Playing with psychopaths, by their rules

A game played with psychopaths who can change or violate the rules at will

News item:

Earlier Monday, members of the Popular Resistance Committees, the Palestinian group responsible for last Thursday’s deadly attack, held a press conference to announce that they would abide by a temporary cease-fire between Hamas and other groups in Gaza that have been firing rockets and mortars into Israel over the last four days. The PRC made clear however that the cease-fire referred only to rocket attacks, and that the group would still seek revenge for Israel’s killing of its top leadership last Thursday afternoon. The revenge, the group’s spokesman Abu Attaya said, would be met on the “heads of the Zionist leadership,” Israel Radio reported.

As we begin the ‘cease-fire’ dance yet again, it’s impossible to avoid thinking that an entire nation is allowing itself to be forced into a playing a game with a bunch of murderous psychopaths, according to the psychopaths’ rules, rules which they are permitted to change or violate at will.

There’s a solution: don’t play. Don’t talk, don’t threaten, don’t worry too much about distinguishing between the various posturing factions among the psychopaths. Just kill them.

After Thursday, why is there still an ‘Abu Attaya’? Why is there still a PRC? The technology exists to target specific individuals anf groups with minimal collateral damage. Use it.

Yoram Ettinger thinks that the best approach is to crush the terrorist infrastructure with massive force:

the most effective defense against terrorism – operationally, financially and morally – is not retaliation and a limited, surgical offensive, but a comprehensive, decisive, sustained, disproportionate and preemptive ground offensive, which aims to obliterate terror infrastructures and capabilities, bringing the enemy to submission. A decisive defeat of terrorism requires a victory over – and not coexistence or ceasefire agreements with – terrorism. We need to uproot – not just stop – terrorism.

Any response to terrorism that falls short of devastating the ideological, political, financial, logistic and operational terrorist infrastructures only serves to reassure terrorists that they are immune to annihilation. Moreover, it nurtures their hope-driven terrorism. They hope to destroy Israel’s defiance, wreck Israel’s steadfastness, and sustain the momentum of sweeping Israeli ideological and territorial retreats between the years 1993-2011.

Furthermore, a limited response to terrorism exacerbates wars of attrition – the terrorists’ dream and the nightmare of democratic societies. The limited-retaliation response to terrorism adds fuel to the fire of terrorism, feeding the self-defeating assumption that there is no military solution to terrorism, thus eroding Israel’s deterrence.

I’m sympathetic. But I think that a massive response could result in Israel being responsible for administering what’s left, as well as diverting resources needed in the North and on the Egyptian border, creating more problems with the US, etc.

I think that fear of one’s own, personal, death can be a very strong motivator, and it should be applied to the terrorist leaders. It should at least be tried before another risky invasion.

There is also the absurd situation in which Israel supports a hostile entity, supplying electricity, water, food and medical supplies to Gaza. This should be stopped as long as terrorist activity continues.

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2 Responses to “Playing with psychopaths, by their rules”

  1. Shalom Freedman says:

    We cannot put an end to rockets from Gaza without taking the terrritory again. But consider the cost of this especially as the Palestinian state declaration is imminent. Imagine too the question of what happens the day after we have retaken Gaza.
    Unfortunately we may have to for a time anyway live with the situation in which we do not have the ability to neutralize completely the enemy from the South.

  2. joelsk44039 says:

    You are 100% correct. Terrorists need to be taken out, expunged, wasted, killed, decimated, etc.

    You never see a leader of Hamas as a suicide bomber. Let them fear for their lives, then we’ll see how they behave.