Israel bombs as tanks wait on outskirts of Gaza

[Adsos Letter]

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Israeli warplanes continued to pound Hamas targets in Gaza on Friday as the world waited to see whether Israel would launch a ground attack.

The Israeli government has said the airstrikes, aimed at stopping Hamas from firing rockets into southern Israel, are only the beginning of a wider military operation.

Israel has moved tanks to the outskirts of Gaza and called up at least 2,000 army reservists.

Israel Defense Forces spokeswoman Avital Leibovitch said ground forces are prepared to enter Gaza when they receive orders to do so.

Meanwhile, exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal promised bloodshed if Israeli troops invade.

"As for you, the soldiers of the enemy whose leadership are getting you ready to enter Gaza in a ground attack, you need to know that doom will await you and you will be killed, injured and captured," Meshaal, speaking in Syria, told Al Jazeera television network Friday. "If the enemy got into Gaza, our people will fight from one street to the next, from one house to the other, and on every inch of the land."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/02/israel.gaza/index.html

[The Magistrate]

1. This Meshaal Fellow, Sir, Will Be Nowhere Near These Brave Fighters, Of Course....

[Adsos Letter]

2. I have no doubt, sir...

as I said in an earlier post, those who drive the action are rarely in the path of the destruction their exhortations bring about.

[The Magistrate]

3. Indeed, Sir, And A Damned Shame It Is, Too

Sometimes, though, the rhetoric simply gets so out of control the temptation to point it out is impossible to resist.

Young men who try to stand to a modern army with hand weapons, misguided, or even evil-hearted, as they might in some cases be, deserve some human sympathy and respect for courage and the despair that drives them, but the men who sit many miles away in an air conditioned office and blather boasts of their courting death deserve nothing but contempt.

[Adsos Letter]

4. We are in full agreement on this.

As with so many on all sides...
they bluster and exhort, but others bear the cost.

[EFerrari]

5. You'd think with all our keyboards and our cell phones

and networks and spit and duct tape, we could make a dent in this. :(