. . . No, It's Survival

[barb162]

. . . No, It's Survival
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, July 25, 2006; Page A15

If by chance you have the search engine LexisNexis and you punch in the words "Israel" and "disproportionate," you run the risk of blowing up your computer or darkening your entire neighborhood. Just limiting the search to newspapers and magazines of the past week will turn up "more than 1,000 documents." Israel may or may not be the land of milk and honey, but it certainly seems to be the land of disproportionate military response -- and a good thing, too.

The list of those who have accused Israel of not being in harmony with its enemies is long and, alas, distinguished. It includes, of course, the United Nations and its secretary general, Kofi Annan. It also includes a whole bunch of European newspapers whose editorial pages call for Israel to respond, it seems, with only one missile for every one tossed its way. Such neat proportion is a recipe for doom.


The dire consequences of proportionality are so clear that it makes you wonder if it is a fig leaf for anti-Israel sentiment in general. Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that proportionality is madness. For Israel, a small country within reach, as we are finding out, of a missile launched from any enemy's back yard, proportionality is not only inapplicable, it is suicide. The last thing it needs is a war of attrition. It is not good enough to take out this or that missile battery. It is necessary to reestablish deterrence: You slap me, I will punch out your lights.

Israel has been in dire need of such deterrence ever since it pulled out of Lebanon in 2000 and, just recently, the Gaza Strip. In Lebanon, it effectively got into a proportional hit-and-respond cycle with Hezbollah. It cost Israel 901 dead and Hezbollah an announced 1,375, too close to parity to make a lasting difference. Whatever the figures, it does not change the fact that Israeli conscripts or reservists do not think death and martyrdom are the same thing. No virgins await Jews in heaven.

snip
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/24/AR2006072400808.html?sub=AR

[babylonsister]

1. Richard Cohen, will read later. nt

[bemildred]

2. Disproportionate reaction won't work either.

There is no intelligent entity that you can instruct in the way contemplated. Kill all you want, it will degrade you and the rockets will keep coming. This is not a new approach, it's the same old approach, the one that brought you here. Doing more of the same is not going to bring some new result this time.

[barb162]

3. I think the only thing that will work (possibly) right now is a large

well-armed UN force

[bemildred]

4. Band aid.

Assuming you can get somebody interested in the job and permission from Hizbullah. Israel needs internal reform, you keep doing the same old shit, you keep getting the same old results.

[barb162]

5. You have a very deadpan delivery, you know?

("Assuming you can get somebody interested in the job...."). Makes me giggle just about every time. Seriously, I agree. I'm sure every counry on the planet is just lining up with their applications.
It will be a bandaid. Hez? Lebanon just can't keep letting them shoot 100 rockets every day into Israel and Israelis are just supposed to sit there with rockets whizzing past their heads and take it until UN troops arrive, if they ever do. There's an unreality about the whole thing.

[Solon]

6. If Israel needs to up the kill count to be secure, why not just use...

nuclear weapons? Kill every single person outside their borders for over a thousand miles, why not? Conventional arms seem to not be enough, because they have been doing the same shit for a long time, with absolutely no positive results, so why not just go to the next logical step?

[barb162]

7. Well, now that you have dreamt up the solution for peace in the

Mideast why don't you tell it to your Congressional delegation. I am sure they will be delighted with your foreign relations skills.

[Solon]

8. And doing the same thing, over and over again...

expecting a different result is working SO well right now, right? :sarcasm:

[barb162]

9. Well,you just tell your congress people about it and you might

also want to tell Hamas, Hez and the other old regular suicide bombers that their tactics (same ol', same ol') aren't exactly resulting in other countries or corporations lining up to invest in their so-called economies.

[Solon]

10. Wait a second, what are these places to you...

"Human Resources" to be exploited by foriegn owned corporations? Damn that explains a lot.

Besides, where did I state that they are sucessful either? I didn't, since you were talking about Israel, I talked about Israel, if you want to go offtopic and talk about Hezbollah or Hamas, feel free, they are just as insane.

[barb162]

12. Oh so whatever a corporation does is now automatic

exploitation by foreign corporations (Tell it to the Chinese and Japanese too, would you?) Maybe the foreign investors Abbas has been looking for is a dumb move on his part. You can tell him all about your, shall we say, "unique" views , just like you can talk to your congress people. Tell Abbas he really, really doesn't need foreign investment so that the people can have jobs. They can just be unemployed for the next hundred years.
Any more suggestions on your part besides proposing A-bombs and Unemployment as big solutions for the Mideast?

[Solon]

14. For the Chinese, it IS foreign exploitation...

have you ever seen a sweatshop, I have, that isn't conductive to having a job, more like slave labor. For the Japanese, they got plenty of NO STRINGS ATTACHED aid from the United States, and built up their OWN economy using that money, now some of the largest companies in the world ARE Japanese, Toyota, Sony, Matsushita(Panasonic to us), etc.

Last thing I want is for the Palestinians to finally have a state of their own, and then get slammed with an IMF loan that is impossible to pay back without resorting to selling out their sovereignty to some foreign, private, interest. Same thing for Lebanon, they were slowly getting back onto their own two feet when Hezbollah had to start up some shit, to the detriment of all in the area, that is a fucking tragedy.

[newyorican]

11. It must be disturbing...

to repeatedly have to resort to arguments and positions that amount to, "We are right and everyone else is wrong".

It must be, at least, as incredibly tiring to continuously churn this out as it is to be on the receiving end.

[barb162]

13. It's neither disturbing nor tiring nor something that

amounts to "We are right and everyone else is wrong". Maybe, though, you could do a reread of it because it seems you may have missed the real points.