Hamas Badly Damaged by IDF Strikes. Not Mortal. 
Spoke this news cycle with colleague Eric Shawn of Fox on his Sunday morning news show to report fresh intel from the action in Gaza. I was briefed right before air by colleague Aaron
Klein ("Schmoozing with Terrorists") from Jerusalem on the IDF after battle reports on the so far forty-eight hours of air strikes. The air strikes are aimed at Hamas military capability and have scored heavily. Continuing this evening with Aaron Klein from Jerusalem, with Malcolm Hoenlein, with Bill Roggio of Long War Journal. The IDF air strikes will contine. The first day targeted old Fatah bunkers (right) and redoubts where Hamas stored weapons and rockets. The new targets are the smuggling tunnels at the Sinai border, hitting the Gaza side in the Stalingrad like village of Rafak. The Hamas tunels come out inside Palestinian homes. IDF is hitting the tunnel routes with penetrators. Hamas is reeling. The IDF air strikes are from a list that has been compiled over the last year or more. Each new wave from the list must be approved by the Israeli Cabinet led by the disgraced and resigning E. Olmert and the Kadima-campaigning T. Livni (below), so this is a politically guided event. Much remains to be done on the tunnels -- less than half now closed. The IDF has two brigades of first-rate troops outside Gaza now. Reservists have been alerted but not called up. No large incursion is planned. This is a
political struggle. Hamas is looking to win the PA elections January 9/10 and takeover the West Bank. Fatah led by M. Abbas has been urging the IDF to strike for some times. Abbas denunciation of Israel, "Barbaric," are doublespeak. Same for all West Bank Fatah speakers. The only way for Fatah to win the January elections is to reduce and fragment Hamas. Will Iran reinforce? Yes. Will Hamas retaliate? Yes. Will the UN and the Quartet call for a ceasefire? Yes. But when, how soon, what conditions? And will the air strikes and retaliations aid the candidacies of Ehud Barak for Labor and B. Netanyahu for Likhud in the February elections? More this evening.
I find that interesting that Israel may be doing Abbas' dirty work. I guess Fatah is the lesser of two evils. Evil is evil...
Hamas unilaterally declared an end to the Egpytian-brokered cease-fire, and then commenced firing rockets and mortars into Isreali sovreign territory. No foreign government should call for any sort of cessation of hostilities until Isreal ensures that the aggressor no longer has the ability to launch these terrorist strikes.
Can war ever result in peace? Yes, when one side is defeated, utterly and completely. With the advent of the nuclear bomb - with mutual destruction assured, guaranteeing no winners (and no losers) – the definition of victory was re-calibrated to one of “containment”. This, however, cannot bring closure. It only allows for a conflict to fester and metastasize. Eventually, the sickness spreads, leaving no corner of the world untouched.
Now you have ongoing “containment” policies practically everywhere. Everyone has an opinion; many, sensing the lure of commitment, have actively taken a side. The disenfranchised are recruited by both sides to engage in this eternal tug of war – this Sisyphus myth – that announces winners only by degrees of exhaustion. Leaders hide in their closets while the planet burns at fever pitch. …and the only ones who profit are the peddlers of fear.
We inhabit a sick planet alright. The temperature is rising. But the sickness is not “global warming” as some would have us believe. The birds still fly, the fish still swim, and the dogs still bark while men spill their brains at negotiating tables and on the battlefields. Do they (the animals) find it curious as they watch the plumes of smoke rising from burnt-out buildings like the ascent of souls in search of their maker? I wonder…
who in their rght mind will allow their next door neighbor to initiate and commit terrorist actions? Israel has the means to respond and has a duty to protect it's citizens. Does any one remember Pearl Harbor, Sept. 11,2001 , etc.... Did not our government have the means to respond and didn't it have a duty to protect it's citizens. God bless the U.S.A. and the State of Israel for being on the "right" side , the" justified" of these conflicts.
The voice of reason.
John, where are you tonight in NY? We need your coverage. The MSM is playing their usual game of blaming Israel.
As long as the practitioners of terrorism have unwavering support from their sponsors, they will perpetually have the ability to strike.
Across the spectrum, ceasefires have only proven to enable the adversary to build up armament, recruit and indoctrinate, and plan strategies. Hezbollah, Hamas, PA, Taliban, Qaeda, Islamists, all have used the ceasefire as a war tactic. Negotiating and agreeing to hostage releases/ exchanges, peace talks with unilateral compromises/ concessions, and public proclamations of progress essentially plays into the schemes of the manipulators and masters of speaking with both sides of the mouth.
Still, the optimists keep believing in peaceful solutions while the enemies of peace staunchly remain devoted to the fight and ultimate destruction of the naive optimists wishing for peace.
This is the difference in waging war and just playing around with making war. Are we at war or are we not?
I'm sorry, but celebrating any form of violence as a means to peace- does that seem odd to anyone else? Shame on anyone who sees a winner in this- Israel attacks Hamas, Hamas attacks Israel- there are no winners- Certainly all the Israeli and Palestinian children born in 2009 will be the losers. As 2009 rounds the bend, I can't help but think- great, here we go again. I'm going to be 90 in my hospital bed watching this crap on tv. Children should not be made to pay for the sins of their fathers. This however is what is happening in the current conflict. This is a conflict felt deep in the bones of people age 60 and over- but who is fighting? Conscripted youth. How about this sentiment in the new year?- "Mom and Dad, I love you- but you did some terrible things- and it won't be my baggage." The greatest thing about the present is to reap the rewards of the hard fought victories of the past and to lay to rest the unfruitful conflicts. I can think of nothing more cowardly than to order your children to fight for your dying ideas, sloughing them forward into the new year.
Thank you Israel and Palestine for just such a Christmas present.
Here are some predictions for the new year:
Pakistan and India continue to skirmish!
Israel and Palestine sign a ceasefire agreement and then break it!
Democrats and Republicans both steeped in scandal!
And we will have the same uninteresting, unenlightening, nearsighted (toward both past and future) reporting I have come to expect from most media. This show not included(usually)
John,
We're all waiting for you and have NO interest in Rutgers sports. We need you on WABC radio!
Penetrator bombs? Awful name. Assume they are American made, with any identifying marks removed.
Smuggling is the only business in Gaza. The West should ALWAYS respond to terror with overwhelming force. No more proportional responses, they never worked against evil.
Expect Clinton and Rice to sue for Peace, IDF needs to act quickly and deadly.
While I'd rather work it out, Frederick the Great said diplomacy without arms is like music without the instruments. You have to back it up, otherwise it is just talk. Talk does not work with every possibility.
senator - Surely, you've seen a lot of everything. Youth does not have that perspective. They're impulsive; they think they're immortal; they think history started on the day they were born. You can't blame them. When I was twenty, I thought I wouldn't live past thirty. And here I am, approaching sixty.
I see the same stuff on TV that you see, and I too feel disgusted. Most of all, I blame our educational institutions. They're no better than madrases these days - spouting propaganda. Sometimes I think life should be lived backwards - and maybe that's how it really is. Who says that you have to be born first and die last? At any rate, that's what we've been told. But I don't see no reason why it shouldn't be the other way around.
Your predictions sound plausible but, don't forget, there's always that meteor hanging around.
Peter:
May be as people live longer, their perspective will change.
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Give war a chance.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/12/halleluyah-isra.html
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Genghis Khan said there is peace when your enemies are dead.
When did the West forget this?
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Old Arab saying: "The Arabs are either at your feet, or at your throat!"
--'Princess Sultana's Circle' by Jean Sasson (p.192)
Arab Muslims are not motivated by threats or military muscle. They fear only real war. No amount of bluffing moves them. They are bluffers themselves.
/
In other news today, about four hundred Palestinian babies were born into hellish conditions.
How many Israelis do you suppose were born?
Kenneth - Assuming your figures are correct, what's that supposed to mean? The "hellish conditions" in the Territories are of the Palestinians' own making. I understand your revulsion, believe me. But, is it really Israel's fault? How would you feel if someone kept rocketing your town? What would you do? Think about it! It's easy to talk about it from your easy chair 6000 miles away.
Fear not, Mr. Koelliker. That whooshing sound that you hear is not an Israeli jet traveling overhead but merely my point, a flatly non-ideological one, that the future belongs to the fecund. In the face of overwhelming disparity in birth rates, bullets and bombs mean nothing. The Israelis might as well be firing their missiles into an onrushing tidal wave for all the good that it will do them in the end, a few decades hence.
On second thought, perhaps you should be afraid. The rest of us, too, for the Israelis' dilemma is really the dilemma of the West writ small.