Defiance ... or Paranoia?

Tonight I went to see 'Defiance' with my wife, the movie is about the Bielski partisans who saved 1200 Jews during the war, by hiding out in the forests. My wife's grandparents actually hid out in the forests during the war in that part of the world, I'm not sure if they were with the Bielski's or not, but they had very similar stories, even having a 'forest' wedding.

After watching the movie, my dear wife said 'This is exactly why we can't show any mercy to Hamas', which ties in neatly to Avram Burg's new book 'The Holocaust is over, we must rise from it's ashes', which is trashed by Efraim Zuroff here.

Burg, who no doubt some will say has gone completely OTD and is now a self-hating Jew, says that Israel is completely over the top paranoid about the Holocaust, and can't make sensible decisions regarding the Arabs etc, because they are living in fear of another Shoah, or alternatively are consumed by the idea that while Europe's Jews mostly went like lambs to the slaughter, they certainly won't.

This same theme appeared in my Rabbi's speech today. He went to Israel this week along with 20 or so other Rabbis on a mission to give support to the Jews in southern Israel. He described movingly how much the people there were suffering, and how we must remain strong, and we will survive etc. Not a word about the incredible carnage being visitied on Gaza though. 

But, since no one seems to agree with me (at least no one connected with the Orthodox world), I can't tell if I'm right or wrong. Of course all morality is subjective, so maybe there is no right or wrong here, but I also get the sense that maybe, due to thousands of years of continual vicitimhood culminating in the Shoah, we are now unable to tell anymore whether or when we are the victims, or the agressors.

I'm all for stopping the next Holocaust (though Israel is as likely to trigger it as it is likely to save us all from it), and have no illusions that such a thing could never happen again. Just wait till the global economic meltdown and another Bernie Madoff (or even just the first one). It could easily happen again. But still, I'm not sure that bombing the heck out of Gaza is the way to go.

Also, the political angle here seems quite obvious. Olmert stops the attack a couple of days before the inauguration, claiming 'victory', in a move clearly designed to put Hamas on the political defensive. 

But how is this victory? Olmert says 'all of our goals have been attained', but is this really true? They are still firing rockets, and surely no one thinks that Hamas has none left, or couldn't easily get more if they wanted to (despite Egyptian assurances which are worthless). 

Olmert says (about Hamas) 'Many of its members have been killed'. Yeah, they killed about 400 Hamas fighters (though a good number of those were just policemen). Before the fighting started, the reports were that Hamas had 20,000 men. So killing a few hundred isn't going to make much of a dent. 

Olmert said that 'Hamas was completely surprised by Israel's determination and strength throughout the operation'. Yet Israel played it extremely safe, since Olmert didn't want huge Israeli losses before an election. Only 10 soldiers got killed, and 4 of those were from friendly fire. That's not just because they fought better, it's because they used very 'safe' tactics, i.e. not entering deep into Gaza and engaging Hamas directly. They stopped short of that, davkah because the Government didn't have the resolve to go that far. I think I'd have more respect for Olmert if he did have the cojones to try and destroy Hamas, at least that would have been a mission worth fighting for. As it stands, I wonder how much of this mission was really about Israeli politics. I guess only time will tell.

UPDATE: Even the jpost is skeptical. It will sure be tragic if this turns out exactly as I predicted. And no, I am not hoping for that.