For your perusal, my latest INTO THE FRAY column:
Liberman’s new home demolition initiative: The point and the pointlessness
(Kindly consider “liking”, sharing, tweeting – please use hash-tag #IntoFray)
For its long term survival and security Israel needs strategic coherence, not haphazard tactical machoism.
It appears this week on the following sites (in alphabetical order):
ALGEMEINER: https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/11/03/liebermans-new-home-demolition-initiative-the-point-and-the-pointlessness/
ISRAELI FRONTLINE: http://www.israelifrontline.com/2017/11/fray-libermans-new-home-demolition-initiative-point-pointlessness.html
ISRAEL NATIONAL: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/21214
ISRAEL NEWS ONLINE: https://israelnewsonline.org/into-the-fray-libermans-new-home-demolition-initiative-the-point-and-the-pointlessness/#.Wf1wYdeWY2w
ISRAEL RISING: https://www.israelrising.com/libermans-new-home-demolition-initiative-point-pointlessness/
ISRAPUNDIT: https://www.israpundit.org/into-the-fray-libermans-new-home-demolition-initiative-the-point-and-the-pointlessness/
Jerusalem Herald: https://www.jerusalem-herald.com/single-post/2017/11/02/INTO-THE-FRAY-Libermans-new-home-demolition-initiative-The-point-and-the-pointlessness
JEWS DOWN UNDER:
MEDIUM: https://medium.com/@martinsherman/into-the-fray-libermans-new-home-demolition-initiative-the-point-and-the-pointlessness-by-76b94539c542
JEWISH PRESS (To be posted)
Several short excerpts:
There is no difference between an attack that ends in murder and an attack that ends with serious injury. In both cases the homes of the terrorists must be destroyed – Defense Minister Avidgor Liberman, Oct 29, 2007.
Earlier this week, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman instructed the Defense Ministry’s legal team to explore avenues that would extend the ability of the IDF to destroy not only the homes of terrorists who have murdered Israelis, but also of terrorists who have severely wounded them… It should be almost self-evident that to arrive at some kind of durable resolution of the conflict and the lasting cessation of violence, the conflict must be correctly conceptualized. …Unless the conflict is correctly conceptualized, no effective policy can be devised to contend with it –and certainly not to end it. Indeed, just as a disease cannot be properly treated if incorrectly diagnosed, so a conflict cannot be correctly addressed if it is incorrectly conceptualized… Little analytical acumen is required to draw the conclusion that the conflict between Arab and Jew over control of the Holy Land is a clash between two collectives: A Jewish collective and an Arab collective—for which the Palestinian collective is its operational spearhead.
In this regard, during a November 2015 address, then-defense minister, Moshe “Bogey” Yaalon, aptly characterized the conflict as a clash of collectives, describing it as: “…predominantly a war of wills, of two societies with conflicting wills”…Accordingly, the conflict, as one between collectives, cannot be individualized. One collective must prevail, the other be prevailed upon. Only then, after such a decisive outcome, can the issue of personal misfortune or injustice within the collectives be addressed…Accordingly, in the context of a clash between conflicted collectives, the issue of the “collective nature” of punitive measures should not be considered grounds for their preclusion…After all, this was never a consideration in, say, Serbia, where markets, hospitals, buses, bridges and old age facilities, to name but a few civilian targets hit in high altitude bombing sorties in the US-led NATO attacks in the Balkans War of the 1990s…
…until Israel foreswears any aspirations of reaching some consensual arrangement with the Palestinians, harsh tactical measures will always, to some degree or other, be at cross purposes with ostensibly more benign strategic objectives. Until that happens, Israeli policy will be plagued by internal contradictions that hamstring its implementation and the effectiveness of its operational tactics, making it appear disingenuous and devious—and an easy target for international acrimony and opprobrium…
