Sun, 18 Jan 2009 02:50:45 +0000 – By Richard MillerAuthor, "In Words and Deed: Battle Speeches in History"
As in all military conflicts, how you get out is as important as how you get in. What a "victory" means today in our media-NGO-EU-Arab League heavy world is not the same thing as 1945 photo-ops of Russian troops dancing around the ruins of the Reich Chancellory in Berlin.
This is because In the world of radical Islam, Alice-in-Wonderland still lives. For example, in 2005 when Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, in the West, Prime Minister Arial Sharon was transformed overnight from warmonger to peacemaker. But not in Gaza: there, Hamas successfully convinced its death cult value voters that Israel's withdrawal was proof of "Jewish weakness" and Islamic virtue. Likewise in Lebanon. Although Israel inflicted massive material losses on Hezbollah, the latter had no need to acknowledge anything of the kind. It simply compared the result--a phony UN supervised ceasefire--against Israel's foolishly stated (and unachieved) goal of eliminating Hezbollah. Israel hadn't done so and Hezbollah could claim victory.
The Israelis, as is their wont, wised up fast. Their real goal in Gaza was to weaken Hamas so that at some point--tomorrow, next week, in a year--Fatah comes back led by the Mahmud Abbas crime family. And to make sure that Hamas can't claim any political benefits, the "ceasefire" that Israel declared was unilateral and not negotiated--thus, Hamas will be unable to claim one benefit--no open borders, increased humanitarian supplies, disingenuous "hudnas," or anything else. They appear weak, deflated, pretensions gone, the object of Israeli power, and not the manipulators thereof. Except for Iran, the usual EU demonstrators, bloated UN-crats, and left-wing academics who function more as bulletin boards for Hamas Public Affairs than truth-discerners, Hamas had zero, zip, nada, or, to put in Yiddish, gornisht, support from the "international community."
Part of returning the Palestinian Authority to power is simply to kill as many of the Hamas leaders as possible. How many have been taken down and how many are left to go is something best known to Israeli intelligence, who have clearly restored their reputation after this latest Gaza merry-go-round. But part of finishing Hamas is to puncture their balloon--that radical Islam somehow delivers, that it is at one with the mainstream Arab world, that Hamas somehow had "protectors" outside of an already isolated Iran.
In the end, Hamas had nobody but the famed snipers from Israel's Golani Brigade looking after their welfare. And with this unilateral Israeli ceasefire, in exchange for all their troubles, the far fewer numbers of Hamas will be able to claim only the rotten fruits of war. Unfortunately for them, Allah sat out this one.
By this Israeli move, the only thing for which Hamas will have bragging rights are funerals in the streets of Gaza. Way to go, IDF.
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