Israeli Police Beat 15 year old American Citizen

[The Mad Monk]

Still doesn't change the fact that the Qassams were more effective at actually killing people in the past before the Iron Dome missile defence

If the person trying to kill you misses his shot, does it make his intent any less bad?

[Sava]

The iron dome is wonderful piece of technology.

only up since 2011... try again

I posted casualty figures going back since 2001.

This is pathetically stupid, even for you.

[C0ckney]

Easy. The people in that thread were not firing rockets.

neither are the vast majority in gaza.

[The Mad Monk]

only up since 2011... try again

I posted casualty figures going back since 2001.

This is pathetically stupid, even for you.

[Dinner]

Yes. Because they were using the tactics you support.

Oerdin = 80 years of stupidity!

Dude, the military campaign was only about 20-30 years of those 80 years. The reality is it took about 80 years before the Catholics decided to come to the table and talk peace.

[The Mad Monk]

neither are the vast majority in gaza.

They also refused to see Israel as an enemy, or support those who did.

[The Mad Monk]

Yes it is!

Hence the lack of a need for a ground incursion.

Iron Dome doesn't deal with the tunnels, and a few rockets have come through and killed Israelis. They are demonstrably lethal when they get through. Israel has every right to take steps to remove them, and as long as Hamas uses the population to shield them, there is little they can do to limit collateral damage without abandoning their responsibilities to their own people.

[C0ckney]

They also refused to see Israel as an enemy, or support those who did.

while their actions are from a certain standpoint admirable, they do involve essentially denying reality (i.e. the people trying to steal your land are your enemy).

[C0ckney]

Dude, the military campaign was only about 20-30 years of those 80 years. The reality is it took about 80 years before the Catholics decided to come to the table and talk peace.

your knowledge of ireland is about on par with your knowledge of the middle east.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

in case this was not posted before

Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian war theorist, famously declared that war is but the continuation of policy by other means. But in this war, neither side had any clear political aims. So victory cannot be judged this way.

The intensive bombing of the Gaza Strip has not produced a Hamas capitulation. On the other hand, the intensive rocket campaign by Hamas, which covered most of Israel, did not succeed either. The stunning success of the rockets to reach everywhere in Israel has been met with the stunning success of the “Iron Dome” counter-rockets to intercept them.

So, until now, it is a standoff.

But when a tiny fighting force in a tiny territory achieves a standoff with one of the mightiest armies in the world, it can be considered a victory.

The lack of an Israeli political aim is the outcome of muddled thinking. The Israeli leadership, both political and military, does not really know how to deal with Hamas.

It may already have been forgotten that Hamas is largely an Israeli creation. During the first years of the occupation, when any political activity in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was brutally suppressed, the only place where Palestinians could meet and organize was the mosque.

At the time, Fatah was considered Israel’s arch-enemy. The Israeli leadership was demonizing Yasser Arafat, the arch-arch-terrorist. The Islamists, who hated Arafat, were considered the lesser evil, even secret allies.

I once asked the Shin-Bet chief at the time whether his organization had created Hamas. His answer: “We did not create them. We tolerated them.”

This changed only one year after the start of the first intifada, when the Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin was arrested. Since then, of course, reality has been completed reversed: Fatah is now an ally of Israel, from the security point of view, and Hamas the arch-arch-terrorist.

But is it?

Some Israeli officers say that if Hamas did not exist, it would have to be invented. Hamas controls the Gaza strip. It can be held responsible for what happens there. It provides law and order. It is a reliable partner for a cease-fire.

The last Palestinian elections, held under international monitoring, ended in a Hamas victory both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. When Hamas was denied power, it took it in the Gaza strip by force. By all reliable accounts, it enjoys the loyalty of the large majority in the territory.

All Israeli experts agree that if the Hamas regime in Gaza were to fall, far more extreme Islamic splinter groups would take over and plunge the Strip, with its 1.8 million inhabitants, into complete chaos. The military experts don’t like that.

So the war aim, if one can dignify it as such, is not to destroy Hamas, but to leave it in power, though in a much weakened state.

But how, for God’s sake, does one do that?

[The Mad Monk]

The stated goal of the ground operation is elimination of the tunnels, not the capitulation of Hamas, the loose statements of certain politicians notwithstanding.

[The Mad Monk]

are you serious? do you honestly not know about the IRA bombing campaign both in northern ireland and great britain?

I think I know, perhaps you can educate me. Did they have anything that would have required counterbattery fire? If they were firing rockets, do you believe the launch sites would have been ignored?

[Fake Boris]

Qassams?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/21/iran-supplied-hamas-missile-technology

Qassams are old hat.

You have just demonstrated the necessity of peace. Escalation will be ugly.

[Fake Boris]

The stated goal of the ground operation is elimination of the tunnels, not the capitulation of Hamas, the loose statements of certain politicians notwithstanding.

The long term strategic goal of Israel is to annex territory while remaining the dominant regional power.

[The Mad Monk]

Escalation already happened. That article is from two years ago, and Hamas was saying in the days leading up to the current conflict that they would launch so many rockets at once that they would overwhelm Iron Dome. Turns out it didn't work out quite the way they wanted.