Get the Ricochet app
Ricochet will work fine in a browser on your mobile devices, but for the best experience please download our app.
"One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic. " — Stalin
Painfully, Stalin had a point. It occurs to me that if Israel has to kill 15,000 or 115,000 Palestinians, it wouldn’t change the opinions of almost anyone. The actual number won’t be relevant to most people. Oddly, I suspect that killing more Palestinians would make Israel more amenable to Saudi Arabia.
As Machiavelli said, "it is much safer to be feared than loved because ...love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”
If Israel wins, there is a shot that Saudi Arabia will make peace with Israel. I doubt that the deaths of Palestinians will matter much in Riyadh. It is power and will that ensures survival. Not humanitarian reverence for life.
I suspect Douglas Murray agrees with me.
.
Discussion (41)
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
15,000 sounds about right.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
I hadn't thought of it in quite that way. But you may be right.
If that thought has occurred to the Israelis, then the Palestinians have a very serious problem.
After the 6 Day War, perhaps this concept has occurred to the Israelis.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Indeedy. I'm totally there -- been there. This is why speed is success, and delay is failure, and explains why the Biden administration pushes for delay. They say in public that they support Israel etc, but behind the scenes, the US is undercutting Israel's position.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Michael Oren's "Six Days of War" is a life-changing book.
Up there with Paul Johnson's definitive "A History of The Jews," which I read after reading Oren.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
I think it would be better for the Palestinians to suffer serious casualties in this war and then lose the war completely. That way they might have to accept Israel and make peace with it. Both psychologically and literally.
Germany and Japan were forced to reject Nazism and Imperialism because they were bombed nearly into oblivion. The light touch that Israel usually uses will only be seen as weakness by the Palestinians. I don't see another way out of it.
You're seeing five of 41 comments. Sign in, or join for just $5 per month, to read them all and add your own.