Israel as an Untouchable Goliath, Grinding Civilian Bodies for their Soldiers' Daily Bread

 Bret Stephens of the NYT urges Israel to "retaliate" against Iran.

In our generation we have gone from viewing America's alleged ally Israel as the end destination of all the skinny guys in the striped suits rescued from the Holocaust, into the World's Biggest Bully.

Birthright, my ass.

Sorry boomers, but the tide has turned and the optics have shifted. We remember the Hostage Crisis in 1979, but President Carter was a wise man who waited things out and had the hostages returned the minute his predecessor was inaugurated into office... Some men create change in mysterious ways, and Carter's transferring the baton to Republican power surely did that in our country back in the day.

Now Israel is leading American taxpayers by the nose, claiming victory with American-financed technology as though they are a world superpower.  Hardly.  They've only confirmed for generations to come the lack of independence in relying on the U.S. to provide such a costly defense...

(Put me on the team of analysts thinking Iran's strategy is simply smarter:  how much did it cost to launch all those missiles compared to how much Israel and the US paid to defend them?  How quickly can their defensive stockpiles be depleted?  Iran was merely probing and likely lucky civilian areas were not struck.  To stick out your tongue and cry "nyah nyah" -- as pro-Israel analyst and supporter (under the guise of "journalist") Bret Stephens does here -- misses the point.

Israel did not win anything worth writing home about over the weekend.  They simply survived to go another round... who would want to live in such anxiety, unable to truly enjoy property and trust in a safe secure future for their own children and grandchildren?  Always looking over their shoulder in worry?  (Not the United States or our motley crew of ethnic identities from the best the world has to offer?  "We Take All Comers.  Everyone Welcome" might as well be written on our borders...)

Look at how cheap Life has become in Israel, where they have written off their own people -- their own captives taken hostage in the 21st century as "collaterol damage", the acceptable costs of wartime strategy...  I guess until you own are kidnapped and killed, people are just political pawns to them, like that...

All the stories in the world won't help if you don't read them and can't identity with the life-loving characters:  poor Israel is tasked with playing Goliath now and they cannot even see the Davids walking amongst them.  I'm not an Evangelist cheering my fellow AIPAC-politicians to "support Israel" the way a Mike Pence is, but I think the story will end badly for the people who refuse to choose peace, have no long-term plan for independence, yet have the arrogance to presume righteous victory because they knocked down the slingshots lobbed at them from the "little people" from another little religious state that will also never be a world superpower...

Jesus wept.

... and this isn't Benny Netanyahu's world playground to pick off rivals at will in other places or to decide who lives and who dies based on purity of blood or promised land holdings.  America is siding with the bad guys here, and risks dragging our own nation via the best military technology into the tribal warfare of the dark ages of the past.  God knows Israel and the Jewish people have fallen in both G-d's favor and worldwide estimation in recent days:  you can't be a powerful military player if you continually operate with the victim mindset so ingrained in that tribe's traditions.

The blood spilleth over, the cleanup commenses and Israel has lost yet another battle in their worldwide never-ending struggle to simply survive.  There's a weakness inherent in a philosophy that lets you imagine God favors your people, and fundamentalists in America will always cheer you on.

Beware the blind spots.