THINK-ISRAEL

GAZA: A JUST WAR FOUGHT CHELM-STYLE

by Jack Englehard

Part 1: Gaza - War At Last

Above all, God bless the boys going up against Hamas and into Gaza by air, land and sea. Bibi said it's "time to take off the gloves" so once again Israel is at war.

This is not the time to remind Israel's politicians "we told you so" when you gave up Gaza in 2005.

Nor is this the time to blame successive Israeli governments for letting it get this far, far enough to allow this implacable foe to arm itself to the teeth.

For the moment Israel must deal with the unbearable barrage of rocket fire coming in ceaselessly from Gaza. Now it's time to stop the bleeding.

Through Operation Protective Edge, the pride of the Jewish State has been mobilized to defuse the bombs and to subdue the enemy. The enemy is Hamas, which has given Israel not a moment's rest. From the time these violent tribes of Sunni origin took over the Strip in 2007 they have hammered Israel with a million bombs meant to discomfort a million Israelis along the South.

For all those years, life along the South has been treacherous, a nightmare, for Israelis living along the border. In Jewish population centers like Ashdod (215,000) Ashkelon (120,000), Beersheva (197,000), Dimona (33,000), Eilat (47,000), Sderot (21,000) sirens wailed every day and parents huddled with their children in bomb shelters.

They complained to the government — how can this be happening in a Land we call our own? Please make this stop.

My friends in Eilat ask me, "Can you do something from America? Do people know what's going on? Would any country besides Israel stand for this?"

It hurts to tell them that America and the rest of the world would only demand of Israel that it exercise "restraint." We heard this again, as recently as yesterday, and again we heard that this "cycle of violence" must stop and that "both sides" should proceed with caution.

Deaf ears refuse to believe that there is no cycle and that only one side and one side alone has been using terror as a tactic to destroy the Jewish State.

It is in their charter. Hamas is under contract to keep firing at Israel until she submits. In fact, from one Israeli government to another, and as the bombs from Hamas kept falling, war was peace. The governments did mostly nothing to stop the terror under the illusion that the enemy would tire — but this enemy never tires.

Israelis along the South were being conditioned to believe that rocket fire slamming into their streets, their homes, their schools was like any other day.

Relax, get used to it and DON'T MAKE TROUBLE.

The world is watching...and that has been Israel's weakness from the start. Israeli leaders, and this certainly includes Benjamin Netanyahu and his administration, too often have an eye for the grandstand — how Israel will be perceived among the nations, beginning with the press.

The question is — how will it play?

No doubt, it will not play well, no matter the justice of Israel's cause as the defender of its Land and its people. The world's reporters are waiting for the pictures — any picture that will show Israel in a bad light. Rarity of rarities, the BBC today admitted that some of those horrific wartime imagines circulating around the world come not from Israeli actions in Gaza, but from ISIS actions in Iraq.

Do not expect such forbearance to continue. Israel will soon be measured. Soon there will be marches throughout Europe and even here in the United States placing Israel at fault, forgetting that Islamic terrorists started this fight, the same fight for Islamic supremacy being waged throughout the region.

Soon Hamas and the Fatah will manufacture their own fabricated images meant to sway public opinion. They are good at this.

Television will select whatever image suits its anti-Israel bias.

This is not the first full-scale operation into Gaza. In the 22-day Gaza war of 2008, Israel found weapons being stored in schools and mosques.

The press ignored this in favor of any weeping Palestinian Arab it could find. They will be sure to find their civilian casualties.

How do you fight an enemy that cares nothing for your children and nothing for its own children? How do you fight an enemy that has no morals, no heart?

So it has come to this. Even for Israel enough is enough. It remains to be seen if Israel will settle for a tie, as it did before.

Or this time will Israel realize that sleeping with the enemy is no way to run a country?

War is hell...so to hell with CNN, the BBC and The New York Times. Let them show their phony pictures as Israel fights its real war.

Part 2: 18 Rules for Fighting The Gaza War Chelm-Style

It is a settled matter that the IDF are tops in bravery and ethical warfare. Give them any job, and it's done. But when politicians run the war, Chelm is likely to happen — Chelm being the town inhabited by those fabled "wise men" loved by tradition for their well-meaning but bumbling ways, like the following rules for conducting combat.

Hence...

18 Rules For Combat From The Wise Men of Chelm So That Your Enemies Will Die Laughing:

1. Advise your enemies to get ready for a surprise attack. Make sure to remind them where the surprise will take place and precisely what time it is to begin.
2. Shower the place with cautionary leaflets to make sure that every single enemy combatant finds safety. We do not want terrorist barbarians getting hurt.
3. Wait till the coast is clear before striking. Kill as many buildings as you can to prove that you really mean business.
4. Tipping off your enemies when a "surprise" attack is about to come, this alone could kill them as they die laughing at your stupidity.
5. Make sure to remind the world that no other nation is so respectful towards its foes. The world admires you and adores you for this. Look around.
6. Always be ready to give up more Jewish territory. Judea and Samaria, for instance. See how well this worked in Gaza after 10,000 Jews were evicted.
7. As bombs keep falling on your people, keep supplying your enemies with food and water and gas and electricity.
8. You do not want to inconvenience the people who keep trying to kill you.

9. Tell your citizens who suffer daily from incoming rocket attacks that it's okay. It's no big deal. Go home and get used to running to shelters. Stop complaining. Don't make trouble.
10. Tell your enemies that THIS TIME! you've had enough and then beg them for a ceasefire.
11. Talk big. Act small.
12. Prove how wise you are at the bargaining table by agreeing to your enemies' every demand.
13. Pay no attention to people within your own country who demand that you fight to win. This is so foolish and so old-fashioned. A tie is good enough.
14. Insist that "quiet for quiet" is fine and dandy...even as rockets keep slamming into your country.
15. If a ceasefire is agreed upon (as it was again today) but rockets keep coming in, that's okay. This is peace in the Land of Israel.
16. Tell the world that Gaza must be demilitarized. You will not stand for anything less. Then go home and forget every part of this.
17. If Israeli residents along the border with Gaza flee by the thousands, truce or no truce, that's simply too bad. Nothing can be done.
18. Repeat this: In the Land that God gave you but that you handed over to your enemies, War and Peace are the same thing.

Above all,   talk big.   Act small.

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Jack Engelhard is a novelist and film writer. He authored the novel "Indecent Proposal," that became a hit movie. His other major works include "Compulsive: A Novel", his award-winning post-Holocaust Montreal memoir "Escape from Mount Moriah," plus "Slot Attendant: A Novel About A Novelist". Visit his website at www.jackengelhard.com. Parts 1 and 2 were published as separate essays. Part 1, "Israel's Gaza Operation - War At Last," appeared July 2014 in and is archived at
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15295#.U70khrGCUtV. Part 2 "Ceasefire? 18 Rules for Fighting a Gaza War Chelm-Style" appeared August 26, 2014 in Arutz-Sheva and is archived at
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15570#.VAYpxXL8iJO.