If this turns into some vast bloodbath Israel will lose badly in the long run. And yes, I would suggest taking out the Hamas leadership, by assassins if possible. The Old Testament says "An eye for an eye", but it does not say "fifty yeas for an eye." WShy play rigyht intop Hamas';s propaganda campaign? See also: the US response to 9-11. Not a model to be followed.
If this turns into some vast bloodbath Israel will lose badly in the long run. And yes, I would suggest taking out the Hamas leadership, by assassins if possible. The Old Testament says "An eye for an eye", but it does not say "fifty yeas for an eye." WShy play rigyht intop Hamas';s propaganda campaign? See also: the US response to 9-11. Not a model to be followed.
Well that was the bet the Arab countries took in 1948, 1967 and 1973, and they lost every time. Or do you just mean "lose badly" in "world opinion"? The problem with just taking out Hamas leadership is the decades of infrastructure built for war and terrorism sitting in Gaza, mostly underground. All Hamas leadership would be instantly replaced, either with other Palestinian nutters right there in Gaza or with outside "freedom fighters" supplied by Iran or whomever.
I think Israel is in a trap, and I don’t see any great options. They’re certainly not going to mimic the Bush wars, that’s not even an issue. They’re not about to go out nation building and convince the Iranians of the glories of LGBTQ. I imagine they’re well aware of how they are about to do what Hamas wants and play into their propaganda campaign, but they don’t see an alternative path.
Re: The problem with just taking out Hamas leadership is the decades of infrastructure built for war and terrorism sitting in Gaza, mostly underground
So what? That's just the real world-- no one is going to found the shangri-la. We took down Al Qaida and killed bin Laden but there are still Islamist radicals lusting for our blood too. If you seek a world with no enemies you're only option is genocide, and that will bring down not merely the opprobrium of the world, but the wrath of Heaven too. For all my life and then some we have lived with weapons of such lethal power trained on us that their wholesale use would render trivial every calamity of history added together. Put away millennialist dreams of a Peaceable Kingdom and learn to live with risk and danger, lest in seeking utopia you bring about the very things you fear worst, like some hero in Greek tragedy.
If al-Qaeda had 500 miles of tunnels running through the DC suburbs filled with weapons and command centers, and then they attacked the city and did what they did in Israel on Oct 7, you'd best believe we'd be taking military action and not stopping until the tunnels were destroyed and every terrorist hiding within caught or killed.
The Israelis have learned to live with risk and danger in a much more real way than you or I and with pretty reasonable balance considering there have been multiple attempts to wipe them off the map - not abstractly, like idiot college students talk, but in real life. They thought they were managing the risk by forming partnerships with what seemed like "moderates" in Hamas and starting to loosen the Gaza restrictions a bit. They were repaid with Oct 7. I don't think very many Israelis think that Hamas in Gaza is a risk that can be managed any longer.
We're not talking about milennialist dreams, we're talking about how to survive on a tiny slice of the Middle East. The dream was that the Palestinians would ever accept a state that didn't involve wiping away the Jews. That dream is now dead.
And good grief this has nothing to do with our little domestic kerfluffles-- f*** all that LGBT crap and a plague on both thopse houses-- none of that matters at this level of things.
Things will not be good. But "very, very bad" is a purely matter of human choice-- and Heaven at least will judge those choices.
My only point with the LGBTQ comment was as an example of how very far our nation building efforts strayed from reason and reality. Unfortunately, just after we were finally recovering from Vietnam malaise, the Bush wars poisoned the well and have now left America full of eyes-covered isolationists. That will come back to bite us.
The Israelis are deeply divided between religious Zionists, and hiloni atheists, and the latter, with their stronghold in the tech industry, are full-on with the whole Sexual Revolution show, not to mention transhumanism, AI, etc. - a sort of sci-fi version of Folsom Street.
If there were no Arab threat, there would probably be civil war. However, the one thing the two sides have in common is that they really, really hate Christians.
When I try to think of factions in the Holy Land who I do sympathise with, they're these: (1) Christians; (2) anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews; and (3) moderate, tolerant Muslims.
If this turns into some vast bloodbath Israel will lose badly in the long run. And yes, I would suggest taking out the Hamas leadership, by assassins if possible. The Old Testament says "An eye for an eye", but it does not say "fifty yeas for an eye." WShy play rigyht intop Hamas';s propaganda campaign? See also: the US response to 9-11. Not a model to be followed.
Well that was the bet the Arab countries took in 1948, 1967 and 1973, and they lost every time. Or do you just mean "lose badly" in "world opinion"? The problem with just taking out Hamas leadership is the decades of infrastructure built for war and terrorism sitting in Gaza, mostly underground. All Hamas leadership would be instantly replaced, either with other Palestinian nutters right there in Gaza or with outside "freedom fighters" supplied by Iran or whomever.
I think Israel is in a trap, and I don’t see any great options. They’re certainly not going to mimic the Bush wars, that’s not even an issue. They’re not about to go out nation building and convince the Iranians of the glories of LGBTQ. I imagine they’re well aware of how they are about to do what Hamas wants and play into their propaganda campaign, but they don’t see an alternative path.
Things are going to get very very bad.
Re: The problem with just taking out Hamas leadership is the decades of infrastructure built for war and terrorism sitting in Gaza, mostly underground
So what? That's just the real world-- no one is going to found the shangri-la. We took down Al Qaida and killed bin Laden but there are still Islamist radicals lusting for our blood too. If you seek a world with no enemies you're only option is genocide, and that will bring down not merely the opprobrium of the world, but the wrath of Heaven too. For all my life and then some we have lived with weapons of such lethal power trained on us that their wholesale use would render trivial every calamity of history added together. Put away millennialist dreams of a Peaceable Kingdom and learn to live with risk and danger, lest in seeking utopia you bring about the very things you fear worst, like some hero in Greek tragedy.
ΜΗΔΕΝ ΑΓΑΝ - Nothing in Excess.
If al-Qaeda had 500 miles of tunnels running through the DC suburbs filled with weapons and command centers, and then they attacked the city and did what they did in Israel on Oct 7, you'd best believe we'd be taking military action and not stopping until the tunnels were destroyed and every terrorist hiding within caught or killed.
The Israelis have learned to live with risk and danger in a much more real way than you or I and with pretty reasonable balance considering there have been multiple attempts to wipe them off the map - not abstractly, like idiot college students talk, but in real life. They thought they were managing the risk by forming partnerships with what seemed like "moderates" in Hamas and starting to loosen the Gaza restrictions a bit. They were repaid with Oct 7. I don't think very many Israelis think that Hamas in Gaza is a risk that can be managed any longer.
We're not talking about milennialist dreams, we're talking about how to survive on a tiny slice of the Middle East. The dream was that the Palestinians would ever accept a state that didn't involve wiping away the Jews. That dream is now dead.
And good grief this has nothing to do with our little domestic kerfluffles-- f*** all that LGBT crap and a plague on both thopse houses-- none of that matters at this level of things.
Things will not be good. But "very, very bad" is a purely matter of human choice-- and Heaven at least will judge those choices.
My only point with the LGBTQ comment was as an example of how very far our nation building efforts strayed from reason and reality. Unfortunately, just after we were finally recovering from Vietnam malaise, the Bush wars poisoned the well and have now left America full of eyes-covered isolationists. That will come back to bite us.
Actually, I think LGBT is relevant here.
The Israelis are deeply divided between religious Zionists, and hiloni atheists, and the latter, with their stronghold in the tech industry, are full-on with the whole Sexual Revolution show, not to mention transhumanism, AI, etc. - a sort of sci-fi version of Folsom Street.
If there were no Arab threat, there would probably be civil war. However, the one thing the two sides have in common is that they really, really hate Christians.
When I try to think of factions in the Holy Land who I do sympathise with, they're these: (1) Christians; (2) anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews; and (3) moderate, tolerant Muslims.