Islamist true believers do not surrender |
It is as though Netanyahu and Trump have no prior experience with a war against true believing Muslims. Gaza is still going on for 2 1/2 years: this war goes on despite Israel’s success in killing all the starting leadership, despite the wives and children of Hamas living in tents without facilities, despite wives and children daily racing for food… and despite this Hamas is able to replenish its ranks at will; its soldiers strut on the ruined city’s streets. A recent spokesperson for Iran boasted of trapping the US in a “quagmire”. What is this quagmire? It is his ruined stores of ammunition, destroyed missles, destroyed factories, and yet he boasts that we have to keep bombing and cannot extricate ourselves.
True believing Muslims truly believe, as do the Haredim of Israel. They believe that their God actually, really, literally lives. We are seeing this with Hezbollah which also does not surrender. We saw this in Fallujah and in Afghanistan where the Taliban actuially won its war with the US. Believers do not surrender, they do not fear death, their death brings them to live with their God, and they are more willing to die than we are to kill them.
It is time for Netanyahu and Trump to recognize this: there will not be a surrender on our terms. So before we shed more of our blood and bankrupt ourselves it is time to declare a halt to hostilities. Let us declare victory and hope the weakened Muslim leadership will fall to its own people.
Declare a halt; maintain surveillance; watch and destroy any effort at nuclear restructuring; strike where we see regrouping of power; and encourage domestic revolt. This is what we can do.
The alternative to the above is the slow loss of Israel’s secular center and it is this center which is supporting the country. The alternative to the above is a spiral of Israeli self-destruction. Modern Israel will disappear to be replaced by a theocracy living in a Muslim country and content to wait another 2500 years.