Four recommended videos
Melanie Phillips is a forceful speaker who manages to state things clearly. This video is long, but I listen to videos like this speeded up, either at 1.5 or 1.75 time:
Harrowing and intense:
This level of ignorance probably isn’t rare among pro-Palestinian activists:
Ayn Rand certainly had an opinion on the subject, back in 1979:
Clip three is the telling one. Most activist liberals can’t even describe their words and won’t admit the meanings of their slogans and are even less capable of constructing and maintaining a chain of logic.
Then they get mad when you can.
Wow, I didn’t know what to expect from Ayn Rand, but she spoke truth to power, and poor Phil was left looking as dumb as in those famous Milton Friedman episodes. I linked the second one on an earlier thread, and noted her observation that there were many “civilians” who poured into Israel from Gaza to join in the raping and pillaging, clearly (to her at least) distinguishable from the Hamas operatives. Both that and the Melanie Phillips video can be easily understood at 1.25x or 1.5x.
Would add this one from Bridget Phetasy with Noam Blum who is really good on this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cT20okgpo8
Wow! Melanie Phillips. She’s wonderful.
Melanie Phillips @ 21:23, “In Israel there is I think in certainly the circles that I move in, there is enormous concern about American intentions.”
Stop being so concerned!
“Perhaps the best response is the one former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin made to then-Sen. Joseph Biden in 1982.
At the time, Biden was chastising Begin during a Senate hearing over Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank, harshly threatening to cut off economic aid to the Jewish state if it did not immediately cease its settlement activities. Begin forcefully replied to Biden in words equally applicable today:
“Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”
https://www.jns.org/i-am-not-a-jew-with-trembling-knees/
That’s the attitude I hope the entire Israeli cabinet will take. Any other attitude begs failure before even beginning the fight.
Bill K:
The problem – as I believe the video went into – is that the Israelis are at present highly dependent on US ammunition. One can argue (I think correctly) that they should not have allowed that to happen. But Israel is a very small country surrounded by enemies on all sides, and the reality is that at the moment they need ammunition to fight, and a great deal of it comes from the US. So not to be “concerned” about the US would be to commit suicide at this point.
Neo, I hope this doesn’t come across as snide, but what company in Israel makes ammo? Sounds like I oughta invest. 😉
But in seriousness, it’s been a military truism since Bonaparte who said, “Amateurs discuss tactics; professionals discuss logistics.”
Apart from all the political considerations, IDF generals are not doing their jobs in the purely military realm if they haven’t planned for such a case.
Jonathan Tobin joked at 46:40, “The joke about the Pentagon which is like the world’s biggest building is that somewhere in that maze of Department of Defense offices, there’s a plan to invade every country in the world.”
Correspondingly, not the whole world, but Israel should already have a plan to defeat every country comprising a reasonable threat. That should include Iran and as Israel has faced in the past, taking on 3 or 4 neighbors at the same time. And that would involve an even greater expenditure of ammo than eliminating Hamas.
So I find it hardly credible despite the Israeli public hand-wringing over adequate supplies that secretly and with no intent to divulge, the IDF has stores no one else knows about.
An IDF non-nuclear strategic ambiguity? If I were the IDF, I certainly wouldn’t advertise how much I had, but if I lived in their neighborhood, I’d have underground parking lots full of ammo and more. Anything less, and I’d fire their head G-4.
And BTW, can one use html code to embed an image? I tried but it didn’t look like it took.
Ayn Rand Institute, “Did Israel Steal Palestinian Land?”, with Nikos Sotirakopoulos and Elan Journo: https://youtu.be/btVFgqkgkzw?si=l5MpR1VTNetMzQFG
Menahem Begin was being rhetorically histrionic but, alas, not entirely truthful.
True, there was a massive, concerted attempt by agents of the incipient (and fledgling) state to procure weaponry, which—in the high-handed guise of “neutrality”—was denied them by most of the Western countries, even while the Arab armies were able to procures—and/or already had—arms.
However, the Jews succeeded by hook or by crook in procuring some old and surplus WWII weapons, munitions and materiel (e.g., planes, the occasional artillery piece, guns). Most significantly, Stalin, following the devious logic of his own perceived interests, in this case, weakening and stymying British interests in the Middle East (and elsewhere), enabled Czechoslovakia to send the Jews desperately needed guns and ammunition, without which the outcome of the 1948-49 war would likely have been very different.
(This is also why there was a rather short, but sufficient—miraculous?—window of time when Stalin supported, and the USSR voted for, the creation of a Jewish State. It was a window that closed pretty quickly after Ben-Gurion made it clear that the new state of Israel would align with the West; and ironically, Czechoslovakia, which helped the Jewish State survive, was the scene, in the early 50s, of one of the worst Communist Party anti-Jewish show trials, the “Doctors’ Plot”.)
So, returning to Begin’s claim, foreign (if not exactly “Western”) help WAS received.
Barry Meislin, I agree, Begin was not entirely truthful, and I’ve read the same regarding the Russians & the Czechs.
But to quote Napoleon again, “‘The moral is to the physical as three to one”, by which he meant to my understanding that morale is the greatest determinant in victory. And I’ve read many times that when armies flee in panic, they sustain multiple times the casualty rates compared to orderly fighting retreats.
I believe the parallel applies on the civilian side as well. So long as Israel maintains confidence she will do well. I would hate to see the Israelis take a defeatist attitude should the Biden administration be the fickle frenemy who pulls the support rug out from under them once they’re in the thick of things.
As the Jews say, “Am Yisrael Chai” come what may. And that’s why I admire Begin’s retort, even if not entirely truthful. 😉
And along the lines of ‘a conservative is a liberal mugged by reality’ and Yamamoto’s quote, “You cannot invade mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.”, I hope Israel doesn’t stop revising its gun laws and arming its citizens so that the Muslims may one day say, “In Israel there is a rifle behind every rock.”
When we list the accomplices of the suicide of the West, make sure Phil Donahue is included. I have been successful in repressing him from my memory for the last several years.
Rand nailed it, and her words remain just as true today.