the fighting

a quick review:

the last few days have seen israeli finally stepping up and taking action against the bastards who have been rocketing us non-stop for the longest time.

a) israel is the underdog
just because we're stronger militarily, we don't have nice easy targets. that's a vast strategic advantage that all terrorists enjoy.

we're also the frontline for all of western civilization, and we can't use our force effectively because we're adhering to these wonderful moral standards of ours - something the arab world doesn't have to worry about. what needs to be done in order to stop all the fighting is to conduct the action as a real war, in violation of the geneva conventions^*, and use cruelty and violence in order to frighten our enemy into submission. contrary to the popular israeli fantasy, the palestinians are not our "partners for peace".

b) the media is a cause
the news networks have been giving facetime to palestinians and their supporters regardless of how much crap they talk. these people hold no compunction about lying on the telly, and as long as nobody is calling bullshit people will assume that their propaganda is legitimate. due to the fact that people are, by nature, fairly stupid - the networks cannot claim to be allowing us to "figure it out for ourselves".

this is only one of the ways that the media is prolonguing the "story". the other is by having "journalists" ask questions that reduce the effectiveness of our tactics. my favourite: asking an israeli if the tanks are there because they have a psychological effect.
the second you answer that question in the affirmative, you're reducing the psychological effect.

c) getting real
i'm really glad that people are beginning to pay attention to the paliwood^** tactics: fake photographs and wonderful acting should not be so easily swallowed by the press.

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i'm very glad that i managed to get on the plane before my unit decided that nobody's allowed out of the country at the moment.

^*the geneva conventions limit fighting in such a way as to reduce the stronger force's ability to win decisively. ingenius.

^**"paliwood" is a term that surprised me this last weekend