Comments on: Briefs

By: Sabba Hillel

Sabba Hillel — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 10:37:10 +0000

The Hamas movement announced that it demands to place Tanzim leader in the West Bank Marwan Barghouti, who is jailed in Israel , at the top of the list of Palestinian prisoners who will be freed as part of a deal for the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit , the London-based Arabic-language newspaper al-Hayat reported Thursday.

An argument in favor of the death penalty

By: howard_coward

howard_coward — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 20:32:30 +0000

1400 Palis for 1 Jew? Yes, you can think of it as 1 Jew being worth 1400 Palis. But you can alternatively think of them as being equally worthwhile and the Palis taking the Jews to the cleaners. And I’m sure this is how the Palis think.

By: Veeshir

Veeshir — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 19:49:00 +0000

Unfortunately, shooting a wall of lead bullets in a densely populated area like Gaza is not realistic, as what goes up will come down with lethal force.

Bing bing bing!! we have a winner. Ignoring any polluting effects, this might be useful at sea or in an un-populated (totally un-populated), but no place where there might be people you don’t want to kill.

By: chsw

chsw — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 17:35:47 +0000

Morris, obviously, if an Arab is worth 1/1400th of a Jew, then we Jews are incalculably valuable.

I think that if the present Israeli government accepts this gambit, then it should also announce that the ratio applies to an exchange of populations of Gaza and the West Bank. In other words, since 10,000 Jews left Gaza for Israel (some say 20,000), then 1.4 million (or 2.8 million) Arabs must leave the West Bank for Gaza, Jordan or other presently Arab governed areas.

chsw

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 17:11:38 +0000

Go get the lion in his den ! Take it to him instead of reacting to his attacks !

By: Herschel

Herschel — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 16:27:05 +0000

Small world, I work for a major defense contractor that designs and builds the Phalanx “close in weapon system” computer that controls the rapid fire machine gun canon. Normally this system is used at sea as a last ditch defense effort against incoming missiles or planes attacking ships, but recently, discussions have focused on its use as a land based strategic defense.

Unfortunately, shooting a wall of lead bullets in a densely populated area like Gaza is not realistic, as what goes up will come down with lethal force.
Laser technology is a better method, but is still in the design stage.

By: sultan knish

sultan knish — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 16:00:13 +0000

The whole problem with investing in complicated defensive systems is

1. They have a high failure rate

2. They’re generally a good deal more expensive than the weapons they’re meant to defend against

The only real defense is to preemptively destroy the weapons themselves. Building expensive and complicated anti-systems is never going to work and the only time it makes sense is when dealing with nuclear weapons which can’t always be preemptively destroyed and whose successful impact has too unimaginably a high cost.

Israel and America’s post 9/11 investment in anti-system is fundamentally misguided. It’s like responding to someone shooting bullets at you by building a complicated expensive system that intercepts the bullets 15 percent of the time, instead of just shooting him first.

What these systems really represent is the lack of will on the part of Israel and America to destroy the enemy instead of playing waiting games, running patrols, maintaining a balance and hoping somehow things will get better.

By: Morris

Morris — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 15:11:30 +0000

So to sum up:
The arabs think that the life of one jew is worth 1400 arab lives and the world doesn’t care about dead jews but does about dead arabs (1/1400 of a Jew)…?
I just can’t do the math here…