Stop giving. Stop trying to control the outcome by throwing money and guns at people. You are not helping Israel. You are not helping the Palestinians. You are deluding yourself and throwing Palestinians into the arms of Hamas. Just stop. Stop!”"

If they choose to be ‘thrown into the arms of Hamas’, well, that’s their choice, but they’re making a giant mistake.

They should accept the Fatah overlords until independence. They’re not pretty, but they make the trains run on time.

Stop giving. Stop trying to control the outcome by throwing money and guns at people. You are not helping Israel. You are not helping the Palestinians. You are deluding yourself and throwing Palestinians into the arms of Hamas. Just stop. Stop!

Though I don’t see anything in there that contradicts my knowledge at all.

Really, the only area the author of that article and I disagree on is in our conclusions; I think that while Fatah’s corruption is still ridiculous, it’s abated *somewhat* since Arafat’s death, and more importantly, a corrupt, authoritarian, secular regime is still the best hope for an independent Palestinian state.

The best strategy, by far, is “Win the state, then once you have the state, take on Fatah corruption”.

These rockets are advertised to be small and not much of a nuisance, but each one carries about 15 times more explosives than a hand grenade.

Harmless toys, Will?

Anyway, it seems the Israelis worked him over pretty well about Iran, including a speech by the all but elected Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Yon has been extensively covering Iraq and Afghanistan from an embedded freelance reporter perspective, so he knows very well who the Iranians are and what the Iranian ambitions are. It seems he’s now understanding the threat beyond Iran’s immediate neighbors.

It strikes me again, and again, and again how people outside of Israel, a military person in this case, just look at the Jews incredulously for taking this bullshit for so many years.

It seems completely logical to every human being on the planet that when someone goes to war with you, you fight until you either kill them or their ambition to fight. Israel is the only country expected to never defeat its enemies, to fight them just so much as to hold them back for a week or a month or a year, and not more. And then to give up everything it achieved in the war during diplomacy.