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Mr. Brook’s 3,248 word apologetic for Israel, and its American sponsor does not include the word Genocide. Neo-Conservatives as followers of Leo Strauss, engage in the habit of drowning the reader in words and paragraphs, steeped in verbosity , that seek to obfuscate meaning, from what rhetoric is meant to accomplish, informing the reader, in sum presenting viable arguments.

A sampling of the ‘actors’ in Mr. Brooks’ political melodrama:

the Democratic Party, the war in Gaza, Israel has the right to defend itself, defeat Hamas, The vast numbers of dead and starving children are gut wrenching, it’s hard not to see it all as indiscriminate, If the current Israeli military approach is inhumane, what’s the alternative?, use to defeat Hamas without a civilian blood bath, I’ve been talking with security and urban warfare experts, The thorniest reality that comes up,

Hamas’s strategy is pure evil, but it is based on an understanding of how the events on the ground will play out in the political world.

So we’re back to the original question: Is there a way to defeat Hamas with far fewer civilian deaths?

Another alternative strategy is targeted assassinations.

Furthermore, Hamas’s fighters are hard to find, even the most notorious leaders.

The political costs of this kind of strategy might be even worse than the political costs of the current effort.

A third alternative is a counterinsurgency strategy, of the kind that the United States used during the surge in Iraq.

A fourth alternative is that Israel should just stop.

The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has argued that Israel can destroy Hamas in Gaza without a large invasion but “by other means”…

Benny Gantz, reportedly told U.S. officials, “Finishing the war without demilitarizing Rafah is like sending in firefighters to put out 80 percent of a fire.”

…

Reader just 1109 words left of this not very carefully managed Zionist apologetics! Aided by the recycled comments of his selection of Technocrats/Experts!

The concluding paragraphs that features David Petraeus as one of his featured political/moral actors with a quote ‘“Over time, hearts and minds still matter.” Call it what it is a maladroit non sequitur, and or just an inept attempt to express etiolated profundity!

For her book “How Terrorism Ends,” the Carnegie Mellon scholar Audrey Kurth Cronin looked at about 460 terrorist groups to investigate how they were defeated. Trying to beat them with military force alone rarely works. The root causes have to be addressed. As the retired general David Petraeus reminded his audience recently at the New Orleans Book Festival, “Over time, hearts and minds still matter.”

Israel also has to offer the world a vision for Gaza’s recovery, and it has to do it right now. Ross argues that after the war is over, the core logic of the peace has to be demilitarization in exchange for reconstruction. In an essay in Foreign Affairs, he sketches out a comprehensive rebuilding effort, bringing in nations and agencies from all over the world, so Gaza doesn’t become a failed state or remain under Hamas control.

Is any of this realistic given the vicious enmity now ripping through the region? Well, many peace breakthroughs of the past decades happened after one side suffered a crushing defeat. Egypt established ties with Israel after it was thoroughly defeated in the Yom Kippur War. When Israel attacked Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 2006, the world was outraged. But after the fighting stopped, some Lebanese concluded that Hezbollah had dragged them into a bloody, unnecessary conflict. The Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was forced to acknowledge his error, saying he didn’t know Israel would react so violently. The Lebanese border stabilized. Israel’s over-the-top responses have sometimes served as effective deterrents and prevented further bloodshed.

Israel and the Palestinians have both just suffered shattering defeats. Maybe in the next few years they will do some difficult rethinking, and a new vision of the future will come into view. But that can happen only after Hamas is fully defeated as a military and governing force.

Newspaper Reader