A Serious Man

Disclaimer: I do not think all the settlers are terrorists, although they all are in violation of international law and are a provocation for the Palestinian terrorists. But many of them are terrorists in their own right, the ones who harass the Palestinians, who build settlements in Arab towns and then introduce a zillion checkpoints, who feel they need a wall zigzagging its way across the West Bank, the religious ones who think that they really have the right to the land because an old book says so. They are terrorists, as much as any Hamas commander is. The only difference is, they have a state and army backing them very openly and directly and Hamas doesn't.

Continuing my last post about MidEast peace (a pipe dream if there ever was one) I'm going to give the Israelis a recipe on how to achieve it. They're never doing to do it, because the settlers are assholes, and they are an amazingly powerful political force in Israel. But I'll suggest anyway so later I can say "See? You shoulda listened to me!"

The key is this: Israel needs to show that it is SERIOUS about both destroying terrorist organizations and about peace. Right now, it's neither, which is the worst idea ever. I am an Israeli nationalist and an unapologetic supporter of democracy, but if the IAF decided to take over the country, it would be fine with me as long as they stop the retarded shit that is Israeli foreign policy right now.

Immediate Solution #1: Least likely to happen, most likely to succeed if it did happen:

Disenfranchisement: Any Israeli citizen must live in Eretz Israel (i.e. within the pre-1967 boundaries or within Jerusalem) in order to have the vote. Discourages settlement AND freezes the retard settlers out of the voting process instantaneously. Justification: settlers are violating international law. Result: Israeli government would by default right itself.

Solution #2:

Last post I described how Israel should get serious with terrorism (come on! if someone stole and then broke your TV, would you PAY them to get it back? well, that's exactly what exchanging prisoners for Israeli BODIES is! the only thing it'll do is create MORE Israeli bodies that you'll have to pay more for, dumbshits!), so consider this solution to already contain the "Soviet plan" for dealing with terrorism. The second part is a settlement construction freeze. Not the scared-ass freeze like now, where the Israeli terrorists (oops, I meant to say "settlers") can build and harass the Palestinian non-terrorist people all they want (face it, settler violence doesn't distinguish between the terrorists and the scared poor people the way the Army does). No, in this freeze, any attempt for new construction is met by the Army coming and blowing up the new building, and then confiscating all the heavy construction equipment and arresting a few terro- oops, my bad, "settlers" just to make a fucking point.

Then, (as long as I'm dreaming, I might as well make it my "best of all worlds" scenario) throw the Israeli "settlers" in jail with the Palestinian terrorists - the real terrorists, mind you, not the people who accidentally left a wrench in their car when they came to the checkpoint - and videotape it. I'd pay a lot of money to see those creeps beat the snot out each other in jail, I really would. It would also be nice if they threw the American evangelists in too, just for kicks, like Pat Robertson who thinks his perfect God of justice killed thousands in Port Au Prince because their ancestors made a pact with the devil (and not even an evil pact, from what I'd read Robertson thought that the devil was a pretty nice guy, offered to free the slaves from their French masters). It'd be just like they all wanted, them fighting each other, only this way they won't bother everyone else who just wants to be fucking left alone.

Actually, that's my real dream: a massive fistfight between Pat Robertson, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Ann Coulter on one side, with Osama Bin Laden, Mullah Nasrullah, Ayatollah Khameini, Mullah Omar, Ahmadinejad, and Omar Al-Bashir on the other, a good bloody fight to the death where no one really wins.

Oh, if only...

From Russia With Love

I've been thinking quite hard for some time now on the question of terrorism and how best to counter it, and now I am convinced that I have the answer, though many people won't like it.

Of course, the only counter in the long term is education and prosperity. If a region becomes rich enough, all of a sudden the people living in it become more interested in life and less interested in blowing themselves up or kidnapping foreigners, and if a region becomes educated enough the (almost always religious) ideologies that push people into such attacks become contested.

However, in order to build education and prosperity, terrorism and counter-progressive insurgencies must be temporarily paralyzed, which means that a short term counter is also needed in order to effectively combat it.

What short term policies work? In my view, it's quite simple: leniency begets further attacks. In the West and in other developed nations cherish our ideas of fundamental human rights and they work extremely well when dealing with 99+% of the world. But when facing terrorism, the only proper response (by a utilitarian value judgment, whereby quick resolution of the crisis, however costly, is preferable to dragging on the conflict indefinitely) is out-right brutality. They are not our friends, and they could be our friends if they so chose. But they chose to be our enemies, and to hurt our friends. In the name of those who wish to abide by the rules of civilization, we must eliminate them.

First thing: however much I admire the IDF, I must criticize them on one thing: their willingness to exchange live terrorists for the bodies of Israeli soldiers. Bodies? Who gives a fuck about bodies? They're DEAD, they're no happier here than they were over there, they can't help us. Let the assholes keep the bodies and we'll keep their asshole buddies locked up. I'll give you a fair trade: bodies for bodies. Israeli policy ought to be extremely hard-line on this issue: every ambush brings a reprisal killing. One dead soldier = 5 dead terrorists in prison. In exchange, Israel ought to also stop building its bullshit and highly destructive settlements throughout the West Bank and leave particularly nasty places such as Hebron. Hell, I'd be all for the IDF to just leave Hebron without warning, let the asshole settlers (who all but worship Baruch Goldstein, this guy who machine-gunned a mosque and killed anywhere from 25 to 50 Arabs and wounded 100 more) deal directly with the Arabs they've terrorized for years.

As for how the US should to respond to a terrorist attack? I'll let the following true story serve as a guide:

In the 1980's Lebanon was occupied by several foreign militaries and an ongoing series of hostages from various nations were being taken. Most countries dealt with the hostage crises the 'normal' way: they talked, cajoled, and offered to free prisoners of radical groups they'd taken in exchange. However, one very different case occurred in 1985...

In 1985 four Soviet diplomats were abducted and one was killed. The abductors demanded that the USSR put pressure on Syria to stop supporting a rival militant group. The Soviets, however, had other plans. They sent Alpha Group, a special forces team, to Lebanon. Using their excellent human intelligence (a la KGB) they identified the families of the kidnappers and took them hostage in return. Normally, a country would then begin negotiating for the hostages' release; not Russia. Russia wanted to make the point clear - one of theirs had been killed, hostile action had been taken against them, and the perpetrators would pay dearly for it. They cut off the fingers of one of the family members of the hostage-takers and mailed it to them - "Dear Hostage Takers, kindly return our people otherwise you'll get more of yours back like this, Sincerely, From Russia, With Love". The three remaining hostages were returned pronto, no Soviets were kidnapped ever again in the Middle East, and no Russians were either until 2004.

This is not something to be gloated over, I'll have to say, despite my urge to the contrary. We should use these tactics as sparingly as we can, since their harshness gives them a low utilitarian value a priori, meaning the results will have to be extra good to make up for it. However, looking at it coldbloodedly (and that's the only way to look at things with consequences as grave as this) who achieved the better result, the West or the Soviet Union? Even from humanitarian terms, the Soviets outdid the United States, since the weaker actions of the US made the terrorists feel fine about kidnapping more people and mistreating them for years. One person with missing fingers is a lot of pain, but not very much when compared with dozens of people held captive, tortured, and killed like the American response has resulted in.

Am I suggesting tearing into every terrorist's household? Maybe, but the main point I want to convey is "whatever works", which incidentally is my motto for life. And whatever the Russians did worked, and what the Israelis are doing isn't.