This is a cross post from Marc Goldberg’s blog on the Times of Israel
As I write this rockets and mortars of Islamic Jihad are hitting Israel. They are pounding our soil, our dust, our earth and in one case (so far) a residential area in our state.
At the time of writing this there are no reports of casualties, that may change. The reason for the attack is being reported as an air strike that killed several Islamic Jihad militants as they themselves were attempting to strike Israel. So this is their response, to our response to the attempt of a bunch of terrorists to do exactly what Islamic Jihad is doing right now. I’m sure our response will take the same form as our response to their cell who died in the initial response to that attempted attack.
Got it?
Depending on how big the barrage is world leaders, first in line being Obama, will call for a “proportionate response”. But what on earth does that mean? It means that of the dozens of targets the IDF has collected intelligence on, Israel should strike just one or two of them. It means that the IDF should make sure that the response is just that…a response, not any sort of game changer.
The call for a proportionate response is something that we’ve heard a lot of. I’m not convinced the Americans would be able to point to any particularly good examples of a US proportionate response to attacks on their territory. The US tends to tear apart any country it has a problem with.
Strictly speaking a proportionate response in this particular case would consist of firing a bunch of missiles and mortars blindly into Gaza. Or would that be a literal response?
For those people thinking of casualties perhaps we should do nothing if Israel doesn’t suffer any casualties. If Israel suffers one dead, perhaps we should just murder a random Gazan in the same way that the Islamic Jihad are currently raining down random death on Israel.
We won’t do that though. I’m sure instead we’ll just pick a few targets and bomb them and then wait to see what happens next.
I’m looking for end game here. I’m looking for a way out of this constant rockets, strike and counter strike, but it would appear that there isn’t one to be had.
