Israel, your brand is tanking

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/08/israel-brand-tanking.html

t can be seen at this point that while Israel has triumphed politically and militarily at the tactical level, it is defeated at the strategic level. Hamas yet lives and continues to resist the fire storm of air strikes, artillery bombardment and ground action. That very steadfastness places Israel in the position of eventually having to make a choice with regard to the Palestinians between actual, serious, bargaining or extermination. The Israeli government and populace have chosen to believe that sufficient brutal force, if widely applied, would separate the resistance from the people. That has failed no matter how much the Israelis would like to believe otherwise. At the same time, political support for Israel is disintegrating across the world. This is defeat.

Notice Lang’s wise observation that the resistance will never be separated from the people? This is the lesson of Northern Ireland and South Africa; and the best response to those who chant about the rockets, the rockets.
---
Even Michael Walzer, the liberal Zionist political philosopher, seems to concede that Israel is losing. In a call arranged by Peace Now today, he repeatedly analogized Israel’s position to that of the U.S. army in Vietnam and Afghanistan.

High tech armies lose wars of this sort by killing too many civilians, as the US lost the war in Vietnam.

[abovesobelow]

1. Mondoweiss cooked numbers..Israel is highly competitive, Mondoweis a RIGHT WING MOUTHPIECE

"Con­ser­v­a­tive busi­ness­man Ron Unz has stirred con­tro­versy over the last year by pub­li­ciz­ing ideas that appeal to anti-Semites, offer­ing a forum for writ­ers who demo­nize Israel, and fund­ing sev­eral anti-Israel activists, some of whom pro­mote anti-Semitic canards. Though Unz does not appear to be an anti-Semite, he pro­vides sup­port to extreme anti-Israel ide­o­logues and his writ­ings res­onate with and are reg­u­larly cited by anti-Semites.

In Novem­ber 2013, Unz cre­ated a webzine called The Unz Review that addresses con­tro­ver­sial polit­i­cal and racial top­ics because he believes the main­stream media ignore or con­ceal cer­tain infor­ma­tion and ideas. Although Unz claims that he does not agree with many of the views pre­sented in the webzine, he nonethe­less has pro­vided a new out­let for cer­tain writ­ers to attack Israel and Jews.

Unz is involved in other endeav­ors that raise ques­tions about his views of Jews and Israel. He funds a num­ber of extreme anti-Israel ide­o­logues through the Unz Foun­da­tion includ­ing Paul Craig Roberts, an anti-Semitic syn­di­cated colum­nist; Mon­doweiss, an anti-Israel blog run by Philip Weiss; and Philip Giraldi, the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Coun­cil for the National Inter­est, an anti-Israel group based in Wash­ing­ton, D.C."

http://handleshaus.wordpress.com/2013/08/25/unz-undone/

[4now]

2. If you disagree with Israel's right wing government

you must be anti-semitic.

[FBaggins]

3. Wishful thinking

The author is obviously in fantasy land... not reading actual polls.

A tiny decline (within the margins of error for the poll) is hardly "tanking"... and Israel remains well ahead of Hamas in every poll I've seen.

"When it comes to the current conflict in the Middle East, are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with Hamas?" - almost 8-to-1 in favor of the Israelis.

"What do you think about the way Israel is responding in the current conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip? Has Israel gone too far, not gone far enough, or has Israel's response been about right?" - "about right" or "not far enough" wins 2-1 over "too far".

http://www.pollingreport.com/israel.htm

That very steadfastness places Israel in the position of eventually having to make a choice with regard to the Palestinians between actual, serious, bargaining or extermination.

Two points:
1 - "Palestinians" is not the same thing as "Hamas".
2 - No they don't. They can just complete the reduction of Hamas' ability to attack Israel and then back out. Then they sit there at the border with shipment after shipment of reconstruction materials and food/medical supplies - making it clear that it doesn't move during weeks where rocket attacks are attempted.

[King_David]

4. It's from Mondoweiss

It's not a serious "article"