Hi LindyBill; Re: "We had the "Israeli" policy before 9/11."
This is correct. We had the Israeli policy before the WTC attack, and just like the Israelis, we got a terror attack. It was no surprise to me. That's why I have always pushed isolationism on SI, from long before the WTC attack.
Re: "Those days are over. The right in Israel and here are now running things, and things are starting to shape up."
(a) I guess if Israel had been a one-party state they wouldn't have terror problems, LOL.
(b) Israel has had problems with terror pretty much off and on since they occupied all that land in 1967. During that time the Israeli right has been in power several times. But still the terror persisted. So what's your solution, make it illegal for anything but the right wing to be in power?
(c) Things are hardly starting to shape up in Israel. There was another suicide bombing just a few days ago. A few days before that they had another tank destroyed.
(d) I don't think that the Israelis are so stupid that they f'ed up by simply voting in a party other than their right wing, LOL.
LindyBill, the world is not a fair place. There are problems that do not have solutions. For Israel, eliminating terror is one of those problems. The Israelis are not stupid people. They are very intelligent, and if there were a way of avoiding terror they would have figured it out a long time ago. There is no solution for them, and if we follow their foreign policy we will end up with their results, permanent fear and terror, a loss of individual freedoms, and a decline in economic growth and productivity that will allow the rest of the world to catch up with us economically that much faster.
Israel's clampdown on the Palestinians has undoubtedly reduced their terror problem in the short term. But they have not eliminated it, and in addition, they have added on to their miseries in the future. For they are continuing to breed terrorists, and they are continuing to isolate themselves from the world community.
The whole purpose of terror, from the Palestinian point of view, is to make the Israelis be scared to live in Israel, and to make the Israelis be brutal to the Palestinians. The consequences of these two objectives is to:
(1) reduce, through changes in immigration and emigration the ratio of Jews to non Jews in Israel;
(2) ensure that the younger generation of Arabs are radicalized against the Israeli state;
(3) increase the isolation of Israel from the rest of the world (like the Apartheid regime in South Africa).
To make progress in the above, the terrorists do not have to constantly increase the number of terrorist activities. When the right wing in Israel clamps down on the Palestinians, the terrorists gain through (2) and (3). When Israel releases the pressure on the Palestinians, the terrorists respond with an increase of terror (possibly after a delay of a few years), which gains through (1).
But in any case, whether the Israeli government chooses "appeasement", "containment", or "confrontation", the terrorists make progress. It's just that the progress is measured in different ways.
Our situation is not at all like the Israelis, because we do not have to choose between "appeasement", "containment", or "confrontation". We can (and will, eventually) choose "isolationism".
-- Carl |
