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With the UN calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip an article written by Gary Brecher and first published in 2012 by NSFWCORP (now part of Pando), lessons from Gaza - suggesting that Palestinian durability may beat Israel's high-tech weaponry, remains remarkably relevant today.
What's going on in Gaza is war, but not the kind any commander from the past would understand. On paper, Israel should be winning easily, because they've got the weapons, the numbers, the organization. The weapons Hamas is firing into Israel are primitive things, unguided rocket artillery, the kind that couldn't hit the ground if it wasn't for the law of gravity. On the other side, the Israelis get the best weaponry the US can give them.
But it's not that simple. Israel may win this battle, but it's lost the war already. You see that in the confusion the IDF shows about what to do. They've tried stomping hard on Gaza. In late 2008 through early 2009, "Operation Cast Lead" sent IDF troops and planes smashing into this tiny overpopulated slum. They killed 1400 Palestinians, and it didn't do much but make everybody sick to their stomachs - including even some Israelis, once they got over their initial gloating.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday July 14 2014, @01:03AM
You are leaving out the fact that those "peasants" had a magic shield that kept a LARGE portion of their turf from being bombed in the form of Soviet advisers...Gaza doesn't have that advantage.
I'll get hate for saying this but...the Americans were facing something similar at the end of WWII and we slaughtered them, civilians and all, because they would not stop and I have a feeling the IDF is gonna reach that point soon enough. By Jan 45 neither the Japs nor the Germans had a hope in hell of winning, we outnumbered them by hundreds to 1 when it came to everything from tanks to bombers yet they just would not stop, would not surrender, so by the end the place looked like the moon for all the craters.
Like it or not there is NOTHING the Jews can do to stop this, nothing. The Shia and Sunni have been killing each other for how many centuries? The Islamist extremists will NEVER agree to peace so Israel could give them every demand short of the jews leaving the country and the rockets would STILL fall, just as they have done for many decades now. If the people of Gaza wanted a peaceful resolution it would be beyond trivial to get the world on their side just as what happened with South Africa...but they won't, because they've grown up on shit like Farfur teaching kids how great it is to kill jews and how wonderful jihad is.
lets face it folks, if Israel gets sick enough of this shit they could turn the place into a crater tomorrow and nobody would do shit because they have dozens of nukes and nobody wants to start WWIII, the only question is how much shit will they take? I've never been pro-Israel but this is just fucking STUPID, hell I can think of a half a dozen ways for Israel to come up with an excuse to just raze the place, everything from false flag to "detection of chemical weapons" at a couple of rocket attack sites, this just isn't the way to get anything but a nice slaughter of Gaza residents going, no real upside i can see for the people of Gaza.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 14 2014, @01:31AM
> I'll get hate for saying this
Well, at least you recognize that there are serious problems with your analysis.
The next step is to start working on improving your understanding.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 14 2014, @03:25AM
The fact that some people are going to hate you for your analysis doesn't mean that the analysis has faults. It is just as likely that the haters use faulty analysis.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday July 14 2014, @07:04AM
Well I feel I have a teeny tiny inkling of how the Israeli feel because i had a grandfather in Europe during WWII and a great uncle that was a marine in the Pacific and both used to talk about the sheer insanity and futility of the war in the last months. My great uncle used to slaughter japs by the hundreds with his "Ma Deuce" because they would just banzai charge, no chance in hell of survival, much less winning, but still they came, and my grandfather said they were shooting kids by the end because they were being used as snipers to free what few men they had for hunting tanks. again no chance of any kind of even stalemate, but at the end of the day it was them or you.
All you have to do is watch a farfur video to see what kind of people the Israeli troops are dealing with, people that see NO problem in teaching kids to hate based on race almost from the day they can walk....what else can they do against that? they will NEVER stop, hell the "rockets" are nothing more than primitive pipes filled with nails and TNT and have zero chance of doing anything of any military value...yet they keep on doing it, have done it almost since the beginning, and no matter what the jews capitulate they will keep on doing it....what else can they do, but what we did when we faced fanatics that refused to stop?
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by monster on Thursday July 31 2014, @05:21PM
I know this can easily turn into flamewars, so I'll try to show a different viewpoint just for playing devil's advocate.
If you just look at some facts, Israel has laws against israeli-palestinian marriages, laws restricting sales to palestinian people and laws against palestinian free movement. You may argue about the reasons, but the facts are that those laws exist and are enforced solely on a race basis. That looks pretty apartheidy to me, but I guess other people may see it different.
Now, about the hate, one could ask if that hate is the cause of the israeli treatment, a consequence of it or part of both. Let's do an experiment: Do you hate canadians? I guess you probably don't, since although it's a neighbouring country to yours, there haven't been recent conflicts between both of you. Now, suppose that instead of that situation, there have been skirmishes at the border for several years, you have been launching rockets in their direction and they have been doing airstrikes in yours. A lot of people have already died in both countries, maybe even some direct family of yours, or friends. Would you hate canucks now? Would you teach your kids to hate them? Would you understand people who did?
I think there is no easy way out of the current situation, because both parts have real grievances and feel entitled to their positions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 14 2014, @03:27AM
lol.
My favourite bit was...
"If the people of Gaza wanted a peaceful resolution it would be beyond trivial to get the world on their side just as what happened with South Africa"
Cos, ya know, it was like soooooooooooooooooooo easy getting South Africa to change.
And there certainly wasn't any violence involved.
It was trivial I tells YA, TRIVIAL!!!!!!!
(Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 14 2014, @03:31AM
I've said it many times, in many ways, in many places.
The world needs to just STFU and let them fight it out. When one side is so sick of bloodshed, so sick of being bombed, starved, so sick of watching their kin being buried (when possible) that they throw in the towel, and surrender unconditionally - THEN there might be peace.
The world will be shocked and horrified, just as it was shocked and horrified with Dresden, with Hiroshima. But - the casualty figures would actually be LOWER than allowing this conflict to continue for another hundred or five hundred years. One big heap of casualties over a couple of years, versus small and medium heaps over the years and decades. The aggregate will actually be smaller in the one huge conflagration.
I say, everyone back off, let Israel have what it has, let the Palestinians have whatever they have, and let them go at it.
And, if the neighbors interfere, I'm quite sure that Israel has the capacity to deal with them as well.
If not - oh well. No more Israel. But, the conflict will be over, and the body count will stop going up.
(Score: 3, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday July 14 2014, @01:57PM
How much has the West spent propping up this ongoing fucking nightmare? Why do I have to come home to news reports of dead children and flattened buildings all because two groups of idiots can't agree on how to not eat pork? As long as religion is mixed up in this shit, compromise is impossible. Here's my solution. If I was Supreme Emperor of the World:
1 - Confiscate all the money the Israelis are using to bribe the US gov, and all the money the crazy oil-princes are using to fuel the palestinians. If more cash is needed, take it from the Western military budgets - they will save money in the long run, trust me.
2 - Use the money to buy up a big Isreal-sized stretch of empty desert in the US somewhere, and another one in Australia[1]. Relocate the Isrealis to one and the Palestinians to the other.
3 - Once the area is empty of people and valuable goods, nuke the entire "holy land" into a radioactive crater that makes Chernobyl look like Eurodisney.[2]
4 - Using leftover money from 1, erect a massive, ugly, concrete monument in the exact centre of the smoking ruins of the freshly-renamed Blasted Forbidden Realm of Pride and Stubbornness. At the bottom of monument are engraved the names of all the people who were killed in the conflict in date & alphabetical order, jews and muslims all mixed together. At the top, in huge glowing radioactive letters legible from miles away, printed side by side in both hebrew and arabic, the following phrase: "This is why we can't have nice things."
[1] Sorry US and Australia, you'll just have to deal with them. You can flip a coin for who gets which. Maybe the US could build a new Israel on an artificial island off the coast of New York. Or maybe you could arrange the land in a long strip along the Mexican border, creating a buffer zone for your illegal immigrants & drugs smugglers. However it ends up, the refugees should consider themselves lucky: My original plan relocated the whole damn lot of them to Antarctica together to fight it out there and/ or maybe learn the value of co-operation, but I figured the penguins don't deserve that kind of shit.
[2]For extra points, this poisonous and inhospitable place[3] could double as a cheap dumping ground for radioactive waste, solving the problem that has held back nuclear power for decades and negating the need for middle eastern oil.
[3]The middle eastern radioactive wasteland, not Eurodisney.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Freeman on Monday July 14 2014, @05:43PM
I for one don't welcome our new "Supreme Emperor of the World". Forced re-locations have always gone so well, I mean just look at the Trail of Tears...
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday July 15 2014, @09:26AM
Who said anything about "forced"? They'd simply be invited to come and live in this nice new land that doesn't have raging jihadis/zionists next door and definitely isn't scheduled to be bombed into radioactive oblivion in 6 months' time.
Seriously though...
I was of course being facetious. The sad fact is though, that from where things stand now there is no neat, tidy solution that won't result in at least a generation of continued misery and murder. My 'solution' would undoubtedly create pain and suffering in the short term, but in twenty years (providing that the new territories are properly supported and not allowed to turn into ghettoes) the next generation of isrealis and palestinians would have a shot at a peaceful and productive life.
The alternative - leaving things as they stand - just guarantees another half-hundred years of bombings, counter-bombings and "he started it", "no, he started it" that brings nobody any closer to a humane solution.
That might look like a false dichotomy, but we've tried the "peaceful negotiation" thing and it just doesn't work. For the two sides to live peacefully where they are would require compromise and as I said in my original post, compromise is impossible when both sides believe they have God's explicit permission and blessing for every atrocious thing they do.
(Score: 1) by fadrian on Tuesday July 15 2014, @03:36PM
The middle eastern radioactive wasteland, not Eurodisney.
to be fair, it's sort of difficult to tell the difference, at least aesthetically.
That is all.
(Score: 2) by redneckmother on Monday July 14 2014, @03:49AM
The people in the "Middle East" have been fighting among(st?) themselves since before the beginning of recorded history. I believe they will continue to do so until well after the end of recorded history.
Mas cerveza por favor.