Are we to believe that Israeli leaders just woke up one day and said, "enough is enough"? That is what Israel's Ambassador to the United States, Sallai Meridor, said at a roundtable on Tuesday, the 6th of January.
Asked three times by audience members, Meridor simply could not offer any plausible explanation as to how its military campaign in Gaza would achieve its stated goals. Indeed, he at times seemed to offer this absence of strategy as a virtue, as evidence that the war had been forced upon Israel rather than chosen: "we have no grand political scheme... we were forced to defend ourselves to provide better security, period."In this day and age of near instant communications and 1.4 billion user of the Internet (a/o June 2008), to say that one has not real plan seems to be very poor public diplomacy.
Maybe this is, as some assert, all about domestic Israeli politics.
Others suggest that this is to get their licks in before President Obama is sworn in.
Maybe the Ambassador was just being cagey.
One would hope that a decision to escalate a war (the war was definitely ongoing with the Hamas rockets landing in Israel) is taken with seriousness of mind and a plan ahead.
Regards -- Cliff
2 comments:
One, with regards to Israel and their patient policy towards a people within their "neighborhood" who keep launching deadly rockets onto the Israeli households can only offer sympathy, empathy, and support.
Who among us when bullies assult and do violence to our families, after failed attempts to secure police action and protection, will not at some point take the cads out to the wood shed for a necessary lesson in the respect for human life, all human life, regardless of perceived differences.
Time and time again Israel acts with considerable restraint. Yet as will invariably happen when they take some action it is then these bullies cry foul. It is amazing to see how much "manly courage" these bullies show when firing deadly rockets into Israeli civilian areas when Israel shows restraint. Yet equally amazing is how they can squeal so loudly when Israel disciplines them.
And don't think for an instant that this is more than discipline. Were it punishment or even worse revenge there would not be two bricks on top of each other in any Palestinian household in Judea or Samaria were this the case.
Israel has no choice but to offer the discipline itself. Which other nation will go into these trouble filled regions and stop the terrorists from firing the rockets? Did anyone, from any other nation, even utter so much as a word of rebuke to these terrorists? If they did, did it stop the rockets?
Just as a father chastises and disciplines a favored son he loves, so Israel is into ensuring his neighboring brothers grow into human beings rather than being allowed to continue to grow up in their folly which raises them to little less than animal in my estimation.
The world more and more asks Israel to make the sacrifices, yet if the tables were turned which nation in it's right mind would make such sacrifices? And let it be noted for the record Israel had made the concessions the world asked of him.
What was the US's response when it had it's own group of people wanting to establish their own nation, The Confederacy. Did the world tell Lincoln, give them what they want...would he have even listened and entertained it? And is not Lincoln one of our most highly respected presidents?
If you think there are differences between the US Civil War and the Israel/Palestinean conflict I would agree with you, we are a much more politically correct nation and world nowadays.
And now...for all you Southerners out there who continue to be disillusioned with the US, I invite you, please...you are entitled to your own nation, your own government to ensure that your own uniqueness will not be assilimiated into the generalness of being an American.
Robert E. Lee where are you? The South so desparately needs you. Too bad you were 150 years before your time. If you had waged your war today you could have counted on world opinion to force the North into giving you your due right your own country.
But that's old news, history. What about today?
What about all the African Americans in the US disillusioned with their standard of living? There are certainly pockets of the US wherein where you live. Shouldn't you have your own government, your own police force, your own land? What right has the US to keep for itself the land of the public housing in which so many of you live? Wouldn't you be better off if you were in control of the housing projects? If we just carved out of the United States all the pockets of land that are densely Africian American, or Hispanic, or Oriental...Don't all of you desire protection of your own nationhood within our US borders?
Oh, that was assuming that something as ovious as race divides us...what if we now consider the less obvious--religion.
How about we divy up our country according to belief in creation versus evolution? or protestant/catholiic?, or monotheistic/atheist/polytheistic?
If we carry this argument to it's logical, and absurd, conclusion...there is always something that differentiates us from our neighbor, even within our own households their are differences ...we are, each of us individually, a nation unto ourselves, each a nation of one. To look after your own interests regardless of the cost of other nations (aka other people).
In what kind of place would that be to live? That, my fellow humans, is the animal kingdom, more or less. In fact probably less, it probably is nearer to the insect realm. A planet dominated by insect mentality, um...could make for an interesting high school science project.
Unfortunately, when conducted on a planetwide scale, the result is assured, a planet only fit for insect inhabitation.
Need I say more, ya'll?
Dear Daytonite
Ah, Robert E Lee. About once a month I thank God that he violated his oath of office, resigned his commission and went with Virginia rather than the Union. Otherwise this student of Jomini might have lost the war for us. Instead, we ended up with General Ulysses S Grant, that Clauswitzian, leading our Army to victory.
Regards -- Cliff
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