Israel Bends to Pressure from Obama to STOP war by Innauguration:
January 20, 2009
Israel has lost another war
By Edward Bernard Glick
Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.
- Anonymous ancient proverb
Once again Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has proved that he is not
formed from the same mold as Prime Ministers David Ben Gurion, Levi
Eshkol, Golda Meir, Yitzchak Rabin, or Menachem Begin. Compared to those
erstwhile giants, he is a political pigmy, easily frightened off by
civilian casualties and by negative world opinion.
By announcing a unilateral cease fire, he has, as he did in the Second
Lebanon War, in 2006, let Israel lose again and let the terrorists win
again.
Hamas won because it did not lose. It celebrated by firing rockets into
Israel and warning that the ceasefire is contingent upon Israel's
withdrawing all its troops from the Gaza Strip and opening all borders.
Additionally, a Hamas spokesman proclaimed the "right to bring arms in
any way we find fit."
Debka, the Israeli internet publication, was correct when it predicted at
the outset of Operation Cast Lead that Hamas was "counting on inflicting
casualties that will mount up week after week and wear Israeli forces down
until they are driven into an ignominious retreat." It was also correct
when it quoted, after the operation had ended, an unnamed senior Israeli
officer as saying "For this we didn't have to go o war."
Even after the Second Lebanon War, in 2006, Olmert and Company still don't
get it. They still refuse to accept the truth of Prof. Fouad Ajami's
observation that the Islamist "is never alone; the terrorist on the fringe
of political life always works with the winks and nods of the society that
gives him cover." They still cannot live guiltlessly with the reality that
if the terrorists are killed in their beds, and if those beds are located
next to the beds of Gaza civilians, that is the price that the latter have
chosen to pay for aiding the terrorists within their midst.
There was a time when Arab terror was always met with immediate and
effective Israeli retaliation -- in Hebrew the phrase is Teror v'Tagmul.
There was a time when Israel gave notice to both friend and foe that,
since the Holocaust, the era of unarmed Jews being killed with immunity
and impunity was over. That was the time of "Never Again!"
Contrary to common belief, you defeat your enemies by using
disproportionate force. You don't, as the Americans, Russians, and British
demonstrated in the Second World War, defeat them with proportionate
force, or with truces, cease fires, and time-outs to deliver humanitarian
aid to enemy civilians.
Also contrary to common belief, you vanquish your enemies not by winning
their hearts and their minds, but by crushing them so decisively that you
break their will, and they finally acknowledge that they have been
vanquished. Only after you have crushed them can you do something about
their hearts, their minds, and their bellicosity.
The fact is that the Israelis will never be able to change their
neighbors' attitudes. They will never be able to make the Arabs like or
accept them. But by adopting the rules of their neighborhood, the Israelis
can make the Arabs fear and respect them.
The first rule of the neighborhood is "War is a test of wills, not of
weapons." At the beginning of Operation Cast Lead, a senior Israeli
military officer said that the goal was to make "Hamas lose their will or
lose their weapons." Israel has its ceasefire, but Hamas still has its
will and enough weapons to matter.
The second rule is "Never let your fear of what others think cloud your
judgment." By initiating the ceasefire, the Israelis have again allowed
world public opinion to affect their judgment and dictate their actions.
And the third rule is "If you are afraid of taking or inflicting
casualties, you will lose the zero-sum game that we play in the Middle
East."
The political and military lessons are clear: Israel must do what it must
do, and do it well. No matter what it does, its friends will be its
friends and its enemies will be its enemies. Most importantly, Israel must
abandon its habit of letting existential enemies snatch victory from the
jaws of defeat. Otherwise, it will cease to exist as a sovereign state.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/01/israel_has_lost_another_war.html at
January 21, 2009
American Thinker
Ed Glick
