Richardcyoung.com

  • Home
  • Debbie Young
  • Jimmy Buffett
  • Key West
  • Your Survival Guy
  • How We Are Different
  • Paris
  • About Us
    • Foundation Principles
    • Contributors
  • Investing
    • You’ve Read The Last Issue of Intelligence Report, Now What?
  • The Swiss Way
  • My Rifles
  • Dividends and Compounding
  • Your Security
  • Dick Young
  • Dick’s R&B Top 100
  • Liberty & Freedom Map
  • Bank Credit & Money
  • Your Survival Guy’s Super States
  • NNT & Cholesterol
  • Your Health
  • Ron Paul
  • US Treasury Yield Curve: My Favorite Investor Tool
  • Anti-Gun Control
  • Anti-Digital Currency
  • Joel Salatin & Alfie Oakes
  • World Gold Mine Production
  • Fidelity & Wellington Since 1971
  • Hillsdale College
  • Babson College
  • Contact Us

Isolating Israel

November 17, 2023 By Debbie Young

By Comofoto @Adobe Stock

What Hamas Hoped to Achieve

Victor Davis Hanson clarifies in American Greatness what proportionality means: Proportionality is a synonym for “lethal stalemate,” if not “defeat.”

When two sides go at it with roughly equal forces, weapons, and strategies, the result is often a horrific deadlock —like the four years of toxic trench warfare on the like the four year of toxic trench warfare on the Western Front of WWI that resulted in 12 million fatalities.

Every war is a humanitarian crisis, notes the WSJ’s Daniel Henninger. What might have been a puzzlement on 7 October, today, with the world’s focus on civilians suffering in Gaza, we have the answer as to why Hamas committed the 7 October atrocities:

  1. Engage in acts so barbaric that Israel would retaliate.
  2. Take hostages that Israel would insist on rescuing no matter how difficult it would be, as with its 1976 commando raid at Uganda’s Entebbe airport.

To retaliate and free hostages, Israel would have to go into Gaza. Assuming Hamas fought back, there would be firefights among Gaza’s population.

Mr. Henninger argues, “The wholly predictable sequence of events since 7 Oct. has produced what Hamas wanted—a global event defined as Israel causing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

Eradicate International Sympathy and Support

Hamas has a political strategy: “to create a humanitarian-crisis war, lifted from the pages of the American left’s playbook. “

The human tragedy in Israel and Gaza has touched the world because so much of it falls outside the boundaries of civilized life. But the political reality is that Hamas now has a situation familiar to anyone who understands the importance of what the modern left calls “framing” an issue. Or more commonly, building a political narrative.

Mr. Hanson lists the disproportionate things Israel either cannot or will not do:

  1. Hamas spent a year planning a preemptive butchery spree inside Israel, targeting unarmed elderly, women, children, and infants, mostly asleep at a time of peace and holiday.
  2. Hamas sought to collectively shock Israel into paralysis by the sheer horror of decapitating civilians, burning babies, mass raping, and mutilating bodies. Another aim of Hamas was to blame Israel’s “occupation” for turning Gazans into veritable monsters.
  3. Hamas gunmen took more than 240 hostages back with them to Gaza.
  4. Hamas shot more than 7,000 rockets into Israel, all aimed at civilians.
  5. Hamas sought to create a multibillion-dollar tunnel city beneath Gaza.
  6. The subterranean headquarters of Hamas elites, along with weapons depots, were strategically placed under hospitals, mosques, and schools to “shield” Hamas from Israeli attacks.
  7. Hamas forced the civilians of Gaza to remain among the street fighting. often shooting those who resisted and killing Gazians who fled.
  8. Hamas bragged that it could repeat strategies 1-7 endlessly on the supposition Israel would tire,the world would turn against it, and it at last could murder enough Jews to end Israel altogether.

A No Win

Israel, a country of about 9 million, faces a virulently hostile 500-million-person Arab Middle East, and every insurgent killed has a son or a brother. In responding to defeating Hamas, Israel still cannot conduct a fully disproportionate war without endangering:

  • its source of military resupply in the U.S.
  • a wider conflict in the Islamic world.

So the war continues, concludes VDH, as Hamas strives for a disproportional terrorist agenda to prolong the war and Israel strives for a disproportional retaliation to end it.

Related Posts

  • Israel Can Withstand Hamas, Harvard Might Not
  • Democrats Breaking Apart on Israel/Hamas
  • Bolton, Neocons and Israel Firsters
  • Switzerland’s Foreign Policy
  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Debbie Young
Debbie Young
Debbie, our chief political writer of Richardcyoung.com, is also our chief domestic affairs writer, a contributing writer on Eastern Europe and Paris and Burgundy, France. She has been associate editor of Dick Young’s investment strategy reports for over five decades. Debbie lives in Key West, Florida, and Newport, Rhode Island, and travels extensively in Paris and Burgundy, France, cooking on her AGA Cooker, driving through Vermont and Maine, and practicing yoga. Debbie has completed the 200-hour Krama Yoga teacher training program taught by Master Instructor Ruslan Kleytman. Debbie is a strong supporting member of the NRA.
Debbie Young
Latest posts by Debbie Young (see all)
  • People Are on Edge - June 13, 2025
  • “Mostly Peaceful” Protests - June 12, 2025
  • The Problem with Violence Is Violence - June 11, 2025

Dick Young’s Must Reads

  • What’s the Best Survival Currency?
  • Tom Brady Is Proof You Shouldn’t Retire if You Still Love Your Work
  • Being Fully American Means Americans First
  • Your Survival Guy: “Life on Main Street Hasn’t Been This Hard in a While”
  • Boom or Bust: “What Do You Think of Bitcoin?
  • A Word or Two about Your Survival Guy’s Money
  • “I’m Having Major Surgery Tomorrow,” He Said
  • If You’re a Highly Effective Person, We Should Talk
  • “The Great Object Is that Every Man Be Armed”
  • America’s Colleges Have Become Progressive Liberal Rat Holes

Our Most Popular Posts

  • Whoa, Hang on Here. There’s Trouble in Culver City
  • Is Salt Bad for You?
  • RON PAUL: Can Musk and Trump Reconcile?
  • $25 Million Down; $175 Million to Go
  • Graduating from Work to Retirement #19: A Teacher for Life
  • Saving Western Civilization
  • There Are Only Two Ways to Cut Entitlements
  • The Federal Reserve Finally Killed the Penny
  • Ukraine’s Attack Underlines Need for Trump-Style Border Control
  • No More NSAIDS for Back Pain?

Compensation was paid to utilize rankings. Click here to read full disclosure.

RSS Youngresearch.com

  • Epic Man Cave with Car Elevator in Utah
  • Oil Prices Spike as Markets Brace for Potential Middle East Conflict
  • Is Private Capital Appropriate for 401(k)s?
  • US Underground Natural Gas Storage Capacity Grew in 2024
  • Trump Revokes Biden Policy on Snake River Dams
  • Graduating from Work to Retirement Special Bonus: God Only Knows
  • US Secures LNG Export Deals Worth $200 Billion
  • High-Voltage Cable Crunch Hits Global Electrification
  • May PPI Lower than Expected
  • Graduating from Work to Retirement #20: Life in Reverse

RSS Yoursurvivalguy.com

  • Epic Man Cave with Car Elevator in Utah
  • Is Private Capital Appropriate for 401(k)s?
  • Strikes Expose Israel’s Hidden Drone Operations Inside Iran
  • Even If You Don’t Golf: Part 2
  • Graduating from Work to Retirement Special Bonus: God Only Knows
  • Private Equity: Moody’s Warns There’s Ample Cause for Concern
  • Your Survival Guy: Castle Hill, Newport
  • Containerized Missiles and the New Rules of War
  • Graduating from Work to Retirement #20: Life in Reverse
  • America’s Silent Army with 423M Guns

US Treasury Yield Curve: My Favorite Investor Tool

My Key West Garden Office

Your Retirement Life: Traveling the Efficient Frontier

Live a Long Life

Your Survival Guy’s Mt. Rushmore of Investing Legends

“Then One Day the Grandfather was Gone”

Copyright © 2025 | Terms & Conditions | About Us | Dick Young | Archives