June 05, 2006

Encouraging First-Hand View from Israel

Last week I posted regarding comments made by Nobel prize winner, Prof. Aumann:

It appears probable that the decision by the Israeli government to expel Israelis from their own homes in Gaza, and to give Gaza to the terrorists, is in large part responsible for this new loss of interest among Israelis in fighting for the state. If their own government is bent on giving away large portions of the country to their enemies, why should the average Israeli citizen fight for the state?

There is some hope that a further pull-out would give Israel more defensible borders. But this reluctance to fight back is killing Israel. They don't do terrorism and they don't wage war - all they do is get killed. The policy of targeting terrorists and picking them off whenever they can isn't working, because the Palestinian people constantly generate more of them. As the election of Hamas has shown, Israel is not at war with some small subgroup of Palestinians, it's at war with the Palestinians as a people.

Israel's policy of targeting terrorists and picking them off whenever they can, is like a policy of fighting a war by picking off a few soldiers at a time, and leaving the rest of the enemy army untouched.

Olah Chadasha, of the excellent Greetings from the French Hill weblog, responds:

Dr Auman is a brilliant brilliant man and a professor at my University, but I completely disagree on his assessment of the current air of feeling toward the "Convergence", "Realignment", "Withdrawal", whatever you want to call it. His game theory is absolutely priceless when it comes to certain subjects, but it has actually been proven completely ineffective when it comes to military strategy. Just because Olmert was voted in, doesn't mean that the country agrees with his policies or supports his "plan" (I can't really call it a real plan since absolutely nobody, and I suspect including him, knows anything about the details of what this new withdrawal entails), and I can say this for a number of reasons. First of all, he did not win a clear majority. He won by the skin of his teeth. This does not a mandate create. Actually, more right wing seats took votes away from Kadima than in any other election in the country's history. Right wing seats out number left wing seats, and that makes more of a difference than Olmert's win. Secondly, His coalition is piddling, and there is already an increasing number of "rebels" within the faction. I suspect, and with good reason, that this government will not last more than a 1, give or take 6 months.

Olmert does not have clear cut support, and it shows more and more every day. I believe that there is a growing number of people within the population and military who are disenfranchised with Olmert's way of thinking. His statements about this "plan" have been half-assed and enigmatic, at best. The military is fighting and is gearing to fight more, without going into too much detail that I'm not at liberty to discuss. I think his pessimism is as ill advised as Olmert's.

Militarily speaking, I also disagree with his and some of your assessments. Targeted assassinations have been proven to work, and you must understand and be able to distinguish between who they take out. They do not take out lower level workers. In that, you are right. Those are manufactured every day. They take out top level management and CEOs. In that way, it doesn't matter how many people you can recruit, you have no one to run the business, they're dead in the water with nothing to do. Hamas has not kept to their hudna as many people would like to imagine. They have been repeatedly trying to carry out high level attacks against Israel. One of the key reasons they haven't been successful is due to targeted killing. They just don't have the brains to carry out missions like they used to. Another reason is because when you're worrying that your next car ride might be your last, you're more concerned with your own well being than carrying out an attack. Then, you concern yourself with fighting Fatah than with fighting Israel. At least when you're fighting Fatah, you have better odds of surviving the day. Those are very simple reasons why targeted killings have been extremely successful. I could go into more depth, but it would be way too long.

Also, unlike Dr Auman's assessment, and I assume by his age that he is no longer in the military or if he ever was since I don't know how old he was when he immigrated to Israel, the military have been carrying out heavy and extremely successful offensives against the terrorists, and, again without going into much detail, there is more in the works that will soon come to fruition. Now, I completely disagree with Olmert's "plan" on many fronts and won't go into them here, but the Disengagement has freed up thousands of troops and has allowed them to be on the offensive instead of on the defensive as they were when they were in the Strip guarding Settlements 24/7/365. Any person with an once of military knowledge will tell you that being on the offensive is the only way to win battles and that being constrained to defensive positions is suicide. Disengagement was the only effective military option. What the government has done since then to promulgate failures has nothing to do with the military and everything to do with their political garbage. People here are proud to do their miluim (reserve duty), and any remarks to the contrary are just plain wrong.

In essence, while Dr Aumann is very correct in his assessment of the lethality of Olmert's "plan", he is incorrect in his gauge of the atmosphere of the Israeli people and its military. Most of us do not support the "plan", and this includes many in the military. WE are ready to fight Olmert, tooth and nail, against expelling 60-70,000 people from their homes. I wish Dr Aumann had more optimism. Olmert might be a defeatist and "tired of winning", but the rest of are not.

I find all of this very encouraging.

Imam: the Suspected Terrorists are “Steadfast, Religious People,” _But_ He Preached Peace

This quote from a Canadian imam raises questions he'd likely rather not answer:

Imam: Canada Suspects Didn't Seek Violence

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario

Several members of a suspected terrorist ring prayed daily at a storefront mosque in a middle-class city west of Toronto but never spoke of hurting others, one of their prayer leaders said.

"I will say that they were steadfast, religious people. There's no doubt about it. But here we always preach peace and moderation," Qamrul Khanson, an imam at the one-room Al-Rahman Islamic Center for Islamic Education, said Sunday.

The imam says they're "steadfast, religious people" BUT he told them not to blow stuff up. Why does he have to say "but"? Paraphrase: They're religious people, but he told them not to kill people anyway. Even though they're religious, at HIS mosque they preach non-violence.

Even though they're "steadfast, religious people," he made a special effort to preach "peace and moderation." "Peace and moderation?" What's that? The imam didn't even say "non-violence." He didn't even say, "not to kill non-Muslims." Peace, in Islam, means submission to the will of Muslims. "Moderation?" That's not non-violence. That might just be moderated violence.

The suspects had acquired three tons of ammonium nitrate - the same ingredient used in the Oklahoma City bombing. So this imam's description of the ones he knew as "steadfast, religious people" appears to say a lot about their "religion."

If it's such a peaceful religion, why don't imams stand up and loudly declare that terrorists who kill in the name of Islam, are lost to Islam and lost to their religion? You never hear that. But you hear tons and tons of imams preaching that Muslims should kill.

Do they ever preach anything else?