Love the pic.
(Via Lex)
UPDATE: A commenter points out that the linked article is more than a year old, a fact that I overlooked. I still love the pic.
Middle East
Israel/Mideast History Book Bleg
A friend emails:
I am becoming very disturbed seeing otherwise intelligent people that I know and respect starting to succumb to the anti-Israel drumbeat in the mainstream press. What books could I recommend to people like this so that they get a more factual picture of the history and evolution of Israel in general, and the evolution of the Israeli- Palestinian (and other Arabs) conflicts in particular?
Great question. Any recommendations?
UPDATE: My friend provides additional info in a follow-up email:
Sir Martin Gilbert has written several good books but I am looking for others. I especially want to turn younger folks onto some good books because they have mostly been force-fed propaganda if they graduated within the last 10-15 years. I will watch the blog to see what your readers recommend. They are a pretty sharp bunch!
Martin Gilbert’s books are a good start. And I agree about CB readers.
Iron Dome: Winning Asymmetric Warfare Through Superior Cost Accounting
Ted Postol, the MIT physicist, media talking head, and so-called ‘missile-defense expert’ is again putting in another Face Palm worthy political performance in analyzing technical capabilities of the Israeli Iron Dome anti-artillery rocket system at the link.
There are numerous practical political reasons that show Postol’s reasoning today with Iron Dome, as it was with the with the Patriot ABM in 1991, is an exercise in political “Magical Thinking.”
First, missile defense contributes to deterrence — even North Korea’s slightly less than “Hamas-level suicidal sociopaths” have to consider the possibility that South Korea Patriots or Standard-3s (Via the US Navy’s Aegis ships) will stop a surprise missile attack gambit.
Second, missile defense provides a degree of political strategic confidence — governments have an option other than quick counter-strike or pre-emptive strike.
Last, on the political level, Iron Dome today (like Patriot in 1991) buys Israeli leadership the gift of time in war, the breathing space to act from Nation-State interest in the classic Westphalian sense, rather than be driven by media pressure and constituent tribal cries of revenge for lost loved ones _Right Now_.
However, the by far more important reasons why Postol and those relying upon him are wrong were actually laid out in 2011 by Alternatewars.com guru, and fellow “History Friday” column researcher, Ryan Crierie in terms of the actuarial cost of injuries and death in a Western Society. This cost account reasoning shows just how badly opponents of missile defense are buried in the unreality of magical thinking political cant over the realities of war on the ground.
In a very real sense, Iron Dome is Asymmetric Warfare by a technologically advanced society on an irrational/suicidal opponent that has converted suicide terrorism into a affordable war of attrition that trades suicidal robots — Iron Dome’s Tamir interceptor missiles plus traditional guided missiles from Jets or unmanned drones — for sucidal Hamas rocket crews and the civilian “human shield” infrastructure that hides them at a cost-trade off beneficial to the advanced western economy supported Westphalian Nation-State.
Dividing by zero in war — zero Israeli deaths and very few rocket injuries for huge Palestinian losses — is just as impossible to do in reality as it is in mathmatics.
See this link:
http://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/ABM/ABM_Economics.htm
Or simply read the text clipped below to understand why I think Israel has “Flipped the Script” of the “Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism” on its head. —
Archive: An Acute Shortage of Care
(It’s been a rough and work-filled weekend from me, as regards providing good bloggy ice cream. I am wrapping up a couple of finished projects for Watercress clients, prepping for three more – from repeat clients no less, so they are entitled to an extra ration of care) and hand-holding a poet, coming down to getting her first book launched. I tell you, I am in two minds about publishing poets after this; a temperamental and high-maintenance variety of author … anyway, this rant dates from 2006, and was one of my more biting ones, written at the time of the last Israeli-Palestine conflict, or possibly the one before that. Yeah, I took sides. This explains how and why that came about.)
So, one of NPR’s news shows had another story, banging on (yet again) about the plight of the poor, pitiful, persecuted Palestinians, now that the money tap looks to be severely constricted; no money, no jobs, no mama no papa no Uncle Sam, yadda, yadda yadda. (It’s sort of like an insistent parent insisting that a stubborn child eat a helping of fried liver and onions, with a lovely side helping of filboid studge. You will feel sorry for these people, the international press, a certain segment of the intellectual and political elite insist— you must! You simply must! It’s good for you!) I briefly felt a pang, but upon brief consideration, I wrote it off to the effect of the green salsa on a breakfast taco from a divey little place along the Austin Highway. (Lovely tacos, by the way, and the green salsa is nuclear fission in a plastic cup. Name of Divey Little Place available upon request, but really, you can’t miss it. It’s painted two shades of orange, with navy blue trim.)
It may have been a pang of regret, barely perceptible, for the nice, sympathetic person I used to be. I used to feel sorry for the Palestinians, in a distant sort of way, the same way I feel about the Tibetans, and the Armenians, and the Kurds, and the Chechens (well, once upon a time, say before the Beslan school atrocity) and the poor starving Biafrans and Somalis, and whoever the international press was holding the current pity party for. Really, I used to be a nice person. I really did feel kindly, and well-disposed to those parties, and I wished them well, since all of them (and more) being victims of historical misfortune.
Is Israel winning the Global War on Terror for us ?
Hamas has attacked Israel, first with the kidnapping of three teenagers, now with rockets aimed, for example, at Tel Aviv and its airport.
GAZA: Islamist Hamas’ armed wing has warned airlines that it intends to target Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport with its rockets from Gaza and has told them not to fly there, a statement by the group said Friday.
So far, Israel’s Iron Dome antimissile system has been successful in intercepting those that are a risk to populated places.
Israel’s astonishingly effective Iron Dome air defense has prevented Hamas from killing Israeli Jews and spreading terror in the civilian population. Ironically, though, the better Iron Dome works, the less sympathy the rest of the world has for a nation that remains under rocket attack.
That sentiment is to be expected as even the Presbyterian Church is anti-Israel.
David Goldman, who has been writing as “Spengler” for years, reports on the situation in Israel.
the thumbnail version is that Hamas is making a demonstration out of weakness. Money is tight, 44,000 Gaza civil servants haven’t been paid for weeks, and the IDF did significant damage to its infrastructure on the West Bank after the kidnapping-murder of the three yeshiva boys. Netanyahu will look indecisive and confused, because he has to deal with an openly hostile U.S. administration on one side and his nationalist camp on the other. Time, though, is on Israel’s side: economically, demographically, strategically. The proportion of Jewish births continues to soar. The fruits of a decade of venture capital investing are ripening into high-valuation companies. And the Arab world is disintegrating all around Israel’s borders.
Israel has been in mortal danger for 50 years. They have survived and thrived. The Arab countries are collapsing into chaos. Iran is still a threat but its demographic future is grim.
There will be no Intifada on the West Bank: the Palestinian Arabs are older, more resigned and less inclined to destroy their livelihoods than in 2000. Syria and Iraq continue to disintegrate, Lebanon is inundated with Syrian Sunni refugees (weakening Hezbollah’s relative position), and Jordan is looking to Israel to protect it against ISIS. Egypt is busy trying to survive economically.
Israel is becoming a huge economic success under Netanyahu. Just think of our future had we elected his friend, Mitt Romney.
Obama promised a “pivot to Asia” but Israel may in fact be the one doing the pivot, leaving us in the dreary Socialist past.
Richard Fernandez notes that in the view of the world press and elites being rich makes you “white.” Everybody knows that white people, even if they are Asian like John Derbyshire’s Eurasian children, are the root of all evil.