Posted on 01/01/2009 1:44:58 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Cambridge, Mass. - Israel's decision to take military action against Hamas rocket attacks targeting its civilian population has been long in coming. I vividly recall a visit my wife and I took to the Israeli city of Sderot on March 20 of this year. Over the past four years, Palestinian terrorists – in particular, Hamas and Islamic Jihad – have fired more than 2,000 rockets at this civilian area, which is home to mostly poor and working-class people.
The rockets are designed exclusively to maximize civilian deaths, and some have barely missed schoolyards, kindergartens, hospitals, and school buses. But others hit their targets, killing more than a dozen civilians since 2001, including in February 2008 a father of four who had been studying at the local university. These anticivilian rockets have also injured and traumatized countless children.
The residents of Sderot were demanding that their nation take action to protect them. But Israel's postoccupation military options were limited, since Hamas deliberately fires its deadly rockets from densely populated urban areas, and the Israeli army has a strict policy of trying to avoid civilian casualties.
The firing of rockets at civilians from densely populated civilian areas is the newest tactic in the war between terrorists who love death and democracies that love life. The terrorists have learned how to exploit the morality of democracies against those who do not want to kill civilians, even enemy civilians.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
If Palestinian civilians are killed, then so be it. they in fact voted these terrorists into power.
Dershowitz is certainly no liberal when it comes to terrorism. I know his attitude toward torture is “do what you have to do and keep your mouth shut”
There’s not much that I can agree about with that moral leper Dershowitz. This time, he’s right.
Amazing how one who is so correct on this issue continues to actively oppose those who support his stance.
I wonder how much of Dershowitz' visibility on this issue is based on his convictions and how much is just an excuse to keep his name in the papers.
Dershowitz can be very exasperating, but I once watched him discuss constitutional issues with a group of other “authorities,” and realized that in his circles, he is, relatively speaking, the most sensible of the lot.
In this case, he is exactly right. This is not to avoid the obvious, which is that there is almost no way for Israel to win, except to depopulate Gaza. Merely winning militarily does not change anything. They must crush the very society which breeds terrorism. I would leave very little there, and deport the survivors to the antipodes.
At the very least, Israel should demand surrender from Hamas. Hamas must crawl to the table. No more of Hamas’s defiant “We will fight to the last drop of blood” unless they really intend to die, in which case they should be helped.
he’s still a liberal. it’s a shame. I bet he voted for Obama.
The US has it exactly right by placing the blame on Hamas, while urging Israel to do everything possible to minimize civilian casualties.
Give him credit.
They are if you ask any palestinian, muslim, or arab.
Dershowitz is certainly correct here. Enough. Enough. We need to ignore the UN and EU and stop kowtowing to these “soft” anti-Semites.
No conflict of this nature ends until one side breaks the will of the other to fight. That’s what the surge did in Iraq, and that’s what haapened to the US in Vietnam despite overwhelmingly winning the military side.
Now, the will to fight can be broken through various means. In WWII, we did it through taking Berlin and uncorking nukes. In Vietnam, they (and their leftist allies here) did it through propaganda and subversion. In Iraq, we did it through the surge and convincing most of the population that we were the good guys.
I don’t know how Israel can do this. I really don’t think the islamiacs can do this to Israel. So this is going to drag on and on and on until Israel figures it out.
This is great, because I am really clueless on this topic. When I saw that Alan Dershowitz wrote this, I hesitated, but then I saw all of these comments in agreement. Thank you so much for posting this.
Alan Dershowitz is an anti-Christian bigot, a leftist fraud, a hired gun for murderers, and a defender of Israeli espionage against the United States. You’re welcome to him.
It is the only thing on which he is right, but kudos to him for this.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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Mr. Dershowitz is so correct on Israeli & Jewish issues in general, hopefully one day he shall also be on target with social issues as well.
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