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• Wednesday, January 7, 2009 02:11 PM

  Cheers Dirbig,

  for posting that fine piece by Avi Shlaim. Just a couple of points:

  "Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak - terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is immense,"

  Maybe mindful of an attitude instilled in us by Churchill years earlier, British people didn't go around acting terrified even during the IRA bombing campaigns. And their bombs actually killed people. And the current thinking on the British Army Rumour Service is that those Pali rockets are bugger all reason to start a war. Soldiers in N. Ireland had ineffective crap like that thrown in their general direction all the time but saw no reason to go off all half cocked.

  Those ineffectual rockets are a sign of the Palis weakness rather than their strength. It's what a weakened and humiliated peoples do to try and keep their end up. Its symbolism rather than terror. Liked this though:

  "In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and shooting".

  Self pity and aggression is a lethal and repulsive mix. And when it occurs it invariably signifies hidden agendas are in play.

  —LondonLad Read LondonLad's other letters
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