American Journalists Decry Israel’s Ability to Defend Itself as Blocking Peace
I hate to spend time discussing U.S. media coverage of Israel. It should be clear by now that it is not very good, balanced, accurate, or fair. Yet there are examples which are irresistible to discuss because they are so revealing of the political as well as media assumptions made about Israel that so mislead the Western publics and policymakers.
The Washington Post has a major article explaining that while, on one hand, the Iron Dome missile defense is a good thing because it blocks missiles that would otherwise kill and injure Israelis as well as cause damage it is also a bad thing. Tom Friedman made similar claims. Why?
“For a nation that longs for normalcy and acceptance, one question being debated here is whether Iron Dome will motivate Israel’s leaders to pursue peace with the Palestinians and the wider Arab world or insulate them from having to do so.”
In other words, if a lot more Israelis were being killed and wounded by attacks then Israel would have more incentive to make peace with the Palestinians and Arabs. But since they are only being attacked and their lives paralyzed but not killed, Israel just isn’t interested in making peace.
And who is debating this idea that only if they are more bloodied will their hearts be softened and they will prefer peace to endless conflict? Supposedly Israelis are saying: “Wow, we wish our leaders tried harder to make peace with the Palestinians. Maybe it’s because we are too strong and secure.” Well, basically the Post comes up with one person, left-wing author Tom Segev. Nobody is interviewed who ridicules this bizarre thesis.
Just to make the situation completely clear let me be very explicit: In the 1980s and in 1993 at the time of the Oslo agreement many Israelis argued that because Israel was more secure it could take risks and make concessions to try to achieve peace. A number of specific steps, including Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, were based on this same stance. Israel could pull out of the Gaza Strip, uproot all of the settlements there, and not suffer any decline in security. That’s the historic argument: the more secure Israel was, the more it could offer the Palestinians in the hope that they would make peace. Is that clear?
When a country becomes less secure it must increase its ability to protect itself, including by retaining territory useful for that defense, spending more on military equipment, and not making concessions and taking risks. The only exception is that if people feel certain that such concessions and risks would definitely bring a full response from the other side and thus lead to a secure and lasting peace.
Now even leaving aside the Palestinian Authority’s intransigence and desire–clearly visible for the last twelve years–to avoid a compromise two-state solution, Israel also faces the following new regional features:
–Hamas, which constantly attacks Israel and would continue to do so (indeed escalate attacks) if Israel did reach an agreement with the PA.
–An Islamist Egypt whose ruling Muslim Brotherhood group daily speaks of genocide against Israel and Jews, plus not accepting the 30-year-old peace treaty, not to mention the even more extreme Salafists.
–An Islamist-ruled Lebanon, where Hizballah, the ruling group, constantly threatens to attack and also daily calls for Israel’s extinction.
–A hostile Turkey whose rulers support Hamas and Hizballah.
–A Syria where radical Islamists seem poised to gain power. They cannot possibly be more anti-Israel than the current regime but they are willing to make the anti-Israel war a higher priority for direct action.
So this is an era where Israel clearly needs to defend itself. Compare this to the early 1990s. Saddam Hussein had been defeated in the 1991 war; the radical Arabs main ally, the USSR, had fallen; America was the sole superpower; the PLO was so weak and depressed that it seemed conceivable it might be pushed into peace because it had no other alternative (in contrast to the contemporary Palestinian Authority which just got recognition as a state and is feeling very confident); and other factors.
That was a moment when Israel could take risks and did so with the Oslo Agreement. And yet, of course, we know–like it or not–that this “peace process” made things worse, another lesson not processed by the hegemonic political forces in much of the West today.
So how do we get from here to demands that Israel must keep doing what has failed and the claim that the weaker is Israel’s strategic position the more it can and should make concessions and take risks? Such a stance is just about equivalent to saying that it is a pity that U.S. counterterrorism measures are working because if there were more September 11 type attacks that succeeded the Americans would be nicer to Muslims. Or if the British air force had only not defeated the Luftwaffe perhaps Prime Minister Winston Churchill wouldn’t have been so insulated from the need to make peace with the Axis.
Special categories are constantly created to bash Israel. Has the concept of “proportional response”–that if defending yourself you shouldn’t do too much–ever been applied to anyone other than Israel? Can you imagine an American journalist writing an article suggesting that if only England got hiT harder by IRA terrorism it would treat the Irish better in Northern Ireland?
What’s most infuriating about all of this is not just that Israel has tried so hard to make peace–including risks and concessions–but the precise attacks referred to in the Post article were made possible only because Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in an attempt to promote peace!
Yet the essential insanity of the kind of thinking epitomized in this article is shielded when it comes to Israel by the media’s bias and sense that it can get away with any nonsense when it comes to discussing Israel.
Meanwhile, there is some concern by Israeli intelligence officials of a new intifadah on the West Bank. This would be due to new confidence created by the UN’s decision to make Palestine a non-member state (the UN’s contribution to peacemaking); a rapprochement between the Palestinian Authority, which rules the West Bank, and Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip; and the Palestinian Authority’s wish to compete with Hamas in attacking Israel and trying to kill Israelis.
Following the logic of the Washington Post we should hope that lots of Israelis are killed by terrorists as a way to pressure those obdurate Israelis to make peace.
The Post article basically follows the same Palestinian political line that has prevailed since the 1960s: forget about a negotiated compromise, Israel must be defeated; Israelis made to suffer. The main goal is to get Israelis to give up altogether and abandon having a state; the shorter-term goal is to get Israelis to accept a Palestinian state unconditionally so it can get on with the task of finishing that job.
Before around 1980, the above analysis would have been considered a normative Israeli analysis. Between the 1980s and 2000, when there was a rising hope of a compromise peace with the PLO and its child, the Palestinian Authority, it would have been considered a right-wing view. Since 2000, however, that assessment—based on evidence and experience—has again become that of the overwhelming majority across almost all of the political spectrum.
Internationally, the refusal to face the fact that the Palestinian side is responsible for the failure of peace leads to such bizarre theories and blinds people to the actual situation.
One must wonder why killing Israelis is supposed to make Israel amenable to compromise while killing Palestinians only makes them more obdurate?
Good point. Also, around the time of the Yom Kippur War, there was the argument that Egypt needs a “victory” to get its “honor” back. A funny double standard!
It wasn’t an argument. It was US policy, to “teach Israel a lesson”. And the result was that the Syrian army was almost in Tiberius.
And that was the first war where the US was officially Israel’s “ally”.
We have now reached a point in history where leading American mainstream papers (hard to call them newspapres anymore) are advocating the murder of Israelis. I’d say another red line has been crossed. And since there won’t be any siginificant mainstream reaction to this, they would be emboldened to go farther. Over decades American papers have become gradually more radical one baby step at the time. They test the water, and when it proves safe they take another step, when the waves settle down and people get used to it they take the next step, and so on. If they can already safely suggest to disarm Israel from even its most passive defense in the hope that more Israelis are murdered for the sake of “peace”, it won’t be long now before they start advocating more extreme “solutions”. A few years at best.
That kind of suggestions also exposes the true face of the left, why they so vehemently opposed to any measure of self-defence Israel takes, whether it’s a military operation, the security fence, or even Iron Dome. It’s not because they care about the Arab suffering caused by the Israeli self-defense against Arab aggression – Iron Dome is an entirely passive self-defense that doesn’t cause any suffering to any Arab (except the frustration at not being able to murder more Jews). The left simply opposes Israeli self defense in principle, no matter what kind, because they want Israelis to die – either for the sake of “peace” if they’re more on the stupid side, or for the sake of dead Israelis if they’re more on the malicious side.
It has to do with control the language, control the message. This is the “New Normal,” high debt, deficits, unemployment. New normalnewnormalnewnormal. As in Balanced Approach, Fair Share, War inWomen, repeated a thousand times in the sycophantic media. Habituation, oh yea, this is normal. Notice how frequently Isreali defense is labeled “disproportional.” Sometime I feel like a lab rat.
The killer is that the term is supposed to refer to “proportional to the OBJECTIVE”, not to what the enemy was doing. The Geneva accords were meant to make people fight fair, not to fight justly (not that we aren’t). Plus it’s from the pro-terrorist protocol which neither the US nor Isael (sane for once) signed.
If you are trying to get the enemy to stop firing missles at your cities, or to destroy the enemy, or even to capture the territory (not that we are), then if your action makes a decent contribution towards your goal, it is proportional.
“high debt, deficits, unemployment.”
Well, you are a lab specimen if you don’t realize that high debt and deficits are basically Republican party planks.
Right, Jad, BO is really reducing the debt and deficits bwahahaha. What test tube did *you* dribble out of?
David, in one fell swoop you have exposed the illogical reasoning of most of the mainstream media.
Conservatives are fools to accept invitations on TV programs where they are going to be given no opportunity to clearly state their views or to challenge the flaws in the reasoning (or lack of it) of the presenters.
Only a tiny handful of conservatives have the knowledge and skill to turn around a hostile situation to their benefit. If presenters fail to do their homework properly then those who are interviewed should have everything at their fingertips and totally demolish the presenters. Perhaps this is also the reason why they should only accept invitations on live broadcasts where the media cannot afterwards go and edit the interviews and totally distort what was said.
And as far as Iron Dome goes, the shield is one piece of a defensive plan, but its effects must be placed in proper perspective, if Israel’s leaders really intend to aim for VICTORY – and that is debatable – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/12/05/israels-iron-domemissile-defense-systems-keeping-its-effects-in-rational-perspective-addendum-to-irans-wmd-genocidal-project-oxford-u-press-prof-louis-rene-beres-commentary-by-adina-kutn/
Two leading Western journalists were in Tel Aviv last year and aired their bitter disappointment that life not only goes on in Israel, but thrives. They want Israelis to suffer from Stockholm syndrome, or rather, Oslo syndrome like they do.
“What’s most infuriating about all of this is not just that Israel has tried so hard to make peace–including risks and concessions–but the precise attacks referred to in the Post article were made possible only because Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in an attempt to promote peace!”
Does anyone remember the early 1990s formula of “Land for Peace”? Well, here we are in 2012, and Israel is expected to give land for incoming missles at worst, and land for nothing at best. The game has been rigged.
Similarly, we are being told that we must give up our guns and our right to defend ourselves, as well as our freedom of speech, in return for domestic peace.
It’s all part of the same thing.
I think the idiotic thinking admirably documented by Barry comes from the principle that ‘War is the enemy’. The corollary is that peace is simply the absence of war. This principle leads to the idea that running away from conflict is really winning. Thus the exit from Iraq in the absence of a status of forces agreement, and the impending retreat from Afghanistan.
Israelis and their friends, at least the level-headed ones, understand who their enemies are. War is not the enemy. War is the last resort in a conflict with people who want to defeat and destroy you. This prinicple leads to things like Iron Dome, attacks on missile sites, blowing up nuclear weapon-making factories etc.
These two ways of thinking are incompatible.
This kind of muddled thinking isn’t limited to members of the leftist media. It’s found, sadly, in senior government officials.
Michelle Flournoy, the former Under-Secretary for Policy in the US Defense Department, spoke at the INSS conference in Tel Aviv some six months ago. She offered the usual pap about Islamists being “moderated” by the responsibilities of government, the consequences of any attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities absent international consensus and cooperation, etc. But she also put the onus of restarting the peace process on … Israel. And though it was Turkey that ended years of cooperation with Israel, that was complicit in an attempt to breach a legal blockade, and continues to defame Israel almost daily, Flournoy insisted it was up to *Israel* to repair those relations.
Some have speculated that if Hagel’s nomination to be Secretary of Defense fails, Flournoy’s name will be put forward.
Killing Jews is a precursor for peace.
Or didnt you get the Islamist memo?
The World at Large has willingly given itself over to Islam.
I understand WHY the West is giving itself up to Islam.
I just don’t understand why they think it’s a GOOD idea.
Can you imagine Edward R. Murrow denouncing the RAF for shooting down the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain or during the Blitz?
No, but I don’t have to “imagine” the U.S. news media denouncing the United States for first building a nuclear deterrent force to checkmate the Soviets and Red Chinese, or later denouncing us for even designing anti-missile systems like Safeguard, Sentinel, and Patriot (the latter being the only one that ever reached IOC).
I’m old enough to have lived through it.
The “enlightened elite’” believe that the only “moral” response to a murderous enemy is to surrender and hope they allow you to live. Except in the case of a group that elite’ dislikes on principle (Israelis, gun owners, small business people, SUV drivers), whom they would like to see exterminated on principle. They all stand in the way of Utopia, after all.
The elite’ believe, as an article of faith, that the murderous ones will see them as friends and after their Triumph will then come to them seeking their council, or even rulership.
It is far more likely that once those the elite’ despise are no longer around to stand between them and the thugs, the thugs will do away with the elite’ as well, as they will have served their purpose and the thugs will have no interest in leaving them hanging about to betray them in turn.
There is also the purely emotional factor to consider. Our modern elites are convinced that they are gods. Gods prove their status by decreeing life and death for mortals. Our elites, I suspect, secretly get a visceral thrill of seeing death and destruction visited upon those they hate, as long as they don’t have to get their hands bloody in the process.
The spectators in the Roman Coliseum had the same delusion; the belief that watching others they considered “inferiors” die horribly somehow reaffirmed their own “innate superiority”. Keep in mind that a large percentage of the unwilling participants in the “spectacles” were Jews and Christians.
It would be interesting to drop a modern “progressive” into a box seat there in about 49 AD, just to see if they would cheer as loudly as the plebeians.
clear ether
eon
Or which way they would turn their thumbs.
Throughout history, when a country gains possession of land through conflict, they get to decide what to do with said land. In the case of the U.S. since the mid 20th century, we give it back, but in most other cases, to the conqueror go the spoils. Except Israel is considered an occupier and should give it back. Why is that?
Mr.Rubin,
Why are we discussing articles of Mr Friedman and likes, when we already know that leftist thinking is a degenerative syndrome of a human brain. That moron already proved it countless times. They can not comprehend, that the Iron Dome was developed because of the “peace Loving” Arabs of Gaza and Judea and Samara.
Well, after all, the more radical progressives, including our president, don’t want Americans to have the means to defend themselves. Why would they want the equally unfashionable Israelis to have them?
Here is latma on Tom Friedman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MffXBqfC-CU
Go to minute 1:50.
Don’t worry, John F. Kerry will wind-surf across the Atlantic and past Gibraltar, land in Gaza and fix everything.
So, if we realize, more or less to our astonishment, that it is the Palestinians who are the obstacles to peace, and not the Israelis… should we then wish for more and more Israeli attacks against Palestinians, with as much collateral damage as possible, in order to convince them to make peace?
Or doesn’t it work that way when the Palestinians are on the receiving end?
Bottom line: Israel is seen as the Goliath in this struggle, and as such, can do nothing right. As long as there’s no peace, it will always be Israel’s fault. Contrariwise, for the Palestinians, the worst atrocities — such as killing and crippling your own people, or sending your own children out to die — are excused, and even blamed on Israel.
Heads, we get to kill you; tails, you get to be killed by us. We’ll use my coin.
Like most useful idiots,the left wing internationalists fail to see the blowback their stance will have. Just as embracing terrorists has made terrorism a legitmate tool in conflict, their position on the need for casulties will come back to hurt them. After all if more Israeli casulties will enhance Israeli desire for peace, shouldn’t more arab casulties enhance arab/palestinian desire for peace. Will this approach be applied to Tibet/China,N/s Korea, Frenchmen/algerians in slums? Perhaps these couch potato generals and statesmen should crack open a history textbook to see how wrong they are. I remember Rabin calling victims Korbanot l’shalom. What he ( and Friedman and WaPo) failed to understand that a sacrifice has to be voluntary. What he unleashed was the idea that it’s open season on Jews. Again.
To describe Tom Segev as a “left-wing author” is more than just way too generous – it’s misleading. He’s one of the most radical loons with a long record of rewriting history to suit its favored idelogical loves and hatreds. Or as one left-wing author put it, he has no Tom (innocense) and he has no Segev (loftiness).
The Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians,” following Soviet Propaganda, have only one desire with respect to Israel – to destroy it and kill the Jews. Their motive is religion. They have taken the name “Palestinian” because Gamal Nasser, ruleer of Egypt, and the Soviet Union in 1964 invented the “Palestine Liberation Organization” (P.L.O.), which came to fame when it massacred the Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. In fact, the name “Palestine” came from the Roman Emperor Hadrian, who renamed Judea “Palestina,” in 135 A.D., after defeating the last Jewish rebellion under Bar Kochba. He wanted to eradicate all memory of Judea and the Jews, outlawing Judaism and renaming Jerusalem “Aelia Capitolina,” “Aelius” being his gens name.
From that time, “Palestine” meant “land of the Jews,” and “Palestinian” meant “Jew.” That is why after World War I, Great Britain was given the “Palestine Mandate” to be “the homeland of the Jews.”
These Arabs deserve nothing, there are plenty of Arab states. Ganging up on Israel in the UN is a continuation of their war against the Jews.
Have you any proof that it was Soviet propaganda that renamed Palestinian Arabs into Palestinians? Granted, it’s the sort of thing that the Soviets would come up with…
I’ve heard that many times before and I would also like to see the evidence.
Anyway, it’s clear now the Soviets won the Cold War even if the USSR doesn’t exist anymore. To win an ideological war it’s not necessary to invade and conquer the enemy’s land, it’s enough to invade and conquer the enemy’s mind. Compare your academia, media and pop culture products to old Soviet propaganda on just about any issue – whether it’s the economy, racism accusations, the US, or Israel – and tell me how they are essentially different. You’re now producing many English speaking “Soviet” agitprop. All types of evil are winning more and more battles all over the globe.
Agreed that the minds of the West have been invaded and are being defeated, slowly but surely, but not by Soviet propaganda, but by the ennui of Western civilization that Mark Steyn so often refers to, which allows the affluent Western mind to choose appeasement and so-called peace, over girding their loins and fighting the enemy. It’s that complacence born of a soft affluent life that repeatedly causes the downfall of successful civilizations….it’s a rot and destruction from within that mankind has yet to find an answer for.
This might shed some answers:
http://leninandsharia.com/docs/preobrazhensky.pdf
Welcome to the new Medieval age, where governments and powerful NGOs propagate antisemitism on a global scale using technologies of mass communication. Believe me, by 2045 the world will look much as if the Nazis had won.
Israel has gone from victim to pariah!
And the left wonders why cinservatives want and need to stay armed. These kooks are a suicide pack with an audience!!
Mr Rubin, you left out a very important, possibly the most important, enabler to this de-legitimization of Israel, that is liberal American Jews.
“You are a slow learner, Winston.”
“How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.”
“Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three.
Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”
Defensive weaponry may impede peace, but not the way these journalist asses think it will:
“A hundred years after the rebirth of the State of Israel, it has shrunk to a small statelet comprising the Tel-Aviv – Jerusalem corridor. It’s remaining citizens squat cheek by jowl under a dome shaped force field, watching Arab, Persian, and EU missiles explode against it, showering fire and sparks into the night. They worry that it is only a matter of time before the enemies figure out how to penetrate the shield, for then it will all be over. The economic elites, who were at the vanguard of the Left, had left 20 years prior, using their foreign passports and connections to escape, leaving their poorer brethren to their fate. So ends the experiment of ‘Land for Peace’, which Israel facilitated by its brilliance in low impact defensive weaponry.”
On July 4, 2010, Nick Kristof ,major columnist for the NY Times, printed that he was “surprised” that Israel’s government had been telling the truth and that there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
That was it. No apology to Israelis for demonizing the country. No denunciation and exposure of the Leftist NGOs(let’s be`realistic )who misinformed him ;just “surprised” .
That’s the way this game is played. r
Completely crazy. The current policy of leftist-liberal fools (if their cherished colonial-victimized islamists come to power, they’ll be first on the hit list, but never mind) toward Israel is “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” This latest “criticism” is very much in the same mode as the pink-bashing of S Schulman (Israel treats gays with equality to cover up abuses of the poor Palestinians) and the accusation that Israeli soldiers did not rape Gaza women out of racism.
The left’s assault against reason is part of their attempt to outlaw the use of force in any form.the ultimate effects to undermine the system of international law they have put all their hopes in. After all the need to preserve/defend one’s own life is hard wired into our DNA. Outlawing that prerogative, makes all of international law absurd and not in a rational actor’s self interest. It is in that self interest that states/peoples with the will to survive will abandon the current international system.we already see states that can ignore the chorus of bleating (Russia,china,brazil,India) pick and choose what “international laws” they will adhere to.
If a Palestinian walked into an Israeli school and murdered 20 Jews in cold blood, our media would write articles deploring the conditions that drove the murderer to be so extreeme.
You’re probably right. It already happened in France. A journalist wrote about how the islamist who murdered the Jews at a school there recently felt ostracized, etc., etc. The mass murderer portrayed as victim.
Well said, Mike of mass….a system of International law regardless of whether or not it is just, peace at any cost…these are the wrong-headed legacies of the World Wars, which the liberal progressive mind seems prepared to take to his grave. I guess to them there is nothing worse than the death and destruction spawned by these 2 World Wars. I suppose they can’t even imagine a world ruled by Nazi or extremist Islamist ideology. Guess again…there is something worse!
To me it looks deeper than this. The creation of Israel in 1947 was at unique point of history when all major powers saw their interest in creating it despite all the misgivings they’ve had than (see GB restricting Jews immigration, US turning ships full of refugees to a certain death, and SU official antisemitism to name a few). And if one is looking at after the war history it is difficult to get rid of an impression that the world is suffering since than from severe pangs of regrets for 1947 collective act of “kindness”.
If it becomes ilegal to develop and operate systems that defend against missiles,what incentivenis there to join and adhere to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty/IAEA?
Friedman lives in a golden bubble. It’s oh so easy to criticize the Israelis from the safety of one’s living room, comfortably insulated from reality by his wife’s wealth. Hey Tom, get down to street level and share the danger, then I might pay some atention to you. Else, you’re just another pampered, pretentious schmuck hack employed by a faltering rag. Shalom.
Why is it that otherwise sane people, with whom you can dine in a most civilized way, can suggest that Jews need less protection?
I also offer the following anecdote: Someone in our community was an inmate in Auschwitz. She was a trained opera singer. When she was called to perform for the officers in charge of the concentration camp, the killing stopped for the performance since all staff attended. This bizarre occurrence happened a number of times. The Germans were so civilized as to put aside genocide to enjoy music that had been part of their upbringing. Her talent saved her life, because she served their cultured and civilized purposes.
When these journalists are compared to those genocidal maniacs who ran Auschwitz, I see little difference in terms of their internal mental functioning. These journalists know full-well that their suggestions if accepted will bring about the deaths of many Jews and of their state, yet their vision of peaceful world precludes the existence of Jews qua Jews. They are too different a group to tolerate in a world that cannot tolerate differences. As leftists, they believe with all their hearts the Leninist doctrine that minor cultures must disappear for peace to be achieved and they are willing to sacrifice anyone towards the end of amalgamating the peoples of the world into a single belief system. Jews must be gone, if they insist upon safety among themselves. Perfectly rational, but no different than the Nazis. Everyone else dies quietly, but the Jews keep organizing and making a fuss. How uncivilized of them! From these journalists we see that, as with Auschwitz, rationality is no bar to evil.
The people supporting the destruction of Israel would do well to consider that the outcome will not be an elimination of Israel followed my a Muslim/Arab ascension, but rather the destruction of both Israel and Islam. Israel has something like 200+ nuclear warheads and the ability to deliver them. They will not go quietly into that good night. Look up the “Samson option”, if Israel is ever to be wiped off the map there will be a lot of small suns rising over middle eastern cities that day. They wouldn’t just retaliate against the aggressor nation (e.g. Iran) but Islam as a whole, targeting Mecca as well as every major population center in range. It is just as much in the interests of the Muslims to pursue peace if only they and their vile leftist enablers would realize it. It’s been very widely speculated that the US was so quick to support Israel in it’s past wars of national survival in order to prevent them from needing to go nuclear, I wonder if our current leaders would see the wisdom of this or insist on trying to call their “bluff”.
That is the most assinine reasoning I have ever heard in my life.
Why yes, yes it is Mr. Hawkins. The most morose conclusion one comes to when reading such an article as this one, is that Mr. Friedman will have to personally witness the murder and destruction on a wholesale scale and even then will go to his grave praising his murderer.
Nihilism in all forms, at it’s apogee.
Why? Because you cannot get you mind around it? Can you get your mind around somebody walking into an elementary school and shooting children? Yet that has happened at least twice that I’m aware of. The USA, Russia, and I think France. Then there was that guy in Norway or Denmark that shot all those campers.
I’m not sure these mass murders used “reasoning.” I’m refering to Thomas Friedman and others calling a defensive measure against aggression the problem, while glossing over the actual aggression. To me that defies logic- and this is coming from a best selling author, Marshall scholar, and “well respected” journalist. What is wrong with these people? And Iron Dome really is a purely defensive weapon. Just bizarre and worrisome.
“In other words, if a lot more Israelis were being killed and wounded by attacks then Israel”
Or maybe we (Israel) would actually do something to stop the missles from being fird. And the US would let us. Naaah.
Still I wonder, what if, heaven forbid, lots of missles would fall not among the poor of South Tel Aviv, but in the ritzy areas of North Tel Aviv and Hertzelia where the Nomenaklatura (left-wing (redundancy) journalists, artists, and judges) live? Would they suddently demand that we get tough? Of course, this did happen during the first Iraq war.
“Peace of the grave”, Mr. Rubin, “Peace of the grave”.
Don’t understand why Rubin thinks it is OK that a strong or stronger nation can afford to make security concessions. Or maybe I read what he said wrong. No nation should make security concessions – nor should they be asked to. If asked, the party that asked is not a friend.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. That is the historical curse of the Jews.
I would think after so many centuries we would have learned not to give a damn about the rest of the world. Stay strong and stay on course, nothing else matters.
ישר כוח