Ground Game

As I pointed out on Tuesday, Israel's airstrikes on Gaza could never last more than a few days. Israel is now out of targets for airstrikes to hit militarily, and politically airstrikes would allow Hamas to play the survivor card. Israel either has to retreat or go to ground attacks, and with "news" that Hamas has somehow "acquired" Iranian short-range Fajr-3 missiles, that conveniently could be fired from Gaza in range of Israel's Dimona nuclear facility (arguably the worst kept secret in the Middle East) Israel seemingly has no choice but to unleash a full ground assault into Gaza. What better way to report it than from the Village's London division, the Times?

Israel is poised to launch a major ground offensive into Gaza tonight after allowing hundreds of foreigners living in the devastated territory to evacuate.

After a week of air strikes that have killed at least 420 Palestinians and left scores of buildings in rubble, the Israeli army was set to fling hundreds of troops and tanks into a blitz to stamp out Hamas’s military wing, The Times understands.

Despite the looming onslaught, more Hamas rockets – which have so far killed four Israelis – were fired into southern Israel today.

The Islamist group vowed that its attacks, which have lasted for years and which finally provoked the massive Israeli campaign, would not stop.

Those dirty Palestinians have regrettably borough collective punishment upon themselves, you see. Of course, the ground offensive part of Operation Cast Lead was the plan all along. Sometime this weekend, Israel is expected to roll in and crush perhaps thousands of Palestinians in order to protect Dimona. It will be a massacre. Having experienced a failure in Lebanon 18 months ago, the Israelis are determined not to repeat their mistakes. With the Palestinians of Gaza safely roped in behind a huge concrete wall, the fish in the barrel will be not only shot, but bombed, burned, crushed, smashed, and butchered.

Our wonderful humanitarian President of course blames the Palestinians for this. It's no surprise then with the Israelis taking a page from Bush's Muslim-killing cookbook, drumming up a climate of fear that the mere threat of Palestinian rockets are infinitely more dangerous and deadly than the Israeli military machine. Israel certainly should be able to defend itself from these rockets. But the imminent slaughter of several orders of magnitude more Palestinians than have been killed by Gaza rockets isn't defending your country...it's collective punishment.

A war crime.

But then again, Americans do that sort of thing too. Why not Israel? Honestly, who's going to stop them?