Long Range Goals

The whole thing is so ridiculous that if it weren't so tragic, I would laugh my head off. Today's look at the news has interrupted the book I am reading on Kony and really the world of mainstream journalism is almost as madly deluded as the very mad Joseph Kony.
Anyway, there was me beginning my daily look at Palestine by delving and dipping into the 'New York Times' and I decided to make life easy on myself by watching a little video where the Deputy Foreign Editor of the 'NYT', Ian Fisher informs us of Israel's three pronged strategy, which entails airstrikes against Hamas, trying to get as much aid to the suffering civilians as possible and calming the fears of the international community by looking at different peace intiatives; Fisher then mentions the French peace initiative.(1) Perhaps, we should look closer at this "three pronged" strategy.
Let's begin with the ridiculous idea that the airstrikes are only targeting Hamas; a concept, which, with hundreds of dead civilians, is absurd; in one of the most densely populated areas on the planet it is, of course, inevitable that the majority of deaths are going to be civilian. Secondly, the audacity to boast about letting humanitarian goods in, when in fact the blockade in the first place and the reluctance to lift that blockade are at least partly responsible for there being no renewal of the ceasefire. Now Israel wants to show the world how its war is against "terrorists" and not against civilians when, in fact, the civilian population of Gaza has been suffering for months because of the Israeli blockade. Finally, Livni did go to Paris but she didn't go to talk to Sarkozy about a ceasefire, which is evidenced by her saying that Israel will be continuing with its military operation, while adding, “this is not a short battle and it is not a single battle, and we have long-range goals.”(2) Israel does, indeed, have "long-range goals" and we would, perhaps, do well to have a brief look at these to understand what its real strategy is.
Perhaps, I can begin with a little analogy; back in 1924 a certain Adolf Hitler was just about to put the finishing touches to his "masterpiece", "Mein Kampf". Now, unfortunately nobody took this, rather badly written, book by that particular raving xenophobic, anti-semitic, megalomaniac too seriously, but there was Adolf declaring to all and sundry his "long range goals" and there he was just ten years later starting to put them into practice and even then we weren't taking him too seriously and by the time we did take him seriously ...... What I am saying is, the madness that was the Holocaust, "Operation Barbarossa" and "Lebensraum" in the east, shows that we should have taken the Charlie Chaplin double seriously long before we did. Now, similarly the Zionists have never hidden their "long range goals", they are there to be read and, should you find what you are reading a little bit incredible, then we have the "Nakba", the occupation and the continued ethnic cleansing of Palestine to leave us in, no doubt, as to what Israel's "long-term goals" are. Yes, Tzipi, there are no misunderstandings when you say that “this is not a short battle and it is not a single battle, and we (Israel) have long-range goals.” Still, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, just as Adolf's did somewhere in downtown Stalingrad. Moreover, with the wisdom that hindsight affords us we now know that El Alamein, Stalingrad and the defeat of Nazi Germany were inevitable. Similary, by continuing to pursue those "long-range goals" that are being alluded to by the Israeli Foreign Minister, Israel too is consigning itself to the dustbin of history.
1 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/world/middleeast/02mideast.html?ref=middleeast
2 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/world/middleeast/02mideast.html?pagewanted=2&ref=middleeast