Posted on 07/23/2014 6:25:39 AM PDT by Star Traveler
Israel’s mood at the start of this war with Hamas was one of confident assurance. We wouldn’t be deterred by the rocket threat, and Hamas would be contained.
That’s utterly changed. The rockets turned out to be the least of our concerns. And the national mood now is a mixture of anguish at the growing toll of IDF dead, anger at the feckless response of parts of the international community — notably the US — and confidence in the troops and (atypically) the political leadership.
To lose the lives of 30 Israelis to terrorism is, appallingly, nothing new in a country that survived the suicide bombing onslaught of the second intifada. As the former Shin Bet intelligence chief Avi Dichter pointed out on Tuesday, 30 Israelis were killed in a single Hamas suicide bombing at the Park Hotel in Netanya on Passover Eve March 27, 2002. That was the worst, but still only one of dozens upon dozens of bombings that battered Israel’s buses, restaurants and shopping malls a decade ago.
But to lose 30 soldiers battling vicious Islamic extremists in Gaza produces anguish of a different nature. Our soldiers are our future. They’re the youngsters among us, who have been required because of Israel’s unique geographic and geostrategic peril to place themselves on the front line for years of service before their young lives have really begun. We feel guilty that we’ve pitched them into war. We, the safe civilians, draw our strength from the sky-high level of their determination and motivation to protect us. We wish it were us, the grownups, who were on the front line. We’d have much preferred for the rockets, targeting all of us, to have been the chief threat.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesofisrael.com ...
That’s why Hamas must be wiped out once and for all.
How do you propose this be accomplished?
Duh.
As I keep saying, Israel has two choices (as do we) - victory or surrender.
Not only do they not fight to win (nor do we), but they constantly brag about how hard they are working NOT to win.
They warn civilians when they should be incinerating them by the thousands. We build schools for girls in Afghanistan when we should be nuking the place.
The opposite of "victory" is "defeat", and when you choose NOT to win, you are choosing to lose.
How do you propose this be accomplished?
The LORD God Almighty promises to fight Israel’s battle for them if they turn to Him.
One Way: JESUS!
Despite your repeated negative posts,
Israel won the battles of Shejaiya, Rafah and Khan Younes,
and found tunnels, paid for by Obama and the UN,
leading to Israeli kindergartens
which will be dismantled.
Israel has allied with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and some
of the EU against Turkey, Qatar and the US State Dept
which are on the side of Hamas (and al Qaeda).
If you’re getting a greater than 10:1 ratio of Dead Terrorists : Israeli Heroes, then you’re doing pretty well. Keep it up.
Freedom isn’t free.
But make sure the other guy pays for evil by at least one order of magnitude.
If Horovitz has his way that will be the case.
The mood in Israel is entirely supportive of the war effort and opposed to the efforts of Obama/Kerry to impose a ceasefire. The recognize that the destruction of the tunnels will have to continue for some time, but they really have embraced the “keep calm and carry on” mood of London during the blitz.
Not that this mood is guaranteed to stay in place, but as of now it is only a small group of leftists in Tel Aviv and Haifa who are losing their confidence about this operation.
You haven’t been following my posts, then, because I was the first one here on Free a Republic to let people know about the new alignment that Israel had with Egypt ... and also why ... :-) ...
I wouldn’t recommend holding your breath while waiting for Israel to convert to Christianity.
“All of Israel” is saved and turns to Jesus, the Messiah of Israel, only on the very day of him returning to earth.
That solution you provide is not going to help right now.
... LOL ... true that ... or any other nation in the world ... :-) ...
It’s not a practical solution for winning wars. Of course Jesus never said one’s personal salvation was for winning wars!
I’m sure the majority is supportive, because what other alternative do they have? ... none!
But they are groaning, in the meantime.
Israel’s morale is great and the country is grateful for the international support that to continues to receive.
Just yesterday 30,000 Israelis showed up for a funeral for a “lone soldier” who moved to Israel without his family from Los Angeles and was killed in combat.
These are not dispirited people quaking in their boots and afraid to go out in public.
Thirty thousand!
Huh?
It's a war.
Soldiers kill each other and break stuff. That's what happens in war.
To think that one can go to war, and not have any of one's soldiers die is the height of stupidity ... or hubris.
What does the author expect?
Quit sending them billions of dollars every year.
I fully back Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and how he has chosen to go about this fight, along with backing the IDF 100% in how they go about it in their statements of avoiding collateral damage as much as humanly possible.
I get tired of calls to “destroy” or “crush” an enemy without some explanation of how this can be done.
Israel has the capacity to kill every single inhabitant of Gaza. For a host of reasons, some good, others not so much, they cannot use their power to do so.
Which means crushing Hamas can only be done by separating it from the other inhabitants. Which cannot be done as long as the people of Gaza are willing to provide a sea in which Hamas can swim. There is, of course, zero evidence of any rejection by Gazans of Hamas similar to the Sunni Uprising that rejected and expelled al Quaeda in Iraq a few years back.
A consequence of the hi-tech wars we’ve had. People now think of war as some kind of video game.
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