Lonous wrote:I have respected the Japanese precision in many fields, but never delved into their literary offerings before.
However this concise summary and the way it turns a phrase, may prompt some more searching on my part.
Israel, which withdrew from Gaza in 2005, has come full circle with its invasion of that territory in response to the atrocities perpetrated by the Hamas militants.
But, just as the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to oust from power a terrorist militia whose rise it had facilitated via its Pakistani intelligence connections for Afghanistan's stability sake, Israel is tasting the bitter fruits of a divide-and-rule policy that helped midwife the birth of the Hamas "Frankenstein monster" that it is now seeking to subdue.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary ... ed-policy/
Yeah, yeah. Israeli intelligence, in a move that they no doubt are now very much regretting, helped fund the birth of Hamas. Saxi doesn't tire of reminding us of that in this forum, at least two or three times a year, so we can hardly forget. The CIA helped spawn the Taliban, and they very much came to regret that. King Louis XI of France spent thousands of livre on bribes to Dutchmen to spawn the nascent independence movement in the Netherlands. He thought he was hurting Austria, but in the long run it hurt France a lot more, and for the next four centuries (as recently as 1815) they had great reason to regret having helped the Dutch gain independence.
When you spawn a rabid dog, it's your duty to put him down, first and foremost. Afterwards, there will come a time to pay the piper and be sued or pilloried by your neighbours for putting this monster in their midst. But in the immediate moment, you deal with the immediate threat.
Israel has a moral obligation to its people to exterminate Hamas and end the immediate threat. After that, it will have an obligation to finally take responsibility for helping to create it in the first place. There would be some moral value in seeing punishment for the government officials who did that. But it doesn't take priority over killing the monster.