Thursday, January 8, 2009

Israel-Palestine continued...

UPDATE: Rockets were fired into northern Israel from Lebanon this morning, raising the possibility of a second front in the ongoing conflict.

This is pretty much what I anticipated when I first argued that regardless of your personal allegiance, a reasonable and dispassionate observer has to doubt the strategic viability of Israel's approach. The fact that Israel may soon be fighting this war on two (or more) fronts is frightening. And even if Israel succeeds in Gaza, there is the real possibility that a power vacuum there will be filled by even more extremist Palestinian leadership (a la Al Queda) - making matters much, much worse.

It's cool to be pro-Israel. It's not cool to manifest your support by simply rejecting any argument that is remotely critical of Israel's defense policy. It's unfortunate that so many people would rather dig for half-truths and shitty arguments that support a preconceived conclusion instead of educating themselves on the issues and using that information to form more reasonable opinions. This, of course, applies equally to those who treat Israel like a completely unprovoked oppressor.

The bottom line: If you're so emotionally connected to Israel or Palestine that you can't see the big picture here: sit down and shut up.

1 comment:

  1. 1. All of the past arguments have been about whether or not Israel has the RIGHT to bomb/fight in Gaza, not whether it is strategically sensible.
    2. You make a good point not only in regard to Israel possibly being part of a second war (and seeing how Israel fought on just one front in 2006 and did not succeed is scary thinking of the situation now), but also as previously discussed in the PR sector. What does it mean if Israel goes to war with Hezbollah/Lebanon after only two rockets were fired, but waited for many more from Gaza to do anything? And who else could be involved? Right now it looks alright since Iran just came out with a statement that they would not send volunteer suicide bombers to Israel, and other surrounding countries/organizations seem to be standing still, for the moment at least(other than Lebanon). (Also, whether it matters or not, Hezbollah denies involvement with the attacks in Nahariya). So it's a sticky situation up in the north.
    3. Regardless of the past arguments of Israel's right/lack of right to attack, was there any way to avoid this? You say it seems to not be such a smart move because of making this much more large scale, but I don't know of another way around it. This seemed to be inevitable since peace talks haven't done anything for the last 60 years. Whether this was smart or stupid, it was going to happen sooner or later because the situation really hasn't changed and was not going to without something on a larger scale, for better or worse. If it didn't happen now, then it would have in a year or two.

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