by vincecate » Sun Jul 13, 2014 9:28 pm
John wrote:There were two categories of objections: Biblical prophecy, and history. I'll address both of them below.
There was a 3rd category of objection. There is a lot more to war than just having more civilians, or even soldiers. The technology, the training, the defensive systems (Iron Dome, bomb shelters) etc really make it so that man-for-man the Israelis will do more killing and less dying. Drones with anti-tank missiles and the Iron Dome that should stop incoming tanks and airplanes making it really hard for the Arabs to hurt Israel. You can see this in the numbers for the current fighting. Last I read, Israel had not lost a man yet. So we can't calculate a Arab deaths/Israeli deaths ratio in this fight so far, since we would get a divide by zero error. But the ratio is probably more than 20 Arabs killed for every Israeli killed, higher than the ratio of total nearby Arabs to Israelis.
All of this does not even look at the Nucear option. Here is some info on the 1973 war:
"That night Meir authorized the assembly of thirteen 20-kiloton-of-TNT (84 TJ) tactical atomic weapons for Jericho missiles at Sdot Micha Airbase, and F-4 aircraft at Tel Nof Airbase, for use against Syrian and Egyptian targets.[274] They would be used if absolutely necessary to prevent total defeat, but the preparation was done in an easily detectable way, likely as a signal to the United States.[276] Kissinger learned of the nuclear alert on the morning of October 9. That day, President Nixon ordered the commencement of Operation Nickel Grass, an American airlift to replace all of Israel's material losses."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War
In the 41 years since then Israel has made more and larger bombs.
Also, Egypt does not like Hamas and won't even look the other way so they can bring stuff in by tunnel. They are not close to joining in their fight.
[quote="John"]There were two categories of objections: Biblical prophecy, and history. I'll address both of them below. [/quote]
There was a 3rd category of objection. There is a lot more to war than just having more civilians, or even soldiers. The technology, the training, the defensive systems (Iron Dome, bomb shelters) etc really make it so that man-for-man the Israelis will do more killing and less dying. Drones with anti-tank missiles and the Iron Dome that should stop incoming tanks and airplanes making it really hard for the Arabs to hurt Israel. You can see this in the numbers for the current fighting. Last I read, Israel had not lost a man yet. So we can't calculate a Arab deaths/Israeli deaths ratio in this fight so far, since we would get a divide by zero error. But the ratio is probably more than 20 Arabs killed for every Israeli killed, higher than the ratio of total nearby Arabs to Israelis.
All of this does not even look at the Nucear option. Here is some info on the 1973 war:
"That night Meir authorized the assembly of thirteen 20-kiloton-of-TNT (84 TJ) tactical atomic weapons for Jericho missiles at Sdot Micha Airbase, and F-4 aircraft at Tel Nof Airbase, for use against Syrian and Egyptian targets.[274] They would be used if absolutely necessary to prevent total defeat, but the preparation was done in an easily detectable way, likely as a signal to the United States.[276] Kissinger learned of the nuclear alert on the morning of October 9. That day, President Nixon ordered the commencement of Operation Nickel Grass, an American airlift to replace all of Israel's material losses."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War
In the 41 years since then Israel has made more and larger bombs.
Also, Egypt does not like Hamas and won't even look the other way so they can bring stuff in by tunnel. They are not close to joining in their fight.