The situation in Sderot as it looks to Seth Freedman. Quite precise.
Then he comes to the whattodo part:
Evacuating them to safety, whatever the cost, is the least they deserve until the dust settles.
Then what? Evacuating Ashkelon? Ashdod? A reminder:
“We have decided to make Sderot a ghost town,” said a spokesman for Hamas who gave his name as Abu Ubeideh. “We are not going to stop launching our rockets until they leave.”
Granted, the thrust of the article – the government doesn’t do enough – is correct. But doing Hamas’ bidding instead of finding a way to stop the barrages will be a clear victory to the terrorism.
Anyhow, this is not my main point. Let’s go back to the beginning of Seth’s piece:
Imagine a London where a sword of Damocles hangs over every street and every building. A London where the day is punctuated by missiles raining down indiscriminately on schools, homes, parks and gardens. A London where the difference between crossing the road or not could be the difference between having your face ripped to shreds by shrapnel from incoming rockets falling from the sky.
So here comes my point: imagine this, dear Londoners and, being as enlightened as you are by years of progressive thought, anti-war demos, sterling knowledge of right and wrong and, let’s not delude ourselves, many years of fat and trouble-free life – tell me what you would have done in our place?
Because Seth isn’t saying.
Cross-posted on SimplyJews.
Are you kidding? I live in Detroit. If we had rockets coming across the river from Canada every day we’d long since have turned southwestern Ontario into a parking lot.
But as Eric Hoffer pointed out long ago, of all the peoples of the world only the Jews are expected to act like Christians.
Actually I have no trouble imagining such a London. It is called the Battle of Britain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain
SH: You beat me to it – Battle of Britain and the London Blitz. And later, the V1 and V2 bombardments, with absolutely no warning when a V2 was about to hit. I guess the knowledge of British history by UK reporters is no better than the knowledge of US history is in American newsrooms.
While a lot of children and some critical facilities were moved north to get them out of range, a general evacuation was never an option. Then in England, or now in Israel.
Sabba Hillel, you also beat me to it. Moreover, I was raised on such stories of London because my parents grew up there during the war.
However, the difference between S’derot and Ashkelon and WW2 London is that the Brits were not being told by their government that nothing would be done for their defense. London had barrage balloons, AA guns, radar-aimed missiles and guns, fortified shelters, fortified schools plus the Underground for civil defense. S’derot and Ashkelon have nothing and have been told that they will get nothing.
I only hope that the Olmert government topples before its incompetence succeeds in toppling Israel.
chsw
In addition to the defensive measures (which were useful against aircraft and V-1s but useless for V-2s), the British government was also working to:
1)deny the Germans territory which could be used for launches
2)conduct tactical air strikes against the launch facilities, even though these were located in friendly-but-occupied-Holland
3)conduct massive air attacks on German cities–these were accurately described by one Luftwaffe general as “annihilation raids.”
“3)conduct massive air attacks on German cities–these were accurately described by one Luftwaffe general as “annihilation raids.—
Which did EXACTLY what they were supposed to do. Make sure that the citizens of that country KNEW they were beaten and acted as such when we finally rolled through and won.
If only war hadn’t become “civilized” I’m sure that the war in Iraq would be OVER now.
Instead of a few air strikes, and YEARS of “insurgents”, we should have just carpet bombed EVERY SINGLE major city into dust.
Then when we declared the war over the survivors would ACT like the wat was over. And if not, well pull back and start BOMBING again. The same thing happened several times in WWII. A resistance would spring up, we’d pull out, slap down a bit of “fire for effect” and roll back in.
It’s strange how TOTAL OVERWHELMING force will stop insurgents.
And I’m sure the daily footage of smoldering Iraq cities would make the REST of the problem countries over there think twice about trying something stupid in the near future.
But oh well, the lives of “innocent” civilians helping the enemy kill, are more important than our OWN innocents…
I say we take a page out of their Koran, the part that states there ARE no innocents in war.