Why does Israel do what it does?

Jeez, the Israeli's have been working trying to kill each and every last Pal since they invaded. The problem is that they are just about as good at Counter Insurgency warfare as we are. Meaning terrible.

I suppose the most Ironic thing, is that it was the Israeli secret services that created Hamas in the first place, as a "counterweight" to the quasi-commie PLO. Hamas was going to be the dumb Islamic faction that would harass the PLO into ineffectiveness, as if the PLO ever needed any help getting there. Well, it worked a little too well. Two intifadas and one Hamas leadership later, the Israelis would give anything to have a pitiful coward like Arafat back in charge, instead of these crazy Hamas guys with 17 children each and a bad case of martyr-envy.

Forgive my laughter but......please!
Politics aside (which this is and nothing more) Israel has it in its power to sweep away the Palestinians before even breaking a sweat. If Hamas and militant Pals were in the same position, Israel would have gone the way of the dinosaur long ago.

I happen to agree with Hamas on one issue. This will NEVER be solved on the negotiating table. Israel must crush them or expect more savagery in the future. Politics will never allow this solution.

-Castle
 
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Forgive my laughter but......please!
Politics aside (which this is and nothing more) Israel has it in its power to sweep away the Palestinians before even breaking a sweat. If Hamas and militant Pals were in the same position, Israel would have gone the way of the dinosaur long ago.

I happen to agree with Hamas on one issue. This will NEVER be solved on the negotiating table. Israel must crush them or expect more savagery in the future. Politics will never allow this solution.

-Castle

Well you can't really nuke the land that you wanna steal can you? I mean you can, but it would take a long time before you could move back in, which sort of defeats the purpose.

If you mean conventionally, well they've been trying to "sweep them away" for the last 25 years. Look how good thats working for em.
 
Maybe "freedom" isn't exactly what they want. Maybe they want a government that adheres to their own principles. Maybe they choose to live as they do because it is the only way to live in their home without endorsing a government that runs opposite to what they believe.

There is no partition plan and no halfway point that'll settle this. There are too many differences between what the Palestinians want and what the Israelis want.


All they want is for the jews to be dead. If their want was given to them, then the "palestinians" would have no further use and every one of them, down to the last child would simply become jordanians as jordan expanded its border to encompass israel.
 
Well you can't really nuke the land that you wanna steal can you? I mean you can, but it would take a long time before you could move back in, which sort of defeats the purpose.

If you mean conventionally, well they've been trying to "sweep them away" for the last 25 years. Look how good thats working for em.

You believe nukes would be necessary? You really are an armchair general aren't you? You don't have a clue as to what the military is capable of. Do you think that we are at the limit of our ability in iraq? Do you think that we are in the situation we are in because we have no other options? If the US wanted, we could flex a fraction of our true military muscle and leave no iraqi alive and no building standing in 2 weeks and never have to consider nuclear weapons.

The same is true for israel. If they really wanted all of the palestinians dead, they would be dead. Down to the last one. They have 21 squadrons of the most advanced fighters and bombers available. Not to mention the helicopter squadrons. One squadron of fighters, or bombers could remove the palestinian nusance in a day or so. They need only be willing to kill everyone in the palestinian areas. Everyone. The reason that they (the palestinians) haven't been swept away is because they (Israel) don't want to do it. Israel has the same capacity for destruction that we do and like us, they don't unleash their true power because that is not what civilized people do.

If the arabs, on the other hand, had the same military capacity as israel, they would have eradicated israel 20 minutes after they believed they had the capacity.
 
You believe nukes would be necessary? You really are an armchair general aren't you? You don't have a clue as to what the military is capable of. Do you think that we are at the limit of our ability in iraq? Do you think that we are in the situation we are in because we have no other options? If the US wanted, we could flex a fraction of our true military muscle and leave no iraqi alive and no building standing in 2 weeks and never have to consider nuclear weapons.

The same is true for israel. If they really wanted all of the palestinians dead, they would be dead. Down to the last one. They have 21 squadrons of the most advanced fighters and bombers available. Not to mention the helicopter squadrons. One squadron of fighters, or bombers could remove the palestinian nusance in a day or so. They need only be willing to kill everyone in the palestinian areas. Everyone. The reason that they (the palestinians) haven't been swept away is because they (Israel) don't want to do it. Israel has the same capacity for destruction that we do and like us, they don't unleash their true power because that is not what civilized people do.

If the arabs, on the other hand, had the same military capacity as israel, they would have eradicated israel 20 minutes after they believed they had the capacity.

I think armchair general was saying the opposite about nukes.
 
Maybe "freedom" isn't exactly what they want. Maybe they want a government that adheres to their own principles. Maybe they choose to live as they do because it is the only way to live in their home without endorsing a government that runs opposite to what they believe.

Great post. And the last thing they probably want is American Brand Freedom©
 
You believe nukes would be necessary? You really are an armchair general aren't you? You don't have a clue as to what the military is capable of. Do you think that we are at the limit of our ability in iraq? Do you think that we are in the situation we are in because we have no other options? If the US wanted, we could flex a fraction of our true military muscle and leave no iraqi alive and no building standing in 2 weeks and never have to consider nuclear weapons.

Ooh look folks, a wannabe war nerd. (Cackles evilly).

Theres a few ways for us to win in Iraq. None of these ways are noble, or pretty, not the stuff you want on your resume. And some are very risky, too So try them at your own risk.

The obvious solution is genocide. I've mentioned it before, even predicted it'll come back into fashion, because what we've got now is a huge gap between the military force a superpower has and what it's actually ready to use. We've got a problem in the Sunni Triangle, and we're fighting it with mid-20th century weapons, armor and cannon and air strikes. Sure, it's much better armor, cannon and air support than we had in 1944, but we're talking little refinements of old weapons. Cannon have been around for 600 years! A 25mm chain cannon is just a much smaller, faster, more accurate version of the humongous, sloppy tubes that blasted the walls of Constantinople in 1453.

Which brings me to the weapons that we WON'T use: the NBC network. "Nuclear Biological Chemical". Just make sure you're upwind when you open the bag, and try not to inhale much for, oh, let's say the rest of your life. If we were willing to use these big dawgs, Ramadi would be as quiet as a retirement community on Halloween.

Of course there are solid reasons to think twice before ripping that bag'o'spores open, like the fact that it's hard to control who dies. Anthrax isn't biased; it'll kill a Shia as easily as a Sunni. And you do sort of concede the moral high ground if you bring in the crop dusters, I guess. I'm not much on high ground myself, but it seems to matter a lot to other folks.

Chemicals are softies compared to bioweapons, because they can't generate one of those Stephen King scenarios that brings world population down to K-Fed album sales numbers. They're nice simple weapons: shell pops open, lethal chem slithers downwind like Pepe LePeu's perfume, everybody dies one horrible way or another, and a few miles further downwind it's just a funny smell, a few athsamatics flopping over. But it wouldn't look good, taking the Formula 409 approach to cleaning up Iraq, because, you, Addam-Say already did that to the Urds-Kay, and we kind of made a big freakin' deal about it, and we love those Kurds now.

It's just one fuss after another, once you start playing genocide, worse than a Mexican-Okie wedding. That's why we end up with good ol' nukes. Nukes are, no question, the class of the hit-man world. You don't have to wonder if a nuke is going to start a pandemic that leaves silverfish as the dominant species on the planet. You don't have to get bashed with Saddam comparisons like if you used chem weapons, because if there's one thing this lame-ass war has proved, it's that Saddam never had any nukes, wasn't close to having 'em, would've shrieked and run like a girl if you'd handed 'em to him. Nobody could say we were just like Saddam if we sanitized the Triangle with nukes.

You think things disappear in the Bermuda Triangle? Just watch how everything taller than a scorpion vanishes in the Sunni Triangle, once we get those high-school compasses out and start drawing little red circles around every habited area from Kirkuk to Karbala, Tal Afar to Najaf. Nukes solve the problem fast - very fast - and clean - well, pretty clean. A few years ago we'd have had a much bigger problem nuking Sunni Iraq, because the sneaky bastards had all these mixed neighborhoods - you know, the ones MSM correspondents loved to mourn the passing of. Well, if you think about it those ethnic-cleansing squads have solved the problem for our megatonnage-management team, because there are no more mixed neighborhoods in Iraq. No need to worry about vaporizing Shia families along with their Sunni neighbors - not that I personally would mind much, but I'm supposed to pretend I do. Nope, no worries, because the ash that would float around the stratosphere after we zapped the Triangle would be 99% Pure Sunni.

Getting carried away here, so I better move on to other CI methods, suitable for children and Democrats. There are three that I know of: targeted assassination, bribery and starting a civil war between insurgent factions. They've all been used successfully; they've all failed too, and sometimes with real Frankenstein results.

Simplest and safest is bribery. I don't know why we don't do it more often. Almost makes me believe the guys running things are secret war nerds themselves, because otherwise they'd do bribery as a way of bringing down "rogue states" all the time. Just do the math. Right now, the official cost of Iraq is around $500 billion. Suppose we'd just bombed Iraq with dollars; we'd be the heroes of the world, and every family in Iraq would be like $90,000 richer. That would make Iraq one of the richest countries in the world. I guarantee you those greedy bastards would find better things to do with their time than drill holes in each others' heads with power drills.

And along the way, Saddam would have been overthrown in a few seconds, like the first time he tried to tell a young Baghdad blood he couldn't drive his new convertible into the country.

The Iraqis were never going to revolt for democracy - I mean, be honest, who would?but a new car? Boom, ol' Soddom is a hood emblem, and Uday and Qusay are seat covers. Then, when every Iraqi had a car, all we'd have to do is let them run out of gas and say, with our feet up on the table, "So...y'say you need some oil refined, huh? Let's make a deal." Piece of low-sulfur hi-octane cake.

You don't want to give those Baghdadis all the cash? Well, kinda late to figure that out, but OK, there are still ways. One slow, bloody; the other fast, risky, also bloody. The slow bloody way is targeted assassinations by mixed US-local kill teams. We did it in Nam and it worked tactically, wiped out the VC networks in many provinces, but couldn't fix the huge sucking black hole where our strategy was supposed to be. In other words, we hosed the VC with those Phoenix teams but that didn't matter when NVA armored columns rolled in a few years later.

Since the Nam case ended so sucky for us, the NeoCons are trotting out El Salvador, where Reagan's guys did a very good job of wiping out the leadership of the local communist insurgency. What I always admired most about it was it was done so quietly. You never heard about it back then, in the Cheers era, unless something really dumb went wrong, like killing those four nuns. It was a good operation, but let's be real here: El Salvador had a population of four million people, and the insurgency was run by a tiny clique of middle-class commies. When they were killed off, the rest of the people, the campesinos/Indios, went back to their old masters.

The Sunni Iraqis are not shuffling little Indio serfs. They're used to killing, they like it, we can't "selectively" kill their leaders because they don't have any beyond neighborhood level.

Other examples of successful CI, like the Brits against Chinese commies in Malaysia in the 1950s, are a lot more like El Salvador than Baghdad: small groups (ethnic Chinese in Malay territory) with nothing but an ideology to keep up their morale. Ideology, compared to tribal loyalties like we're facing in Iraq, is weak stuff, soymilk compared to Jagermeister. Commies didn't strap on suicide vests like the Jihadis do. We're up against a clan, a big old clan that will fight to the last dummy. Taking out the leadership just won't do it.

That leaves maybe the best, and also the riskiest CI strategy: giving the insurgency enough rope to hang itself with an endless civil war. I wish I had time to go into details, but basically what you do is identify the weak element among the insurgent leadership, strengthen it vs. the hardliners (and here's where having a good assassination squad or two can help, by wiping out the most effective hardline commanders) and then force the weak faction to sign a treaty with you.

It's a sure thing that the hardliners won't accept the deal, but it's just as sure the moderates won't give up power, because (a) they like it, and (b) they don't want to be tortured to death along with their entire families. So booya! You've got a nice civil war going between what used to be comrades in insurgency, and you can play one faction against the other, keeping them both weak. You can't stay in open power as the foreign occupier, but you can take a terrible revenge, because this kind of war is one long massacre, neighbor vs. neighbor. Big sales for Black & Decker reps, as well as your leading makers of rope, soldering irons, hacksaws and other devices for reeducating pesky folks who used to park in your driveway.

The classic success-story for this kind of CI strategy was by Britain vs. the IRA in the early 1920s. The Micks had basically forced Brit CI forces out of most of the rural areas and were using hit teams, like the VC "sparrow teams," to take out officials and informers in the cities. The Brits offered to make a deal with Michael Collins, who ran the IRA's urban campaigns, and got him to sign a treaty they knew the hardliners wouldn't accept. Worked like a charm; the IRA killed Collins, its best strategist, and the Irish settled back for decades of blaming each other, and the Brits never had to deal with more than nuisance campaigns until Ulster blew up in the late 60s.
 
The Israelis tried to do exactly the same thing by ceding Gaza and bits of the West Bank to the PLO. They had Hamas waiting, way tougher and younger than Fatah, and hoped the Pals would duke it out - the old, weak Arafat cronies vs. the bloods from Hamas. The reason they knew Hamas was in the mood to go to the mattress is that it was the Israeli secret services that created Hamas in the first place.

See, that's the problem though: you set up two insurgent factions at each other's throats and you're likely to be running a tournament, with the meanest and most determined bastards winning. And that's not who you want for neighbors. The Israelis had some early successes sparking feuds between Palestinian factions. It's not exactly rocket science getting Arabs at each others' throats. The hard part, and the part where the Israelis lost their nerve, is staying out of the way long enough to let the puppet government you've set up get strong enough to take on the hardliners in a really big, bloody civil war. In Ireland, the Brits gave Collins, a guy they hated like poison, not just their backing, but heavy artillery. Now that, is discipline. And sure enough, Collins' forces couldn't wait till the guns were offloaded to start bombarding Dublin neighborhoods where their hardline enemies were holed up.

The Israelis couldn't stay out of the little Palestinian pockets they'd handed over to the PLO, because some Hamas or Islamic Jihad kid would blow himself up in a Tel Aviv deli and the public would demand that the IAF go blast some Pal refugee camp. It made the public happy, but then the public, any public, is a moron. And in the long run, it meant that the Pals never stopped having some new Israeli raid to be mad about, so they couldn't get around to the next step of hating each other enough to get a decent civil war going.

So yeah, this is a cool, clever strategy but I don't give anybody enough credit for sheer cold-blooded smarts to do it except the Brits. And I mean the old Brits, not these poor saps today who tagged along with Dubya for the ride to Baghdad.

Not even those old-school Brits could do it now, in Iraq. Because whereas the 1920-vintage IRA had a fairly disciplined leadership to play games with, we've got -- who? -- to talk to in Iraq. You'd be better off trying to divide and conquer the roaches in your kitchen. Nobody runs the insurgency, and nobody really runs the Shia militias either, not at national level. Sadr? He's their poster boy as long as he mouths off the way the hardliners want, but he'll go the way of Sistani if he tries to curb the boys' enthusiasm. They don't need help. They're having the time of their lives. It's not so much fun for the other focus groups, like women and men over 25 but for Iraqi boys from 15-25, these are the Wonder Years.

The key measurement for insurgencies in all these strategies is leadership, ranging from the almost Inca-style pyramid structure of the VC/NVA to total chaos. The steeper the pyramid, the more room you have to play with CI options, especially the ones involving negotiation. The more chaotic and localized the insurgents, the more you start thinking about those nice, clean red diameter-circles you get with our old friends the nukes.


The same is true for israel. If they really wanted all of the palestinians dead, they would be dead. Down to the last one. They have 21 squadrons of the most advanced fighters and bombers available. Not to mention the helicopter squadrons. One squadron of fighters, or bombers could remove the palestinian nusance in a day or so. They need only be willing to kill everyone in the palestinian areas. Everyone. The reason that they (the palestinians) haven't been swept away is because they (Israel) don't want to do it. Israel has the same capacity for destruction that we do and like us, they don't unleash their true power because that is not what civilized people do.

You mean like last year when the IDF tried to destroy Hezbollah? Oh yah, that worked out great...

If the arabs, on the other hand, had the same military capacity as israel, they would have eradicated israel 20 minutes after they believed they had the capacity.

Propably. But then I'm sure if the UN just decided to take Kansas and give it to a bunch of Muslims you probably wouldn't be too happy about it either.
 
So general, after all that, are you conceeding that you were wrong when you said:

"If you mean conventionally, well they've been trying to "sweep them away" for the last 25 years. Look how good thats working for em."

Since Israel has clearly NOT been trying to sweep the palestinians away since they could have swept them away at any time in the past 40 years.
 
So general, after all that, are you conceeding that you were wrong when you said:

"If you mean conventionally, well they've been trying to "sweep them away" for the last 25 years. Look how good thats working for em."

Since Israel has clearly NOT been trying to sweep the palestinians away since they could have swept them away at any time in the past 40 years.

Clearly you need to learn how to read. Thats exactly what they've been trying to do.
 
You type a lot, but say very little. Maybe you do that to camoflage the fact that you have very little to say. The fact is that if Israel wanted the palestinians gone, they could do it in less than a week and never even have to consider chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. The area in which the palestinians live could be effectively destroyed along with every living being with no more than 9 daisy cutters.

Clearly, they have not been "trying" to eliminate the "palestinians" because they certainly have the means by which to do it in short order should they actually want to take that course.

A point based in sarcasm is no point at all and to suggest that they have been trying to do a thing for a very long time that they could do in a day or so if they actually tried is a point based in sarcasm.
 
You type a lot, but say very little. Maybe you do that to camoflage the fact that you have very little to say. The fact is that if Israel wanted the palestinians gone, they could do it in less than a week and never even have to consider chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. The area in which the palestinians live could be effectively destroyed along with every living being with no more than 9 daisy cutters.

Clearly, they have not been "trying" to eliminate the "palestinians" because they certainly have the means by which to do it in short order should they actually want to take that course.

A point based in sarcasm is no point at all and to suggest that they have been trying to do a thing for a very long time that they could do in a day or so if they actually tried is a point based in sarcasm.

Clearly, you need to get some education on what is going on in the region. Next time you post, try addressing some of the points that are made instead of just flinging insults. Thats the sign of a very weak mind.
 
You type a lot, but say very little. Maybe you do that to camoflage the fact that you have very little to say. The fact is that if Israel wanted the palestinians gone, they could do it in less than a week and never even have to consider chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. The area in which the palestinians live could be effectively destroyed along with every living being with no more than 9 daisy cutters.

Clearly, they have not been "trying" to eliminate the "palestinians" because they certainly have the means by which to do it in short order should they actually want to take that course.

A point based in sarcasm is no point at all and to suggest that they have been trying to do a thing for a very long time that they could do in a day or so if they actually tried is a point based in sarcasm.

It's perfectly possible that Israel wants the Palestinians to just disappear and it's for sure possible that they have the means to do so.

That doesn't mean that they can however since the international repercussions would be severe. So instead they are going about it another way.

There is an increasing similarity in the Israeli/Palistinian situation to the South African Apartheid situation.

For example, in 2002: The Israeli government decided to support a private law proposal that allows the allocation of land for the development of “Jews only” urban communities. The proposal is designed to bypass earlier supreme court ruling on the subject. Previously, the Israeli supreme court ruled that the state cannot discriminate between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens in matters of land allocation for housing. The court accepted the appeal of an Arab-Israeli couple that requested to be accepted into the urban community “Katzir” that was founded by the Jewish Agency.

In a response to the above decision, KM Haim Drukman of the Mafdal party, drafted a law proposition that will allow the Jewish Agency and the governmental “land administrate” to bypass the supreme court’s ruling. The proposition allows allocation of land for the development of urban communities restricted for Jews only.
 
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It's perfectly possible that Israel wants the Palestinians to just disappear and it's for sure possible that they have the means to do so.

That doesn't mean that they can however since the international repercussions would be severe. So instead they are going about it another way.

There is an increasing similarity in the Israeli/Palistinian situation to the South African Apartheid situation.

For example, in 2002: The Israeli government decided to support a private law proposal that allows the allocation of land for the development of “Jews only” urban communities. The proposal is designed to bypass earlier supreme court ruling on the subject. Previously, the Israeli supreme court ruled that the state cannot discriminate between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens in matters of land allocation for housing. The court accepted the appeal of an Arab-Israeli couple that requested to be accepted into the urban community “Katzir” that was founded by the Jewish Agency.

In a response to the above decision, KM Haim Drukman of the Mafdal party, drafted a law proposition that will allow the Jewish Agency and the governmental “land administrate” to bypass the supreme court’s ruling. The proposition allows allocation of land for the development of urban communities restricted for Jews only.

Absolutely right. Its all about Demographics. Its a slow Ethnic Cleansing. For four decades, Israel has pushed to build and expand Jewish neighborhoods, while restricting the growth in Arab parts.

I can’t imagine the vitriol that would be packaged as journalism if some southern US state were to, say, subsidize the construction of white neighborhoods and yet refuse permits for private building in overcrowded black neighborhoods.
 
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