Avram Horowitz wrote on Mar 31
st, 2012 at 5:16pm:
I will tell you one experience I had with Cast Lead in Gaza.
We has Palestinians in streets throwing rocks to us, throw the petrol bombs to us, then is snipers in apartments to us.
We stays back and orders in IAF who gives 30 mins of air strike to the buildings and to scatter peoples in the streets. After we receives advise from air force is clear path we army goes down to them with armor vehicles and to clear apartments snipers.
All the rocks still come but you know? As soon as we Israeli come what is they do in Gaza??
Run run run -- all down other street, run away, is not want to engage IDF when we enter into the city.
Now you tells me we defeated in Gaza? How can you even say so?
How many Israeli soldiers are currently brave enough to stand in Gaza? Tell me is the Israeli Army currently occupying Gaza or not? That will tell you how glorious the victory of the Israeli Army in Gaza really was.
A decisive loss for Israel
Israel’s objectives from the war on Gaza were set long before its launch: to remove the Hamas movement and government, achieve the reinstallation of the Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas, in Gaza, and end the armed resistance. Two other objectives were not announced. First, restore the Israeli public’s wavering confidence in its armed forces after its defeat by Hizballah in 2006. Second, boost the coalition government in the coming elections.
Accordingly, we declare that Israel lost, and lost decisively. What did it achieve? The killing of large numbers of civilians, children and women, and the destruction of homes, ministry buildings and other infrastructure with the most advanced United States weapons and other internationally banned chemical and phosphorous elements. Almost 2,000 children were killed and injured in desperate pursuit of political goals. Many international organizations called these attacks war crimes, yet barely a word of denunciation was uttered by any Western leader. What message does the European Union mean to send Palestinians by its shameful silence on these crimes, when it speaks incessantly on human rights?
If anything, the last three weeks, and previous 18 months, have proved that the Palestinians can never be broken by either starvation, economic strangulation or brutal attack. European leaders have only one option: to recognize the outcome of a democratic process they had called for and supported.
The aggression failed to undermine or weaken the Hamas-led government, or turn Palestinians against Hamas. If anything, public support is stronger than ever in Palestine and worldwide. Hamas’s military capabilities have not been hurt, either. This explains Israel scurrying to sign such a strange agreement with the U.S. to stop arms reaching Hamas. It is doomed to fail. As the former Israeli chief of staff Moshe Yaalon and [right-wing Likud party leader] Benjamin Netanyahu agreed, Israeli forces failed to achieve their objectives...
http://www.workers.org/2009/world/hamas_0205/
Hamas' popularity soars after Gaza war, poll shows; Fatah declines
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2009/03/09/uk-palestinians-leadership-poll-idUKL94...