270 Comments
Oct 11, 2023·edited Oct 11, 2023

Post Oslo the Palestinians have shown themselves to be in need of a entirely new society. No more half-measures. Nanjing level atrocities require Meetinghouse responses. They can pick through the rubble and select new leadership after they've enjoyed the harvest they have sown.

Expand full comment

Was confused about "Meetinghouse", thinking it some kind of LDS pacifist thing. My bad. Doolittle, Arnold, LeMay. Got it.

Expand full comment

I'm thinking Sherman

Expand full comment

Dropping incendiaries from aircraft is more efficient but like your idea of some old school mounted cavalry torching everything. Lt. Col. Kilgore would approve.

Expand full comment

I concur But that would only draw in more problems and hate.

The end of Sherman's march sowed hate that exist to this day in the state it happened.

Until Bush Jr That state voted democrat SOP. the party of race and division.

Expand full comment

^ Probably so, Bear. This is like that Nuclear Doomsday Clock that has been hovering around "3 minutes until midnight" since I was a kid in the 1950's. The level of problems and hatred by these troublesome people has been pegged at 3 minutes until midnight for so long that provoking a Shermanesque uptick of a minute or two now would hardly be discernible on that 24 hour clock scale. There's no final solution to this problem IMO other than to displace them as humanely as possible to a far distance where they'd be S.E.P. (Somebody Else's Problem). Displace them to a distance far enough away that you'd have sufficient early warning about Toyota Tacticals, terrorists on foot, rockets and para-gliders coming in to do mayhem. Having them as next door neighbors within walking range is no longer a sane option. That'd be COA-C and to implement that might mean turning up the heat to urge them to leave. The Israeli's are dealing with an intractable enemy which is going to require an Operation Downfall in Gaza, which is preferable (or at least more palatable) to a pair of nukes. The Palestinians had a hand in writing the ROE for this. Let them live with it. When babies are beheaded, women raped, POW's murdered and Mopsy, the Greenberg's beloved Corgi, is sodomized it's time to take the gloves off.

Expand full comment

There it is.

We need to let the Israeli's deal with this their own way.

That will finish Gaza.

Expand full comment

Pushing all the Gazans out of Gaza would require Sherman's March to the Sea. Gonna be messy, but it's necessary. Gazans need to know that they and Hamas have been defeated. We stopped having problems with Germany and Japan because they knew they had been beat.

Expand full comment

Hamas don't surf!

Expand full comment

No gaza mother will name their child “Moshe” for a century.

Expand full comment

So effective, they still talk about 'im to this day.

Also, I really like the guy.

Expand full comment

He's a collateral relative on my Ma's side.

Expand full comment

That only knocked the democrats out of the war and ended slavery, it did not stop the violence, lynching's, Jim Crow and race problems that exist to this day.

Republicans are now on the back foot and the democrats have started another race war.

Expand full comment

Who was it who said the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity?

Expand full comment

Abba Eban, 1973;

"The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."

Expand full comment

Yep, I was looking but you found it first!

Expand full comment

New leadership that can't defeat the outsiders (Iran etal), who want proximity to Israel, will survive. It is hopeless unless it is organic. If it were to be organic, it would have already been manifest. No Palestinian leadership can stand up to Iran, so until Iran is defeated, the problem will persist.

Expand full comment

Maybe the new leadership will get funding from another source and be able to abandon their previous sponsor.

Expand full comment

Forgive me. That should have been, "New leadership that can't defeat the outsiders (Iran etal), who want proximity to Israel, will NOT survive."

Expand full comment

Oslo started out with the Pals being offered everything they demanded...and they rejected it.

Give them Bir Tawil, take it or leave it. Declare them hostis humani generis, until they show they are not. A homeland for them, to make their paradise from.

Expand full comment

Plenty of open space in the Sinai for them, right? Send these Egyptians back to Egypt. Egypt has no love for Gazans, will deal with them more harshly than Israel has most of the time over the decades, and will get away with it.

Expand full comment

I would tend to go for COA-C, with this possible modification. The exile of Gazans is done after Gaza is leveled. It must be imprinted on the survivors’ psyche, otherwise they might begin to think that, with a bit more planning and barbarism, they could win next time.

Expand full comment

think Germans fleeing East Prussia in 45, with carts filled with belongings?

Expand full comment

I say no belongings, just the clothes on there backs. Or orange jumpsuits for everyone

Expand full comment

What about no survivors this go around?

Expand full comment

An option supported by God Himself, when the Hebrews settled the land known as Canaan. "We're obeying the orders of a Higher Power, literally".

Expand full comment

Hmmm, Let's see, No they could never get away with it, too much like the holocaust.

Expand full comment

More like Palestinians in the US starting their own Gaza here and bombarding, attacking and cutting off baby heads in (_________) insert state that they take over.

We will never be to the end of Islam.

Expand full comment

I don’t think that worked in Germany in 1919

Expand full comment

They didn’t demolish Germany at end of WW1. They did in WW2, and almost 80 years later the Germans are still feeling the pain.

Expand full comment

Line the Rachel Corriizers up axle to axle on the border. Push west. They want the sea? Make them a reef.

Expand full comment

I want to say that was loaded with brevity but say Short & Sweet instead. COA-C is my vote. .

Expand full comment

The usual suspects of the International Community are already popping up with call for a cease fire. Israel is a "win fast or lose" force, the call up of the reserves and declaration of war is a testament to that as it cripples the nation economically while in effect.

I'll cliff dive off the "how did this happen" discussion. Hypothesis:

The IDF isn't anything like what we (and the Israelis) remember. As our U.S. citizen military has degraded in quantity and quality as our social fabric unravels, perhaps the IDF has degraded as well. The simultaneous breaching of the wall in so many places and the lack of any response for five plus hours is indicative of a failure in command structure (everyone's on leave on the fifty year anniversary of Yom Kippur) or incompetence (can't rule out both, so I won't). Call it Occam's razor, perhaps this Hamas hostage grab experienced "catastrophic success" with the lack of response, which allowed the true nature of the scorpion in the fable to come out, and a cascading series of horrific killings and rapes resulted. Any other explanations for how this happened have an awful lot of unexplainable anomalies for them to happen. But those are already being debunked as conspiracy theories, so we don't need to waste any time on them...(-;

Expand full comment

Kind of like we left a consulate absolutely vulnerable in a Muslim country on the anniversary of 9-11 to be overrun for hours with no assistance? These are anniversary people. Everyone knows that. A real headscratcher.

Expand full comment
Oct 12, 2023·edited Oct 12, 2023

Jesus the US went to a higher DEFCON during the Yom Kippur war of 1973.

But The US, Israel and the world keeps forgetting. I know my unit got air alert warnings. Last seven months of my enlistment and someone wanted to start WWIII.................Again.

Expand full comment

Israel looked at its field of fucks, none found.

Expand full comment

Do they keep their fucks where I keep my mercy?

Expand full comment

Copy that. Likewise, as mine, none found.

Expand full comment

Ceterum autem censeo Gazam esse delendam.

#AKNC

Expand full comment

Some IDF bases were attacked will soldiers killed in their offices. That suggests that, aside from the failure of the electronic sensor system, that the base security practices were faulty and resulted in delayed IDF responses down the line.

Expand full comment

There were reports early on that soldiers were killed in their barracks, don't know if it's true. Some mention has been made that Hamas targeted some sort of tower mounted sensor network, but no details.

Expand full comment

They had five days to run wild before the bleeding hearts screamed, cried and whined them to a stop.

They need to do a Biden and ignore everyone while doing their job.

Expand full comment

Apparently there is at least warnings in the North to SIP for 72 hours. I believe this might change the planning/ability for option C.

Expand full comment

The best option by far is option COA-C CARTHAGE. Here is why: Muslims tend to equate survival with victory, and any lesser action will be seen as a sign of weakness. Having said that:

Some of your base assumptions are too optimistic.

1. US support is not likely to last longer than 90 days, if that. Almost all democrats, progressives, leftists and all American Muslims are pro Hamas and do not consider Israel a legitimate state.

2. I fully expect Palestinians in the West Bank and Hezbollah to join the fighting on behalf of Hamas.

3. Other Arabs regard Palestinians as expendable cannon fodder. No Arab country will open their borders voluntarily. At best, Palestinians would have to be loaded on Western ships and taken to a country without a functioning government (Somalia? South Sudan?)

Having said that, if Israel can seize the border area with Egypt, clear out the Gazans in that immediate area, then clamp a total land, air and sea blockade for the next 60 days, that should work well enough, coupled with round-the-clock bombardment. Rather than risk street to street fighting with millions of combatants a la Stalingrad, better by far to let General Hunger and General Pestilence lead the attack. Israel, after all, has nothing to lose. Tge Palestinians and their allies/supporters cannot hatexthem any more than they already do.

Expand full comment

"3. Other Arabs regard Palestinians as expendable cannon fodder. No Arab country will open their borders voluntarily. At best, Palestinians would have to be loaded on Western ships and taken to a country without a functioning government (Somalia? South Sudan?)"

I think every country that has taken in the Paly's has regretted it. Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia. In each case the Paly's tried to seize the country or sided with external foes.

Expand full comment

Egypt jumped fast and closed their borders ASAP.

Expand full comment

Egypt doesn't trust them. In Egypt, Hamas calls itself the Muslim Brotherhood. The current Egyptian gov threw them out.

Expand full comment

Smart move I'd say.

Expand full comment

Disease & starvation are cruel. Use fire and be done with it quickly.

Expand full comment

https://lieber.westpoint.edu/siege-law/

Review the laws of siege warfare, especially the conditions and exclusions.....

Expand full comment

COA-C seems the best choice. The savagery we’ve witnessed and Israel has endured should be met with equal vigor and determination.

Expand full comment

I see COA Carthage has the lead. I guess men DO think often of the Roman Empire!

Expand full comment

Whatsoever do you mean?

Gaza delenda est.

If that ain't conjugated right, bite my shiny metal ass.

Expand full comment

Alright Bender!

Expand full comment

3 years of Latin in school in the 60's. Am rusty at declining verbs, conjugating nouns and telling ablative tents from a dative tent but.."Gazookôrum delenda est"? Gadzooks, SPQR! ....est, EST, Warner Erhard, Erhard Seminars Training...don't you get it yet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irpniHv1V_k&ab_channel=Movieclips

Expand full comment

Ceterum autem censeo Gazam esse delendam.

Expand full comment

How realistic is "Gazan civilians will be allowed to leave for other Arabic nations?" Specifically the part about other Arabic nations accepting them. My understanding was that they won't accept them *now*, so how do we get Egypt or whomever to do it as part of the COA?

Expand full comment
author

Money, that's how.

Expand full comment

If the west had been willing to pay-off Jordan and Syria 60 years ago, this could have been resolved after the 6-day war. They would have taken the then much smaller population in return for enough money.

But many of the western elites - especially those in the UK - have harbored a soft-antisemitism for decades.

The British elite never forgave the Jews for their fighting (and, in all honesty, some acts of terrorism) against the Brits during the Mandate.

Heck, the Kings Jordanian Legion was led by British officers. and the Brits allowed plenty of former SS personnel to emigrate to Arab countries from the Brit zone, thus providing the core training cadre that forges the Arab attack in '47.

I think Sudan would make an excellent place to drop them off.

Expand full comment

pithy. precise. perfect!

meh, what's a few more $Billons down the drain, neh?

Expand full comment

Ha ha ha, whose money?

Expand full comment

Yours!

Plebeian. Now shut up and accept the grift.

Expand full comment

How fitting if it was paid in shekels.

Expand full comment

There is a theory, that a form of natural selection is at play in Palestine. Many folks, most of them educated, and, others who were gifted with natural intelligence, fled Palestine early. The ones with cash left first, but, as things got worse and worse, more and more folks fled.

The capabible Palestinians moved to Paris, London, or Merritt Island. They established business and practiced professions, and pulled others out. Over time, everybody with gumption and grit, the strivers and doers, left. If I owned the Gaza Fiat dealership in 1948, I'd be looking to get the hell out of Dodge, ASAP.

That leaves the slow, the lazy and the stubborn. What I'm trying to say is that the enterprising Palestinians, the ones motivated by money, left thirty years ago.

Expand full comment

There may be some truth to that. One study estimate Gazan IQs at 83.3. Another study estimated Mizrahi Israeli IQs at 96 (the Israeli average).

There is nearly an entire standard deviation of difference between the population of Gaza and Israel. They may be too mentally deficient to understand the legal norms of the rest of the world.

That doesn't mean they deserve any mercy. It just means that holding out hope for peace is foolish.

Expand full comment

That's at the minimum IQ needed to be drafted into the US military in a war.

Expand full comment

Probably true but not sufficient. Gazans are those not selected for success in modern life, and also the entire ppulation has been raised on nothing but hatred of Jews since childhood, for generations. They have children;s TV shows about how great it is to kill the Jews.

Expand full comment

I was just explaining to my fellow engineers what 'diplomacy' really means. It usually comes down to bribes or threats, sometimes to public embarrassment.

Expand full comment

Send them to Iran for $3,000

Per head for 3 year’s. Better yet Ethiopia, Sudan & Mali.

Expand full comment

But it's not really fair to ask Sudan to pay that much. Iran can pay up out of the billions (6, 10, 250?) the WH has cumulatively provided to them.

Expand full comment

Lessee, Iran still has billions tied up...

Ethiopia's weird, but they don't deserve this dirt.

Expand full comment

Eritrea, on the other hand, perhaps.

Expand full comment

Bir Tawil.... 2000 sq km vs 365 sq km. Nobody else wants it, surrounded by islamic countries....

Let them take a desert and make a paradise.

Expand full comment

North Korea is bribable...

Expand full comment

Don't ask them. Take them to the border, push them across. Let them deal with it as they best decide.

Much like illegal immigrants are flooding into S. Europe now.

Expand full comment

In re your opener, Patton: “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”

Expand full comment

Sometimes, even if you pride yourself on your Western Liberal (old meaning, not new) ideals, you still have to drop the nuke. Not saying to literally use nukes, but COA-C is still too soft for what the situation warrants, and what the survival of the current Israeli government will require.

Expand full comment

Mini-MOABs would achieve the same purpose.

Expand full comment

Why "mini"?

Expand full comment

Don’t want the debris landing in Israel.

Expand full comment

I don't like seeing beachfront real estate going to waste.

Expand full comment

Next Israeli Naval base?

Expand full comment

How many MT's to make a deep water port?

Expand full comment

I remember reading a book that proposed doing that, but they really didn't have numbers. One of those Awesomeness Of Nuclear Power books written in the 50s.

Expand full comment

I recall a plan in the 50's to dig a new Panama Canal using nukes. Quick & dirty, they said. The dirty part nixed it.

Expand full comment

The only thing dirtier than a ground burst is an underwater burst....

Expand full comment

W70-3 for the win!

Expand full comment

I don't know how one could ultimately decapitate Hamas without creating opportunities for other failed Palestinian radicals and their international allies. A population in place in Gaza will always be a fixed constituency that will draw worse elements and outside agitators. It's not explicitly clear that Gaza isn't quite Israel and might then properly be made Israel so long as Gaza is Gaza (or Palestine). So I rather lean to some plan between B and C. How do you make the place into a national park - some place sparsely populated like South Dakota?

On the one hand, a forced and subsidized relocation project takes some burden off Israel who would obviously keep tight track of everyone being paid - but where do they go? If they go into Israel, that implies a two-tiered citizenship. If they go elsewhere, how would they be accepted? If they go elsewhere than Israel, they would be subsumed under governments that may or may not be capable of derailing Iran's meddling. I guess I need to understand the baseline of how Israel knows who is who inside Gaza. What is their status as residents of Israel, and by what provision are they not subject to the direct policing by domestic authorities of Israel?

Expand full comment

If Israel REALLY wants to make a statement, they would work with US SOF and go to Qatar and get the leadership. With a VERY last second notification of Qatar that we are coming - like, "as the guys are fast-roping onto the building top" last second. The leadership is responsible for all of it and need to go on trial for war crimes. If they fight and some or all die, you save the trial.

Expand full comment

Even Iran would refuse to take them, but that would be the most fitting place to send them.

Expand full comment

I wish I could have saved you some time with your first couple of drafts. Coming from the perspective as a fellow tribe member there was never going to be any plan to didn't involve a complete de-hamasification of Gaza. Whether that will include the majority of the civilian population of Gaza is unfortunately in the hands of Hamas as well. Given their track record caring for their population's well being, the odds are not good.

Expand full comment

Sometimes, we gotta sift through the bad plans to find what makes the good plans great.

Expand full comment

Do to Gaza what the United States did to urban Japan. "Bomb them back into the Stone Age" as General Curtis LeMay said. Leave no structure standing and depopulate the strip. Once devastated, leave it as a reminder to terrorists.

The more hellish a War, the shorter, the fewer lives lost, and the longer the peace. Civil War US Genersl Sherman.

With BALLS (does Biden & Netanyu have them?) the US knows how to Gurantee a lasting Peacce.

It is not a product of "cease fires" but of Unconditional Surrender.

Expand full comment

I’m leaning to COA B. Simply in that it would be politically achievable, and solve the issue long term.

Also, I fear COA C would turn the area into bandit country. Settlements keep out those sorts of groups.

Expand full comment

I am onboard for B with some sprinkling of C for select zones.

Expand full comment

0 bandits if it it is all open country with no structures. Maybe make it a remote call center for tech support: "Hello, my name is Bob Schettlestein Smith, what's your error message?"

Those places need yuuuge parking lots.

Expand full comment