Once again, we have Watcher’s Council Results! Winning Council Submissions First place with 2 1/3 points! – Joshuapundit – Gaza:A Tale Of Selective Morality and Tribal Warfare Second place with 1 2/3 points – The Razor – Walking In Israel’s……

The week’s Watcher’s Council submissions are UP! Because the major focus of the council and non-council offerings this week has been Israel’s war with Hamas, my review of the nominees is going to be a bit different this week. In Gaza:A Tale Of Selec…

That’s why it can sustain itself for centuries to come.

The violence used by Israel in the current campaign is pretty minor by comparison.

The reason why Total War doesn’t work on terrorists, unless you are willing to execute the family members of terrorists and the civilians who they use as shields, is because a nation needs another nation as an enemy if Total War is to be conducted. In all the cases before, Hamas was a terrorist/charity organization, like an NGO. Any attempt to take them out was always independent of the grand strategic vision that would hold for the actual national boundaries of the West Bank or Gaza, because there were no national boundaries for Palestine there. Just territorial limits.

Now that Hamas has their own nation, you can initiative Total War policies and objectives. This is a byproduct of pulling out of Gaza and the West Bank and adopting a defensive tactical position, so as to provide yourself with a pretext and justification for launching a campaign of utter obliteration on your enemies. Instead of treating them as individual terrorists or even non-government organizations, declare war, declare that you will reciprocate Palestinian attacks against Israeli citizens, declare that punitive and retributive policies will be initiated, and that this will end with the unconditional surrender of the government of Palestine (which is Hamas).

They won’t surrender, but that means you can destroy all of their organization, if that organization is in the West Bank or Gaza. Fatah, because they part of the Palestinian nation, will also be targets. You may kill enough of the fanatics that the moderates have to stage a coup or something, but whatever they do will have to be substantial enough to unconditionally surrender Palestine.

A well organized campaign like this will provide you more cover and more actual gains than the Russian pretexted invasion of Georgia.

Hizbollah is controlled by Iran but Hamas is a Sunni organization with a different origin point.

There is some cooperation, inspite of their ideological differences, but they are usually self-contained.

but you must.

Are you beginning to accept the Jacksonian proposition concerning Total War, Book?

Notably, the Egyptians and Palestinian Authority have condemned Hamas. I suspect that many of the Arab countries are gleeful that the IDF is hammering the Iranian-linked Hamas, even if they can’t admit it in private.

Most of the Arab countries are terrified of a rising and dominant Iran and know well that Hamas and Hezbollah are Iranian proxies. They also know they can’t be certain about the new, untested incoming U.S. President and that Israel is the only thing that really stands between them and Iran.

One very interesting development that may take place in 2009 is that we may see a new Iraq being much more open to Israel, given that they have a common enemy in Iran.

As far as the Israelis versus Palestinians, I can’t think of a people that have done more historically to extend a helping, supporting hand to the Palestinians than the Israelis. They certainly have done more than any of the surrounding Arab countries. Whenever I feel frustrated because of the perceived timidity of the Israelis in dealing with the “Palestinian Problem”, I remind myself that however misguided they may be, the Israelis act that way because of their fundamental human goodness, something that seems sadly missing in the Palestinian powers-that-be…and their Bonobo Lefty acolytes in America and Europe.

As Golda Meir said, peace will come when Palestinian mothers learn to love their children more than they hate Jews. Until then, the Palestinians (as a group) are pretty much at the tail-end of the long line of people in this world deserving of sympathy. Oh well!