Why is Israel not allowed to defeat her enemies?
By Ted Belman
Many countries condemn Israel’s attacks on Gaza. A few countries including Canada, Britain, Germany and the US support Israel’s right of self defense. With the exception of Canada, the latter go on to recommend restraint with a variety of words.
But no country encourages Israel to devastate Hamas and its rocket arsenal. When they support our right of self defense they imply that should the rockets stop, Israel should stop.
Why is Israel not allowed to defeat her enemies? Especially here where our enemy Hamas is recognized as a terrorist organization. Does anyone demand that the US stop killing al Qaeda terrorists. On what basis does the US have the right to kill terrorist who aren’t targeting the US.
After 9/11 the world accepted that the US had the right to destroy Al Qaeda and remove the Taliban from power.
Hamas with its arsenal of up to 50,000 rockets within killing range of over one million Israelis, represent a much bigger threat to Israel than all the terrorists in the world represent to the USA.
Hamas started the war. Israel should have the right, and the support of the world, to finish it by defeating Hamas.
If the UN passes a ceasefire resolution, which it will, Israel should ignore it and end the war on her terms.
@dweller:
Poland attacked Germany on 1 September 1939: Poland had been guaranteed access to the sea — the “Free Corridor” of Danzig — by the League of Nations. This agreement separated Prussia from Greater Germany by cutting a path through to the seaport of Danzig. This angered Hitler and many Germans, who saw the land as the birthright of Germans everywhere.
I agree
@ NormanF:
I never said or thought Israel would under a BB Government.
@ yamit82:
Israel is a free country without any restraints. It has the size, power and large population to invoke its own sovereignty. Anytime Israel wishes to use its ultimate weapon(s) it can. Israel, is not beholden to America or any other country. Israel is self sufficient in the realm of food stuffs , weapons, or any other resources. Israel can obtain from its very rich soil all the energy, mineral resources, and just about any commodity it needs.Israel does not need any diplomatic support or any other modes of support. Israel does not need trading partners since ISRAEL IS SELF SUFFICIENT IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY. Israel is fully united without any opposition from any sources, internal, or external. That happens to be the way it is.
@ yamit82:
Man Bites Dog! read all about it!
Oh, get a freakin’ life, Yamit.
Poland’s ‘attack’ on Germany was a put-up job from Day One. That’s why I had followed my comment with:
“(And the Reichstag fire, that wasn’t a pretext either?)”
As I told Georg, I agree with the central point in his post, but to use this “Poland Attacked Germany” crap to make his point suggests that the German school system has degenerated every bit as much as the American one over the past 65-something years.
@ yamit82:
And your point would be. . . . what, exactly?
@ dweller:
Only someone as egotistically obtuse like you would not catch my point.
@ dweller:
dweller Said:
That he prefers the upfrontness of Von Shark than your perceived suaveness – i disagree with Yamit’s perception of you.
Dweller, i like Yamit’s upfrontness very much but i would rather die than have to endure Von Shark’s company.
@ dweller:
Then the dog gets really pissed off and eats the man for lunch. That’s how the real story goes.
@ yamit82:
Huh? First time I ever heard that Poland attacked Germany on 1 September 1939. Where does this strange idea come from? Everything I’ve ever heard or read holds that Germany attacked Poland on that date.
@ yamit82:
Now there’s a rich twist!
— as if you (of all people) — you, who genuflect at the altar of egotism — suddenly found something ‘wrong’ with it.
Too funny.
You made no point, that could be ‘missed.’ (But you did show us just a little more of what you’re made of.)
All the same though, if you had a point, there’s nothing to keep you from making it now
— that is, if you can stay on point and resist the temptation to indulge the silly-assed, one-upmanship, pissing contest you’re so addicted to.
@ dionissis mitropoulos:
But Georg was anything but ‘upfront’ with the remark that sparked my response.
He carefully (and most deftly, in fact) tucked that comment about ‘Poland attacking the Fatherland’ into the middle of his post.
— If a reader didn’t read it with some deliberation, it could’ve slipped right past him.
Under the circumstances, it seemed to me that a ‘suave’ thrust called for a suave riposte.
@ dionissis mitropoulos:
But Georg had been anything but ‘upfront’ with the remark that sparked my response [Older Comments: #47, Nov 18, 12:18 am].
He had carefully (and most deftly, in fact) tucked that comment about ‘Poland attacking the Fatherland’ into the middle of his post.
— If a reader didn’t read it with some deliberation, it could’ve slipped right past him.
Under the circumstances, it seemed to me that a ‘suave’ thrust called for a suave riposte.
@ Marjorie Rosenfeld:
Where indeed?
— Where does chutzpa ever come from?
Churchill said he would write the history of that war.
And so he did.
OTOH, had it been written by a victorious Germany [God forbid]
— then doubtless “everything [you'd] ever heard or read” (if you were ever BORN, given a name like “Rosenfeld”)
would recount the story as Georg slipped it into his post.
“To the victor go the spoils.”
— The prevailing narrative always constitutes a part of the spoils.
Germany like Israel always believed in Peace usually at any cost. We didn’t start WW2, the war was fostered upon us by the Pole and the Bolsheviks. Like Israel, we only sought peace. However, when war did break out, we certainly fought with gusto. My wife currently is in Israel and she is worried that once again the Israelis will capitulate to the Arabs at the bequest of President Obama. So once again we will have a stalemate, and the State of War will only intensify among the Arabs. What Israel needs to do is once and for all destroy the Palestinians from Gaza to the West Bank.
@ Georg von Starkermann:
Georg von Starkermann Said:
You are incapable of feeling shame, aren’t you?
Well, i guess you would have taken pride in this, being so similar to Nietzsche’s overman – if only you were not as illiterate to have ever read Nietzsche, as you sound (you don’t miss much though, trust me).
@ Georg von Starkermann:
There was no “Germany” till 1870.
Please illustrate, therefore, your assertion with pertinent examples from 1870 forward.
And they actually teach kids this stuff in the German public school system? — today, in 2012?
@ dionissis mitropoulos:
I’m not too sure about that.
Seems more likely that he is all-too-capable of feeling it — and is fighting hard against the perceived shame.
The repeated attempts at linkage (“Germany, like Israel,” etc) suggest a desire to ‘relieve’ that shame:
— by (perversely, to-be-sure) indulging the hope that the symbol of the shame will come to share it (by behaving in a purportedly similar manner).
@ dweller:
Seeing that “gusto”, i felt like i had 6 million reasons to conclude that the Nazi in him is the only part of him. A gratuitous word for a gratuitous genocide. But you shook my certainty – i grant he might be a multiple personality (half SS, half curious American?)
The repetitions you noted are pointing to your direction – that he might be capable, after all, to feel shame ( i have heard the expression about Germans not forgiving the Jews for Auschwitz).
I wonder why he does not reply to the personal remarks we both made. If he does, we will have more evidence to base our judgment. But if he doesn’t, then i will feel corroborated – he is here only to… well, to experience what Nazis experience nowadays when commenting in a Jewish blog.
@ dweller:
Von Shark might have made his second comment just for the benefit of Yamit, having been impressed by Yamit’s laconically dispassionate agreement to his first comment.
dionissis mitropoulos Said:
It was the weirdest comment I ever saw. Half seeming pro-Israel, half crazy.
Maybe some attempt at being sardonic but I missed the point. I wouldn’t try to respond to ‘crazy’ with the facts- that’s a waste of time.
@ dionissis mitropoulos:
No way he could’ve been around when that all was going down.
—I doubt he’d have even been born until LONG after the time had come to start picking up the pieces.
I don’t think he’s secretly our Curio.
As to the other ‘half’ — beware of seeing people as symbols; that’s a very slippery slope. . . .
He’s got to have family memories, generational concerns, etc, that he shleps around with him; can’t be easy.
— “Von Starkermann” is an aristocratic Prussian name. Probably has a centuries-long tradition that was dragged thru the mud by the experience with the Reich. (All speculation here, of course.)
His wife, for her part, has her own familial anguish to carry around.
Whatever these things may consist of, they doubtless led the two of them to each other & now she’s in Israel.
Bottom line:
We are all prisoners of our history, Dionissis — and no person can know the traumata that shaped another’s life.
— One can know about it, of course, but he cannot know a given trauma directly — cannot KNOW it in the biblical sense of knowing (which isn’t, as supposed, necessarily about sex, BTW — but most primarily about intimacy).
As I’ve said, it can’t be easy carrying around the weight of his rucksack.
Personally, I’m not inclined to press him to unload any more of it than he wants to.
— In fact, insofar as it can be honorably done without debauching history or outraging the memory of the innocent departed, my instincts say to me, “Tread lightly.”
There’s a place
— for space.
Now, howzzatforpsychobabble!
@ Max:
Max Said:
It crossed my mind.
@ dweller:
dweller Said:
Yes,yes. I did the math while writing my comment. But by calling him a Nazi i just meant he was endorsing the genocide, not that he helped committing it.
dweller Said:
He spoke very nonchalantly about the Germans fighting with “gusto”. I concluded that the barbarianism of the Holocaust had not registered with him. This can be explained by an impulse in him very similar to the one that the Nazis of WW2 were under the influence of. I feel justified in speaking about the Nazi in him, a way of speaking about a deleterious impulse against Jews.
But if he were not a clear-cut case of a Nazi, wouldn’t he have taken the pains to object the allegation?
I agree with you on the dangers of stereotyping people – but stereotyping him, it seemed appropriate to me.
dweller Said:
You mean his wife is Jewish? I didn’t gather that in his comment.
dweller Said:
Couldn’t he just say whatever he wanted to say but also add “Hey guys, i am not one of those Germans who wanted the Jews exterminated’?
dweller Said:
You are right. And it’s “prisoners” the word i would have used – it’s not easy to overcome it.
Even if determinism is true, i.e. even if we are just a product of factors that we have no control over (our genes and our upbringing – gestation included in the latter, i remember your having made that point), there is still value in morally criticizing, and the value lies in altering the person’s behavior, even if she cannot be held responsible for her actions.
Considering also that humans seem to have a limited amount of compassion to spare, i would be tempted to think we should allocate it wisely to moral detractors, if at all – and this means attempting to sympathize with the less dangerous ones only (if at all).
So i say “what the hell, it can’t be wrong not to have compassion for Nazis”.
dweller Said:
Ha ha (i don’t know how to insert emoticons).
It’s not just that your psychologizing is not psychobabble, it’s also that it is very stimulating for thinking on serious ethical issues.
@ dweller:
Dweller, i wrote some thoughts on the issues you posed in your comment on my take of Von Shark, but i am once again moderated.
With all due respect, I seriously doubt that.
There’s no value in my going to great lengths on the massive interior struggle that I suspect he lives with
— only that I’m disinclined to distract him from it.
“Things are seldom what they seem; skim milk masquerades as cream.” [HMS Pinafore, Gilbert & Sullivan]
It’s in his followup. See post #14 above. And I also seem to recall him mentioning this about her a while back.
Not everybody does their mourning in the same way.
Then too, for all you know, he MAY have already gone that route in the past (i.e., ‘Hey guys, etc’) — and gotten (quite understandably) weary of having to establish his freakin’ bona fides every time he wants to exchange ideas. (All speculation, TBS.)
But I don’t make that assumption.
What I do know is that trauma — improperly met — generates compulsiveness; hence, ‘determinism.’
What that suggests is that properly meeting trauma (viz., the “slings & arrows of outrageous fortune,” the “thousand nat’ral shocks that flesh is heir to,” etc) holds the key to reversing compulsiveness.
— But this is getting off into the weeds somewhat and may be better suited to another discussion than this one.
Another assumption, this time, based on the notion of quantification; wrong paradigm — and, in perspective, not applicable.
Look at it this way:
When I see how helpless I am to become other than what I see in the mirror of my mind
— it becomes all the easier to understand that everybody ELSE is just as helpless.
YOU can’t help yourself; THEY can’t help themselves.
That’s the beginning of compassion. And it’s not quantifiable.
— You can’t “run out of it,” because there’s no finite reservoir of it somewhere, that you just ladle out like beef stew on a cold day.
Yeah, yeah, okay: or like soybean casserole on a cold day.