps you could regale us with examples from your own 10th grade classes, if you made it that fair.
Peaceful is an interesting description….they are peaceful after they’ve taken someone else’s land,
Yes, that’s how it happened . Of course I notice how you neatly sidestep the fact that Israel pulled all the settlements out of Gaza, and got increased attacks in response. So your point is rather meaningless, though I expect you to defend it to the death.
If you told the US state Dept that you and your fellow followers wanted to go off to some hostile land like Iran, Afghanistan, Tibet, or whatnot and set up a peacefull community and live as you feel God wants you to the response would be, quite properly, ‘best of luck but you’re on your own out there…we can’t and won’t guarantee your safety’.
So you criticize my argument from analogy by responding with a false analogy? Neither Gaza or the West Bank are to Israel what Afghanistan is to the US. That’s why Texas is the better analogy, though even that one falls short, because arguably we were the aggressors in the Mexican War, Israel was not in the wars in which they claimed the West Bank and Gaza.
But, like you said, that just makes more martyrs.
I said targeting the leadership creates more martyrs. Unfortunately, like the South in the Civil War, the citizens of Gaza will have to feel a lot of pain in this war to rid them of the delusion that Hamas operates in their best interest.

There has been a continuous Jewish presence in Palestine for 3000 years, so they never “invaded” anything. It’s just that between 70 AD and about 1918, there were few enough that the Arabs tolerated their presence. After WWII, most Jews had two choices: move back next door to the people who turned them in to the Gestapo, or go to Palestine. By 1948, there got to be enough of them to irritate the Arabs, and the Arabs tried to wipe them out. They failed then but they’ve kept trying ever since.
And anybody who says that collateral damage when hitting a terrorist bomb factory the moral equivalent of targeting elementary schools with rockets is is a moral infant.

I think it is fairly representative sample of the past 150 years or so. If you can cite a counter example, please feel free. Perhaps you could regale us with examples from your own 10th grade classes, if you made it that fair.
A representative sample of the past 150 years of conflict: WWII, The US Civil War, & the Neopoleantic Wars between England and France.
If you put all the conflicts of the past 150 years into a hat and pulled out 3 you might get these. You may also get the Russian Revolution, china’s invasion of Tibet, China’s civil War which left Taiwan in a status that can be described as ‘unclear’, WWI, several dozen conflicts in Africa, the uprising against English rule in Ireland, ater the fight over Northern Ireland, India and Pakistan, Burma’s military gov’t, the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, and so on. Taking a random sample of conflicts to try to derive some type model of how conflicts resolve themselves is unlikely to result in the 3 ucfengr uses.
Using a different approach, if you were to list all the conflicts of the past 150 years and then try to rank them as to which conflicts are ‘most like’ the Israel-Palestine conflict these 3 are almost certainly not on the top of the list.
The reason ucfengr and other neocons pound so much on WWII analogies is rather simple, they don’t know much else. To the man with a hammer, all the world’s a nail. Deeper, though, they don’t even really know WWII except as a cartoon version of it so even then the usefulness of their advice is limited.
Yes, that’s how it happened . Of course I notice how you neatly sidestep the fact that Israel pulled all the settlements out of Gaza, and got increased attacks in response. So your point is rather meaningless, though I expect you to defend it to the death.
We still have the problem that Gaza & the West Bank cannot exist as an independent viable country without Israel. Pulling out settlements was a good step (and were settlements even an issue in Gaza? My impression was that the settlements were in the West Bank only…could be wrong though) but clearly that by itself is not the solution. However it is part of it and Israel itself recognizes that. Does ucfengr think Israel would be better off reversing course and establishing a bunch of settlements in Gaza?
That’s why Texas is the better analogy, though even that one falls short, because arguably we were the aggressors in the Mexican War, Israel was not in the wars in which they claimed the West Bank and Gaza.
You mistake your analogies. Unlike Texas Israel never annexed the West Bank or Gaza. Hence the common phrase ‘occupied territories’. If it did the Palestinians would end up as Israeli citizens or Israel would end up as a non-democratic aparteid based country where a majority of its people are disenfranchised. So go ahead and argue for the ‘Texas model’ for Israel. It would, at least, give you a unique position rather than a cliched one.
John M
There has been a continuous Jewish presence in Palestine for 3000 years, so they never “invaded” anything.
Since we have pretty good evidence that peoples from Siberia crossed a now extinct ice bridge between Asia and North America we have a continuous Russian presence in the Western Hemisphere for the last 10,000 years or so. Hence, when the movie Red Dawn came out in the 80′s I’m sure you were standing up in the theater shouting there was no Russian invasion as the paratroopers were landing.

There’s nowhere for Jews to live in Israel except the West Bank and Gaza strip? I think you need to brush up on your geography a bit. And get into the present moment. No one here is debating Israel’s founding last time I checked.

The goal of Israel’s adversaries is the destruction of Israel, it is silly to gloss over that in an effort to, at best paint both parties as equally culpable, or at worst to paint the Israelis as responsible for the conflict.
1. This side discussion was about Israel’s founding. Please try to follow the thread.
2. Who here is glossing over anything or asserting both parties are ‘equally culpable’?

That land was given by God to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob not Abraham and Ishmael.
Yea ok but so what? Arabs and Middle Eastern Jews are essentially the same people. Over the last 2-3 thousand years there’s been so much interbreeding and conversion activity there’s no conceivable way you could say that all Arabs and all Israelis come from two different blood lines. This is assuming we are accepting title searches that extend back more than 100 years.

Boontoon,
Technically, it was Cuba that first landed in Red Dawn.
I think the best way for the conflict to end in Israel/Gaza/West Bank would be for all parties to convert to Christianity and become Southern Baptists. The fight would be different and annoying when they got together, but no one would get blown up.

Rich,
I’m used to thinking about a “country” as sovereign and independent state. Palestine, being a region, is neither.
Well there’s a couple of ways to use the word country. For example, Tibet is often referred to as a country even though it is not sovereign and independent. Likewise, when a small country sits next to a superpower in an uneasy truce one could say it isn’t exactly independent. Sometimes you can have a region that is technically sovereign and independent but they don’t want to be called a country for diplomatic reasons (Taiwan).
Needless to say Israel itself has only been a country for a fraction of human history, even in Biblical times it independence is often brief.
But let’s look at the facts as they are. A country is defined by people and as a people the Palestinians are not Israelis and are almost certainly not going to become Israelies. As a result of the occupation the people who were once simply part of a region that might be called Palestine are no longer citizens of Jordan, Egypt or Syria.
So if Israel gets to be a country I see no real reason for Palestine not to be one as well. The Biblical argument presented here is almost too silly to spend much time refuting but anyone who wants to take it seriously should start with demanding that the US dissolve itself as there is no Biblical grant of any land to any such ‘nation’.
Also if Palestine is not technically ‘sovereign and independent’ then what business does Israel have in a war with it? Is not Hammas independently launching rockets every day at Israel? As for sovereignity, who exactly elected Hammas to run anything? Israelis? I don’t think so. Palestine looks a lot more like a state than it did 20 years ago…granted a failure of a state and one that’s not doing very well in t his war (although correct me if I’m wrong, isn’t this conflict mostly limited to the Gaza strip which is only a fraction of the much larger West Bank?)
On a slightly different note, I’m befuddled how some could suggest moral equivalency between the two opposing forces.
Who exactly has suggested a moral equilivalency between the two?
Though Israel has its own sins to fess up to
Care to be specific?

me:
On a slightly different note, I’m befuddled how some could suggest moral equivalency between the two opposing forces.
Boonton:
Who exactly has suggested a moral equilivalency between the two?
See this
Though I’m no expert, I’m hip enough to catch the sentiment out there, even if not explicitly stated.
I wasn’t suggesting that you suggest moral equivalency in your comments here, so I apologize if I caused any confusion.

I think you are thinking like sukrat, but I think you should cover the other side of the topic in the post too…

I think you are thinking like sukrat, but I think you should cover the other side of the topic in the post too…

Greatings,
Many Thanks for this one
Have a nice day
Dirnov

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