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I don't hold out this as a defence against Smithers. He's demonsrated that his antagonism is antisemitic ages ago. But many of his factual assertions are correct. The problem is that both of you come across as extremists. I would post this excerpt from Ha'aretz, a jewish journal which seems to be more objective than most and certainly more objective than any western news source.
The long and imbecilic arm of Israel
By Yoel Marcus
The robbery of the safe deposit boxes at the Israel Discount Bank arouses professional awe. The was brilliant planning, flawless inside information, skillful execution, a right choice of timing, and scrupulous attention to detail to the point of using a vacuum cleaner to remove all traces of evidence.
What has the State of Israel come to, if the only thing that goes right is a bank robbery?
Where are the days before the IDF word-laundry turned "assassination" into "preventive strike"? The days when missions of this type were carried out in secret, most of them successfully? When an operative dressed as a woman and bumped off a wanted Palestinian in Beirut without harming his family? When today's chief of staff oversaw the liquidation of Abu Jihad at his home in Tunis and departed without a hair falling from the head of his wife and children?
Where are the days when the perpetrators of the massacre of our athletes in Munich were struck down with surgical precision, one by one, and no one would have been the wiser if not for a little identification mix-up in Lillehammer? Where are the tweezer operations, like the capture of Eichmann, who was brought to Israel to stand trial? Some liquidations have never been reported or spoken about, but at least they were all the product of an orderly decision making process, and not the whim of one man.
Israel's long arm had become a trademark. But not everything that could be done in the past can still be done today, because of our diplomatic relations and because the rules have changed. And not everything that was effective and served as a deterrent in the past does those things equally well today. Expulsions, house demolition, andcollective punishments, do more harm than good. Times and circumstances have changed. Our long, legendary arm has gone from smart to imbecilic.
"We used to catch elephants with tweezers," says Avi Gil. "Today, we catch tweezers with elephants." Yossi Sarid, who once sat on secret committees that decided matters of life and death, says that there are times when you don't have to be a military expert - you just have to be an expert in the brains department. When 180 people, including women and children, are killed or wounded in a "surgical strike," it's clear they weren't in bed with Salah Shehadeh. They are among the hundreds of people who live in tin shanties nearby.
It is hard to believe that no one knew they existed. Dropping a bomb that weighs a ton in such a teeming place is either an intelligence failure, a case of bad judgment, or the work of an evil mind, and God only knows which is worse.
I shed no tears for Shehadeh, but for the timing of this operation and the outcome. What kind of clever idea is it to do the right thing but have the whole world, including the United States, denounce you for it? Hamas needs no excuses to carry out suicide bombings.
But when babies and just plain innocent people are killed, Hamas will get free propaganda and public sympathy it doesn't deserve when it takes revenge with a mega-bombing. Just the sort of bombing that will drag us, sooner or later, into the last thing we need: an invasion of Gaza.
Which takes us back to the government decision making process. These days, when there is zero tolerance for assassinations, and cease-fire talks are on the horizon, it is intolerable that a decision to knock someone off is made before you can blink, with no consideration for what's happening around us.
In view of Shehadeh's murderous past, no one would have had any complaints if Israel had got rid of him in a pinpointed strike at a different time. But Sharon can't get up and decide such a thing on his own, while Ben-Eliezer is informed long distance and doesn't ask too many questions. Peres (the same who is foreign minister, we assume) is not told at all, or even consulted, about an assassination that is strategic in character, has the whole world down our throats, and in hindsight, could have been done some other time. The operation was a triple-loser, a combination of intelligence failure, military clumsiness and political obtuseness.
Sharon says this is one of the most successful operations Israel has ever pulled off. He used a similar expression to describe the Lebanon War. Here is a baker who priases his spoiled dough. He has brought us to the point where the number of Israelis who have died in the Intifada is fast approaching the number of fallen in Israel's most glorious military triumph, the Six-Day War. Without peace, without security, Sharon is dragging us into an existential and moral abyss, just so he can achieve his goals of staying in the territories and staying in power.
" My own comments: There can be no political solution without some degree of trust. The Palestinians, inhabitants of land which they no longer control, wish for land which they do control without outside influence. Their problem is that they have no central authority to both direct and mandate their policy towards neighbours, particularly Israel, i.e to the dummies amongst us, an ability to control individual or dissident group violence against their neighbour state. However given the lands without the presence of Israeli communes and the subsequent excuse that these communes should be defended by Israeli troops and no-go areas plus a corridor from Gaza to the West Bank they would have a semblance of a State. The question of east Jerusalem and the Holy sites could be a matter for later negotiation with of course a christian influence.
An alternative is, of course for the Israeli's to wipe out the Palestinians for that is their ultimate security. Should make for an interesting situation. Should it be examined and punished at the world court, unrecognised by both Israel and the US or should it be considered as the imprimature on the last colonisation the West has allowed.
My own views are that there should be a plague on their house. Just as there should be a plague on the houses of those who fight for 'religious' reasons in Northern Ireland.
It's the usual plea. Why can't we all get along.
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