Great Post!

I was speculating on the lack of the usual suspects whining, marching, waving signs and "tut-tutting" at the agressive Israelis. Selfish toads, how dare they take umbrage when noble Muslims shoot rockets into their children's schools?

As for your analysis of the outcome? I'm betting on this:

This can only end one way: eventually, the war will stop, because there will be nothing left in Gaza to defend but rubble and more rubble, with starving, stunned Moslems wandering the shattered landscape, wondering what sin they committed that their god should so fail them.

I just hope that it is quick, surgical, and profoundly eye-opening to the rest of Islam. After all, if it comes down to 'us' or 'them'?

I pick 'us'.

The Palestinians are not delusional or irrational. They are simply doing what has worked in the past. Their history is that when their impotent attacks on Israel have provoked an Israeli reaction they have been richly rewarded with international sympathy and money. The question is whether they will learn that things have changed before they are wiped out. Or, will Israel learn, when they start really clearing out Gaza and actually killing a significant number of people, that things really haven't changed and the world's sympathy for them will last about as long as the world's sympathy for the U.S. lasted after 9/11?

TM:

The Palestinians are not delusional or irrational. They are simply doing what has worked in the past.

Hm... I tend to drive fast, as does everyone else here in the West (we're usually driving 20-30 miles; can't poke along at 55!) The speed limit here is 65, but it's normal for the freeway (what we call expressways here where they don't require a toll) to be flowing about 80-85 during non-rush-hour periods.

However normal it is, if the CHP sees you, they will nevertheless pull you over and give you a ticket. So when I'm blasting along at 83, and I see a Chimp up ahead, I take my foot off the gas and slow down... because a rational person notices when the situation has changed.

What we have here is like seeing the CHP ahead of you and just whipping past him at 80 mph. He pulls you over and gives you a ticket. So the moment he finishes writing, you cuss him out and tear off... at 80 mph.

He pulls you over again, and this time gives you a ticket for reckless driving. Once again, the moment he gives you the citation, you're off again at the same speed. This time, you get arrested and the court suspends your driving license... so you exit the courtroom, and -- surrounded by cops -- you peel out at 80 mph along the city streets.

You see my point, I hope: even though under normal circumstances, you can speed every day and not get a ticked (the CHP rarely tries to slow down traffic, because they, themselves drive fast when they're in their civilian cars!)... if you cannot shift gears when the facts on the ground -- or the cop cars on the ground -- change, and modify your behavior, and if you behave in such a staggeringly self-destructive way... well, then I think such a person is "delusional or irrational!"

Dafydd

So Monkeyboy, why don't they take a few of those $10 assault rifles and attack the tanks and jets? Why aren't they taking those rockets they are firing at schools and fire them at staging areas for those tanks and jets instead?

Just curious

The truth of the matter is that, good, bad or indifferent, no one really cares about the Palestinians and only uses them for their own proxy purposes. When push comes to shove, no one will lift a hand to save them from themselves. The Gaza Strip and West Bank cannot logically ever be a free, independent, self sustaining country. This two disjoined areas can never be more than a human zoo, a place to keep the remaining Palestinians where they can keep an eye on them to make sure the Palestinians don’t attack them (Jordan, for example) and to show them off to convince the other Muslim Arabs that they care about them and please don’t attack us first (France, for example). Once Israel decides enough is enough, the end will come for the Palestinians. They will be absorbed into Israel or the adjoining countries or killed, just like what happened throughout history when a stronger tribe moved into (or, in this case, back into since the Jews where there before) a weaker tribe’s territory. Just ask the Philistines.

Dafydd, you say

because a rational person notices when the situation has changed.

I'm not convinced that Hamas recognizes that the situation has changed. And frankly, it may not have. The UN may step in and rebuild Gaza. Israel may have sanctions threatened, and pull back their troops and hand over prisoners.

After all, recent history teaches that this will happen.

Certainly you or I could look at the information that we have available to us and come to a different conclusion, but what information has Hamas been given behind the scenes?

Who would benefit most (outside of Israel) if Israel indeed reduces Gaza to rubble? I submit to you, that the various Jihadi Islamic groups like Al-queda would... and they have political influence in Hamas, and may be orchestrating the destruction of the Palestinians for their own ends.

It is possible that the Palestinians are being told that outside intervention will save them if only Israel can be goaded into 'going too far'. Who cares if it's true as long as Jihadi Islamic groups can point to Israel as evil?

It is also possible that outside agencies will indeed come to 'save the day'.

What has Gaza lost? A few buildings, a few orchards maybe? Israel isn't 'sowing the fields with salt' but are targeting sites remote from the public for the most part. They've gained Martyrs out of their dead, so I don't count that as a 'loss' in their eyes. What can they gain? Hey, they had so little to begin with that a little reconstruction may indeed improve the place. And the anti-Israel emotion wave may be worth the price in their eyes, or the eyes of those who are encouraging them.

Never assume that they know what you know, or care about what you care about. It is concievable that the Hamas leadership in Syria believes that it is losing a small battle but winning a larger war...

Great post, Dafydd. I excerpted and linked at Old War Dog >> So who said anything about rational people?

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