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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Take any subject mentioning Jews or Israel, and I know exactly how you'll spin it, what you'll leave out, and how you'll twist your Jew Hating into a narrative.
The Lebanon war was a military victory but a political disaster for Israel. The PLO was driven out but not defeated.
It wasn't a political disaster for Israel.
As you know, but left out. The PLO tried to overthrow the government in Jordan and was expelled and move to Lebanon, which the PLO then used as a base to shell Israeli cities, and destabilized the Lebanonese government.
Under this context Israel invaded, and tried to destroy the PLO. Arafat was actually in an Israeli sniper's site, but the order to kill was not given.
The PLO leadership was then exiled to Tunisia.
As Gary also knows, at the time the PLO called for the destruction of Israel in the same manner that Hamas does today.
After suffering a severe military defeat, the PLO finally understood they could not defeat Israel on the field of battle, this allowed them to enter into negotiations at Oslo and drop the clause in their charter calling for Israel's destruction.
The PA and hence Palestinian self-rule is a direct result of Oslo, and Oslo would have never happened without the Lebanon War in 1982.
Demographically, Israel cannot hold onto the West Bank and Gaza, it has eventually work out a deal with someone to take control of those areas, but Israel will not deal with any entity calling for Israel's destruction.
Today, Hamas is in the position of the PLO two decades ago. Wanting self-rule, but taking calling for Israel's destruction. The two are mutually exclusive.
Outside the political violence, Hamas has done a decent job in governing Gaza. There is relative order, even today under war conditions. Police in many cities still direct traffic, there is little of the chaos that could result. Looting has been almost non-existent.
Bribery has been almost eliminated, and as a whole, Hamas' political leadership in Gaza was better than the PAs.
Israel will be very lucky if this Gaza conflict ends up like the Lebanon conflict in 1982, because if Hamas drops its call for Israel's destruction, Hamas appears to be more competent at actual governing than the PLO has.
Now, Gary is more than familiar with all this history, yet he leaves it out. Why? In order to spin his tale into as negative as possible against Israel.
Israel is doing a pretty bang up job, all on its own, all on its own initiative, of creating a big fat negative situation.
I'm against settlement expansion in Judea and Samaria (as it's been known since the days of the bible, hundreds of years before Muhammad was a twinkle in his mom's eye).
To show support for the brave IDF soldiers who are defending Israel:
http://pizzaidf.org/
This conflict
All essentially boils down to
The best of the worst
And
Whose star twinkled first?
You make the point that "You can withdraw your civilian population out of the range of homemade missiles and continue to use non-lethal methods of coercion." If you withdraw outside of range, Hamas won't be satisfied, they will instead expand the range, and this is what has happened. Hamas been supplied with longer range missiles by Iran. From the safety of suburban US we can decry the loss of innocent life, but if my house was taking incoming shells, I would demand protection, not relocation.
As for your contention that Israel is the only source of information, the way that the press has been spun by the Palestinians in the past has led the Israelis not to trust the press. Remember the "thousands of deaths" in Jenin, turned out to be 38 fighters? Remember the Al-Dura hoax, until it was proven that if the boy were shot, it was by the Palestinians, after anti-Israel riots. Led by the anti-Israel BBC, which won't even release its own report on anti-Israel bias, Israel has no reason to trust the world press.
Xanthro: "your Jew Hating"
Can you disagree without being disagreeable, Xanthro?
Xanthro: "It wasn't a political disaster for Israel."
You curiously omitted the following from your narrative. As explained by Israeli historian Benny Morris in "Righteous Victims - A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001":
The PLO military infrastructure in southern Lebanon was destroyed, and the organization was driven out of Beirut. Many PLO fighters were killed, and it lost most of its heavy equipment and ammunition stockpiles. Its headquarters was established in far away Tunisia, and its military units were dispersed in camps all around the Middle East and North Africa, no longer a threat along or near Israel's borders. The PLO and Arafat emerged from the fray considerably weakened...
But... having set out to destroy the Palestinian threat from Lebanon, the Israelis withdrew only to find out that they had installed in its place a far more fanatical and efficient foe in the form of the 'Amal, and particularly, the Hizbullah military organizations. The later was to prove far more deadly and determined than the PLO. After the withdrawal the Hizbullah (and, to a lesser degree, other Lebanese and Lebanon-based groups) continued to hound and pound the IDF in the Security Zone and, on occasion, the Israeli side of the international frontier. Indeed, by the mid-1990s the guerrilla campaign in the south was dubbed by Israeli generals a "war of attrition." Clearly Begin and Sharon had dismally failed to deliver "forty years of peace" along Israel's frontier.
Xanthro: "Israel will be very lucky if this Gaza conflict ends up like the Lebanon conflict in 1982."
God I hope not. By analogy, and as Gary correctly put it, "Qaida-like groups would flourish."
JonathanInTelAviv: "I'm against settlement expansion in Judea and Samaria
Cool. Do you therefore support the United States making its "aid" to Israel conditional upon Israel stopping settlement expansion in the West Bank?
And if not, why not?
Bro, you've got your work cut out for you hangin' a sweet smiley face on this slaughter house picture, you'd better begin at once to crack open some good books, and start high handedly, quotin' the old scriptures.
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The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
Salon headlines in your mailbox
