Lawrence Auster quotes someone who quotes a commenter to some other blog (one doesn't always have to be a name to articulate sound principles) concerning Israeli policy with regard to responding to the constant threat of Islamic jihad around them. The commenter describes the policy as "...the equivalent of tossing the dog a biscuit whenever he poops the rug."
He goes on (I have added one comment in square brackets and bolded one sentence):
"Personally, I think the ''holy hell" policy ought to be applied by Israel to all of the terror modalities employed by the Arabs in and around her: to suicide bombings, hijackings, abductions, arsons, vehicular homicides, stabbings, and so forth.
"The nub of it, though, is that the holy hell policy must be as indiscriminate as the terror that triggers it. A policy of carefully targetted reprisal with precision weapons teaches the terrorists' host population [who, it is reasonable to suppose by now, are -- at the very least -- passively enabling their “extremist” brothers and sisters] that they will generally escape any reprisal for terrorist acts, that only the terror actors and persons in their immediate vicinity will feel the pain.
"A rocket from Gaza or Lebanon into Israel should be responded to with equally unguided projectiles back into those territories, say 100-fold. They hit where they hit--tough luck.
"An abduction such as that of Gilad Shalit's should be responded to by rounding up 100 or 1,000 random individuals from random locations in Gaza, to be held incommunicado, as Shalit was, until the Israeli captor is released.
"A holy hell policy of massive, indiscriminate reprisal is the one and only way to teach the terrorists' host population that any and all of them will pay for acts of terror. If, then, it is true that the majority of the host population only wants to go about its business and build better lives for themselves and their children (as the Left is so fond of insisting) then the business of eliminating terror will become their business. The terrorists will become intolerable to them, and they'll not tolerate them."
End quote. This uncommon sense reminds me of another sound policy from another era, about which I wrote a few months ago:
Plausible Denial, Islam Style -- and Bluffing Them, Western Style
1 comment:
I believe this was the policy of the Soviets/Russians (forget which) when their diplomats were abducted in some Muslim country. They did some abductions of their own of people close to the abductors, and then sent them fingers of their hostage. They got their people back unharmed.
Too bad Israel has too much of the perfectionist mentality to go that route.
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