Too defeatist - there is sometimes a place for tactical withdrawal

Submitted by Sully (United States), Jun 9, 2006 at 01:40

The Israeli people are in the 60th or 70th year of their war with the Palestinian people. This relatively short war is just a single front of the 1300+ plus year war which has been fought at greater and lesser intensity between Islam and all other faiths (and non-faiths).

There have been advances and retreats by both sides in these wars. And there have been relative changes in the strengths of the combatants.

Would you rather be an outgunned, outmanned, closely pressed Israeli of 1948, or one of 2006, when no rational analyst thinks that the entire might of the Arab world can defeat the IDF? Similarly, would you rather be a European faced with a surging unified Islamic power in the year after the fall of Constantinople or a European faced with a divided, misgoverned, technologically primitive Islamic world of 2006?

Only the people of Israel can make such decisions and judgements, but defeatism hardly seems justified by what seems a rational process of rationalizing their borders on more defensible lines while at the same time their technological, military and material lead over their enemies expands.

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