23 Comments

1. Susan W.:

Roger, I’m with you. Enough.

Mar 6, 2008 - 8:35 pm 2. Darrell:

You as Prime Minister must decide whether you place a higher value on your country’s survival, or its morality, humanity, and civility.

If you want to ensure your survival, flatten them, knowing that you’re killing many relatively innocent people (I realize that innocence doesn’t come in degrees, but surely not every Palestinian dances and sings upon learning of dead Israeli students).

If you want to hold your head high, and say, “See, we are humane and decent, we are not like them, we will not kill scores of civilians,” then you prove your decency and humanity, and risk defeat at the hands of those who have none. (And most of the world would find a way to condemn you anyway.)

The Allies won because they were willing to swallow their natural reluctance to kill indiscriminately and reduce entire cities to ashes. And I’m glad they did; I don’t believe they behaved immorally, never having asked to be placed in the position where they had to make that choice.

But I’m glad I didn’t have to give the order to wipe out Dresden or Hiroshima, and I don’t envy you as the Israeli Prime Minister.

Mar 6, 2008 - 8:39 pm 3. David Thomson:

“You as Prime Minister must decide whether you place a higher value on your country’s survival, or its morality, humanity, and civility.”

That is simply false. The Israelis have every more right to bomb military and terrorist targets—even if these attacks indirectly kill innocent people. Not to do so is actually the immoral option. The Israeli government is obligated to protect its own citizens. And this is also the calm and rational way of doing things. It is indeed not the behavior of someone losing their temper and going off halfcocked.

Mar 6, 2008 - 8:51 pm 4. amuro316:

As a soverign state, eventually Israel needs to prove to the Middle East that it will not tolerate sickening acts like this- and hold other soverign states responsible for it.

The only response that Israel should give is the military sledgehammer. It speaks unconditionally “this is the ramifications of such an act as you perpetrated on us. You want no quarter? Fine- it’s your funeral.”

Give Gaza the Dresden treatment. If they love their culture of death so much, let them die like the Germans did.

Mar 6, 2008 - 9:03 pm 5. Anthony (Los Angeles):

Hamas praises the yeshiva massacre? Fine. Then hold Hamas responsible. Forget the individual gunman or rocketeer: Israel should resume targeted killings of Hamas leaders, starting with Palestinian PM Haniyeh. Make the brave, brave jihadis of Hamas pay the price — personally.

Mar 6, 2008 - 10:02 pm 6. Lem:

Estoy con vosotros Roger.

Its like you want to be able to have the distance of a lab, but somebody forgot to let you in the expirement and you start to wonder. this is not for any beneficio. CONO! with a tilde over the n. okay you know what i mean!

el dia 9/11 yo busque refugio para mi ira y era enconter que era demasiado pesada hasta que recorde con quien yo devia estar en ese momento.

Roger, cuando te sientas asi, usa ese momento palpable, ese sentimiento y aprovechalo. Vosotros que eres artista tienes.. eres poseedor de un don especial.

El don milagroso que es el don a que se deve la escritura.

La escritura se invento para que nos entendamos sin tener que enfrentarnos. In other words, el que lee, lee para saver de que se le acusa. NO?

me gusto lo que escribiste retando a la jente a pedir mas de si mismo.

eso es fe. tu tienes mas fe que los que la usan para enriqueserse. vaya y para mi el pedir es fe but i’m going on a tangent.

ojala que me entiendas amigo porque lo que te escribo es para recordarte que en el momento dificil recuerdas quien eres! remember! and the way people remember is by sorounding themselves with the people that mean the most to them.

Mar 7, 2008 - 2:00 am 7. Lem:

This is crude, but in a way we all are.

My prasing of Borges as the gratest writer of all time was challenged someone who had red Borges.. make a long story short he (a patient friend) lend me his Orwell’s, I felt insulted bla bla, but he told me read this Orwell (the one that starts over at the end) not he caricatured from the cold war.

I read the book again and again, and to my surprise he told me you like it because you like Borges. By God I did.

And there it is. rigid dogma is really not how we are wired to conduct anything.

The beautifull things is to discover dogma via caos and not reject how you get there because you might want to maybe remain uncomitted to the idea that we started cooking only yesterday. (read from the top of this post, and we are not finished)

Mar 7, 2008 - 2:38 am 8. Mambo Bananapatch:

“The Israelis have every more right to bomb military and terrorist targets—even if these attacks indirectly kill innocent people.”

No argument here. However, the discussion is about abandoning restraint and firebombing Gaza, a la Dresden, not surgically removing military and terrorist targets.

And I wasn’t even necessarily arguing against that approach; I was merely saying that a person who values life and humanity would likely have a great deal of difficulty making the decision to do so.

Mar 7, 2008 - 4:48 am 9. Roger:

“I was merely saying that a person who values life and humanity would likely have a great deal of difficulty making the decision to do so.”

Wouldn’t they indeed, Mambo Bananapatch (I won’t ask the provenance of that name)? That’s the rub for the Prime Minister of Israel. It’s all well and good to want to turn Gaza into Dresden – a perfectly normal reaction, given their conduct – but to allow yourself to do it is another matter.

Mar 7, 2008 - 5:12 am 10. photoncourier.blogspot.com:

It’s questionable whether the area bombing of the German cities (not only Dresden: Hamburg and many others) was militarily necessary or even efficient. The resources might have been better used in other ways, including more emphasis on targeted bombing of Germany’s fuel supplies. These would still have killed many civilians, but a lot fewer than the area-bombing policy did. BUT

If the war had ended with an Allied victory but without German civilians being exposed to the full horror of the war, then what would the aftermath have been like? Would there have been another stab-in-the-back legend as in 1918? Would there have been a resurgent Nazi party?

Also, would the British public have been willing to support a war in which they were exposed to bombing, V-1 attacks, and V-2 attacks if they had not seen similar treatment being meted out to the enemy’s cities?

Mar 7, 2008 - 5:26 am 11. Joe Schmoe:

I have never understood why the Israelis don’t man up and end it.

Yes, it would be fraught with troubling moral irony — the victims of genocide turning to genocide. Philosophers would spend thousands of years debating whether the Israelis, by their actions, had lowered themselves to the level of the Nazis, etc.

Americans would never in a million years allow things to get as bad as they have gotten in Israel. If terrorists suddenly started slipping across the border from Canada and blowing up school buses, Sabarro pizza restaurants, and bar mitzvahs, Canada would be reduced to a glowing radioactive wasteland.

The Israelis, OTOH, permit the violence to continue. They shouldn’t. They should kill them all. We nuked the Japanese, and the Israelis should nuke the Arabs.

Mar 7, 2008 - 6:00 am 12. madmatt:

Please explain how this “seminary” is any different from a radical madrassa….they both preach against their enemies and seek to drive them from their land…why should jews get a pass when their policies result in thousand more deaths than they suffer and they brought the problems on themselves by stealing palestinian lands at the point of a gun and with the help of the US and UN.

Mar 7, 2008 - 7:01 am 13. john Ryan:

If I were the prime minister I would listen to the voice of the people I lead. And what do the pople of Israel want ?
Well 64% want direct talks with Hamas towards a cease fire. Those they do not want direct talks number only 28%
Gee these figures look a lot like some polls here in the USA on Iraq don’t they ?
But still arrogant leaders think that they know what is best for a country and its people

HAARETZ; POLL MOST ISRAELIS WANT DIRECT TALKS WITH HAMAShttp://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/958473.html

Most israelis also not that time and population are working against them. More Israelis are leaving than coming and the will be a minority in 40 years.

Mar 7, 2008 - 9:17 am 14. CraigC:

Roger, Dresden was a British operation, not an American one. Photoncourier, there certainly is room for argument about the necessity/efficacy of the Dresden bombings, but if you’d like to read a very even-handed treatment that brings to light a number of reasons for the bobmbings and debunks some of the more persistent myths, such as that Dresden was a peaceful art center that had nothing to do with the Nazis or the war, read Dresden: Tuesday February 13, 1945″ by Frederick Taylor.

Mar 7, 2008 - 10:31 am 15. CraigC:

Just for the record, I too wish that the Israelis would put an end to it. The question is, would it ever actually end, the problem being the apparently infinite supply of twisted islamic automatons who are willing to die for their Kafkaesque fantasies.

Mar 7, 2008 - 10:37 am 16. scaramouoche:

In her book Jews and Power, historian Ruth Wisse referred to the Jewish phenomenon of being so consumed by our higher morality–an obsession that makes us ill-equipped to defend ourselves from those who seek to destroy us–as “moral solipsism”. Moral solipsism feels awfully good–until, of course, they kill you.

Mar 7, 2008 - 1:19 pm 17. ibfamous:

by all means, retaliate, its worked so well in the past…

Mar 7, 2008 - 2:31 pm 18. photoncourier.blogspot.com:

CraigC…not suggesting that Dresden was a peaceful art center…I really don’t think the Dresden operation was different in kind from the other area bombings of German cities. The theory of all these operations was that–given the poor accuracy of bombing from high altitudes–the most effective way of using the bomber weapon was to destroy worker housing, thus making it difficult to support the populations required for the factories and possibly even creating widespread panic and abandonment of the cities. Some were skeptical at the time, such as the scientist Henry Tizard, who had been a major force in the British deployment of radar, and in retrospect it seems the campaign wasn’t as effective as hoped, although it did consume large amounts of German manpower, AA guns, etc, it also consumed a lot of Allied resources.

But my point in the comment above was a more psychological one, dealing with an alternate history in which the war was won *without* an area bombing campaign. Would the population have really accepted defeat?

Just wondering, not suggesting that I know the answer.

Mar 7, 2008 - 3:27 pm 19. George Atkisson:

I would publish the directions for making the exact same rockets as the Palestinians, and make it very clear that the government would take no action againt any Israelis who built them and fired them into Gaza. When asked why Israel was doing nothing to stop the counter-barrage, he should just smile and say, “We’re just being good neighbors and returning their rockets.”

Mar 7, 2008 - 4:52 pm 20. farleyt:

We who live in tolerant nations may have forgotten Baruch Goldstein but do you think muslims in the territories have?

In 1994 on Purim, Goldstein stormed a mosque and fired on praying Muslims in the West Bank city’s Tomb of the Patriarchs – a shrine sacred to both Muslims and Jews.

Twenty-nine people died in the attack, and the angry crowd lynched Goldstein in retaliation.

Israeli extremists continue to pay homage at his grave in the nearby Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, where a marble plaque reads: “To the holy Baruch Goldstein, who gave his life for the Jewish people, the Torah and the nation of Israel.”

About 10,000 people had visited the grave since the massacre, Mr Marzel said.

In 2000 the BBC reported: “Militant Jews have gathered at the grave of Baruch Goldstein to celebrate the sixth anniversary of his massacre of Muslim worshippers in Hebron.
The celebrants dressed up as the gunman, wearing army uniforms, doctor’s coats and fake beards.

Goldstein, an immigrant from New York City, had been a physician in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba.
Waving semi-automatic weapons in the air, the celebrants danced, sang and read prayers around his grave.

“We decided to make a big party on the day he was murdered by Arabs,” said Baruch Marzel, one of about 40 celebrants.

Mar 7, 2008 - 5:29 pm 21. JD Rhoades:

Why don’t ya’ll just call it a “Final Solution to the Ay-rab Problem” and be done with it?

Man up and ‘fess up about your real agenda, namely genocide.

Mar 9, 2008 - 3:26 pm 22. john Ryan:

And what should American government do ? Well for a start maybe they should be listening more to what American Jews think should be done: and 87% of the American Jewish vote goes to the Democrats. American Jews are one of the bases of the modern Democratic Party.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/states/US/H/00/epolls.0.html

Mar 10, 2008 - 5:54 pm 23. Darrell:

JD, isn’t it hard to see with your eyes rolling around like that? And how did you get your arms out of their restraints to type?

Mar 12, 2008 - 5:07 am

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