🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <EGGERTJ.92Aug3175041@moses.atc.ll.mit.edu> eggertj@atc.ll.mit.edu writes:
>In article <15bmmqINNlqt@agate.berkeley.edu> dan@barkley.berkeley.edu (dan graves) writes:

>>   They even abstained from retailiating against their
>>   enemies when their citizens were murdered by rocket
>>   attacks, just because we asked them to.  I would
>>   call this very steadfast.
>
>Don't kid yourself, Israel was not motivated by mere alliance with the
>US.
>With the density of sorties the Coalition forces were sending over
>Iraq, Israel realized that it just didn't make sense to send any of
>their planes into harm's way.  Either military sense (they couldn't
>have destroyed a significant number of Scud launchers) or political

I don't believe that they couldn't have destroyed more Scud launchers,
Israels Air Force is reputed to be one of the best.  Also, they could
have concentrated all their efforts on the Scuds while the other forces
had the entire Iraq to bomb.

>(they couldn't have added significantly to the destruction of Iraq,
>hence wouldn't have scared Iraq at all).
>All they could accomplish was to make Iraq hate Israel even more, or
>to risk the chance that Iraq (or another Coalition country) would down
>an Israeli plane.  Israel would have been shooting themselves in the
>foot to launch an attack against Iraq.

So people shouldn't protect themselves from an aggressor because he may
hate them more ?

>>  I doubt any of the brutal
>>   dictatorships of the region would do the same.  The 
>>   current administration is willing to accept much of
>>   the smoke and mirrors of the Arab dictatorships
>>   as support.  Israel has supported us with concrete and
>>   (in the case of the scuds) potentially dangerous action.
>
>If you want concrete and potentially dangerous action as proof of
>alliance, then ask Israel to give the West Bank to an independent
>Palestine.

Why should Israel give up the territory now ?  What will they get in
return ?  So far, the people who intend to run Palestine have been
intent on killing Jews.  How do we know it would stop ?

>>   Now i ask you to comment on the most important point i made
>>   in the earlier post.  Israel is not (unlike these brutal 
>>   dictatorships) motivated by conquest or the politics of hatred.
>>   Israel defends itself, every nation's right.
>
>Surely you jest.  There is more than enough hatred in Israeli politics.
>There is considerable evidence that conquest of Arab territories was a
>goal of the 1948 war of independence.

There is also considerable evidence that conquest of Indian territories
was a goal of early Americans, so what ?  Most countries are started by
capturing and securing a piece of territory.

Mark