Gaza Madness

"There is little doubt that Israel is morally justified in its offensive against Hamas. No nation can sit by and allow its territory to be rocketed with impunity. Not if it wishes to remain a nation for long. ... Even as Israeli troops push into Gaza following a week of air strikes, it seems highly unlikely that they will be able to decisely defeat the terrorist organization on their souther border. Achieving total victory would require waging war in the way that America fought Germany and Japan--all out and on many fronts until the enemy has no more capacity to resist. ... None of this is beyond the Israeli's military capacity (and Israel could do it without using nuclear weapons). They could also impose a peace at gunpoint. That is, essentially what they did between 1967, when the Gaza Strip was won from Egypt, and 1994, when the Palestinian Authority was created. They could do it again if necessary. ... The generally accepted estimate is that no more than 1,200 Lebanese died, half of them Hezbollah fighters. Even that relatively miniscule toll of 0.03% of Lebanon's population of 3.9 million--probably comparable to the damage now being inflicted on Gaza--evoked world-wide condemnation and accusations that Israel was committing war crimes. ... The Russians have inflicted World War II-level carnage in Chechnya since the mid-1990s, and they don't care what anybody else says. ... Israel is a liberal democracy in the modern age whose miltary operations are conducted under the intense scrutiny of lawyers, judges, opposition politicians, reporters and human-rights activists. And those are just its own internal watchdogs. To these must be added the 'international community,' which monitors Israeli actions with a degree of interest and antipathy reserved for no other state in the world. For all the accusations of brutality that are routinely flung at Israel's armed forces, their conduct has been exemplary by historical standards. ... We now know the settlers' departure did not mollify the extremists. it only emboldened them. ... Israel has always been a state that is one battle away from destruction, and it cannot allow its enemies to think it can be attacked with impunity. ... Israelis have to discard Gen. Douglas MacArthur's famous maxim: 'War's objective is victory--not prolonged indecision. In war there is no substitute for victory.' They will have to settle for a substitute because from their standpoint 'prolonged indecision' is better than the alternatives--the annihilation of themselves, which would be unthinkable, or of their enemices, which would be unconscionable", my emphasis, Max Boot (MB) at the WSJ, 5 January 2009.

"Israel's assault on Hamas is just the latest in a long chain of military clashes, the scripts of which are always the same. ... Sooner or later, the tactics of the Palestinian terrorists work. The voices of protest in response to Palestinian suffering grow louder until international pressure stays Israel's hand. ... Palestinian children are dying today not because of Israeli brutality, but because their own leaders have chosen to use their children as human shields, and their pain as a battering ram against Western sensibilities. ... This reflexive 'understanding' for the Palestinian leaders' abuse of their own people is the heart of the problem. For decades the international community has actively assisted in building the terrorists' unique system of control--over where Palestinians live and in what conditions, and over what they think--by allowing terrorists to turn the refugee camps into the center of the Palestinian war machine. ... With the Palestinians, the U.N. does exactly the opposite, granting refugee status to the great-grandchildern of people who were displaced in 1948, doing nothing to dismantle the camps, and acting as facilitators for the terrorists' goal, of grinding an entire civilian population under their thumb. Nowhere on earth do terrorists get so much help from the Free World", Natan Sharansky at the WSJ, 6 January 2009.

"No phrase represents more of a triumph of hope over experience than the phrase 'Middle East peace process.' A close second might be the once-fashionable notion that Israel should 'trade land for peace.' Since everybody seems to be criticizing Israel for its military response to the rockets being fired into their country from the Gaza strip, let me add my criticisms as well. The Israelis traded land for peace, but they have never gotten the peace, so they should take back the land. ... So called 'world opinion' has been largely a negative factor in the situation. Nothing is easier than for people living in peace and safety in Paris or Rome to call for a 'cease fire' after the Israelis retaliate against people who are firing rockets into their country. The time to cease fire was before the rockets were fired. What do calls for 'cease fire' and 'negotiations' do? They lower the price of launching attacks. This is true not only in the Middle East but in other parts of the world as well. ... Anywhere in the world, attacks such as those on Israel today would not only have risked retaliation but invasion and annihilation of the government that launched those attacks. Today, so-called 'world opinion' not only limits the price to be paid for aggression or terrorism, it has even led to the self-indulgence of third parties talking pretty talk about limiting the response of those who are attacked to what is 'propotionate.' ... Or is the real agends to engage in moral preening from a safe distance and at someone else's expense. Those who think 'negotiations' are a magic answer seem not to understand that when A wants to annihilate B, this is not an 'issue' that can be resolved amicably around a conference table", Thomas Sowell, 13 January 2009 at http://townhall.com/.

"Sentimental attachment to Third World cultures, though, is a Western phenomenon; in the Third World as it actually exists, one encounters other cultures and kills them. It remains to be seen whether the president-elect is a Western sentimentalist, or a Third World anthroplogist who has talked his way into the leadership of the United States. ... Governance in Africa is not about ideology, but about the raw exercise of power. Confronted with multiple crises that threaten the power of the United States, this clever Luo from Hawaii by way of Indonesia may defend his prerogatives more ferociously than anyone expects", my emphasis, Spengler, 12 January 2009 at http://www.atimes.com/.

Michael Savage (MS) on 5 January blasted Jordan's Queen Noor (QN) claiming she lied about 1970's "Black September" movement and Jordan's response. MS said QN said 10,000 Palestinians were killed by Jordan's army in 1970. Wikipedia claims it was 7,000 to 25,000. Contemporaneous estimates were about 100,000. QN's future husband forced about 300,000 Palestinians into the West Bank, then under Israeli control. Let's cut QN some slack. In 1970 she was 19 and at Princeton so may not have heard about the events until years later. QN does not thank Israel for giving the "Palestinian Refugees" a place to live. In two Chechen wars, Russia may have killed 100-250 thousand Chechens out of 1.3 million. Also 300-500 thousand Chechens were "displaced". Where are the UN, EU and OIS protests?

We support the PLO, Hamas, etc. We support terrorism.

Sowell, an economist at Stanford's Hoover Institution explains things in terms evan economists can understand. Or an Uncle Miltie would say, "If you want more terrorism, reward it. You want less, penalize it".

Quoted without comment.