According to a news article, the expression he used for this was “from the river to the sea.”
Tit for tat.
States have armies.
Terrorists killed 1,200 Israelis, raped and abducted more.
They have been taught to hate Israel for years.
What will they be able to do with an army supported by other middle eastern countries?
Judging by what’s currently happening in Gaza? 25,000 dead, significant majority being women and children.
Gosh, if there was only some sort of history that we could draw upon for the answer to that question. Guess we’ll never know.
I’m excited to report that the Biden administration has actually done something regarding the settlements in the West Bank by placing economic sanctions on West Bank extremists. See the announcement here:
Also, a US Treasury alert on what this could mean.
https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/FinCEN_Alert_Extremist_Violence_FINAL_2.1.24.pdf
Old friend MK Bezalel Smotrich, head of the Religious Zionist Party, is not happy:
“The ‘settler violence’ campaign is an antisemitic lie that enemies of Israel disseminate to smear the pioneering settlers and settlement enterprise, and to harm them and thus smear the entire State of Israel…President Biden is wrong about the citizens of the State of Israel and the heroic settlers …"
https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-784732
Unrelated, but also interesting, the US State Department announced “We are actively pursuing the establishment as an independent Palestinian state, with real security guarantees for Israel, because we do believe that is the best way to bring about lasting peace and security for Israel, for Palestinians and for the region.” That isn’t a new policy, but it is good to see it stated publicly.
There will need to be some third military party to get between a Palestinian state and the Israelis, and it must no be sympathetic to either side.
I am so damn tired of the “any criticism of Israel is antisemitism”
It’s so damn obnoxious.
I’m not there, so I don’t know.
The US did give Israel some M-16s, with the sole caveat that they not be given to settlers.
Somewhere upstream, or maybe another thread, it was suggested that I may not like the result if I wrote my Congress person about my beliefs. Turns out I’m pretty good with it.
Jack Reed (D-RI) was my Senator back when I was protesting the Iraq war twenty-some years ago. I tagged along to a meeting between him and a bunch of local activists to express our concerns, and was impressed by his listening to us and his courage in pushing back against the pro-war groundswell.
Glad to see Sen. Reed is still responsive to the humanitarian concerns of his constituents; if you write him again, tell him this ex-Ocean Stater appreciates it.
This is Biden’s strongest take against the Israeli war efforts. Will it do anything is the next question.
This is pretty off topic, but from one of the suggested article at the bottom of that page, the headline:
I think I speak for all of us secular Israelis when I say: Dear God, yes, please, I’ll take that deal. Can we do it today? Can you take Smotrich and Ben Gvir with you?
Perhaps some of them are having a Talmudic debate over what happens when there too many Haredim to keep the IDF going.
Second Zen question - where would they go?
There are Jews who believe it is religiously forbidden to move to the Holy Land until the Messiah comes and delivers the land of Israel to the Jews, or something like that — I am sure I have it not quite right, but, point is, they would not fight for the current State of Israel nor would they be found in Israel in the first place. Maybe there are some less extreme sects where they may be in Israel but not go so far as to support the state?
I don’t want to go too far down this rabbit hole, but there are already Ultra Orthodox Jews who live in Israel who can get both military exemptions and state financial aid so that they can devote time to studying the Torah. At the moment, they make up over 13% of the population, but some demographic projections show Haredim making up 1/3 of the population in 40 years. Here is a quote from a longer version of that story
"All these secular people don’t understand that without kollels and yeshivas, the army would not be successful,” he says, referring to institutions where religious men study Jewish texts rather than working or enlisting. “The soldiers only succeed thanks to those learning Torah.”
Pressure is mounting for the coalition to end the exemption from military and national service for the ultra-Orthodox community, especially amid the war against Hamas."
I’ll take that bet.
How long could Israel survive if the Ultra population hit that point? With all those useless leeches sucking the body public dry and never stepping up to take their share of the burden of keeping the country going?
So is this the philosophy of Attaque à outrance by proxy? It’s the Ultra Orthodox studying the Torah that is imbuing the IDF with fighting spirit that will overcome bullets?
Where were these guys in the Warsaw ghetto uprising?