30-Oct-15 World View -- Israeli Arab citizens and politicians choose sides on incitement issue

[John]

> Masses of people trying to charge through machine gun fire does
> not work out for the masses. A hole in the wall would soon be
> plugged by dead bodies.

And yet, those tens of thousands of American soldiers did eventually
make it past the machine guns on Normandy Beach, didn't they.

[vincecate]

> Masses of people trying to charge through machine gun fire does
> not work out for the masses. A hole in the wall would soon be
> plugged by dead bodies.

And yet, those tens of thousands of American soldiers did eventually
make it past the machine guns on Normandy Beach, didn't they.

If nobody was shooting back at the machine guns the Americans would not have made it past them. There were ships firing at machine guns, guys parachuted behind, guys climbing up to them and attacking, etc.

[Guest]

A war against the Palestinians will not occur in a vacuum. Other Muslim states/groups will intervene. I honestly don't see how a tiny country like Israel could survive. And afterward, where could surviving Jews flee? Europe? No. America? I hope they like tacos. Asia? Forget it.

[vincecate]

A war against the Palestinians will not occur in a vacuum. Other Muslim states/groups will intervene. I honestly don't see how a tiny country like Israel could survive. And afterward, where could surviving Jews flee? Europe? No. America? I hope they like tacos. Asia? Forget it.

Tiny Israel has been at war with huge numbers of Arabs many times in the past. Each time they have done amazingly well. Search Israel and war on google or youtube. The whole country has been trained to fight and is activated in time of war. They are fighting for the survival of their families and friends.

It is as if the Arabs are fighting with lots of hate and a prayer and the Israelis are fighting with full understanding of the technology and best tactics. Also, the Arabs lie to each other and don't trust each other, so they are not fighting as one big army. Israel sort of does a defensive action on several different Arabs while it destroys one, then moves on to the next.

The Israeli technological edge is now greater than it has ever been before. Their tanks are the only ones that currently stop anti-tank missiles. Their cities are the only ones that have anti-missile and anti-aircraft systems deployed. They are the only ones that have plenty of bomb shelters and regularly practice going into them. They are world leaders in drones. And they still train everyone to fight.

Most of the Arab countries are really dictatorships where they can't let the general population have guns or the government might get attacked. So the general population is unarmed. An Arab army is as much to protect the dictator from the population as it is to fight foreign wars. The leadership positions in the military are filled by loyalty to the dictator more than by who is the best commander.

The Arab world is more messed up than it has been in a long time. Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, are a mess. These are In no condition to go to war with Israel. There are a few ISIS fighters in the Sinai and Egypt has its hands full.

Many Arabs attribute almost mystical powers to the Jews. Like many really believe that Jews are controlling the world. So when they fight against them they are easily discouraged.

In past wars the Arabs would count up how many jets and tanks they had and how many jets and tanks the Israelis had and figure that since they had many more they would win. This assumed that they could fight as well as the Israelis, but that has never been the case.

It looks to me like another Arab-Israeli war at this time would be even easier for Israel than the past ones.

And remember, Israel has nukes. So if it ever actually looked like the Arabs were going to win, then they would lose for sure.

[Guest]

I disagree.

The Israelis were defeated in Lebanon in 2006.

Technology, including WMD, is becoming easier to attain.

And, in the past, Israel had America and (for the most part) western Europe to back it up. Today America and Western Europe are being overrun by illegals. Europe is swarming with Muslim immigrants. The West is bankrupt. What assistance will they provide Israel? You are still using the old play books.

What if, as John writes, 400,000 Palestinian males start attacking Jews in Israel? What's Israel going to do? Use poison gas? How would that play out?

What if Pakistan's ISI supplies a mini-nuke to a rouge group,and they use it on Tel aviv?

You are dead wrong, vince.

[vincecate]

I disagree.

The Israelis were defeated in Lebanon in 2006.

Technology, including WMD, is becoming easier to attain.

And, in the past, Israel had America and (for the most part) western Europe to back it up. Today America and Western Europe are being overrun by illegals. Europe is swarming with Muslim immigrants. The West is bankrupt. What assistance will they provide Israel? You are still using the old play books.

What if, as John writes, 400,000 Palestinian males start attacking Jews in Israel? What's Israel going to do? Use poison gas? How would that play out?

What if Pakistan's ISI supplies a mini-nuke to a rouge group,and they use it on Tel aviv?

You are dead wrong, vince.

Yes, a nuke from Pakistan would turn it into a crisis war very fast. No longer "mowing the lawn" at that point. But I don't think that would even break the spirit of the Israelis or really change the military conflict, just far more Israeli civilian deaths. It would also make it far more likely that Israel started using their nukes. Israel would probably fight much more violently with less concern about collateral damage after such an attack.

The one danger for the Israelis is getting over confident. So having a hard time in 2006 may remove their one weakness really. They took anti-tank missiles seriously after that and developed a good system so their tanks can destroy incoming anti-tank missiles. Russian made tanks in Syria are getting destroyed by anti-tank missiles to this day, but Israeli tanks would not be so easily destroyed in a war. Even the USA seems 2 years away from deploying such a system and Israel has had their system deployed for several years.

In videos you can see how fast guns come out when a Palestinian with a knife shows up. If they blew a hole in the wall and started climbing through, there would be a bunch of Israelis shooting anyone climbing through very quickly. The hole would plug with dead bodies. Anyway, I just don't see a a mob of Arabs with knifes really getting far against Israelis.

If we imagine ISIS bringing 200,000 guns into Gaza before the Israelis hear about it (Israelis pay well for information like this and would probably hear very early on) and give these to angry young male Gazans then there would be some risk to Israelis. But they would not be a well trained army, not even much practice aiming a gun let alone more advanced training. An untrained mob with small arms against tanks with machine guns is still very lopsided. If they can make it into the Israeli urban areas there would be some bloodly house to house fighting. But unarmed Israelis would flee fast and the army would get there fast. Israeli drones would probably see this coming far enough ahead of time that the army was waiting for them. Gaza has been firing rockets at Israel for a long time, so not many Israelis live close to it. Lots of farms around it. So they have to cross some ground to get to where there are Israelis to kill. There is probably enough army already around there to pin down an untrained mob till more army arrives. So the damage may not be as much as you would guess.

Yes, the West is probably bankrupt. But the price of oil is so low that the Arabs may be cracking first. Israel is old enough now that it probably can stand on its own without assistance. Israel makes lots of money selling weapons and so their fortunes seem to be picking up as the world rearms.

Clearly the details of the next war will be very different, but there are enough important things that are really about the same that I think it is safe to predict the same outcome as past Arab-Israeli wars.

Interesting times.

[vincecate]

Here is a very interesting article looking at results from lots of polling of Palestinians over the years. It really helps you understand how the Palestinians view things.

http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2015/11 ... ians-want/

[psCargile]

How would you take on Israel, Vincecate? What weakness would you exploit?

If my aim was to destroy the State to reclaim the land, I'd tie up the IDF in numerous distraction battles and deploy assassination teams to attack the government leadership.

[vincecate]

How would you take on Israel, Vincecate? What weakness would you exploit?

If my aim was to destroy the State to reclaim the land, I'd tie up the IDF in numerous distraction battles and deploy assassination teams to attack the government leadership.

I don't think that would work. There are many other good leaders, so killing off many would not change things. And it would harden the population and leadership. After the first couple the rest would be very hard to get to.

I think the only real Israeli weakness to exploit, or strength of the Arabs, is in population growth rates. The Arabs inside Israel could make enough more babies that at some future point they could just outvote the Israelis. However, the longer the Arabs inside Israel are apart from those in Gaza the more they seem like Israelis and the less like the Gazans. So I am not even sure this would work. If Israel becomes 40 or 50% Arab and the Gazans are still firing rockets and half the time hitting Arab-Israelis they might not like the Gazans any more than Jewish Israelis. Already Arab-Israelis adjacent to the West Bank would not want to join the West Bank if it became a separate country. The Arab Israelis seems to have it rather good compared to Arabs anywhere else and over a long enough time they may realize this. Also, although Jewish Israeli birthrates are lower, there are still many Jews coming from other places in the world to Israel. So winning out in demographics is not as easy as it might seem at first blush.

There were a bunch of Palestinians that went into Syria in 1967. The Palestinians in the West Bank did not seem to care when ISIS was killing them. So it does not look like the loyalty between Palestinians is anything like the loyalty between Jews. The Jews would have gone to great lengths to rescue some Jews 50 miles away being killed by ISIS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZbvUWhz6kI