Holocaust Shmolocaust!

"The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves."

                                                -- Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai


I'll say it again: Holocaust Shmolocaust.

After the last several years of Israeli piecemeal military/police actions no enemy of Israel can be expected to take these words seriously. Israel is dominated by piecemeal war doctrine that makes it incapable of fighting and winning a protracted conflict, much less eradicating an enemy threat.

According to this theory, Israeli “leaders” (fearing potentially destabilizing international or local criticism of their governments drawn by taking action against terrorists) wait until enough Jews are murdered in high profile slaughtering (not those pesky low profile events that don’t make CNN) before they feel confident enough to temporarily disrupt Arab terrorist capabilities.

Frankly, not a single military action in the last 30 years has fallen outside of the Israeli piecemeal paradigm and neither will any action taken against Gaza.

Israel desperately requires a strategic goal in this conflict here folks and it assuredly ain't got one better than nitpicking through Gaza on the hunt for “militants” and “activists” and taking them out in residentially merciful, martyr status inducing, precision attacks.

Pushing all of Gaza’s inhabitants onto the Sinai Peninsula through the open border is a strategic aim worth having. Combing through Gaza like a school nurse in a kindergartners hair in hot pursuit of lice is not a goal, it’s a pathetic tactic best left to the nurses.

The entire notion is a ridiculous and pathetic joke. We shouldn't have left Gaza to begin with, Olmert shouldn't be in office, and no IDF soldier should be forced to risk his or her life because of this stupid prime minister and his stupid predecessor’s insane self-serving policies.

I would love nothing more than to see all of the men deployed lay siege to Olmert’s office, the Knesset, and supreme court until the people in those offices agreed to take up arms and fight Hamas on the front lines.

Ultimately, even if Hamas is wiped out--which is more than doubtful, a vacuum will remain in its place eventually to be filled by another "Islamist" organization waiting in the wings to take its place, which it inevitably will.  Their major claim for leadership will be that Fatah is no more than an Israeli pawn and must be opposed. Not ironically, this will again sway many distorted Israeli psyche's into thinking that the enemy of my enemy is my friend and hail Fatah still as a partner in peace as they do now with Abu Shmazen.


Additionally, something else that really grinds my gears:

Something that few may point out is the cultural double standard to be evoked by the utter absence of broad reaction to Villainous Vilnai’s statement by the Israeli media.

Had anyone identifiable with the right wing dared to use the “H” word in the same sense the media would have publicly flogged them until the cows came home.

Not Vilnai though, an establishmentarian apparatchik if there ever was one. He gets a free pass.

Imagine Bibi making the same statement. Every hack Israeli publication would have vilified him by drawing comparisons to Hitler and denouncing him as a Nazi racist till the very end. To be Frank, they would have been as merciless as hungry Russians in a pork store.

It makes me sick.