I’d add the old saying: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Palestinian (and French) dishonesty and deception can only harm them in the long run. They know this, which is why they were so desperate to keep the Al Dura tapes from becoming public. As with all media disinformation and dishonesty, the truth will eventually spread, and become more widely known.

Already, the American media are taking it on the chin. Every year the percentage of Americans who acknowledge the incredible bias… that percentage just keeps on rising.

Hope is there in the long term! Patience… patience… trust the American people to eventually awaken.

It is never full proof, for I am still a human being and vulnerable to human emotion, but it is still pretty efficient compared to, say, what I had in 2003.

Human brains are wired to believe, and thus to feel, that what they see is true. You can recognize, intellectually, that what you are seeing is a photo and that a photo can be doctored, but that won’t stop your emotions. It won’t stop your emotions unless you have internal mental filters that will process what you see of photographs into the same part of your brain which processes what salespeople tell you in order for you to buy their products. Unless you put that signal through the compartmentalization and filter that all Americans have against advertisement and hype and “too good to be true” scams, then your emotions will be triggered first and not your brain.

You’ll know when this is working if you feel sadness at a photo of “Palestinian” deaths and a few years later, you don’t feel anything after seeing the same photo. This is called making yourself less sensitive and the reason why the Left wants you to become “more sensitive” is because more sensitive people are easier to emotionally manipulate with guilt and propaganda techniques.

You don’t want to become “more sensitive”. You want to become more accurate in how you process your senses and that is not the same as “more sensitive”.

That’s a good thing in the end that you saw through the veil of illusion. Unfortunately, there’s a sucker born every 10 minutes.

That didn’t stop Israel from pulling out from their settlements and forcibly relocating their own people, who didn’t want to go, Mike.

Regardless of what people think about Israel’s “size”, this does not change the facts that we have. And the facts that we have are that the Israelis themselves retreated on their own initiative. And the wall is not a strategy for victory. It is, at best, a holding tactic, as we can easily see from Israel’s need to attack.

Does size matter?

Size matters only in the aspect of logistics. It takes longer logistical lines and more logistical support to sustain military operations across vast distances. This means that the logistical lines become more important and it also means that once those lines are cut, your soldiers will start starving. Something I recommend Hamas needs to experience if Israel truly wants to blunt their offensive threat potential.

Tippi Livni was closely involved in the Lebanon debacle, in a manner that makes her seem as serious as her “Pippi Longstocking-ish” name. She was outrageously ineffective.

Americans have demonstrated how it should be done in cities like Fallujah, Ramadi, Tikrit, Mosul, and various other places in Iraq. The fact that the Israelis won’t or can’t emulate us or ask for our help is their problem. The solution is there, and Generals like Petraeus have shown that it will work. In fact, it will work in less than 10 years while the Israelis have been fighting the same war for decades.

Israel never made any real attempt to get local support in Lebanon. Thus instead of creating the conditions for the local Lebanese to overthrow Hizbollah, Israel instead consolidated Hizbollah’s power in Lebanon. This is actually worse than America’s “catch and release” policy in Iraq during the year 2005.

Israel has been outstandingly passive

My guesstimate is that the security wall’s ability to stop suicide bombers let the Israeli socialist elites pretend that they didn’t need to worry about Hamas any more. Of course, socialist governments are the ones that often set up the conditions for “military adventures” in the first place and thus the invasion of Lebanon, after the security wall was up, was no surprise. As with all military operations, it can be done well or it can be done badly. Even if the political objectives were crap or unwise, the military component can still be done effectively rather than ineffectively.

Thank you for remembering the a-Dura case. Watching the child’s “death” caused me a good deal of anguish. I shed muckets of tears for that child. I followed the case most closely as I wanted the animals who “killed” him brought to justice.

When I learned, as everyone else did, that the whole scene was a fraud, that the firing was not Israeli, that Mohammad al-Dura was not harmed in any way… I will never forgive the Palestinians for that. And I can never believe anything they have to say. Any possible support they may have had from me was lost.

That’s so well said and true. One problem for Israel though, is that they are small, while Russia was vast (and the American seaboard colonies when George Washington was moving his ragtag army around and about). Does size matter?

The ability and intent to project force matters, too, I think. Tippi Livni was closely involved in the Lebanon debacle, in a manner that makes her seem as serious as her “Pippi Longstocking-ish” name. She was outrageously ineffective.

I think your point about Ariel Sharon is a good one. His maneuver, on the surface, looked all wishy-washy and weak and made the hearts of the U.N. and liberals every swell with… swell with, well, something… but in truth, he would have backed it up strategically with the follow-on tough decisions and tough actions that were required.

What’s happening now is not that tough action. Israel has been outstandingly passive, and all they’ve received for it is more condemnation and then the latest ratcheting up of aggression by Israel’s enemies. Israel under Olmert and Livni have been passive victims and non-responsive; their enemies dictate all conditions. Finally, backs against the wall – or perhaps, pushed to the edge of the cliff, toes clinging to the edge – they finally have had no choice but to do SOMETHING. And as long as Olmert and Livni are in charge, that “something” will be wildly ineffective, probably at times tactically ok, but strategically destructive to Israel’s interests. It’s Tweedledum and Tweedledee, you see, with Olmert and Livni.

Add a few more of Olmert’s and Livni’s political allies into the mix and you have the Keystone Kops in all their glory, available 24-7 on the cable news station of your choice.

Why would your own country keep you in a refugee camp? Shouldn’t they incorporate you into society in general?

Of course, I know these camps are only to create sympathy for themselves and anger towards Israel.

Jerusalem Post May 2008:

France 2 stringer Talal Abu Rahma, shows al-Dura hiding, and then cuts to footage of him lying, apparently dead, at the junction. It does not show the child killed.

The footage, and Enderlin’s broadcast assertion of Israeli responsibility for the killing of al-Dura, turned the 12-year-old’s death into a cause célèbre in the Muslim world.

It’s hard to credit it as some kind of propaganda master-stroke, because whom does it impress?

I’ll say this one’s a coincidence. It’s possible you’re out-thinking yourself, and not giving ordinary coincidence and stupidity enough credit. We all see nefariousness where often enough simple stupidity is the explanation. Stupidity doesn’t get nearly enough credit in human affairs.