Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

Anan 7: You realise what you have done?
Capt Kirk:Yes, I do. I’ve given you back the horrors of war. The Vendikans now assume that you’ve broken your agreement and that you’re preparing to wage real war with real weapons. They’ll want do the same. Only the next attack they launch will do a lot more than count up numbers in a computer. They’ll destroy cities, devastate your planet. You of course will want to retaliate. If I were you, I’d start making bombs. Yes, Councilman, you have a real war on your hands. You can either wage it with real weapons, or you might consider an alternative. Put an end to it. Make peace.

Star Trek A Taste of Armageddon 1967

In the final volume of Shelby Foote’s three volume series there is a very telling post war story.

aboard a Chesapeake bay steamer, not long after his surrender, the general [Joe Johnston] heard a fellow passenger insisting that the south had been “conquered but not subdued.”  Asked in what command he had served, the bellicose young man — one of those stalwarts later classified as “Invisible in wr and invincible in peace” —- replied that ,  unfortunately , circumstances ha made it impossible for him to be in the army .  ” Well sir, I was, Johnston told him.  “You may not be subdued, but I am.”

This illustrates a very important point, until the rise of Grant and Sherman an outnumbered south fought long and with some success against a better armed and supplied enemy.  It wasn’t until they faced Grant who was willing to keep going in the face of massive casualties and Sherman whose philosophy of combat was:

We can’t change the hearts of these people of the south but we can make war so terrible … [and] make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it.

that the south eventually fell, and even that took a full year of hard fighting.  But when it was done slavery was confined to the dustbin of American History, not because southern leaders like Alexander Stephens or Howell Cobb no longer believed in their right to hold slaves it but because the population that they persuaded to go to war to preserve it (and until you read the newspapers of the time please don’t start the “secession not slavery” argument)

And that brings us to the situation in Israel today:

For the last couple of weeks the citizen of the Jewish state have been regularly attacked by Palestinian who have deliberately targeted the population.  Israel’s ambassador to the UN put it very well:

Mr. President,
Over the course of the last month, 24 terror attacks have claimed the lives of 8 Israelis, and injured 70. 15 of them are still hospitalized. This tide of terror has washed over the entire nation and it spares no one: Young and old are being targeted every day.

Israelis do not feel safe walking down the street, they avoid taking the bus to work, and they fear for the lives of their children every time they walk out the door.

The root cause of this wave of terror is clear. It is inflammatory rhetoric and lies lit the fuse, and incitement that keeps feeding the flames.

The Israeli people have responded by arming themselves, the media  has responded with yet does of moral equivalency and in all the nonsense but within that noise is a hidden gem that Israel needs to take to heart:

But what does seem guaranteed is that most Palestinians will continue to believe that if the occupation is cost-free, there will be little incentive to end it.

While Nathan Thrall’s words have been correctly identified as BS there is a critical point that needs to be understood by Israel.

The Palestinian authority has absolutely no incentive to ease up on Israel.

They continue to receive funding, they continue to live easy and their leaders believe that thanks to western pressure they will remain untouched.

The history of the Arab wars against Israel has been a history of the west saving the arabs from destruction as Israel pounds them.  The only reason why Damascus is still in the hands of Syria and the Suez Canal is in the hands of Egypt is because outside pressure stopped it from happening.

But the dynamic today is different.

With the changing demographics and the dechristianization of the west, plus the sheer fear of the muslim populations within their borders the simple fact is that there is no action that the Palestinians can do that will draw the condemnation of the west.

Contrariwise  we have reached the point where if even shooting an active attacker by Israel is, in the eyes of any journalist not named Jake Tapper is an action to be condemned.

That changes the arithmetic for Israel much in the way Lincoln saw it.

After the disaster at Fredericksburg Lincoln commented if the battle was repeated everyday for a week with the same casualties the North would have a huge army and the southern army would be gone, as he put it:

No general yet found can face the arithmetic, but the end of the war will be at hand when he shall be discovered

Israel need to look at the arithmetic and simply say “enough” no more negotiation, no more fancy conferences, no more dinners.  Israel needs to annex the west bank, and give those living there a choice.  1.  become full citizens of Israel, 2.  sell their land to Israel and leave, or remain on a special lifetime visa which can be revoked if they aid or abet any terror activity.

The Palestinian “leadership” need to know that their meal ticket that is making them and their cronies rich is gone and the world needs to be presented with a fait accompli.

The Palestinians want war, give it to them.

The world will scream, the world will shout and there will be protests but the bottom line is the citizens of Israel will be safe in their own country.

This arithmetic has been true for a while but I suspect with this latest attack we’ve finally reached the point where Israel is finally ready to face the arithmetic.

and perhaps some day a arab student who has spent a lifetime in the west will be sitting next to Abbas on a plane and declare that the Palestinian will never be subdued and he will answer “You may not be subdued by I am.”

That should be Israel’s war aim.

Update: Case in Point via instapundit:

How does CNN report a near massacre of Israeli children? “Palestinians shot boarding kids’ bus”

While millions tune in to Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi testimony, CNN’s ticker continues to display the outrageous headline from earlier today where they reported on the Palestinian terrorists who tried to enter a children’s school bus to carry out a horrific terror attack this morning. The Palestinians were shot before carrying out the potential massacre – somewhat of a miracle in and of itself.

We’ve briefly talked about the revenge killing of Muhammad Abu Khdei who was murdered in response to the kidnapping and slaying of three Israeli teens, but what we haven’t talked about is the cultural significance in this.

I think it’s the sign of a cultural turn and one that our Palestinian friends should see as a huge warning sign.

One of the constant lies of Palestinian/arab propaganda is the idea of Jewish “ethnic cleansing” or Apartheid we’ve demolished this myth several times here but we never really talked about why it’s false.

Israel certainly has the power, the ability and the weaponry to wipe the Palestinians off the face of the earth. If the Jewish state choose, it could say half a mile into Gaza, totally destroy the existing housing there, create a kill zone and simply move the border accordingly. The arabs couldn’t stop them and would be subject to massive slaughter if they tried. They are in the position to take and displace the arabs en masse whenever they want. If they wanted to rebuild the temple, the dome of the rock would be gone and no arab army would react because to do so would invite slaughter.

So why doesn’t Israel do these things?

The answer is pretty simple, the western values that Israel has precludes those things but it’s more than that.

Israel was founded in the late 40′s and fought a full-scale war in the 40′s, 50′s 60′s and 70′s and 80′s to keep it. That generation goal was always the security of the Jewish state, simply to be left alone.

But time passes and that generation is dying.

Now Israel has a population where more than half of their people were born after the six-day war. Jerusalem and the west bank have been a part of Israel all their lives. They have not had to fight a full-scale war but have endorsed rocket & terror attacks regularly.

While the older generation might have accepted this as the price of the return to their ancient lands the younger generation is likely to have none of it. They did not flee from arab lands to Israel as their parents or grandparents did and do not have the memory of a time when they might have had friendly, or at least not hostile arab neighbors.

All they know is they are trying to live their lives and the Arabs are tying to kill them while they do so to make up for a war they lost and their failure to destroy them.

Furthermore they see those same arabs celebrating their deaths and they unlike the west, know what the Arabs are saying in arabic and know exactly what the Palestinians are being taught and what their goals really are. The best symbol of this?

Palestinian rioters in the Arab-Israeli town of Shuafat outside Jerusalem have completely destroyed a new light rail system built by Israel to improve travel in the city and connect it to other towns.

And that message has not been lost on those who saw it.

The total destruction of the modern light rail—which was seen as a symbol of coexistence between Israeli and Arab areas of Jerusalem—is evidence of mounting frustration among Israeli Arabs, who have increasingly clashed with Israeli police as tensions reach a boiling point following the murders.

“These are Arab-Israelis in Jerusalem, and they destroyed a multi-million dollar project that connected them to the rest of the city,” said Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of research for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). “This is apartheid, self imposed.”.

That leads to changing attitudes to a new generation of Israeli warriors and not one that bodes well for the Arabs:

Tamir Lion, an anthropologist who studies youth, said he was troubled by the changing attitudes among Israel’s young people. For many years, Mr. Lion interviewed soldiers about why they chose to enter combat units. “The answers,” he said on Israel Radio, “were always about the challenge, to show I could make it, the prestige involved.”

That began to change in 2000, he said. “I started to get answers — not a lot, but some — like: ‘To kill Arabs.’ The first time I heard it, it was at the time of the large terror attacks, and since then it has not stopped.”

A generation has grown up in a period of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with suicide bombs and military incursions, rocket fire and airstrikes. Young people on both sides may think about the other more as an enemy than as a neighbor.

Mr. Lion, head of research at the Ethos Institute, said he was troubled. “Today I can say, and everyone who works with youth will say it, Jewish youth in Israel hate Arabs without connection to their parents or their own party affiliation and their own political opinions.”

This represents a serious miscalculation for the arabs and their allies:

Those who blamed Israel for radicalizing Palestinian youth could do so freely because they never thought Israeli youth could be radicalized in sufficient numbers to expose their hypocrisy. They might now be wondering if they were wrong.

The 20 something who joined the Israeli army in 2000 is now the 30 something vet and or junior or middle officer in 10 more years they will be the General in charge of striking back and it 20 more years they will be the prime minister who says “enough”. Moreover that population will be augmented by Jews who have fled Islamic persecution in Europe.

While Seth Mandel doesn’t think Israeli youth may be resentful of the Palestinians who have tried to kill them I’m betting they not only resent it, but are getting damn tired of it and in a very few years those youth will be in government and will not be inclined to show restraint.

For decades the Arabs have wanted to exterminate the Jews but have not had the power, during that same time the Jews had the power to exterminate the Arabs but did not have the will or desire.

I predict that in a generation the Arabs will still not have the power to exterminate the jews but the jews will not only still have that power, but might also have the will to do it.

If I were the arabs I’d make a deal and make it NOW while the 1948 generation is still alive because any deal they will get once they’re gone will come from the barrel of a gun.