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May 18, 2007
The Inbetween War
Seraphic Friend Jameel, over at The Muqata, has asked me to coin a new name for the war that's about to break out in Gaza.
My response: "Gee, a war? I just thought the Arabs were killing each other for, y'know, practice?"
Jameel, understandably jaded, titles his entry: Here We Go Again, and later pleads: "This time we better win."
Here's the problem:
Hamas and Fatah are fighting a civil war in Gaza. There has never been a unity government. That was a charade from the the very beginning, each side maneuvering carefully, looking for the right moment to move in for the kill.
Within this civil war are smaller turf battles between powerful crime families, tribes and clans fighting for control of neighborhoods, for their sex, liquor, drugs and various black market operations.
All this under the guise of national liberation, and enabled by the useful idiots of the left in Israel and the West. It's much like supporting the Mafia in the name of civil rights for Italian Americans. But the left is stuck in a nihilism so self-destructive that they cannot be reasoned with nor redeemed. They are the tools of the worst moral thugs in the world, the most rabid Jew-haters since the Third Reich.
But I digress:
Is this a war?
And:
Can Israel win?
We have seen the end of conventional industrial war. This is the age of Fourth Generation Warfare. Modern day terrorists are able to challenge nation-states through incremental terrorist steps: homicide bombers, Qassam rockets, Molotov Cocktails, child-snipers. Industrial nations like Israel and America will not respond with full military might to these "insurgent threats."
Why?
1. World opinion will consider nation-state responses "disproportionate" as "civilian" deaths flash across TV screens. Let's be clear, as in the Second Lebanon War, the terrorists defined civilian deaths to a willfully naive press.
2. The homefront, pushed by a liberal and hostile media, is unwilling and unable to accept casualties in a war with faceless, nameless combatants who celebrate death over life.
3. Terrorists seem to be decentralized. In fact, most groups, at the moment, get their financing, training and support from Iran and Syria.
4. Thus, the only effective way of decapitating the terrorist organizations is by attacking the root-states: and for Geopolitical and strategic reasons, neither Israel nor America are prepared to do this. At least not yet.
And so the West fights the war on terror on the cheap; and loses and loses and loses. In horrible and agonizing slow motion.
The terrorists no longer follow the playbook of Lenin and Mao. They are not looking to overthrow and take over entire nations. Heck, they know their own limitations. They understand who and what they are: destroyers, not builders. And so, under the romantic banner of national liberation, a convenient fig-leaf for their Western apologists, they chip away at nation-states and fill in the vacuum with their criminal, Islamic enterprises.
The Taliban's brutal rule in Afghanistan illustrates how a terrorist band steps into a political vacuum with no ability to build a modern infrastructure. Tribal warlords impose brutal Sharia over an exhausted population.
Entire areas of Pakistan are lawless frontiers, closed to the Pakistanian army and controlled by Islamic warlords with liquid and always shifting loyalties. Hizbullah/Iran in Southern Lebanon is another example of Islamic gangsterhood taking over swaths of territory from a weak nation-state. This phenomenon is spreading throughout Africa.
Israel created the perfect opportunity for a Hamas/Islamic putch in Gaza when Jews were forcibly expelled by Jews; this signaled to the Islamic fanatics and to the world that the Jewish state would help create an Islamic thugocracy right on Israel's border.
Naturally, there are plenty of voices in Israel and in the West who are advocating the exact same measures for Judea and Samaria. There is no end to the charms of appeasement and defeatism—especially among Jews.
The terrorists no longer have to make outrageous demands. The outrageous has become commonplace. Let the liberals and leftists do most of the work. It's not even called collaboration. It's labeled civilized dialogue.
Thus, politely and well mannered, more and more Jews go to their graves.
And now Qassam rockets rain down on Israel.
What is the correct response?
People talk of evacuating S'derot.
Wrong.
The correct response should be: evacuating areas of Gaza.
But this will not happen because if we do this we: "will become just like them."
Or:
"Jews don't do things like that."
Or:
"It's collective punishment."
Conveniently forgetting that this is precisely the definition of war: collective punishment. War is never about the individual civilian, it's about the choices the civilians have made as to their leadership.
In fact, the endgame the terrorists count on is just this merciful mindset.
You see, when a nation-state is not at war, and not at peace, she is somewhere inbetween, and that inbetween place is the very space where she becomes most vulnerable. It's the zone of not-quite-all-out-war where the terrorists want you to be for that is where they thrive.
Nation states like Israel and America, and soon all of Europe, will have to come to the realization that when you go to war you must fight to win—anything less spells doom for your civilization.
If you fight an Inbetween War, you lose.
And we cannot afford to lose to the Islamic terrorists.
Karen and I wish you all a lovely and meaningful Shabbos and Chodesh Tov.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at May 18, 2007 10:20 AM
Comments
Seraphic Secret is private property, that's right, it's an extension of our home, and as such, Karen and I have instituted two Seraphic Rules and we ask commentors to act respectfully.
1. No profanity.2. No Israel bashing. We debate, we discuss, we are respectful. You know what Israel bashing is. The world is full of it. Seraphic Secret is one of the few places in the world that will not tolerate this form of anti-Semitism. That's it. Break either of these rules and you will be banned.
"It's much like supporting the Mafia in the name of civil rights for Italian Americans."
Perfect.
Posted by: ralphie at May 18, 2007 12:02 PM
Ralphie:
Thanks so much. Have a great Shabbos and if I don't speak to you beforehand, a lovely Shavuos.
Posted by: Robert J. Avrech ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.seraphicpress.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at May 18, 2007 03:52 PM
Very well said! One can understand the US response to this situation, segment and ignore and hope it goes away. After all, it's far away, it doesn't really impact anyone's day to day lives.
But in Israel? Effectively losing towns to the enemy would make one think that you can't segment and pretend it's "over there", and ignore it. Somehow there's almost a national collaboration to do so. The press doesn't speak about it, the organs of the government (even support & welfare) don't react to it. And when some tries to (the billionaire for example), he's castigated.
Insanity.
Posted by: Akiva at May 20, 2007 07:32 AM
Excellent as usual..............very best regards
Posted by: mark David at May 20, 2007 07:50 AM
Akiva:
Thanks so much for your comment.
Many Israelis live in denial, it's the only way of coping with the unrelenting terrorist threat and brutish anti-Semitic hostility of western Europe.
It's another story when it comes to the Israeli left. Their record in the 20th century speaks for itself: apologists for Stalin, apologists for Soviet Russia, apologists for Castro, apologists for North Vietnamese aggression which led directly to the Cambodian genocide, and of course their support for every brutish socialist tyranny in Africa. The body count hovers over 60 million.
Of course the surrender in Southern Lebanon and the expulson of Jews from Gaza is explained away with the simple: "We didn't belong there in the first place." Thus erasing history, cause and effect.
Why would they act any differently when it comes to Israel, because they are Jews, because they are Israeli?
In fact, this animates them commit even more horrendous acts which will undermine the security of the Jewish State. Their self-loathing knows no bounds.
Posted by: Robert J. Avrech at May 20, 2007 10:43 AM
Mark:
Thanks so much. Have a lovely Shavuos.
Posted by: Robert J. Avrech at May 20, 2007 10:45 AM
2. The homefront, pushed by a liberal and hostile media, is unwilling and unable to accept casualties in a war with faceless, nameless combatants who celebrate death over life.It is a little more complicated than this. People are unwilling to accept casualties that are pointless. People are not stupid, even though they may have trouble articulating their feelings. Most people in US know that deaths in Iraq are pointless because US will eventually surrender and get out of there while the iraqis will continue to kill each other. How do they know that? Because they observe that US is not really fighting but tries to be idiotically nice and that Bush administration is incompetent in stopping the democratic/liberal attack on war. Nobody is going to admit or in many cases even articulate these thoughts of course out of fear of being labeled something bad.
Most israelis also know that dying in any given fight with arabs is pointless because things will return to where they were 5 minutes after the "cease-fire". All these pointless demonstrations of force that don't frighten anybody, arrests that end up in release rather than gallows, cleanups of "terror infrastructure" that is going to be rebuilt the next day etc. etc. Would you die for it?
The US or Israeli leaders (Republicans or Democrats, Likud, Kadima or Avoda) don't want to win. Of course we are to blame for that since we have elected them. But we also don't want to elect leaders who will fight because they are politically incorrect. There are only two possible outcomes for this. Either the muslims will do things so horrible that people in US will elect leaders willing to really hurt them or we should all start studying Koran. I suspect the later is more realistic.
My only hope is that one day muslims will forget themselves and really hurt one of those nations that didn't go through 60-s reeducation campaign like China or Russia (which already demonstrated in Chechnya that carpet bombing is very effective against freedom fighters). Perhaps then we will finally see a mushroom cloud over mecca.
Posted by: Ex-Israeli at May 26, 2007 12:19 AM
Ex-Israeli:
I have no argument with you. Seraphic Secret has often said that both Israel and America need to fight to win; fighting with restraint is a recipe for disaster.
Thanks so much for your valubale comment.
Posted by: Robert J. Avrech at May 27, 2007 10:51 AM