This is a cross-post from Marc Goldberg
This evening Hamas launched an anti tank rocket at an IDF patrol on the Gaza border and injured 4 Israeli soldiers. The IDF quickly struck back and killed 4 Palestinian terrorists. You can read the full story here.
The Hamas attack and our response hi-light once again the fact that we are in a constant state of war, a state that has existed since Ben Gurion declared Israel’s independence. All that has changed over the years are the names of the groups we are fighting and the level of their religious belief, their birthplace has remained the same and the tactics of both sides have adapted along with improvements to the capability of war machines. The will to kill Israelis and Jews around the world has remained constant.
Unlike with other wars this is a war without end. There simply are not any military objectives that we can take or leaders that we can kill that will put an end to this situation. Our enemies fight using both conventional and unconventional forces. We have significant experience fighting against both and rather more success in the shorter, sharper wars against regular forces than in the long term guerilla confrontations that continue on, seemingly without end.
As Hezbollah rumbles and threatens in the North, Hamas and the Popular Resistance Committees in the South send over rockets, commando attacks and anti tank fire directly from Gaza. Our response has been to kill individual terrorists but has so far failed to end attacks emanating from the Hamas ruled territory and all of this with Iran in the background pulling nuclear strings.
The bottom line is that elections don’t matter, the particular person who is the President of the United States at any given moment doesn’t matter and in the long term it barely matters who the Prime Minister of Israel is. We have reached an incredibly dangerous point in our history, our enemies our numerous and bold, the ‘usual’ tit for tat responses aren’t having any affect and Iran is still in the background pulling nuclear strings.
The angry, dark war clouds loom large on the horizon and they are moving closer every day. This latest missile attack and the bombardment from Gaza that is falling on the South even as I write these words are now the rule rather than the exception. I fear that the time draws near for a more sustained military attack on Gaza that could well end with enemies on all of the borders bombarding Israel and expanding the conflict. I fear even more greatly that in the long term there is nothing at all that the IDF can do to enforce peace on Israel’s borders, that will only come with a diplomatic solution and we are moving further away from one of those with every rocket that falls.
