(note: this horse done already left the barn, but ...just for arguments' sake...)to be linked to Pakistan?s military intelligence, infiltrated India and killed more than 160 people in Mumbai, including 61 at two luxury hotels. What was Singh?s military response to India?s Sept. 11?
(Plus, Skeeter said "I will Listen" which, if true, will have me looking out the window to see if pigs are flying -- with Sasquatch as the pilot)
By Thomas L. Friedman:
I am watching the Israel-Hamas war and thinking about one of the world leaders I?ve most admired: Manmohan Singh. He was India?s prime minister in late November 2008 when 10 Pakistani jihadist militants from the Lashkar-e-Taiba group, widely believed
He did nothing.way toward erasing the shame of the incompetence that India?s police and security agencies displayed.?
Singh never retaliated militarily against the nation of Pakistan or Lashkar camps in Pakistan. It was a remarkable act of restraint.
What was the logic?
In his book ?Choices: Inside the Making of India?s Foreign Policy,? India?s foreign secretary at the time, Shivshankar Menon, explained, making these key points:
?I myself pressed at that time for immediate visible retaliation? against the jihadist bases or against Pakistani military intelligence, ?which was clearly complicit,? Menon wrote. ?To have done so would have been emotionally satisfying and gone some
He continued, ?But on sober reflection and in hindsight, I now believe that the decision not to retaliate militarily and to concentrate on diplomatic, covert and other means was the right one for that time and place.?involvement on the Pakistan side? would have been lost.
Chief among the reasons, Menon said, was that any military response would have quickly obscured just how outrageous and terrible the raid on Indian civilians and tourists was; ?the fact of a terrorist attack from Pakistan on India with official
Once India retaliated, the world would immediately have had what Menon called a ?ho-hum reaction.? Just another Pakistani-Indian dust-up ? nothing unusual here.just been elected to power and which sought a much better relationship with India than the Pakistan Army was willing to consider.? He continued, ?A war scare, and maybe even a war itself, was exactly what the Pakistan Army
Moreover, Menon wrote, ?an Indian attack on Pakistan would have united Pakistan behind the Pakistan Army, which was in increasing domestic disrepute,? and ?an attack on Pakistan would also have weakened the civilian government in Pakistan, which had
In addition, he wrote, ?a war, even a successful war, would have imposed costs and set back the progress of the Indian economy just when the world economy in November 2008 was in an unprecedented financial crisis.?behavior and to strengthen the likelihood that such an attack would not take place again.?
In conclusion, said Menon, ?by not attacking Pakistan, India was free to pursue all legal and covert means to achieve its goals of bringing the perpetrators to justice, uniting the international community to force consequences on Pakistan for its
I understand that Israel is not India ? a country of 1.4 billion people, covering a massive territory. The loss of more than 160 people in Mumbai, some of them tourists, was not felt in every home and hamlet, as were Hamas?s killing of roughly 1,400Israelis, the maiming of countless others and the kidnapping of more than 200 people. Pakistan also has nuclear weapons to deter retaliation.
Nevertheless, it is instructive to reflect on the contrast between India?s response to the Mumbai terrorist attack and Israel?s response to the Hamas slaughter.has embedded itself. The massive Israeli counterstrike overshadowed Hamas?s terrorism and instead made the organization a hero to some. It has also forced Israel?s new Arab allies in the Abraham Accords to distance
After the initial horror at the sheer barbarism of the Hamas onslaught on Israeli children, older adults and a dance party, what happened? The narrative quickly shifted to the brutality of the Israeli counterattack on Gazan civilians, among whom Hamas
Meanwhile, with some 360,000 reservists called up, Israel?s economy will almost certainly be depressed if Israel?s ouster of Hamas from Gaza takes months, as predicted. The economy is already expected to shrink more than 10 percent on an annualizedbasis for the last three months of the year. This after being ranked by The Economist as the fourth-best-performing economy among O.E.C.D. countries in 2022.
On a personal level, I am appalled by the reaction of those students and progressives who sided with Hamas against Israel ? in some cases, even before Israel retaliated ? as if the Jewish people were not entitled to either self-determination or self-defense in any part of their ancestral homeland. This backlash also fails to take into account that Israel, for all its faults, is a multicultural society where almost half of graduating doctors today are Arabs or Druze. Or
So I have sympathy for the terrible choices that Israel?s government faced after the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. But it was precisely because I closely followed Singh?s unique reaction to the Mumbai terrorist attack that I immediatelyadvocated a much more targeted, fully thought-through response by Israel. It should have called this Operation Save Our Hostages and focused on capturing and killing the kidnappers of children and grandparents. Every
Instead, Benjamin Netanyahu?s government immediately raced into a plan to, as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant put it, ?wipe out? Hamas ?from the face of the earth.? And in three weeks Israel has inflicted easily more than triple the number of civiliancasualties and caused far more destruction in Gaza than Israel suffered, while committing itself to taking military control of Gaza ? an operation, on a relative population basis, that is roughly equivalent to the United
As I said, Israel is not India, and there is no way that it could be expected to turn the other cheek ? not in that neighborhood. But what is Netanyahu?s plan? The Israeli officials I speak with tell me they know two things for sure: Hamas will neveragain govern Gaza, and Israel will not govern a post-Hamas Gaza. They suggest that they will set up an arrangement similarly seen in parts of the West Bank today, with Palestinians in Gaza administering day-to-day life and
This is a half-baked plan. Who are these Palestinians who will be enlisted to govern Gaza on Israel?s behalf? What happens the morning after a Palestinian working for Israel in Gaza is found murdered in an alley with a note pinned to his chest: ?Traitor,?? signed ?the Hamas underground.?
More at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/opinion/israel-hamas-ceasefire.html
In article
<c7fa14d3-5b7d-4fa3-9fe3-a9a66d4eb6d8n@googlegroups.com>, davidbrown20782@gmail.com says...
wanted to buttress its internal position.?
(note: this horse done already left the barn, but ...just for
arguments' sake...)
(Plus, Skeeter said "I will Listen" which, if true, will have
me looking out the window to see if pigs are flying -- with
Sasquatch as the pilot)
By Thomas L. Friedman:
I am watching the Israel-Hamas war and thinking about one of
the world leaders I?ve most admired: Manmohan Singh. He was
India?s prime minister in late November 2008 when 10
Pakistani jihadist militants from the Lashkar-e-Taiba group,
widely believed to be linked to Pakistan?s military
intelligence, infiltrated India and killed more than 160
people in Mumbai, including 61 at two luxury hotels. What was
Singh?s military response to India?s Sept. 11?
He did nothing.
Singh never retaliated militarily against the nation of
Pakistan or Lashkar camps in Pakistan. It was a remarkable
act of restraint.
What was the logic?
In his book ?Choices: Inside the Making of India?s Foreign
Policy,? India?s foreign secretary at the time, Shivshankar
Menon, explained, making these key points:
?I myself pressed at that time for immediate visible
retaliation? against the jihadist bases or against Pakistani
military intelligence, ?which was clearly complicit,? Menon
wrote. ?To have done so would have been emotionally
satisfying and gone some way toward erasing the shame of the
incompetence that India?s police and security agencies
displayed.?
He continued, ?But on sober reflection and in hindsight, I
now believe that the decision not to retaliate militarily and
to concentrate on diplomatic, covert and other means was the
right one for that time and place.?
Chief among the reasons, Menon said, was that any military
response would have quickly obscured just how outrageous and
terrible the raid on Indian civilians and tourists was; ?the
fact of a terrorist attack from Pakistan on India with
official involvement on the Pakistan side? would have been
lost. Once India retaliated, the world would immediately have
had what Menon called a ?ho-hum reaction.? Just another
Pakistani-Indian dust-up ? nothing unusual here.
Moreover, Menon wrote, ?an Indian attack on Pakistan would
have united Pakistan behind the Pakistan Army, which was in
increasing domestic disrepute,? and ?an attack on Pakistan
would also have weakened the civilian government in Pakistan,
which had just been elected to power and which sought a much
better relationship with India than the Pakistan Army was
willing to consider.? He continued, ?A war scare, and maybe
even a war itself, was exactly what the Pakistan Army
themselves from the Jewish state.
In addition, he wrote, ?a war, even a successful war, would
have imposed costs and set back the progress of the Indian
economy just when the world economy in November 2008 was in
an unprecedented financial crisis.?
In conclusion, said Menon, ?by not attacking Pakistan, India
was free to pursue all legal and covert means to achieve its
goals of bringing the perpetrators to justice, uniting the
international community to force consequences on Pakistan for
its behavior and to strengthen the likelihood that such an
attack would not take place again.?
I understand that Israel is not India ? a country of 1.4
billion people, covering a massive territory. The loss of
more than 160 people in Mumbai, some of them tourists, was
not felt in every home and hamlet, as were Hamas?s killing of
roughly 1,400 Israelis, the maiming of countless others and
the kidnapping of more than 200 people. Pakistan also has
nuclear weapons to deter retaliation.
Nevertheless, it is instructive to reflect on the contrast
between India?s response to the Mumbai terrorist attack and
Israel?s response to the Hamas slaughter.
After the initial horror at the sheer barbarism of the Hamas
onslaught on Israeli children, older adults and a dance
party, what happened? The narrative quickly shifted to the
brutality of the Israeli counterattack on Gazan civilians,
among whom Hamas has embedded itself. The massive Israeli
counterstrike overshadowed Hamas?s terrorism and instead made
the organization a hero to some. It has also forced Israel?s
new Arab allies in the Abraham Accords to distance
that Hamas is a militant, Islamist organization that does not
Meanwhile, with some 360,000 reservists called up, Israel?s
economy will almost certainly be depressed if Israel?s ouster
of Hamas from Gaza takes months, as predicted. The economy is
already expected to shrink more than 10 percent on an
annualized basis for the last three months of the year. This
after being ranked by The Economist as the
fourth-best-performing economy among O.E.C.D. countries in
2022.
On a personal level, I am appalled by the reaction of those
students and progressives who sided with Hamas against Israel
? in some cases, even before Israel retaliated ? as if the
Jewish people were not entitled to either self-determination
or self-defense in any part of their ancestral homeland. This
backlash also fails to take into account that Israel, for all
its faults, is a multicultural society where almost half of
graduating doctors today are Arabs or Druze. Or
tolerate dissent or L.G.B.T.Q. individuals and has been
dedicated to wiping the Jewish state off the face of the
earth.
parent could understand that.
So I have sympathy for the terrible choices that Israel?s
government faced after the worst slaughter of Jews since the
Holocaust. But it was precisely because I closely followed
Singh?s unique reaction to the Mumbai terrorist attack that I
immediately advocated a much more targeted, fully
thought-through response by Israel. It should have called
this Operation Save Our Hostages and focused on capturing and
killing the kidnappers of children and grandparents. Every
States deciding almost overnight to occupy half of Mexico. The
Instead, Benjamin Netanyahu?s government immediately raced
into a plan to, as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant put it,
?wipe out? Hamas ?from the face of the earth.? And in three
weeks Israel has inflicted easily more than triple the number
of civilian casualties and caused far more destruction in
Gaza than Israel suffered, while committing itself to taking
military control of Gaza ? an operation, on a relative
population basis, that is roughly equivalent to the United
Israeli plan, according to Netanyahu, will be a ?long and
difficult? battle to ?destroy the military and governmental
capabilities of Hamas and bring the hostages home.?
Israeli military and Shin Bet security teams providing the
As I said, Israel is not India, and there is no way that it
could be expected to turn the other cheek ? not in that
neighborhood. But what is Netanyahu?s plan? The Israeli
officials I speak with tell me they know two things for sure:
Hamas will never again govern Gaza, and Israel will not
govern a post-Hamas Gaza. They suggest that they will set up
an arrangement similarly seen in parts of the West Bank
today, with Palestinians in Gaza administering day-to-day
life and
muscle behind the scenes.
This is a half-baked plan. Who are these Palestinians who
will be enlisted to govern Gaza on Israel?s behalf? What
happens the morning after a Palestinian working for Israel in
Gaza is found murdered in an alley with a note pinned to his
chest: ?Traitor,?? signed ?the Hamas underground.?
More at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/opinion/israel-hamas-ceasef
ire.html
What?
If I don't reply to this Skeeter post, the terroists win.
In article
<c7fa14d3-5b7d-4fa3-9fe3-a9a66d4eb6d8n@googlegroups.com>, davidbrown20782@gmail.com says...
wanted to buttress its internal position.?
(note: this horse done already left the barn, but ...just for
arguments' sake...)
(Plus, Skeeter said "I will Listen" which, if true, will have
me looking out the window to see if pigs are flying -- with
Sasquatch as the pilot)
By Thomas L. Friedman:
I am watching the Israel-Hamas war and thinking about one of
the world leaders I?ve most admired: Manmohan Singh. He was
India?s prime minister in late November 2008 when 10
Pakistani jihadist militants from the Lashkar-e-Taiba group,
widely believed to be linked to Pakistan?s military
intelligence, infiltrated India and killed more than 160
people in Mumbai, including 61 at two luxury hotels. What was
Singh?s military response to India?s Sept. 11?
He did nothing.
Singh never retaliated militarily against the nation of
Pakistan or Lashkar camps in Pakistan. It was a remarkable
act of restraint.
What was the logic?
In his book ?Choices: Inside the Making of India?s Foreign
Policy,? India?s foreign secretary at the time, Shivshankar
Menon, explained, making these key points:
?I myself pressed at that time for immediate visible
retaliation? against the jihadist bases or against Pakistani
military intelligence, ?which was clearly complicit,? Menon
wrote. ?To have done so would have been emotionally
satisfying and gone some way toward erasing the shame of the
incompetence that India?s police and security agencies
displayed.?
He continued, ?But on sober reflection and in hindsight, I
now believe that the decision not to retaliate militarily and
to concentrate on diplomatic, covert and other means was the
right one for that time and place.?
Chief among the reasons, Menon said, was that any military
response would have quickly obscured just how outrageous and
terrible the raid on Indian civilians and tourists was; ?the
fact of a terrorist attack from Pakistan on India with
official involvement on the Pakistan side? would have been
lost. Once India retaliated, the world would immediately have
had what Menon called a ?ho-hum reaction.? Just another
Pakistani-Indian dust-up ? nothing unusual here.
Moreover, Menon wrote, ?an Indian attack on Pakistan would
have united Pakistan behind the Pakistan Army, which was in
increasing domestic disrepute,? and ?an attack on Pakistan
would also have weakened the civilian government in Pakistan,
which had just been elected to power and which sought a much
better relationship with India than the Pakistan Army was
willing to consider.? He continued, ?A war scare, and maybe
even a war itself, was exactly what the Pakistan Army
themselves from the Jewish state.
In addition, he wrote, ?a war, even a successful war, would
have imposed costs and set back the progress of the Indian
economy just when the world economy in November 2008 was in
an unprecedented financial crisis.?
In conclusion, said Menon, ?by not attacking Pakistan, India
was free to pursue all legal and covert means to achieve its
goals of bringing the perpetrators to justice, uniting the
international community to force consequences on Pakistan for
its behavior and to strengthen the likelihood that such an
attack would not take place again.?
I understand that Israel is not India ? a country of 1.4
billion people, covering a massive territory. The loss of
more than 160 people in Mumbai, some of them tourists, was
not felt in every home and hamlet, as were Hamas?s killing of
roughly 1,400 Israelis, the maiming of countless others and
the kidnapping of more than 200 people. Pakistan also has
nuclear weapons to deter retaliation.
Nevertheless, it is instructive to reflect on the contrast
between India?s response to the Mumbai terrorist attack and
Israel?s response to the Hamas slaughter.
After the initial horror at the sheer barbarism of the Hamas
onslaught on Israeli children, older adults and a dance
party, what happened? The narrative quickly shifted to the
brutality of the Israeli counterattack on Gazan civilians,
among whom Hamas has embedded itself. The massive Israeli
counterstrike overshadowed Hamas?s terrorism and instead made
the organization a hero to some. It has also forced Israel?s
new Arab allies in the Abraham Accords to distance
that Hamas is a militant, Islamist organization that does not
Meanwhile, with some 360,000 reservists called up, Israel?s
economy will almost certainly be depressed if Israel?s ouster
of Hamas from Gaza takes months, as predicted. The economy is
already expected to shrink more than 10 percent on an
annualized basis for the last three months of the year. This
after being ranked by The Economist as the
fourth-best-performing economy among O.E.C.D. countries in
2022.
On a personal level, I am appalled by the reaction of those
students and progressives who sided with Hamas against Israel
? in some cases, even before Israel retaliated ? as if the
Jewish people were not entitled to either self-determination
or self-defense in any part of their ancestral homeland. This
backlash also fails to take into account that Israel, for all
its faults, is a multicultural society where almost half of
graduating doctors today are Arabs or Druze. Or
tolerate dissent or L.G.B.T.Q. individuals and has been
dedicated to wiping the Jewish state off the face of the
earth.
parent could understand that.
So I have sympathy for the terrible choices that Israel?s
government faced after the worst slaughter of Jews since the
Holocaust. But it was precisely because I closely followed
Singh?s unique reaction to the Mumbai terrorist attack that I
immediately advocated a much more targeted, fully
thought-through response by Israel. It should have called
this Operation Save Our Hostages and focused on capturing and
killing the kidnappers of children and grandparents. Every
States deciding almost overnight to occupy half of Mexico. The
Instead, Benjamin Netanyahu?s government immediately raced
into a plan to, as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant put it,
?wipe out? Hamas ?from the face of the earth.? And in three
weeks Israel has inflicted easily more than triple the number
of civilian casualties and caused far more destruction in
Gaza than Israel suffered, while committing itself to taking
military control of Gaza ? an operation, on a relative
population basis, that is roughly equivalent to the United
Israeli plan, according to Netanyahu, will be a ?long and
difficult? battle to ?destroy the military and governmental
capabilities of Hamas and bring the hostages home.?
Israeli military and Shin Bet security teams providing the
As I said, Israel is not India, and there is no way that it
could be expected to turn the other cheek ? not in that
neighborhood. But what is Netanyahu?s plan? The Israeli
officials I speak with tell me they know two things for sure:
Hamas will never again govern Gaza, and Israel will not
govern a post-Hamas Gaza. They suggest that they will set up
an arrangement similarly seen in parts of the West Bank
today, with Palestinians in Gaza administering day-to-day
life and
muscle behind the scenes.
This is a half-baked plan. Who are these Palestinians who
will be enlisted to govern Gaza on Israel?s behalf? What
happens the morning after a Palestinian working for Israel in
Gaza is found murdered in an alley with a note pinned to his
chest: ?Traitor,?? signed ?the Hamas underground.?
More at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/opinion/israel-hamas-ceasef
ire.html
What?
Look, Skeets; I know your reading comprehension isn't the
greatest (seems to go hand-in-hand with conservatism), but that's
pretty straightforward.
In article <XnsB0AEC17D2441Df...@95.217.65.137>,
free...@hotSPAMTHISmail.com says...
If I don't reply to this Skeeter post, the terroists win.
In article
<c7fa14d3-5b7d-4fa3...@googlegroups.com>,
davidbr...@gmail.com says...
wanted to buttress its internal position.?
(note: this horse done already left the barn, but ...just for
arguments' sake...)
(Plus, Skeeter said "I will Listen" which, if true, will have
me looking out the window to see if pigs are flying -- with
Sasquatch as the pilot)
By Thomas L. Friedman:
I am watching the Israel-Hamas war and thinking about one of
the world leaders I?ve most admired: Manmohan Singh. He was
India?s prime minister in late November 2008 when 10
Pakistani jihadist militants from the Lashkar-e-Taiba group,
widely believed to be linked to Pakistan?s military
intelligence, infiltrated India and killed more than 160
people in Mumbai, including 61 at two luxury hotels. What was
Singh?s military response to India?s Sept. 11?
He did nothing.
Singh never retaliated militarily against the nation of
Pakistan or Lashkar camps in Pakistan. It was a remarkable
act of restraint.
What was the logic?
In his book ?Choices: Inside the Making of India?s Foreign
Policy,? India?s foreign secretary at the time, Shivshankar
Menon, explained, making these key points:
?I myself pressed at that time for immediate visible
retaliation? against the jihadist bases or against Pakistani
military intelligence, ?which was clearly complicit,? Menon
wrote. ?To have done so would have been emotionally
satisfying and gone some way toward erasing the shame of the
incompetence that India?s police and security agencies
displayed.?
He continued, ?But on sober reflection and in hindsight, I
now believe that the decision not to retaliate militarily and
to concentrate on diplomatic, covert and other means was the
right one for that time and place.?
Chief among the reasons, Menon said, was that any military
response would have quickly obscured just how outrageous and
terrible the raid on Indian civilians and tourists was; ?the
fact of a terrorist attack from Pakistan on India with
official involvement on the Pakistan side? would have been
lost. Once India retaliated, the world would immediately have
had what Menon called a ?ho-hum reaction.? Just another
Pakistani-Indian dust-up ? nothing unusual here.
Moreover, Menon wrote, ?an Indian attack on Pakistan would
have united Pakistan behind the Pakistan Army, which was in
increasing domestic disrepute,? and ?an attack on Pakistan
would also have weakened the civilian government in Pakistan,
which had just been elected to power and which sought a much
better relationship with India than the Pakistan Army was
willing to consider.? He continued, ?A war scare, and maybe
even a war itself, was exactly what the Pakistan Army
themselves from the Jewish state.
In addition, he wrote, ?a war, even a successful war, would
have imposed costs and set back the progress of the Indian
economy just when the world economy in November 2008 was in
an unprecedented financial crisis.?
In conclusion, said Menon, ?by not attacking Pakistan, India
was free to pursue all legal and covert means to achieve its
goals of bringing the perpetrators to justice, uniting the
international community to force consequences on Pakistan for
its behavior and to strengthen the likelihood that such an
attack would not take place again.?
I understand that Israel is not India ? a country of 1.4
billion people, covering a massive territory. The loss of
more than 160 people in Mumbai, some of them tourists, was
not felt in every home and hamlet, as were Hamas?s killing of
roughly 1,400 Israelis, the maiming of countless others and
the kidnapping of more than 200 people. Pakistan also has
nuclear weapons to deter retaliation.
Nevertheless, it is instructive to reflect on the contrast
between India?s response to the Mumbai terrorist attack and
Israel?s response to the Hamas slaughter.
After the initial horror at the sheer barbarism of the Hamas
onslaught on Israeli children, older adults and a dance
party, what happened? The narrative quickly shifted to the
brutality of the Israeli counterattack on Gazan civilians,
among whom Hamas has embedded itself. The massive Israeli
counterstrike overshadowed Hamas?s terrorism and instead made
the organization a hero to some. It has also forced Israel?s
new Arab allies in the Abraham Accords to distance
that Hamas is a militant, Islamist organization that does not
Meanwhile, with some 360,000 reservists called up, Israel?s
economy will almost certainly be depressed if Israel?s ouster
of Hamas from Gaza takes months, as predicted. The economy is
already expected to shrink more than 10 percent on an
annualized basis for the last three months of the year. This
after being ranked by The Economist as the
fourth-best-performing economy among O.E.C.D. countries in
2022.
On a personal level, I am appalled by the reaction of those
students and progressives who sided with Hamas against Israel
? in some cases, even before Israel retaliated ? as if the
Jewish people were not entitled to either self-determination
or self-defense in any part of their ancestral homeland. This
backlash also fails to take into account that Israel, for all
its faults, is a multicultural society where almost half of
graduating doctors today are Arabs or Druze. Or
tolerate dissent or L.G.B.T.Q. individuals and has been
dedicated to wiping the Jewish state off the face of the
earth.
parent could understand that.
So I have sympathy for the terrible choices that Israel?s
government faced after the worst slaughter of Jews since the
Holocaust. But it was precisely because I closely followed
Singh?s unique reaction to the Mumbai terrorist attack that I
immediately advocated a much more targeted, fully
thought-through response by Israel. It should have called
this Operation Save Our Hostages and focused on capturing and
killing the kidnappers of children and grandparents. Every
States deciding almost overnight to occupy half of Mexico. The
Instead, Benjamin Netanyahu?s government immediately raced
into a plan to, as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant put it,
?wipe out? Hamas ?from the face of the earth.? And in three
weeks Israel has inflicted easily more than triple the number
of civilian casualties and caused far more destruction in
Gaza than Israel suffered, while committing itself to taking
military control of Gaza ? an operation, on a relative
population basis, that is roughly equivalent to the United
Israeli plan, according to Netanyahu, will be a ?long and
difficult? battle to ?destroy the military and governmental
capabilities of Hamas and bring the hostages home.?
Israeli military and Shin Bet security teams providing the
As I said, Israel is not India, and there is no way that it
could be expected to turn the other cheek ? not in that
neighborhood. But what is Netanyahu?s plan? The Israeli
officials I speak with tell me they know two things for sure:
Hamas will never again govern Gaza, and Israel will not
govern a post-Hamas Gaza. They suggest that they will set up
an arrangement similarly seen in parts of the West Bank
today, with Palestinians in Gaza administering day-to-day
life and
muscle behind the scenes.
This is a half-baked plan. Who are these Palestinians who
will be enlisted to govern Gaza on Israel?s behalf? What
happens the morning after a Palestinian working for Israel in
Gaza is found murdered in an alley with a note pinned to his
chest: ?Traitor,?? signed ?the Hamas underground.?
More at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/opinion/israel-hamas-ceasef
ire.html
What?
Look, Skeets; I know your reading comprehension isn't the
greatest (seems to go hand-in-hand with conservatism), but that's
pretty straightforward.
Another "we vs them" stupid remark.
On Wednesday, November 1, 2023 at 1:14:17PM UTC-4, Skeeter wrote:
In article <XnsB0AEC17D2441Df...@95.217.65.137>, free...@hotSPAMTHISmail.com says...
If I don't reply to this Skeeter post, the terroists win.
In article
<c7fa14d3-5b7d-4fa3...@googlegroups.com>,
davidbr...@gmail.com says...
wanted to buttress its internal position.?
(note: this horse done already left the barn, but ...just for
arguments' sake...)
(Plus, Skeeter said "I will Listen" which, if true, will have
me looking out the window to see if pigs are flying -- with
Sasquatch as the pilot)
By Thomas L. Friedman:
I am watching the Israel-Hamas war and thinking about one of
the world leaders I?ve most admired: Manmohan Singh. He was
India?s prime minister in late November 2008 when 10
Pakistani jihadist militants from the Lashkar-e-Taiba group,
widely believed to be linked to Pakistan?s military
intelligence, infiltrated India and killed more than 160
people in Mumbai, including 61 at two luxury hotels. What was
Singh?s military response to India?s Sept. 11?
He did nothing.
Singh never retaliated militarily against the nation of
Pakistan or Lashkar camps in Pakistan. It was a remarkable
act of restraint.
What was the logic?
In his book ?Choices: Inside the Making of India?s Foreign
Policy,? India?s foreign secretary at the time, Shivshankar
Menon, explained, making these key points:
?I myself pressed at that time for immediate visible
retaliation? against the jihadist bases or against Pakistani
military intelligence, ?which was clearly complicit,? Menon
wrote. ?To have done so would have been emotionally
satisfying and gone some way toward erasing the shame of the
incompetence that India?s police and security agencies
displayed.?
He continued, ?But on sober reflection and in hindsight, I
now believe that the decision not to retaliate militarily and
to concentrate on diplomatic, covert and other means was the
right one for that time and place.?
Chief among the reasons, Menon said, was that any military
response would have quickly obscured just how outrageous and
terrible the raid on Indian civilians and tourists was; ?the
fact of a terrorist attack from Pakistan on India with
official involvement on the Pakistan side? would have been
lost. Once India retaliated, the world would immediately have
had what Menon called a ?ho-hum reaction.? Just another
Pakistani-Indian dust-up ? nothing unusual here.
Moreover, Menon wrote, ?an Indian attack on Pakistan would
have united Pakistan behind the Pakistan Army, which was in
increasing domestic disrepute,? and ?an attack on Pakistan
would also have weakened the civilian government in Pakistan,
which had just been elected to power and which sought a much
better relationship with India than the Pakistan Army was
willing to consider.? He continued, ?A war scare, and maybe
even a war itself, was exactly what the Pakistan Army
themselves from the Jewish state.
In addition, he wrote, ?a war, even a successful war, would
have imposed costs and set back the progress of the Indian
economy just when the world economy in November 2008 was in
an unprecedented financial crisis.?
In conclusion, said Menon, ?by not attacking Pakistan, India
was free to pursue all legal and covert means to achieve its
goals of bringing the perpetrators to justice, uniting the
international community to force consequences on Pakistan for
its behavior and to strengthen the likelihood that such an
attack would not take place again.?
I understand that Israel is not India ? a country of 1.4
billion people, covering a massive territory. The loss of
more than 160 people in Mumbai, some of them tourists, was
not felt in every home and hamlet, as were Hamas?s killing of
roughly 1,400 Israelis, the maiming of countless others and
the kidnapping of more than 200 people. Pakistan also has
nuclear weapons to deter retaliation.
Nevertheless, it is instructive to reflect on the contrast
between India?s response to the Mumbai terrorist attack and
Israel?s response to the Hamas slaughter.
After the initial horror at the sheer barbarism of the Hamas
onslaught on Israeli children, older adults and a dance
party, what happened? The narrative quickly shifted to the
brutality of the Israeli counterattack on Gazan civilians,
among whom Hamas has embedded itself. The massive Israeli
counterstrike overshadowed Hamas?s terrorism and instead made
the organization a hero to some. It has also forced Israel?s
new Arab allies in the Abraham Accords to distance
that Hamas is a militant, Islamist organization that does not
Meanwhile, with some 360,000 reservists called up, Israel?s
economy will almost certainly be depressed if Israel?s ouster
of Hamas from Gaza takes months, as predicted. The economy is
already expected to shrink more than 10 percent on an
annualized basis for the last three months of the year. This
after being ranked by The Economist as the
fourth-best-performing economy among O.E.C.D. countries in
2022.
On a personal level, I am appalled by the reaction of those
students and progressives who sided with Hamas against Israel
? in some cases, even before Israel retaliated ? as if the
Jewish people were not entitled to either self-determination
or self-defense in any part of their ancestral homeland. This
backlash also fails to take into account that Israel, for all
its faults, is a multicultural society where almost half of
graduating doctors today are Arabs or Druze. Or
tolerate dissent or L.G.B.T.Q. individuals and has been
dedicated to wiping the Jewish state off the face of the
earth.
parent could understand that.
So I have sympathy for the terrible choices that Israel?s
government faced after the worst slaughter of Jews since the
Holocaust. But it was precisely because I closely followed
Singh?s unique reaction to the Mumbai terrorist attack that I
immediately advocated a much more targeted, fully
thought-through response by Israel. It should have called
this Operation Save Our Hostages and focused on capturing and
killing the kidnappers of children and grandparents. Every
States deciding almost overnight to occupy half of Mexico. The
Instead, Benjamin Netanyahu?s government immediately raced
into a plan to, as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant put it,
?wipe out? Hamas ?from the face of the earth.? And in three
weeks Israel has inflicted easily more than triple the number
of civilian casualties and caused far more destruction in
Gaza than Israel suffered, while committing itself to taking
military control of Gaza ? an operation, on a relative
population basis, that is roughly equivalent to the United
Israeli plan, according to Netanyahu, will be a ?long and
difficult? battle to ?destroy the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas and bring the hostages home.?
Israeli military and Shin Bet security teams providing the
As I said, Israel is not India, and there is no way that it
could be expected to turn the other cheek ? not in that
neighborhood. But what is Netanyahu?s plan? The Israeli
officials I speak with tell me they know two things for sure:
Hamas will never again govern Gaza, and Israel will not
govern a post-Hamas Gaza. They suggest that they will set up
an arrangement similarly seen in parts of the West Bank
today, with Palestinians in Gaza administering day-to-day
life and
muscle behind the scenes.
This is a half-baked plan. Who are these Palestinians who
will be enlisted to govern Gaza on Israel?s behalf? What
happens the morning after a Palestinian working for Israel in
Gaza is found murdered in an alley with a note pinned to his
chest: ?Traitor,?? signed ?the Hamas underground.?
More at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/opinion/israel-hamas-ceasef
ire.html
What?
Look, Skeets; I know your reading comprehension isn't the
greatest (seems to go hand-in-hand with conservatism), but that's
pretty straightforward.
Another "we vs them" stupid remark.
This from the guy who constantly and consistently talks about how evil liberals are.
In article <352571bf-71a3-49b8...@googlegroups.com>,
davidbr...@gmail.com says...
On Wednesday, November 1, 2023 at 1:14:17 PM UTC-4, Skeeter wrote:
In article <XnsB0AEC17D2441Df...@95.217.65.137>, free...@hotSPAMTHISmail.com says...
If I don't reply to this Skeeter post, the terroists win.
In article
<c7fa14d3-5b7d-4fa3...@googlegroups.com>,
davidbr...@gmail.com says...
wanted to buttress its internal position.?
(note: this horse done already left the barn, but ...just for
arguments' sake...)
(Plus, Skeeter said "I will Listen" which, if true, will have
me looking out the window to see if pigs are flying -- with
Sasquatch as the pilot)
By Thomas L. Friedman:
I am watching the Israel-Hamas war and thinking about one of
the world leaders I?ve most admired: Manmohan Singh. He was
India?s prime minister in late November 2008 when 10
Pakistani jihadist militants from the Lashkar-e-Taiba group,
widely believed to be linked to Pakistan?s military
intelligence, infiltrated India and killed more than 160
people in Mumbai, including 61 at two luxury hotels. What was
Singh?s military response to India?s Sept. 11?
He did nothing.
Singh never retaliated militarily against the nation of
Pakistan or Lashkar camps in Pakistan. It was a remarkable
act of restraint.
What was the logic?
In his book ?Choices: Inside the Making of India?s Foreign
Policy,? India?s foreign secretary at the time, Shivshankar
Menon, explained, making these key points:
?I myself pressed at that time for immediate visible
retaliation? against the jihadist bases or against Pakistani
military intelligence, ?which was clearly complicit,? Menon
wrote. ?To have done so would have been emotionally
satisfying and gone some way toward erasing the shame of the
incompetence that India?s police and security agencies
displayed.?
He continued, ?But on sober reflection and in hindsight, I
now believe that the decision not to retaliate militarily and
to concentrate on diplomatic, covert and other means was the
right one for that time and place.?
Chief among the reasons, Menon said, was that any military
response would have quickly obscured just how outrageous and
terrible the raid on Indian civilians and tourists was; ?the
fact of a terrorist attack from Pakistan on India with
official involvement on the Pakistan side? would have been
lost. Once India retaliated, the world would immediately have
had what Menon called a ?ho-hum reaction.? Just another
Pakistani-Indian dust-up ? nothing unusual here.
Moreover, Menon wrote, ?an Indian attack on Pakistan would
have united Pakistan behind the Pakistan Army, which was in
increasing domestic disrepute,? and ?an attack on Pakistan
would also have weakened the civilian government in Pakistan,
which had just been elected to power and which sought a much
better relationship with India than the Pakistan Army was
willing to consider.? He continued, ?A war scare, and maybe
even a war itself, was exactly what the Pakistan Army
themselves from the Jewish state.
In addition, he wrote, ?a war, even a successful war, would
have imposed costs and set back the progress of the Indian
economy just when the world economy in November 2008 was in
an unprecedented financial crisis.?
In conclusion, said Menon, ?by not attacking Pakistan, India
was free to pursue all legal and covert means to achieve its
goals of bringing the perpetrators to justice, uniting the
international community to force consequences on Pakistan for
its behavior and to strengthen the likelihood that such an
attack would not take place again.?
I understand that Israel is not India ? a country of 1.4
billion people, covering a massive territory. The loss of
more than 160 people in Mumbai, some of them tourists, was
not felt in every home and hamlet, as were Hamas?s killing of
roughly 1,400 Israelis, the maiming of countless others and
the kidnapping of more than 200 people. Pakistan also has
nuclear weapons to deter retaliation.
Nevertheless, it is instructive to reflect on the contrast
between India?s response to the Mumbai terrorist attack and
Israel?s response to the Hamas slaughter.
After the initial horror at the sheer barbarism of the Hamas
onslaught on Israeli children, older adults and a dance
party, what happened? The narrative quickly shifted to the
brutality of the Israeli counterattack on Gazan civilians,
among whom Hamas has embedded itself. The massive Israeli
counterstrike overshadowed Hamas?s terrorism and instead made
the organization a hero to some. It has also forced Israel?s
new Arab allies in the Abraham Accords to distance
that Hamas is a militant, Islamist organization that does not tolerate dissent or L.G.B.T.Q. individuals and has been
Meanwhile, with some 360,000 reservists called up, Israel?s
economy will almost certainly be depressed if Israel?s ouster
of Hamas from Gaza takes months, as predicted. The economy is
already expected to shrink more than 10 percent on an
annualized basis for the last three months of the year. This
after being ranked by The Economist as the
fourth-best-performing economy among O.E.C.D. countries in
2022.
On a personal level, I am appalled by the reaction of those
students and progressives who sided with Hamas against Israel
? in some cases, even before Israel retaliated ? as if the
Jewish people were not entitled to either self-determination
or self-defense in any part of their ancestral homeland. This
backlash also fails to take into account that Israel, for all
its faults, is a multicultural society where almost half of
graduating doctors today are Arabs or Druze. Or
dedicated to wiping the Jewish state off the face of the
earth.
parent could understand that.
So I have sympathy for the terrible choices that Israel?s
government faced after the worst slaughter of Jews since the
Holocaust. But it was precisely because I closely followed
Singh?s unique reaction to the Mumbai terrorist attack that I
immediately advocated a much more targeted, fully
thought-through response by Israel. It should have called
this Operation Save Our Hostages and focused on capturing and
killing the kidnappers of children and grandparents. Every
States deciding almost overnight to occupy half of Mexico. The Israeli plan, according to Netanyahu, will be a ?long and
Instead, Benjamin Netanyahu?s government immediately raced
into a plan to, as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant put it,
?wipe out? Hamas ?from the face of the earth.? And in three
weeks Israel has inflicted easily more than triple the number
of civilian casualties and caused far more destruction in
Gaza than Israel suffered, while committing itself to taking
military control of Gaza ? an operation, on a relative
population basis, that is roughly equivalent to the United
difficult? battle to ?destroy the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas and bring the hostages home.?
Israeli military and Shin Bet security teams providing the
As I said, Israel is not India, and there is no way that it
could be expected to turn the other cheek ? not in that
neighborhood. But what is Netanyahu?s plan? The Israeli
officials I speak with tell me they know two things for sure:
Hamas will never again govern Gaza, and Israel will not
govern a post-Hamas Gaza. They suggest that they will set up
an arrangement similarly seen in parts of the West Bank
today, with Palestinians in Gaza administering day-to-day
life and
muscle behind the scenes.
This is a half-baked plan. Who are these Palestinians who
will be enlisted to govern Gaza on Israel?s behalf? What
happens the morning after a Palestinian working for Israel in
Gaza is found murdered in an alley with a note pinned to his
chest: ?Traitor,?? signed ?the Hamas underground.?
More at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/opinion/israel-hamas-ceasef
ire.html
What?
Look, Skeets; I know your reading comprehension isn't the
greatest (seems to go hand-in-hand with conservatism), but that's pretty straightforward.
Another "we vs them" stupid remark.
This from the guy who constantly and consistently talks about how evil liberals are.Oh this from the guy who talks constantly about Trump.
from all your threads again.
If I don't reply to this Skeeter post, the terroists win.
In article
<c7fa14d3-5b7d-4fa3-9fe3-a9a66d4eb6d8n@googlegroups.com>,
davidbrown20782@gmail.com says...
wanted to buttress its internal position.?
(note: this horse done already left the barn, but ...just for
arguments' sake...)
(Plus, Skeeter said "I will Listen" which, if true, will have
me looking out the window to see if pigs are flying -- with
Sasquatch as the pilot)
By Thomas L. Friedman:
I am watching the Israel-Hamas war and thinking about one of
the world leaders I?ve most admired: Manmohan Singh. He was
India?s prime minister in late November 2008 when 10
Pakistani jihadist militants from the Lashkar-e-Taiba group,
widely believed to be linked to Pakistan?s military
intelligence, infiltrated India and killed more than 160
people in Mumbai, including 61 at two luxury hotels. What was
Singh?s military response to India?s Sept. 11?
He did nothing.
Singh never retaliated militarily against the nation of
Pakistan or Lashkar camps in Pakistan. It was a remarkable
act of restraint.
What was the logic?
In his book ?Choices: Inside the Making of India?s Foreign
Policy,? India?s foreign secretary at the time, Shivshankar
Menon, explained, making these key points:
?I myself pressed at that time for immediate visible
retaliation? against the jihadist bases or against Pakistani
military intelligence, ?which was clearly complicit,? Menon
wrote. ?To have done so would have been emotionally
satisfying and gone some way toward erasing the shame of the
incompetence that India?s police and security agencies
displayed.?
He continued, ?But on sober reflection and in hindsight, I
now believe that the decision not to retaliate militarily and
to concentrate on diplomatic, covert and other means was the
right one for that time and place.?
Chief among the reasons, Menon said, was that any military
response would have quickly obscured just how outrageous and
terrible the raid on Indian civilians and tourists was; ?the
fact of a terrorist attack from Pakistan on India with
official involvement on the Pakistan side? would have been
lost. Once India retaliated, the world would immediately have
had what Menon called a ?ho-hum reaction.? Just another
Pakistani-Indian dust-up ? nothing unusual here.
Moreover, Menon wrote, ?an Indian attack on Pakistan would
have united Pakistan behind the Pakistan Army, which was in
increasing domestic disrepute,? and ?an attack on Pakistan
would also have weakened the civilian government in Pakistan,
which had just been elected to power and which sought a much
better relationship with India than the Pakistan Army was
willing to consider.? He continued, ?A war scare, and maybe
even a war itself, was exactly what the Pakistan Army
themselves from the Jewish state.
In addition, he wrote, ?a war, even a successful war, would
have imposed costs and set back the progress of the Indian
economy just when the world economy in November 2008 was in
an unprecedented financial crisis.?
In conclusion, said Menon, ?by not attacking Pakistan, India
was free to pursue all legal and covert means to achieve its
goals of bringing the perpetrators to justice, uniting the
international community to force consequences on Pakistan for
its behavior and to strengthen the likelihood that such an
attack would not take place again.?
I understand that Israel is not India ? a country of 1.4
billion people, covering a massive territory. The loss of
more than 160 people in Mumbai, some of them tourists, was
not felt in every home and hamlet, as were Hamas?s killing of
roughly 1,400 Israelis, the maiming of countless others and
the kidnapping of more than 200 people. Pakistan also has
nuclear weapons to deter retaliation.
Nevertheless, it is instructive to reflect on the contrast
between India?s response to the Mumbai terrorist attack and
Israel?s response to the Hamas slaughter.
After the initial horror at the sheer barbarism of the Hamas
onslaught on Israeli children, older adults and a dance
party, what happened? The narrative quickly shifted to the
brutality of the Israeli counterattack on Gazan civilians,
among whom Hamas has embedded itself. The massive Israeli
counterstrike overshadowed Hamas?s terrorism and instead made
the organization a hero to some. It has also forced Israel?s
new Arab allies in the Abraham Accords to distance
that Hamas is a militant, Islamist organization that does not
Meanwhile, with some 360,000 reservists called up, Israel?s
economy will almost certainly be depressed if Israel?s ouster
of Hamas from Gaza takes months, as predicted. The economy is
already expected to shrink more than 10 percent on an
annualized basis for the last three months of the year. This
after being ranked by The Economist as the
fourth-best-performing economy among O.E.C.D. countries in
2022.
On a personal level, I am appalled by the reaction of those
students and progressives who sided with Hamas against Israel
? in some cases, even before Israel retaliated ? as if the
Jewish people were not entitled to either self-determination
or self-defense in any part of their ancestral homeland. This
backlash also fails to take into account that Israel, for all
its faults, is a multicultural society where almost half of
graduating doctors today are Arabs or Druze. Or
tolerate dissent or L.G.B.T.Q. individuals and has been
dedicated to wiping the Jewish state off the face of the
earth.
parent could understand that.
So I have sympathy for the terrible choices that Israel?s
government faced after the worst slaughter of Jews since the
Holocaust. But it was precisely because I closely followed
Singh?s unique reaction to the Mumbai terrorist attack that I
immediately advocated a much more targeted, fully
thought-through response by Israel. It should have called
this Operation Save Our Hostages and focused on capturing and
killing the kidnappers of children and grandparents. Every
States deciding almost overnight to occupy half of Mexico. The
Instead, Benjamin Netanyahu?s government immediately raced
into a plan to, as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant put it,
?wipe out? Hamas ?from the face of the earth.? And in three
weeks Israel has inflicted easily more than triple the number
of civilian casualties and caused far more destruction in
Gaza than Israel suffered, while committing itself to taking
military control of Gaza ? an operation, on a relative
population basis, that is roughly equivalent to the United
Israeli plan, according to Netanyahu, will be a ?long and
difficult? battle to ?destroy the military and governmental
capabilities of Hamas and bring the hostages home.?
Israeli military and Shin Bet security teams providing the
As I said, Israel is not India, and there is no way that it
could be expected to turn the other cheek ? not in that
neighborhood. But what is Netanyahu?s plan? The Israeli
officials I speak with tell me they know two things for sure:
Hamas will never again govern Gaza, and Israel will not
govern a post-Hamas Gaza. They suggest that they will set up
an arrangement similarly seen in parts of the West Bank
today, with Palestinians in Gaza administering day-to-day
life and
muscle behind the scenes.
This is a half-baked plan. Who are these Palestinians who
will be enlisted to govern Gaza on Israel?s behalf? What
happens the morning after a Palestinian working for Israel in
Gaza is found murdered in an alley with a note pinned to his
chest: ?Traitor,?? signed ?the Hamas underground.?
More at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/opinion/israel-hamas-ceasef
ire.html
What?
Look, Skeets; I know your reading comprehension isn't the
greatest (seems to go hand-in-hand with conservatism), but that's
pretty straightforward.
Freezer <freezer88@hotSPAMTHISmail.com> wrote:
If I don't reply to this Skeeter post, the terroists win.
In article
<c7fa14d3-5b7d-4fa3-9fe3-a9a66d4eb6d8n@googlegroups.com>,
davidbrown20782@gmail.com says...
wanted to buttress its internal position.?
(note: this horse done already left the barn, but ...just for
arguments' sake...)
(Plus, Skeeter said "I will Listen" which, if true, will have
me looking out the window to see if pigs are flying -- with
Sasquatch as the pilot)
By Thomas L. Friedman:
I am watching the Israel-Hamas war and thinking about one of
the world leaders I?ve most admired: Manmohan Singh. He was
India?s prime minister in late November 2008 when 10
Pakistani jihadist militants from the Lashkar-e-Taiba group,
widely believed to be linked to Pakistan?s military
intelligence, infiltrated India and killed more than 160
people in Mumbai, including 61 at two luxury hotels. What was
Singh?s military response to India?s Sept. 11?
He did nothing.
Singh never retaliated militarily against the nation of
Pakistan or Lashkar camps in Pakistan. It was a remarkable
act of restraint.
What was the logic?
In his book ?Choices: Inside the Making of India?s Foreign
Policy,? India?s foreign secretary at the time, Shivshankar
Menon, explained, making these key points:
?I myself pressed at that time for immediate visible
retaliation? against the jihadist bases or against Pakistani
military intelligence, ?which was clearly complicit,? Menon
wrote. ?To have done so would have been emotionally
satisfying and gone some way toward erasing the shame of the
incompetence that India?s police and security agencies
displayed.?
He continued, ?But on sober reflection and in hindsight, I
now believe that the decision not to retaliate militarily and
to concentrate on diplomatic, covert and other means was the
right one for that time and place.?
Chief among the reasons, Menon said, was that any military
response would have quickly obscured just how outrageous and
terrible the raid on Indian civilians and tourists was; ?the
fact of a terrorist attack from Pakistan on India with
official involvement on the Pakistan side? would have been
lost. Once India retaliated, the world would immediately have
had what Menon called a ?ho-hum reaction.? Just another
Pakistani-Indian dust-up ? nothing unusual here.
Moreover, Menon wrote, ?an Indian attack on Pakistan would
have united Pakistan behind the Pakistan Army, which was in
increasing domestic disrepute,? and ?an attack on Pakistan
would also have weakened the civilian government in Pakistan,
which had just been elected to power and which sought a much
better relationship with India than the Pakistan Army was
willing to consider.? He continued, ?A war scare, and maybe
even a war itself, was exactly what the Pakistan Army
themselves from the Jewish state.
In addition, he wrote, ?a war, even a successful war, would
have imposed costs and set back the progress of the Indian
economy just when the world economy in November 2008 was in
an unprecedented financial crisis.?
In conclusion, said Menon, ?by not attacking Pakistan, India
was free to pursue all legal and covert means to achieve its
goals of bringing the perpetrators to justice, uniting the
international community to force consequences on Pakistan for
its behavior and to strengthen the likelihood that such an
attack would not take place again.?
I understand that Israel is not India ? a country of 1.4
billion people, covering a massive territory. The loss of
more than 160 people in Mumbai, some of them tourists, was
not felt in every home and hamlet, as were Hamas?s killing of
roughly 1,400 Israelis, the maiming of countless others and
the kidnapping of more than 200 people. Pakistan also has
nuclear weapons to deter retaliation.
Nevertheless, it is instructive to reflect on the contrast
between India?s response to the Mumbai terrorist attack and
Israel?s response to the Hamas slaughter.
After the initial horror at the sheer barbarism of the Hamas
onslaught on Israeli children, older adults and a dance
party, what happened? The narrative quickly shifted to the
brutality of the Israeli counterattack on Gazan civilians,
among whom Hamas has embedded itself. The massive Israeli
counterstrike overshadowed Hamas?s terrorism and instead made
the organization a hero to some. It has also forced Israel?s
new Arab allies in the Abraham Accords to distance
that Hamas is a militant, Islamist organization that does not
Meanwhile, with some 360,000 reservists called up, Israel?s
economy will almost certainly be depressed if Israel?s ouster
of Hamas from Gaza takes months, as predicted. The economy is
already expected to shrink more than 10 percent on an
annualized basis for the last three months of the year. This
after being ranked by The Economist as the
fourth-best-performing economy among O.E.C.D. countries in
2022.
On a personal level, I am appalled by the reaction of those
students and progressives who sided with Hamas against Israel
? in some cases, even before Israel retaliated ? as if the
Jewish people were not entitled to either self-determination
or self-defense in any part of their ancestral homeland. This
backlash also fails to take into account that Israel, for all
its faults, is a multicultural society where almost half of
graduating doctors today are Arabs or Druze. Or
tolerate dissent or L.G.B.T.Q. individuals and has been
dedicated to wiping the Jewish state off the face of the
earth.
parent could understand that.
So I have sympathy for the terrible choices that Israel?s
government faced after the worst slaughter of Jews since the
Holocaust. But it was precisely because I closely followed
Singh?s unique reaction to the Mumbai terrorist attack that I
immediately advocated a much more targeted, fully
thought-through response by Israel. It should have called
this Operation Save Our Hostages and focused on capturing and
killing the kidnappers of children and grandparents. Every
States deciding almost overnight to occupy half of Mexico. The
Instead, Benjamin Netanyahu?s government immediately raced
into a plan to, as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant put it,
?wipe out? Hamas ?from the face of the earth.? And in three
weeks Israel has inflicted easily more than triple the number
of civilian casualties and caused far more destruction in
Gaza than Israel suffered, while committing itself to taking
military control of Gaza ? an operation, on a relative
population basis, that is roughly equivalent to the United
Israeli plan, according to Netanyahu, will be a ?long and
difficult? battle to ?destroy the military and governmental
capabilities of Hamas and bring the hostages home.?
Israeli military and Shin Bet security teams providing the
As I said, Israel is not India, and there is no way that it
could be expected to turn the other cheek ? not in that
neighborhood. But what is Netanyahu?s plan? The Israeli
officials I speak with tell me they know two things for sure:
Hamas will never again govern Gaza, and Israel will not
govern a post-Hamas Gaza. They suggest that they will set up
an arrangement similarly seen in parts of the West Bank
today, with Palestinians in Gaza administering day-to-day
life and
muscle behind the scenes.
This is a half-baked plan. Who are these Palestinians who
will be enlisted to govern Gaza on Israel?s behalf? What
happens the morning after a Palestinian working for Israel in
Gaza is found murdered in an alley with a note pinned to his
chest: ?Traitor,?? signed ?the Hamas underground.?
More at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/opinion/israel-hamas-ceasef
ire.html
What?
Look, Skeets; I know your reading comprehension isn't the
greatest (seems to go hand-in-hand with conservatism), but that's
pretty straightforward.
What do liars comprehend?
In article <ui2fkk$2nsb3$3@dont-email.me>, morons@mormonia.com says...
Freezer <freezer88@hotSPAMTHISmail.com> wrote:
If I don't reply to this Skeeter post, the terroists win.
In article
<c7fa14d3-5b7d-4fa3-9fe3-a9a66d4eb6d8n@googlegroups.com>,
davidbrown20782@gmail.com says...
wanted to buttress its internal position.?
(note: this horse done already left the barn, but ...just for
arguments' sake...)
(Plus, Skeeter said "I will Listen" which, if true, will have
me looking out the window to see if pigs are flying -- with
Sasquatch as the pilot)
By Thomas L. Friedman:
I am watching the Israel-Hamas war and thinking about one of
the world leaders I?ve most admired: Manmohan Singh. He was
India?s prime minister in late November 2008 when 10
Pakistani jihadist militants from the Lashkar-e-Taiba group,
widely believed to be linked to Pakistan?s military
intelligence, infiltrated India and killed more than 160
people in Mumbai, including 61 at two luxury hotels. What was
Singh?s military response to India?s Sept. 11?
He did nothing.
Singh never retaliated militarily against the nation of
Pakistan or Lashkar camps in Pakistan. It was a remarkable
act of restraint.
What was the logic?
In his book ?Choices: Inside the Making of India?s Foreign
Policy,? India?s foreign secretary at the time, Shivshankar
Menon, explained, making these key points:
?I myself pressed at that time for immediate visible
retaliation? against the jihadist bases or against Pakistani
military intelligence, ?which was clearly complicit,? Menon
wrote. ?To have done so would have been emotionally
satisfying and gone some way toward erasing the shame of the
incompetence that India?s police and security agencies
displayed.?
He continued, ?But on sober reflection and in hindsight, I
now believe that the decision not to retaliate militarily and
to concentrate on diplomatic, covert and other means was the
right one for that time and place.?
Chief among the reasons, Menon said, was that any military
response would have quickly obscured just how outrageous and
terrible the raid on Indian civilians and tourists was; ?the
fact of a terrorist attack from Pakistan on India with
official involvement on the Pakistan side? would have been
lost. Once India retaliated, the world would immediately have
had what Menon called a ?ho-hum reaction.? Just another
Pakistani-Indian dust-up ? nothing unusual here.
Moreover, Menon wrote, ?an Indian attack on Pakistan would
have united Pakistan behind the Pakistan Army, which was in
increasing domestic disrepute,? and ?an attack on Pakistan
would also have weakened the civilian government in Pakistan,
which had just been elected to power and which sought a much
better relationship with India than the Pakistan Army was
willing to consider.? He continued, ?A war scare, and maybe
even a war itself, was exactly what the Pakistan Army
themselves from the Jewish state.
In addition, he wrote, ?a war, even a successful war, would
have imposed costs and set back the progress of the Indian
economy just when the world economy in November 2008 was in
an unprecedented financial crisis.?
In conclusion, said Menon, ?by not attacking Pakistan, India
was free to pursue all legal and covert means to achieve its
goals of bringing the perpetrators to justice, uniting the
international community to force consequences on Pakistan for
its behavior and to strengthen the likelihood that such an
attack would not take place again.?
I understand that Israel is not India ? a country of 1.4
billion people, covering a massive territory. The loss of
more than 160 people in Mumbai, some of them tourists, was
not felt in every home and hamlet, as were Hamas?s killing of
roughly 1,400 Israelis, the maiming of countless others and
the kidnapping of more than 200 people. Pakistan also has
nuclear weapons to deter retaliation.
Nevertheless, it is instructive to reflect on the contrast
between India?s response to the Mumbai terrorist attack and
Israel?s response to the Hamas slaughter.
After the initial horror at the sheer barbarism of the Hamas
onslaught on Israeli children, older adults and a dance
party, what happened? The narrative quickly shifted to the
brutality of the Israeli counterattack on Gazan civilians,
among whom Hamas has embedded itself. The massive Israeli
counterstrike overshadowed Hamas?s terrorism and instead made
the organization a hero to some. It has also forced Israel?s
new Arab allies in the Abraham Accords to distance
that Hamas is a militant, Islamist organization that does not
Meanwhile, with some 360,000 reservists called up, Israel?s
economy will almost certainly be depressed if Israel?s ouster
of Hamas from Gaza takes months, as predicted. The economy is
already expected to shrink more than 10 percent on an
annualized basis for the last three months of the year. This
after being ranked by The Economist as the
fourth-best-performing economy among O.E.C.D. countries in
2022.
On a personal level, I am appalled by the reaction of those
students and progressives who sided with Hamas against Israel
? in some cases, even before Israel retaliated ? as if the
Jewish people were not entitled to either self-determination
or self-defense in any part of their ancestral homeland. This
backlash also fails to take into account that Israel, for all
its faults, is a multicultural society where almost half of
graduating doctors today are Arabs or Druze. Or
tolerate dissent or L.G.B.T.Q. individuals and has been
dedicated to wiping the Jewish state off the face of the
earth.
parent could understand that.
So I have sympathy for the terrible choices that Israel?s
government faced after the worst slaughter of Jews since the
Holocaust. But it was precisely because I closely followed
Singh?s unique reaction to the Mumbai terrorist attack that I
immediately advocated a much more targeted, fully
thought-through response by Israel. It should have called
this Operation Save Our Hostages and focused on capturing and
killing the kidnappers of children and grandparents. Every
States deciding almost overnight to occupy half of Mexico. The
Instead, Benjamin Netanyahu?s government immediately raced
into a plan to, as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant put it,
?wipe out? Hamas ?from the face of the earth.? And in three
weeks Israel has inflicted easily more than triple the number
of civilian casualties and caused far more destruction in
Gaza than Israel suffered, while committing itself to taking
military control of Gaza ? an operation, on a relative
population basis, that is roughly equivalent to the United
Israeli plan, according to Netanyahu, will be a ?long and
difficult? battle to ?destroy the military and governmental
capabilities of Hamas and bring the hostages home.?
Israeli military and Shin Bet security teams providing the
As I said, Israel is not India, and there is no way that it
could be expected to turn the other cheek ? not in that
neighborhood. But what is Netanyahu?s plan? The Israeli
officials I speak with tell me they know two things for sure:
Hamas will never again govern Gaza, and Israel will not
govern a post-Hamas Gaza. They suggest that they will set up
an arrangement similarly seen in parts of the West Bank
today, with Palestinians in Gaza administering day-to-day
life and
muscle behind the scenes.
This is a half-baked plan. Who are these Palestinians who
will be enlisted to govern Gaza on Israel?s behalf? What
happens the morning after a Palestinian working for Israel in
Gaza is found murdered in an alley with a note pinned to his
chest: ?Traitor,?? signed ?the Hamas underground.?
More at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/opinion/israel-hamas-ceasef
ire.html
What?
Look, Skeets; I know your reading comprehension isn't the
greatest (seems to go hand-in-hand with conservatism), but that's
pretty straightforward.
What do liars comprehend?
His statement reeks of stomping feet and confusion.
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