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Subject: For Discussion - Sderot
swhitebull    2/25/2008 6:55:31 PM
What Would be the Political Cost to Israel Should the Sderotniks take matters into their own hands - and start bombarding Gaza in retaliation? Eye for an Eye - indiscrimanately - maximum effect. Of course, without IDF or Olmert approval? swhitebull
 
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farscape       2/25/2008 7:41:24 PM
With their own home made rockets or liberated IDF munitions, you mean? It might play well among some in Sderot, for awhile but ultimately, something else is going to have to come down. Reinvasion? Skyguard? Truce?

Did you notice that the "nonviolent " Hamas sponsored human chain event fizzled out at the same time more Qassams were lobbed into Sderot?
 
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jastayme3       2/26/2008 3:11:50 AM

What Would be the Political Cost to Israel Should the Sderotniks take matters into their own hands - and start bombarding Gaza in retaliation? Eye for an Eye - indiscrimanately - maximum effect. Of course, without IDF or Olmert approval?


swhitebull


Israelis need to believe in themselves to fight well. If they start acting like their enemies
morale will go down. I am an outsider but I do know Jews well enough to know that they
have a tyrannical conscience and Purity of Arms(or to coin a phrase, "Kosher slaughtering") may
indeed be a matter of national survival.
 
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swhitebull       2/26/2008 6:02:04 PM
Bret Stephens -  Wall Street Journal
 
GLOBAL VIEW
By BRET STEPHENS
http://online.wsj.com/img/colhed_Stephens_Bret.jpg" width=44 align=top border=0>


The Sderot Calculus
February 26, 2008; Page A18

The Israeli town of Sderot lies less than a mile from the Gaza Strip. Since the beginning of the intifada seven years ago, it has borne the brunt of some 2,500 Kassam rockets fired from Gaza by Palestinian terrorists. Only about a dozen of these Kassams have proved lethal, though earlier this month brothers Osher and Rami Twito were seriously injured by one as they walked down a Sderot street on a Saturday evening. Eight-year-old Osher lost a leg.

It is no stretch to say that life in Sderot has become unendurable. Palestinians and their chorus of supporters -- including the 118 countries of the so-called Non-Aligned Movement, much of Europe, and the panoply of international aid organizations from the World Bank to the United Nations -- typically reply that life in the Gaza Strip is also unendurable, and that Palestinian casualties greatly exceed Israeli ones. But this argument is fatuous: Conditions in Gaza, in so far as they are shaped by Israel, are a function of conditions in Sderot. No Palestinian Kassams (or other forms of terrorism), no Israeli "siege."

[The Sderot Calculus]http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ED-AH134_glovie_20080225184814.jpg" width=245 align=left border=0>

The more vexing question, both morally and strategically, is what Israel ought to do about Gaza. The standard answer is that Israel's response to the Kassams ought to be "proportionate." What does that mean? Does the "proportion" apply to the intention of those firing the Kassams -- to wit, indiscriminate terror against civilian populations? In that case, a "proportionate" Israeli response would involve, perhaps, firing 2,500 artillery shells at random against civilian targets in Gaza. Or should proportion apply to the effects of the Kassams -- an exquisitely calibrated, eye-for-eye operation involving the killing of a dozen Palestinians and the deliberate maiming or traumatizing of several hundred more?

Surely this isn't what advocates of proportion have in mind. What they really mean is that Israel ought to respond with moderation. But the criteria for moderation are subjective. Should Israel pick off Hamas leaders who are ordering the rocket attacks? The European Parliament last week passed a resolution denouncing the practice of targeted assassinations. Should Israel adopt purely economic measures to punish Hamas for the Kassams? The same resolution denounced what it called Israel's "collective punishment" of Palestinians. Should Israel seek to dismantle the Kassams through limited military incursions? This, too, has the unpardonable effect of resulting in too many Palestinian casualties, which are said to be "disproportionate" to the number of Israelis injured by the Kassams.

By these lights, Israel's presumptive right to self-defense has no practical application as far as Gaza is concerned. Instead, Israel is counseled to allow goods to flow freely into the Strip, and to negotiate a cease-fire with Hamas.

But here another set of considerations intrudes. Hamas was elected democratically and by overwhelming margins in Gaza. It has never once honored a cease-

 
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jastayme3       2/27/2008 3:22:03 AM

 I suppose so. But the phrase, "take matters into their own hands" and "eye for an eye" seemed to
imply, in effect, a resurrected Stern Gang; not simply another IDF punitive expedition.

 
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