While Looking for Middle East solutions

by Mustang

I’m no fan of Semitic culture, and I don’t have much patience with the messing about that has been going on in the land of milk and honey for the past 3,000 years, either.  If we’ve learned anything at all over the past three millennia, it is this: The longer the conflict drags on, the more people are killed or injured.  It is time to end the fighting.  It is time to declare a winner.  And it is time to tell the loser, whoever it is, to sit down and shut up.

Protestors in support of Israel and Palestine clash in the United States.

For some reason, the Western press loves to criticize Israel.  The criticism may not be so bad if the Israelis began acting as if they were halfway intelligent.   What I’m saying here is that the Israelis have agreed to play patty-cake with the Palestinians for far too long. Innovative leaders want to avoid conflict if they can.  But if they cannot, competent leaders must design a war plan that ultimately makes them the winner.  And then, when all is done, there should be no question about who the loser is.

I have no “inside” information regarding Joe Biden’s involvement in the Israeli-Gaza War.  I don’t know, for example, if Biden promised a ton of money to Israel, if only Netanyahu agreed to walk carefully through the problem.  If that’s the case, though, I’ve lost respect for Netanyahu.  He’s the leader of his country, and his first duty is to his countrymen.

Note: I’ve never had any respect for Biden.  I’ve observed him for fifty years, and I’m dumbfounded that he’s lasted in politics for so long.  And, for the record, Netanyahu has also been around for far too long.  I think term limits are an excellent idea.

According to an article in Foreign Affairs by Dan Byman, Israel has been successful in the Gaza Strip, but only if Israel’s goal was devastation.  Byman reports that Hamas murdered more than 1,100 people (a number that changes depending on who is doing the reporting), and Israel has reciprocated by killing 20,000 Palestinians.  Moreover, Israel has destroyed around 20% of the Gaza Strip’s infrastructure — and put around 85% of the population out of work.

I’m not sure what Byman is complaining about.  Israel didn’t start this war.  Israel is the victim, and Hamas (and all those who supported that terrorist organization, whether overtly or by ignoring what was going on around them) were the bad guys.  Destroying bad guys is the entire purpose of war.  I would hope that should some third-world cesspool attack the United States, we would have a president with the gonads to utterly destroy them — and do it within the first few hours of their assault.  I digress.

Byman reports that “Much of Gaza lies in ruins.”  Reality check: twenty percent is not “much” of Gaza.  In my view, the devastation not only should make the Strip look like a moonscape, but the Israelis were falling down on the job if 20% is all they could do.  And, he adds, diseases are spreading.  Again, that isn’t Israel’s fault.

This is what happens when you align yourself with nutjobs like Hamas.  I think it is also appropriate (should Israel be able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Iran was behind the attack) that Israel inform Iran that it would be wise for them to prepare for utter devastation in Tehran or some other Iranian city — as a demonstration that there are consequences to their mischief.

Does Netanyahu have that kind of nerve?  No, I don’t think he does.  But in not doing something like that, he “enables” not very bright Muslim leaders to continue their mischief.  Right now, someone in Tehran is strutting around bragging about how he designed and executed the devastating rocket attacks on an unsuspecting Israel.

This, by the way, was not a war against the Israeli military or its government.  It was an unprovoked attack on innocent citizens.  I have no patience with it, and were I in Netanyahu’s position, I wouldn’t stand for it.

Mr. Byman traveled to Israel and conferred with Israeli experts.  According to his findings, Israel is confining its conflict to Hamas (not the Palestinians who live in the Gaza Strip).  I’m unsure how Israel intends to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Still, I suspect if that is Netanyahu’s plan, the entire incident will end as it always has: the leading rats will scurry back into their warrens and assume new identities, and they’ll be back again in the future to murder more innocents.  And no, I would not let the hostages, whoever they are, get in the way of just retribution.

Kissing enemy ass to retain international support isn’t much of a foreign policy, and were I an Israeli citizen, I wouldn’t be too happy thinking that my government worries more about what Germany thinks than my safety or that of my family.

Here’s what we know and should have learned over the past 75 years.  No amount of “reaching out” for a peaceful solution works in Palestine.  If the Israeli government hasn’t learned this lesson, then we can only conclude that the Israeli government is incompetent.

So, if “reaching out” with an olive branch doesn’t work, let’s do something that works—fire and brimstone works.  And I would think that if the Israeli government utterly destroyed entire Arab villages, should even one person from the village conspire against the Israeli people, then even low I.Q. Arabs could figure out what not to do in the future.  By the way, Bynum describes Israeli ministers who think the way I do as “extremists.”  I would ask, how is a stout defense of Israeli citizens “extremist?”

I do agree with Bynum that the Israeli government, in not having any inkling about what Hamas was up to, was a failure of epic proportions.  Netanyahu has to answer for that, but so do the cabinet officials who bear that responsibility as part of their job description.  By all means, punish Hamas and all their enablers, but punish the nincompoops in the Israeli government, too.

I’m tired of hearing about the Arab-Israeli conflict.  The world is tired of it.  I want it to end, and while I prefer that the Israelis win, whoever does win should be the clear winner, and the losers need to crawl back under their rock.

But there is another aspect to this dispute.  According to writer Tony Badran (Tablet Magazine), Iran unquestionably sponsored the October 7 massacre — but the American people paid for it.  This, too, would be a consequence of uninformed (hopey/changey) voting.  Badran tells us that only weeks after Hamas slaughtered 1,200 people, Joe Biden awarded the Iranians sanction waivers worth more than $10 billion.

Even better, the waiver includes a provision that allows Iran to collect money from Iraq from the sale of electricity, which increases Iranian control over Iraq … which probably makes no sense at all to anyone who isn’t economically involved with the Iranian government.  Right, Joe?

But really, was Iran involved in the Hamas attack?  According to the Wall Street Journal, definitely.  They reported that hundreds of Hamas terrorists who took part in the attack received specialized training in Iran and that Tehran was involved in the operational planning and execution of the assault.  If true, and Iran has not denied it, then Western Europe’s fascination with blaming everything on Israel is even more absurd.

Mustang also has blogs called  Fix Bayonets and Searching History