Splendid Isolation

Several people have written to me to ask why I haven’t commented on the Iranian-backed Hamas attack / invasion of Israel — especially as I’ve long been a strong supporter of both Israel and my Tribe friends.

Frankly, I’ve been thinking about the situation, and devising some kind of suggested response that would be appropriate for Israel.

There are, as the title for this post suggests, two solutions for Israel to consider.  The first is simple.

Set aside your inherent loathing of ethnic cleansing.  I know, I know:  Hitler tried to do just that to Jews (and look where it got him), and ever since then Jews (and their parent state Israel) have recoiled from any idea of doing the same to people who hate them and want them destroyed.  Let’s clear up a couple of misconceptions first.

Firstly, clearing out the entire Gaza Strip (destroying all their buildings — every last one) and killing any Arab who tries to resist is not “ethnic” cleansing, in its purest sense, because there is no genetic difference between Arabs and Jews:  they’re both Semitic, genetically speaking.

Secondly, what the wholesale destruction of Gaza and its inhabitants represents is not therefore anything other than a military operation of retaliation — retaliation against an indiscriminate slaughter of Israelis (and, lest we forget, a whole bunch of non-Israelis as well).  To allow this “Palestinian” state to exist and continue to be a threat to Israeli citizens would be a complete failure of a government whose primary (some would say sole) duty is to protect those same citizens.

I’m not interested in people who wail that innocent Palestinians would be killed in such an operation, because there are no “innocent Palestinians” — witness the celebrations of these Arabs not just in the Middle East but worldwide over the slaughter of, ahem, innocent Israelis.  They don’t consider any Israelis to be innocent, so why should you treat them any differently?  Hell, the Hamas terrorists use their own civilians as shields against retaliation, relying on the Israelis’ reluctance to kill innocent people;  if that’s how they regard civilians, why should anyone else care about them?

To go from the specific retaliation to a broader one:  Hamas must be destroyed:  its leadership, its followers, its bases of operation and, most importantly, its support structure.

Which means taking on Iran.  I leave that to the Israeli military to pick the options here, but other than the obvious ones (destroying Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and killing the Iranians tasked with supporting Hamas), Israel should start a wholesale destruction of Iran’s oil apparatus:  the oilfields, the refineries, the ports and oil export infrastructure, the lot.  No Iranian money, no Hamas.  It’s that simple an equation.

All that comprises only the first of the two solutions of the title of this piece.  Here’s the Second [sic].

We are all accustomed to seeing pictures of off-duty Israeli soldiers walking around with their rifles slung.

However, it should be remembered that these are active-duty soldiers, not ordinary civilians.

In fact — and this is their dirty little secret — it’s almost impossible for civilian Israelis to get to own guns, any guns, for their own protection.  It is, to my mind, the single-largest failure of the Israeli government:  not having an equivalent of our Second Amendment.

In essence, what the Israeli government is saying is:  “Leave your protection to us, and to our Defense Force.”

The recent attack on a music festival (i.e. a civilian event with, it should be noted, no Army presence) should end that little charade right there in its tracks.  Or, as we Americans would put it, “When seconds count and the police are minutes away.”  The IDF’s immediate response to the Hamas invasion was quick (bit not quick enough), but neither decisive nor concerted.

Here’s another little event which happened at the same time as the invasion:

Hamas militants terrorists indiscriminately gunned down civilians and took control of a police station in a small Israeli city in Saturday’s surprise offensive.

Sderot, home to 30,000 people, was one of the first settlements to come under attack by the Hamas militants, who moved through the city shortly after dawn.

Using motorbikes, pickup trucks, motorised gliders and speed boats, more than 1,000 fighters streamed into Israel – targeting cities including Ashkelon, Ofakim and Sderot – in an attack that caught authorities completely off-guard.

Harrowing footage of the assault captured by survivors has since emerged, showing how the heavily armed assailants rode into the city on the back of pick-up trucks, killing dozens of civilians before besieging and ultimately seizing its police station.

Note that they were essentially unopposed while they played their little reindeer games and did not come under fire until after the game was played out — the IDF plowed down the police station and crushed these “militants” to death in the rubble — but it was too late for those unfortunate civilians shot at before.  Take a look at this pic:

I’ll bet that there’s not a single gun among these alte kakers, although all of them are of an age where they could have fought in the Yom Kippur War of 1973.  To deny these men their right to self-defense, to not allow them to be armed while they play their peaceful little board game, is to turn them into potential victims of Hamas terrorists.

The Israeli government should, with immediate effect, allow civilians to purchase and possess whatever guns they wish, and carry them as they go about their daily business.

Yes, there may be the occasional accident or even homicide — just as we tragically experience here in the U.S. — but the greater good is, if anything, even greater in Eretz Yisrael  than it is here.  Otherwise, there’s going to be a whole lot more of this:

…and it will all be entirely the fault of the government.

Get it done, Izzies.