The times reports:
After a week of air strikes that have killed at least 420 Palestinians and left scores of buildings in rubble, the Israeli army was set to fling hundreds of troops and tanks into a blitz to stamp out Hamas’s military wing.
“To stamp out Hamas’s military wing.” That’s like Russia launching an attack only on the Pentagon to stamp out America’s military wing.
Let me explain.
There are governments and nations. There are no ‘wings’ of governments and nations. There are only governments and nations. Hamas is the duly elected government of the nation of Gaza done willfully and deliberately by the population of Gaza.
Period.
Israel must understand that Hamas is Gaza and Gaza is Hamas and unless it’s willing to do what the US did in Afghanistan – that is, fight a war with the Taliban government of Afghanistan – and replace it, then invading Gaza to just take out its militant wing then withdraw for them to rebuild it up again, is foolish and they will repeat the errors made in the Hezbollah war.
Israel’s propaganda machine should frame this conflict using reams of press releases taking the position that they have been attacked repeatedly since they left Gaza by a duly elected government. Israel is only responding to the attacks by another nation.
To continue the farce that Hamas is somehow not the government of Gaza and Israel is only going after ‘a militant wing’ of have that government will only strengthen Hamas’s position in the view of the world and paint Israel as over-reacting to the actions of a few terrorists acting outside the Gazan government.
Either Israel goes in and rebuilds that nation state – which they will not – or have their ground troops stay out of Gaza and respond to the Hamas rockets with continued air strikes until the people of Gaza get tired of a government that does not have their interests at heart.
If that doesn’t happen, continue to degrade their rocket capabilities and kill the officials of the Gaza government.
This war with Islamist will not end until the non-Muslim world accepts the fact that we are fighting an ideology not different from those tyrannical ideologies of the past. And peace will only come when that ideology is defeated wherever it’s found.
4 comments:
Hamas - political party and Hamas military wing and there is a huge difference between the two. What else is new from the New York Times? The Obama's "landslide"? Oh it wasn't a landslide it was voter registration. Oh it wasn't voter registration but a huge phenomenon.
I see absolutely no distinction between armed and political wings since pol sets the agenda.
But never mind.
Short of complete transfer or utter obliteration, removal of HAMAS, killing of it's leaders, members and structure is the only other method (which will have to applied repeatedly) available to erode the complete rejection of Israel's existence (as sitting on a waqf)
Israel SHOULD have everyone making the point all the time that arab rejection has always been the real plan, that the PLA is different from HAMAS only in corruption not aim, and that the problem is not these groups anyway, but the PALESTINIAN (??) people if not all of Islam who continue to insist that god insists that Israel dies, and that only the failure of the individual Muslim people to live up to what they are told is their individual responsibility to kill Israel is why they are alive at all. Or why they haven't been compelled to slaughter tens if not hundreds of millions to survive.
The failure of Israel to focus the world on the Islamic determination to use any and all methods to kill Israel is a major failure.
What is in the school textbooks, children's stories and TV for kids is the real deal for Israel.
When that dies, we will have a political situation which can be negotiated. Until then, it is a religious war of the peoples, and no negotiation cease fire or truce can be anything other than a postponement of reckoning.
I tend to agree with WC. It isn’t prudent to invade Gaza. To do so merely to change the leadership of a broadly supported jihadist government will only bring death to the brave men and women of the IDF. It won't change the hearts and minds of a people poisoned by Islam. On the contrary, jihadists look forward to the 'honor' of dying in hand-to-hand combat. It’s being bombed from the air that makes their death meaningless.
Israel should stop feeding its enemy. This is war. Until the government of Gaza lays down its arms and accepts the terms of surrender, Israel should not supply food, water, or electricity. It is the responsibility of the government of Gaza to enter into relationships to secure trade routes with other nations.
If the people of Gaza want to live, they have to learn to live in peace with their neighbors. It isn’t Israel’s responsibility to give welfare to Gaza. There is absolutely no responsibility to care for a neighbor that is actively trying to kill your children. That’s insanity.
WC,
You said: There are governments and nations. There are no ‘wings’ of governments and nations. There are only governments and nations. Hamas is the duly elected government of the nation of Gaza done willfully and deliberately by the population of Gaza. Period. Israel must understand that Hamas is Gaza and Gaza is Hamas ...
I said: Brilliant point.
While the U.S. did recognize that to be the truth vis a vis Afghanistan, the only reason we were able to recognize the truth is because we had nothing to gain from Afghanistan.
Likewise Iraq. Because we had stopped doing business with Iraq so many years before, we had nothing to gain from seeing the Hussein regime continue to run Iraq, and that is why we were willing to invade and destroy his regime.
But, let's be clear, this "War on Terrorism" gets it's primary funding from Saudi Arabia and it's logistical support from Pakistan, and about those problems, we are willing to do nothing.
Therefore, we are the same as Israel in that respect.
That being said, I agree with the larger point of your essay. I agree wholeheartedly.
Unless Israel is willing to destroy Hamas and replace it with another government, they should not do anything.
In that case
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