
 |
|
July 2, 2009
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The hallmark of a person
Abe Novick: Up, up, and aliya
July 1, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: The Road Taken
The Kosher Gourmet
by Marialisa Calta: Get into the holiday spirit with these Star-Spangled desserts
June 30, 2009
Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg: What makes a great parent?
Caroline B. Glick: Ideologue-in-Chief
June 29, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Beware of 'Caveat Emptor'
Steven Emerson: ACLU pushing for more money for Hamas
June 26, 2009
Rabbi Yoni Posnick: Learn the secret to a healthy marriage from a scriptural villain
Caroline B. Glick: Barack Obama vs. International Law
June 25, 2009
Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf: The Absurd Power of Truth
Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip:
Everything's Relative
June 24, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Advancement of technology is a wake-up call for humanity
The Kosher Gourmet by Andrea Weigl: Summer on a stick: Making frozen treats can be easy, creative and fun
June 23, 2009
Martin M. Bodek: 'On Surnames': And so, We Begin
Caroline B. Glick: The Obama Effect
June 22, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Working for a corrupt firm
N. Richard Greenfield : Where are American Jews?
June 19, 2009
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Emotion v. intellect
Caroline B. Glick: Israel's rare opportunity
June 18, 2009
Jonathan Rosenblum: Sometimes it is more essential to define the nature of evil than good
Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip:
Everything's Relative
June 17, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Language of Confusion
The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Nothing pleases Dad more than a thick, juicy onion-smothered steak. Add home-Baked Potato Chips and …
June 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Career v. Careersism
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's losing streak and Israel
Richard Z. Chesnoff: Palestinians: Never Missing an Opportunity …
June 15, 2009
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: How Judea and Samaria can become 'Palestine'
Daniel Pipes: Where Netanyahu's speech failed
June 12, 2009
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Some big thoughts about not acting so big
Caroline B. Glick:
Obama's High Commissioner
June 11, 2009
Victor Davis Hanson: Our historically challenged President
Mitch Albom: Beware the True Believers
Lewis Grossberger: What we learn from the new Hitler photos
June 10, 2009
Mort Zuckerman: What Obama and his advisors won't -- or refuse to -- grasp about Israel and the Muslim world
The Kosher Gourmet
by Steve Petusevsky Lotsa pasta: Tips, techniques and (amazing) taste
June 9, 2009
Anne Bayefsky: Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: America's first Muslim president?
June 8, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Merchant must take responsibility for careless shopper?
Mark Steyn: A superpower that feeds on mediocrity cannot survive for long on leftovers from the past
Richard Z. Chesnoff: How do you say 'kumbaya' in Arabic?
June 5, 2009
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: In quest of spirituality
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's Arabian dreams
Charles Krauthammer: The Settlements Myth
June 4, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The War Comes to Little Rock
The Kosher Gourmet
by Judy Hevrdejs: Splash it on! Tap your inner jazz musician and improvise when stirring up a vinaigrette
June 3, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Should terrible teacher be exposed?
Jonathan Rosenblum: The Israel Lobby: Missing in Action
June 2, 2009
Dennis Prager: The Speech President Obama Won't Dare Give in Egypt
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Pressure on Israel raises war risk
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)
|
| |
Jewish World Review
January 7, 2009
/ 11 Teves 5769
Eyeless in Gaza, or: Waiting for the smoke to clear
By
Paul Greenberg
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Who's winning, who's losing in the latest unpleasantness in the Mideast?
It's not always easy to tell, for all sides seem to occupy alternate universes in which war is peace, terror is resistance, and nothing is more malleable than the facts, for all concerned seem to have not only their own facts but their own vocabulary.
For now any peace or facsimile thereof in Gaza and Israeli environs will have to wait till the fog of war clears, and even then such a truce may prove only a lull before the next war. That's the Middle East, as they say with good reason. For in that part of the world, history seems largely indistinguishable from a tragedy that may have intermissions but never an end.
And so the suffering goes on. The big losers are the innocent civilian populations on both sides, held hostage by the uncertain forces of war:
Border cities in southern Israel, especially battered Sderot, have been subjected to a rain of rockets over the years since the Israelis pulled out of Gaza, hoping for peace and getting war instead. Just as those Israelis who once lived there warned as they were being dragged out of their homes by their own army.
As for Gaza's teeming, hemmed-in population, its suffering is a constant. Only the intensity of it seems to vary over the years from the toll that endemic poverty takes in the "good" times to the hundreds of violent deaths bound to result when Hamas deploys its rockets deep in the shadowy alleyways of the casbah that is Gaza. Result: apartment buildings, mosques, and even hospitals become targets. And the whole, thickly populated anthill called Gaza (population 1.5 million, squeezed into 140 square miles) goes from a staging ground for war to a battlefield.
"War is hell," said an American general named Sherman, "and you cannot refine it." His name is still cursed in these parts yet, as he told Atlanta's local officials as the city burned, "those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out." For it was not he who began that war, as he was quick to point out a minor detail that those who suffered from his bringing the war home tended to overlook. Now another army drives to the sea, another city burns, and war remains hell.
Like all other wars, this fresh hell must eventually move into the diplomatic arena to be settled. Developments there, or the lack thereof, will be the surest reflection of the balance of forces on the ground. Till then, international demands for a cease-fire will vary in inverse proportion to the progress of Israeli arms. It's an historic pattern in the Mideast, and there is no reason to think it will change now.
Only when its clear that Israel isn't facing defeat will its adversaries agree to a truce. It happened in the Six Day War of 1967, the Yom Kipper War of 1973, and again in Lebanon only a couple of years ago. Only after Hezbollah's section of Beirut was reduced to rubble, and that country's population became hostage to both sides, did the fighting conclude indecisively.
Now the United Nations and the world's diplomats scurry about attempting to patch a peace together in Gaza. There were no meetings of the UN's Security Council, no hurried missions to the Middle East by the French president, no effective diplomacy at all so long as Hamas' rockets were falling on Israeli towns. Only when the Israelis decided, after issuing repeated warnings, that if there was to be no peace in Ashkelon, there would be none in Gaza, either, did the UN spring into action.
The surest indication that Israeli forces have managed to suppress or at least significantly degrade Hamas' capacity to wage war will come if a cease-fire is hammered out one that constrains Hamas, too, and not just the Israelis. A cease-fire that would be enforced by UN forces, perhaps a makeshift international force, or even Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian faction on the West Bank, where an uneasy peace still reigns and a two-state solution slowly, painfully slowly, begins to emerge.
'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished a real, enforceable cease-fire rather than a unilateral one, but it's not likely till Israeli forces have achieved their aims, or seem on the verge of doing so. At that point, if the historical pattern holds, and surely it will, those who have been holding out for a truce that would apply only to one side might agree to make it bilateral. But not till then. Till then? Suffer, little children.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.
Paul Greenberg Archives
© 2006 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
|
|

Mitch Albom
Michael Barone
Dave Barry
Tony Blankley
Andy Borowitz
David Broder
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Rod Dreher
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
John Fund
Frank J. Gaffney
Lloyd Garver
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Lewis Grossberger
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Laura Ingraham
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Jonathan Last
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Dick Morris
Bill O'Reilly
Jim Mullen
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Jonathan Rauch
Celia Rivenbark
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Culture Shlock
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
Gary Brookins
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holber
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Ranan R. Lurie
Jimmy Margulies
Rick McKee
Michael Ramirez
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters

How 2
Lori Borgman
The Savvy Consumer
Elder matters
Fixit
Dr. Peter Gott
Marybeth Hicks
GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
Richard Lederer
Tech Maven
Every Monday Matters
Nutrition Myths
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
How Stuff Works
|