Hezbollah doesn’t need nukes or large amounts of military firepower to destroy Israel, just unlimited second chances. Which the UN seems determined to give them.

A lot of people have been saying that it feels like the thirties now, with pogromos and appeasement and a lunatic in power obsessed with conquest and killing the Jews. Marx and Engels, writing about Napoleon III’s coup and comparing it to his uncle’s, wrote that things happen twice in history, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Unfortunately the repeat of the thirties now seems no farce, but set to become an even bigger tragedy than the first time.

The Chamberlains and Rab Butlers had this excuse: they thought they were avoiding another Great War and did not know how it would come out. We know what happened the first time, we have no excuse.

Tatterdemalian, I think that if Hezbollah had the opportunity to pursue merciless victory (ie have nukes and/or large amounts of military firepower)we would see actions and rhetoric similiar to the Nazi party of WWII with the eventuality of the ‘merciless victory’ that was descibed above for all us Kufirs later.

They won’t stop with merely Israel.

This kind of thinking appeared in the behavior of the French high command in 1940. They were convinced that a breakthrough assault was dependent on heavy artillery, and were complacent about the speed at which the enemy could bring their big guns forward…not grasping that, in the German model, the role once played by heavy artillery was now played by dive bombers.

Heh. If Israel ever sought that sort of victory, they could have it in short order. They’ve had nukes for 20 years, and even today, on the eve of them no longer being a deterrent, they have never used them.

Every organization, even Hezbollah, has the ability to pursue the merciless victory you describe. If you are to choose your allies wisely, you will not choose those who try to prove they have no ability to carry it out, but rather those who have proven they have the forebearance not to carry it out when they could have.

Nothing really like the real thing, nor did reflect the realty of what war really is.

Still, it sopped up all the extra testosterone and sated the warlike, dark-side that we all have.

Its ironic that I hate guns…

Anyhoo… there was a saying that I came across way back when, which would be a good addition to what Snoopy is saying today.

When I played one of them silly board games, I played for blood. So did other guys who played (whether it was Squad Leader, Axis & Allies, or even chess).

But one thing I learned is this: Some people play those games in real life. It never occurred to me for many years that there were people out there that did not value Life. That a persons soul was no more important to them as … a pawn on a chess board.

Yep, those little games have served me well. Because when I finally made the crossing, I understood that there are people out there who are my enemy because I … merely exist.

Here is the quote I referred to above:

“The meaning of victory is not to defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavors, to crush utterly his every achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of true victory.”

On the chessboard, that is easy to understand, but in real life…

Hard to believe that a human being could even think that. Yet this is a quote as there are many others similiar in nature…

It sounds almost like one of them rants from some … political leaders out there… whipping up his people into a frenzy.

It is this, that many Liberals do not understand. They are trapped in their own little world, unable to comprehend people who do not value life. It is that which will (if they don;t wake up) destroy them.

· Rabbi Dr David J Goldberg is emeritus rabbi of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London, and author of The Divided Self: Israel and the Jewish Psyche Today.

Unfortunately many people use the term “rabbi” who are not really worthy of the original meaning or connotation of the term. One has to learn to recognize subtle signs as to who such a person is. In this case, the term Liberal in the UK is basically what is meant by Reform in the United States. As such, I would not regard someone in that organization as someone on the level of Rabbi Twerski, or Rabbi Weinreb (head of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations) in the United States, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (chief Rabbi of Great Britain), or Rabbi Elyashiv and Rabbi Ovadiah Yoseph (two of the greatest and most respected Rabbis in the world today) in Israel.

Of course, that could be because of my own prejudice (which has always been obvious to those who have read my comments). Perhaps it is only because of this prejudice that I agree with your assessment of him, so I googled him.

His bio and some of the speeches that were referenced on google showed that he is definitely not of the caliber of the great ones. Of course, he is not near the caliber of my shul rabbi either.

One has to realize that there are many people whose religion is the current liberal political “thinking” of the day and have never matured beyond that. Unfortunately we do not have prophets today that we can follow. All we can do is try to understand the truly great ones of our generation.

We cannot even ask ourselves what the great ones of the past (like Rabbi Moshe Feinstein) would say because we cannot reach their understanding of current events and applying what they said to the current situation requires someone on that level.