What is wrong with Israel´s strategy to fight terrorism

War is probably the most obvious proof of weakness… but it is probably a lot easier to speak from a country which is not the target of daily rockets.

My only wish is that the Isreali power will start to be “stronger” in its “tolerance” toward these rockets, because each civilian killed in gaza will generate at least 10 new “terrorrist” who will sooner or later bomb israel.

Martin ! The Hamas don’t want a Palestinian State. They don’t want to sign for an Oslo peace. They just want the destruction of Israel !

All what you’re saying is out of matter. It was impossible to negociate with Hitler. It’s impossible to negociate with the Hamas.
Please read their charter : http://www.burks.de/hamas.html

Israel wants 2 states . Israel wants peace. Hamas don’t.

It’s a big problem but the only solution is to fight the Hamas with an army and not with words.

Today’s editorial in the guardian is an interesting piece to
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine

@Jeremie,

Why Hamas “JUST wants the destruction of Israel ?”
Is that simple ?
Are 300 homemade rockets going to dstroy Israel ?
Are 300 suicide bombers destroy Israel ?
Are they just that stupid ?

I think that using social media like youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p–x0NCdJH4&feature=related) or twitter is a good thinking in the media handling of the events.

Lets not forget that terrorists organizations have long been using the net to carry their messages, including videos of kidnap victims, decapitations, etc.

Now…it is also clear that the definition of war has changed…shouldn’t we change the definition of public diplomacy also? When handling such things as wars, it is very important to speak to every demographic in a language they understand…and making your generations understand the “reasons for war” may be a move in the right direction, after all the “youtube generation” is the one who will govern us next.

Sometimes as in Business Deals, whatever you do, there is no DEAL… That happens when your counterpart is not interested.

I do not think Hamas is interested in doing a deal on behalf of the Palestinian people.

D.

Martin, i think your analysis is wrong on many points. Hamas and terrorist recruit from the youngest possible age. at kinder garden. There is nothing you can change there. The education system is built to negate israel and jews and on israel extermination. You don t change that. The other thing you seem to forget is that terrorism by hamas is not only meant at Israel but first and before at their own palestinian citizens: whoever disagree or express a slight different point of view is tortured or killed immediately without trial. for this i invite you to check the testimonial of the son of one of top hamas leaders that left Gaza for California

Hamas won t manage to recruit more, because the recruitement process is already in place for ages at the youngest age. Their hate of Israel won t disappear with this war.

The definition of Moral is when you have the choice of Good on bad. In a war there is nothing moral. choosing to shoot terrorists that hide behind citizens (which they most of the time discover only after they shot) is terrible. Immoral is using human shields, is cultivating the love of death and forcing its citizens to believe so. immoral is teaching your kids to kill and hate.

The only solution to fight terror is inner explosion. A civil war was already beginning before this terrible episode. I believe this will happen more after the “truce” will happen. More palestinian will hate hamas. inner killings will happen between hamas leader for such a HUGE loss (yes they lost so far way more than israel). Fatah will take more power but hamas won t let that happen

Israel i believe has created a point of tension for inner explosion of hamas.

Um, Israel isn’t fighting terrorism, they’re advancing their campaign of terror and genocide against the Arabs whose land they stole.

Oppressed people fighting an occupying army are not terrorists, their insurgents and patriots protecting their fellow man.

Turn off the TV and learn what’s really going on.

Israel went to Oslo and what did it get in return? Hamas blowing up buses in downtown Tel-Aviv. Actually, Hamas is just a proxy force of Iran. Israel is fighting Iran by proxy.

Nobody wants the occupation and the two-state solution poses the problem of Palestine as a new failed state. If Hamas could launch rockets from the West Bank, then it would de facto destroy Israel by closing down Ben-Gurion Airport. The only realistic solution is to return to the status-quo pre-1967, that is, Jordan to annex the West Bank and Egypt the Gaza Strip. And let Hosni Mubarak security services deal with Hamas. And, perhaps, in 25 years, an independent Palestine.

Maybe the Zionists could pack their stuff and leave, profusely apolgizing on their way out for the pain and suffering they’ve caused.

Hamas had support from Iran but so what, the US supports dictators all across the globe.

The fact is Hamas was elected by the people there. End of story.

Jeffrey Henderson #8 comment.

I already switched off the TV and stopped reading European traditional press, where the blind anti-Semitic prejudices inherited from the historical positions of the extreme left still inspire the intelligentsia and their gospel of accepted, politically correct truths. I turned myself to electronic media to have a more intellectually challenging debate.

I was ready to contribute to the debate that Martin opens. I tend to disagree, in degree, with him. But in every blog that tries to discuss something seriously there is always the illuminated extremist that lowers the general level of the discussion.

Jeffrey Henderson, you have that dubious honor today with your sweeping hatred statements. It is a waste of time starting de-constructing you simplistic logic… But I cannot resist myself, the same as I cannot resist confronting brain dead Nazis abusing people in a tube station.

So the Israeli people (all, including Arabs, or just the Jews?), have a plan to exterminate the Palestinians (the ones in Gaza, the ones in the West Bank, also the ones in Jordan and elsewhere?). And in order to do that, they provoked being attacked by a confederation of Arab nations in a cople of wars, so that they could occupy those territories… And now they have embarked in the slow process of targeting rocket launching facilities, killing Hamas terrorists and a few civilians each time. Plus sending in their troops and putting their young ones at considerable risk. Why doing that if Hamas-style indiscriminate use of Israeli military might would do just that (extermination) in about a few minutes?.

And, then, Hamas warriors are insurgents and patriots… Model ones, I might add. Hiding behind civilians that they use as human shields, sending suicide bombers to blow themselves up targeting civilian in buses. How do you define terrorism, then?. And if it is a war, how do you define war crimes?.

To complete the more habitual plethora of non-sensical slogans we have the expulsion, the refugees and the right to the land… Whenever I hear somebody has been a refugee for 60 years, for 40 years… You may be an exiled, but not a refugee. And if your grand-grand father was an exiled, that does not make you one. Where do claims to something like that end?. Do we evacuate the USA and return it to the American Indians, and Australia to the Aboriginals?. Do these Islamists have a claim over Spain, or do we Spaniards have a claim over Cuba?. Since they were expelled, and tens of years later they have a claim, wouldn’t that catatonic logic justify the Jews having an even more ancient and original claim over the Greater Israel?.

Let´s do a deal: I will switch off my TV (again) if you switch on your brain

Blame Israel first, or damn if you do, damn if you don’t

http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD217709

@ Angel Mas

Hatred? I say stop killing innocent people and give them back their land and that equals hatred of all jews?

One of the Zionists great PR tricks is to equate anti-zionism with anti-semitism.

I personally am against all ruling class elitists that want to take over the world and bring pain and suffering to untold millions of people.

The situation in Israel and Gaza is similar to Iraq in that the people who have a right to be there are trying to expel an outside force which has violated their sovereignty. It’s really quite simple. If I woke up tomorrow and their were Chinese troops going down my street they’d get the same treatment as US troops in Iraq or IOF (Israeli Offense Force) troops are receiving in Gaza.

So, if loving freedom and defending the oppressed is hateful then you’ve got me figured out.

In English…

The Necessity of Israel
Charles Krauthammer
Friday, January 02, 2009

Late Saturday, thousands of Gazans received Arabic-language cell-phone
messages from the Israeli military, urging them to leave homes where
militants might have stashed weapons. — Associated Press, Dec. 27
WASHINGTON — Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The
Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but
excruciating.

Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life that, risking the element of
surprise, it contacts enemy noncombatants in advance to warn them of
approaching danger. Hamas, which started this conflict with unrelenting
rocket and mortar attacks on unarmed Israelis — 6,464 launched from Gaza in
the last three years — deliberately places its weapons in and near the
homes of its own people.
This has two purposes. First, counting on the moral scrupulousness of
Israel, Hamas figures civilian proximity might help protect at least part of
its arsenal. Second, knowing that Israelis have new precision weapons that
may allow them to attack nonetheless, Hamas hopes that inevitable collateral
damage — or, if it is really fortunate, an errant Israeli bomb — will kill
large numbers of its own people for which, of course, the world will blame
Israel.
For Hamas the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians.
The religion of Jew-murder and self-martyrdom is ubiquitous. And deeply
perverse, such as the Hamas TV children’s program in which an adorable
live-action Palestinian Mickey Mouse is beaten to death by an Israeli (then
replaced by his more militant cousin, Nahoul the Bee, who vows to continue
on Mickey’s path to martyrdom).

At war today in Gaza, one combatant is committed to causing the most
civilian pain and suffering on both sides. The other combatant is committed
to saving as many lives as possible — also on both sides. It’s a recurring
theme. Israel gave similar warnings to Southern Lebanese villagers before
attacking Hezbollah in the Lebanon war of 2006. The Israelis did this
knowing it would lose for them the element of surprise and cost the lives of
their own soldiers.
That is the asymmetry of means between Hamas and Israel. But there is equal
clarity regarding the asymmetry of ends. Israel has but a single objective
in Gaza — peace: the calm, open, normal relations it offered Gaza when it
withdrew in 2005. Doing something never done by the Turkish, British,
Egyptian and Jordanian rulers of Palestine, the Israelis gave the
Palestinians their first sovereign territory ever in Gaza.

What ensued? This is not ancient history. Did the Palestinians begin
building the state that is supposedly their great national aim? No. No
roads, no industry, no courts, no civil society at all. The flourishing
greenhouses that Israel left behind for the Palestinians were destroyed and
abandoned. Instead, Gaza’s Iranian-sponsored rulers have devoted all their
resources to turning it into a terror base — importing weapons, training
terrorists, building tunnels with which to kidnap Israelis on the other
side. And of course firing rockets unceasingly.
The grievance? It cannot be occupation, military control or settlers. They
were all removed in September 2005. There’s only one grievance and Hamas is
open about it. Israel’s very existence.
Nor does Hamas conceal its strategy. Provoke conflict. Wait for the
inevitable civilian casualties. Bring down the world’s opprobrium on Israel.
Force it into an untenable cease-fire — exactly as happened in Lebanon.
Then, as in Lebanon, rearm, rebuild and mobilize for the next round.
Perpetual war. Since its raison d’etre is the eradication of Israel, there
are only two possible outcomes: the defeat of Hamas or the extinction of
Israel.

Israel’s only response is to try to do what it failed to do after the Gaza
withdrawal. The unpardonable strategic error of its architect, Ariel Sharon,
was not the withdrawal itself but the failure to immediately establish a
deterrence regime under which no violence would be tolerated after the
removal of any and all Israeli presence — the ostensible justification for
previous Palestinian attacks. Instead, Israel allowed unceasing rocket fire,
implicitly acquiescing to a state of active war and indiscriminate terror.
Hamas’ rejection of an extension of its often-violated six-month cease-fire
(during which the rockets never stopped, just were less frequent) gave
Israel a rare opportunity to establish the norm it should have insisted upon
three years ago: no rockets, no mortar fire, no kidnapping, no acts of war.
As the U.S. government has officially stated: a sustainable and enduring
cease-fire.
If this fighting ends with anything less than that, Israel will have lost
again. It can ill afford to lose any more wars.

…and in Spanish

AL ABORDAJE

La taberna

DAVID GISTAU

La chicharra progresista gusta de ver la entrada de Israel en Gaza como la de William Munny en la taberna de Big Whiskey: «Quien quiera vivir, que salga». Al pistolero encarnado por Clint Eastwood, después de descerrajar un tiro al tabernero, le reprocharon que hubiera disparado a un hombre desarmado: «Debió armarse cuando decidió decorar su taberna con el cadáver de mi amigo».
Hamas no olvidó armarse, en la medida en que se lo permitió el bloqueo, cuando decidió granizar con misiles el sur de la nación cuya extinción anhela. Y, aun así, los motivos por los que Israel entró en la taberna no están claros para los custodios de la conciencia colectiva. No lo están porque la ocultación de los mismos es necesaria para atribuir a Israel una conducta psicópata, de maldad pura, de cartel de Wanted: «¿Es usted el William Munny de Misuri que mató a mujeres y niños porque sí?». Y si los motivos afloran, si de pronto se hace inevitable discutir sobre ellos, entonces hay que reducir su importancia para que no sirvan de coartada a un comportamiento irracional. O «desproporcionado», que ése es el término oficial. Es entonces cuando los misiles Qassam pasan a ser mercancía de una tienda de artículos de broma, inofensivos como el corcho de una escopeta de barraca de feria que por supuesto matan mal: los judíos de la ciudad de Sderot que disponen, cuando suenan las sirenas, de quince segundos para alcanzar el refugio son tan tontos que no se dan cuenta de que su manía de intentar sobrevivir deslegitima en términos morales la campaña de Israel contra unos bombarderos para los cuales la población civil no es daño colateral, sino objetivo.

El presidente Zetapé se pronunció ayer sobre el incendio en Oriente Próximo. Más allá de esa ingenuidad cursi según la cual la palabra «democracia» es el abracadabra que funde en un abrazo a cualquier enemigo milenario, dijo que la respuesta militar no es «el camino a la paz». Así pues, por paz entiende la resignación a vivir sin protestar ni actuar bajo los misiles, sobre todo cuando éstos no arruinan el postre del televidente europeo porque son omitidos por los cauces de información occidentales: ¿sabía la mayoría de la opinión pública europea que estaban cayendo antes del ataque israelí? ¿Les habría importado? ¿Les importa que, para arrastrar conciencias hacia el ladoceja del maniqueísmo, se esté haciendo pasar por imágenes de un bombardeo israelí las que corresponden a la explosión accidental de un Qassam en un mercado de Gaza?

Zetapé también dijo que es necesaria la intervención de un «mecanismo internacional» que estabilice la zona. La pregunta obligada es: ¿por qué ahora, y no hace dos meses, cuando era la población israelí la agredida? Que sea el ataque a Gaza lo que comprometa a los mismos gobiernos que se inhibieron cuando sonaban sirenas en Sderot es una forma de reconocer que había que entrar en la taberna.

Hhhhmmmm, maybe this pic will better illustrate the issue at hand.

Link to image

Maybe this will better illustrate the issue to you Jeffrey

http://www.geocities.com/turkel.geo/expuls.gif

Happy new year all of you.

@Tom

So you got chased around and that makes it ok to do that to Palestinians?

So in 500 years when the Palestinians are murdering people in Africa after being given their own country will it be okay for them to point back to the abuses they’ve suffered from the Zionists to justify their attacks on others?

@Jeffry

First of all I have to admit that after viewing the source of the image you provided the quality of this discussion decreased.

Hoping that there is someone reading this post that doesn’t believe in conspiracy theories I will post some facts about Gaza that may be important to recall.

It was late 1948 when the British troops leave Mandatory Palestine. It was then when the state of Israel was declared. During its war of independence thousands of Palestinians, fleeing other cities settle in the Gaza Strip, mostly in some kind of refugee camps. That is how today Gaza population is about 1.5 million.

After that, the Gaza strip comes under Egyptian military rule, but, the Egyptian government refuses the citizenship to the Palestinians of the Gaza strip.

Then came the six day war where Israel captures the Gaza strip territories.

UN, Camp David, Jericho, Hamas, The Islamic Jihad, IDF…it was all useless. People keep dieing and the problem was still there, and the same.

It was in 2005 when Sharon’s disengagement plan was set to begin where everything should have ended…BUT

Hamas took military control of Gaza in 2007 from rival Fatah forces leading Israel to clamp tight restrictions on the border in an attempt to end rocket attacks.

How this will end…I have no idea. I just know that when what you want is the destruction of the other, and that is your only objective, then things like what is going on right now are inevitable.

I think that a big mistake is to believe that this conflict can be separated from the what is happening in Iraq, Iran and everywhere else in the Middle East, they are all interconnected.

Meanwhile the population on both sides are becoming puppets of what seems to be a neccesary evil of the human race.

Never go to war, it is as simple and complicated as that.

What is wrong with israel:
Very simply: they kill dozen more times innocents than the palestinian terrorists killing innocent in israel.

Another simple question:
Would their be so much palestinian terrorism if israel stop increasing the settlement of palestin (the number of settle has increase a lot since Olso agreement)

What is wrong with Israel?. That it is the country for the Jews?.

I believe subjecting Israel to a much stricter test on everything, its right to self defend, the accuracy of its bombardments, the respect of others’ rights… Blaming Israel first, whatever circumstances is impregnated of historic anti-Semitic prejudices, as much as the special laws and treatment that Jews were subject to in many countries for centuries… But it has become so common, that even some well intended Jews embrace that behavior.

- The disproportionate response: I did not see a single picture of Serbian children dead as a result of the response of NATO, bombing with significant less accuracy Serbian cities as a means to protect the (Muslim) Kosovar population.

- The Palestinian cause: the Left uses very flexibly the right of self determination of peoples, as protected by the UN charter, to promote so called “liberation” movements in the world, including Palestinian’s.. But if it refers to Israel, the obvious, simple exercise of that right encounters many buts and ifs.

- The Palestinian ordeal: equally unbalanced is the criticism of Israel as the sole source of the Palestinians’ suffering. Other than their own leaders, methods and organizations (hence, themselves. Internecine Palestinian fighting during the past two years also has dealt a harsh blow to future prospects for peace, with 616 Palestinians killed in factional fighting from the time that Hamas won Palestinian elections in January 2006 through May 2007).

But, there are many parties involved. The Palestinians are used by Arab (and now also Persian!) Nations as a distraction for their own internal problems. Why didn’t the oil rich sheiks of the Middle East alleviate the conditions in Gaza?. Where are the demonstrations against Egypt, that closed the border as much as Israel did?. And against Kuwait, that after the first Gulf War expelled 400K Palestinians?. Where is the historical resentment, the eternal war being fought against Jordan, that in 1970 killed about 10K Palestinians and injured more than 15K (as recognized by the UNRWA), more that all the conflicts fought between Jews and Arabs since the 20′s?.

- The land: and then, the focus on Israel as the big “land expropriator” against the Arabs. Well, as mentioned in my previous post, where do historic claims start and end?. It seems they are eternal if it refers to anything executed by Jews. But Turkey got large districts from Syria (Alexandretta or Iskenderun). Iran did so by taking Tubn and Abu Mussa islands from the UAE… The biggest example is Arabistan, (Juzestan in Iranian denomination) taken by Iran from Iraq. 64K Sq Km (three times the size of Israel), 4.5 MM Sunni Muslims “invaded”. 120K Ha. of land expropriated from Arab land owners by the Mullahs, 550K Persians in “settlements”… Where is the Focus of the Arab League?.

- The humanitarian situation: The humanitarian situation is Darfur has been critical for years. Something that truly can be described as genocide (a word so frequently used in an exaggerated way, and typically to offend Jews and their memory). The problem is that the perpetrator is an Islamist regime in Sudan. Where is the media, where the demonstrators, where the Christians international solidarity with the victims, where the Muslim Diaspora self criticism?.

- The Wall: and, oh, “the wall” (it is 98% a fence). What on Earth do many of the countries in the world have on their conflictive borders. What do we Spaniards have in Ceuta and Melilla, even in Gibraltar, without the threat of terrorism?. And those are as contested borders as the ones in the West Bank…

What’s different in launching a rocket from Gaza to Israel, and launching a missile from a Israeli helicopter to Gaza? Why is the first example terrorism, while the latter is not? There is an element of propaganda that the handle terrorist is attached to people whose military activities are described somehow more immoral than one’s own. Armies are usually not thought to commit terrorist acts, even though by definition that is exactly what they do. I think what usually is described as terrorism is a way of warfare that results from inability to have a real military force with which to defend or attack. So basically terrorism is the last resort when you have nothing else left. If you go one step further beyond problem of recruiting (which is a marketing problem), you should ask why these people are doing this stuff in the first place, and see if something can be done. Always solve the cause, not the effect.

Lasse Enersen.

…and what is the difference between that and blowing yourself up in a bus with people going to work?. And maybe you cannot find a difference between that and kidnapping a plane and crashing it against two office buildings?. And surely, you could find justification for some of these freaks getting hold of a nuclear, chemical or bacteriological weapon and exploding it in you town, right next to where your kids go to school?. It is so demagogic it is boring. Not to mention most Yihadists do come from wealthy backgrounds, many raised enjoying Western eduation, wellfare and freedom.

The good thing is that, the more I read Martin, the more I think he answers the question set in previous posts: of course he is a Jew; he has all the accumulated sense of guilt that the Jewish religion transmitted to Christianism. The question is if he is also becoming a Spaniard, with those self-depreciative doubts about ever being correct as a people and able to be proud of our collective achievements. We, Spaniards, have a hard time going beyond being cynical and skeptic about ourselves. A friendly welcome, Martín, to your new adopted identity

Angel Mas.

I am not justifying terrorism nor war. I am fervently against both. The use of word “terrorism” is what I was talking about.

Martin: I think people did not get your point. I agree with you 100%, we all know that Hamas are terrorist and they all should die, but we must think and understand that it is a matter of time until others countries in the area, fill them self with even more hate and start helping Hamas or any other terrorist group with lethal weapons and put Israel in risk. We all know that Israel have the best army in the world and USA will always be a good partner, but all that can’t be enough to stop a nuclear bomb or a massive killing.
I hope Israel start thinking about the future, instead the present.

Martin
Let me share with you and rest of readers the shame that I’m actually feeling after watching at this video:

http://www.zshare.net/video/53615165ce62d17b/

I don’t know where the solution is, but this is not the way… Those of you commenting the post without even knowing the real daily situation: please have 10 minutes to watch before you write.

No more ‘eye for an eye’

Rabbi Michael Lerner says the best way to destroy Hamas is for Israel to “rebuild Gaza and the West Bank with a massive Marshall Plan type enterprise—adopt our Strategy of Generosity and renounce the strategy of domination.”

Israel’s military operation in Gaza is aimed primarily at forcing Hamas to end its rocket barrages and military build-up.
But it has another goal as well: to expunge the ghost of its flawed 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and re-establish Israeli deterrence.
At any cost.
That is a sick reality.

MV,
You don’t understand or you don’t want to understand.
It is not Israel, it is the jews.

I feel ashamed that European countries don’t do nothing about this conflict, stop what Israel is doing (including the occupation of the Palestinian territories) and then stop Hamas. Both countries want to leave in peace, but there are small groups of people (growing every day) that want to eliminate the other side. Things like the oppression Palestinians are suffering daily or the rockets fired from Gaza are just increasing the amount of anger in both sides which has been historically very high.

By the way Tom, @Jeffry’s image about which land is under Isarel control is completely true. I’ve been in Israel and Cisjordania last year and I saw with my own eyes. Palestinian territories are divided in three areas.
area A: Full palestinian control, But Israeli military forces get inside there whenever they want (seen with my own eyes)
area B: Palestinian civil control (regular police), Israel military control. Israelian military applies it’s own rules.
area C: Full Israeli control.

Google for maps abou this and you’ll get your own answers since this is publicily available from israeli goverment.

The miss one point that war can not solve anything.