Ariel Sharon's Whirlwind
Here's what Israel's - and our - enemies are saying after the Gaza "disengagement" (via Powerline):
You know what? Hamas can hardly be begrudged their point of view. Why, indeed, should they give up their arms or abandon their jihad? It's working. Whatever Prime Minister Sharon's intentions vis-a-vie cutting and running from Gaza or the reasoning behind them, to the Pals it looks like a retreat under fire that is the result of their terrorist warfare. As far as they're concerned they have the Jews on the run. If I were they I would be thinking the same thing: let's pour it on even more until we finish them off and "Palestine" is once again "Palestine," and the "people of the Book" are a dhimmized historical footnote.
Sometimes in life - and especially in war - what you think you're doing matters far less than how your enemy perceives those same actions. It is the genesis of every foreign policy miscalculation that has ever been made. It is, just to cite one example, how our economic sanctions against Imperial Japan plunged us into the Pacific war they were intended to prevent. And in the here and now, it constitutes the first strategic victory for Islamic fundamentalism over the West since 9/11.
It's really a staggeringly momentuous milestone in the GWOT. This was no Labor-led, Shimon Peres-crafted capitulation; Israel - under Likud and Ariel Sharon - has fled the terrorists. It's like if Ronald Reagan had walked into Reykjavik in 1985, morphed into Jimmy Carter, and not only surrendered SDI to Mikhail Gorbachev but all American nukes plus offering to return Alaska to Moscow at fifty cents on the dollar. Where do Israeli patriots turn now? Hell, if Benjamin Netanyahu wasn't angling to challenge PM Sharon for party leadership, Likudniks would be drafting him anyway.
Even that may not salvage much. Bebe found in his first (post-Oslo) premiership - as I wrote at that time - that the "house" which he fought to save had already been condemned by the former owners. This time he'd regain it only to find the wrecking ball already beginning the final demolition.
The Israeli government is going to find out sooner rather than later that this "disengagement" is a point of no return because "world opinion" will not stand for any turn-back, just as it demanded this withdrawal. Perhaps only then will they and their once warrior leader recall the words of Golda Meir (paraphrased) that "Israel will not die so that the world will think better of it" - and lament that she was not, after all, a prophetess.
Hamas terrorists vowed yesterday to drive Israel out of the West Bank and Jerusalem. "Gaza is not Palestine," a masked spokesman for Hamas' armed wing declared, making it clear the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip will not satisfy the fanatical terrorist group.
"As for Jerusalem and the West Bank, we will seek to liberate them by resistance just as the Gaza Strip was liberated," said the spokesman, surrounded by gunmen with rocket launchers.
"This retreat [by Israel] does not mean the end of our battle, but it is the beginning," said one of the gunmen.
"Our arms removed the Zionist enemy and therefore we will not abandon our weapons and we will not hand them over to anybody," said the Hamas spokesman.
You know what? Hamas can hardly be begrudged their point of view. Why, indeed, should they give up their arms or abandon their jihad? It's working. Whatever Prime Minister Sharon's intentions vis-a-vie cutting and running from Gaza or the reasoning behind them, to the Pals it looks like a retreat under fire that is the result of their terrorist warfare. As far as they're concerned they have the Jews on the run. If I were they I would be thinking the same thing: let's pour it on even more until we finish them off and "Palestine" is once again "Palestine," and the "people of the Book" are a dhimmized historical footnote.
Sometimes in life - and especially in war - what you think you're doing matters far less than how your enemy perceives those same actions. It is the genesis of every foreign policy miscalculation that has ever been made. It is, just to cite one example, how our economic sanctions against Imperial Japan plunged us into the Pacific war they were intended to prevent. And in the here and now, it constitutes the first strategic victory for Islamic fundamentalism over the West since 9/11.
It's really a staggeringly momentuous milestone in the GWOT. This was no Labor-led, Shimon Peres-crafted capitulation; Israel - under Likud and Ariel Sharon - has fled the terrorists. It's like if Ronald Reagan had walked into Reykjavik in 1985, morphed into Jimmy Carter, and not only surrendered SDI to Mikhail Gorbachev but all American nukes plus offering to return Alaska to Moscow at fifty cents on the dollar. Where do Israeli patriots turn now? Hell, if Benjamin Netanyahu wasn't angling to challenge PM Sharon for party leadership, Likudniks would be drafting him anyway.
Even that may not salvage much. Bebe found in his first (post-Oslo) premiership - as I wrote at that time - that the "house" which he fought to save had already been condemned by the former owners. This time he'd regain it only to find the wrecking ball already beginning the final demolition.
The Israeli government is going to find out sooner rather than later that this "disengagement" is a point of no return because "world opinion" will not stand for any turn-back, just as it demanded this withdrawal. Perhaps only then will they and their once warrior leader recall the words of Golda Meir (paraphrased) that "Israel will not die so that the world will think better of it" - and lament that she was not, after all, a prophetess.
posted by JASmius at 7:14 PM
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