bibbi oh bibbi

Am I crazy to think Benjamin Netanyahu ought to take the U.N. suggestion and declare a halt to air strikes on Gaza, if only, say, for a day? To see if Hamas responds in kind? if Hamas doesn't, well then. . .

The prospect of Israeli troops in Gaza is awful to contemplate. I’ve been there. It was a tortured place before Hamas, which, in connection with recent history, tortures it further.

What good can an Israeli incursion do? Israel can never stamp out all of Hamas, or its roots. Or does it imagine it can, given the suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (Hamas, for those who are not tired of hearing this already, being but the expression of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine)?

But how can there not be intolerable damage to civilian life and infrastructure, or what’s left of both, in Gaza, as a result of an Israel incursion?

This will not look good Bibbi. Think. Think Bibbi think. Or are you as absolutely incapable of thought as other leaders in that conflict became (notably not excluding Yassir Arafat?)

Is your mind subsumed, doped up, on vengeance, power?

(Are you even a biseleh — in English, "remotely" or "a bit" — a mensch Bibbi, or have you mostly transmogrified into a monster?)

Israel has the upper hand, more than ever vis a vis Hamas. Hezbollah cannot and will not strike seriously at Israel from Lebanon in retaliation for events in Gaza. Whatever Hezbollah-Hamas alliance there might have been is over, given Hezbollah’s commitment to Assad’s viciously anti-Sunni (anti-everybody) tyranny in Syria. (A few stray rockets from Lebanon do not change the above.)

Bibbi, there is self-defense, and Israel absolutely has a right. And then there is vicious overkill.

You, Bibbi, may wish to avoid overkill, somewhat, or a bit, slightly, though who knows how much. You do seem to betray a certain resistance to it. But then there are those to your right, Naftali Bennett and others, whispering in your ear that you must take the most extreme measures, that there is no such thing as overkill in Eretz Yisroel, not when rockets aimed at Tel Aviv are involved.

Bibbi, let me say this: If you do your worst, it will come back at you.

Why would I bother to say this? For one reason only, which should be obvious by now: the big bucks I am being paid by the State Department to be a Bibbi whisperer.