What about Hezbollah? Oh, yeah, those guys. Funny thing, their silence over the past week. They do have some 40,000 rockets and missiles, and usually can be counted on the launch a fusillade from the north while Hamas attacks from the south, just for giggles, and to show what big men they are. But it seems as if they like having those 40,000 missiles after all, and recollect what happened the last time they got a bit frisky, back in 2006: They got their asses kicked by the Israelis, and were almost run out of Lebanon by their own people. Took them all this time to re-arm, and they can't risk having to do it all over again. Especially if they are expected to launch a counter-attack when Israel decides to take out Iran's nuclear capabilities, probably within the next 18 months.But Hezbollah can probably afford to lose some face this time. Remember, a key part of the cease-fire agreement of the 2006 Israel/Lebanon war was the disarming of Hezbollah. Yeah, that went well. No wonder Israel doesn't trust the UN, and why the Arabs are always asking for their intercession after they start yet another war they cannot finish...
So Hamas will be back to their Jew-killing, when it is politically prudent. And Israel buys a moment of peace, at very little cost. And Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan got to strut around like a Chaplin-eaque dictator, while Hillary Clinton gets the warring parties to hold off on signing a cease-fire until she shows up at the scene. So everybody wins. Except the dead, who will not get to see the sun rise on the status quo tomorrow...
And what did Hillary Clinton do, exactly? Nothing, as far as anyone could tell, except show up for a photo-op once the heavy lifting was finished, so as to receive accolades from the American media. Which she seems to receive every time she takes a dump in a foreign toilet.
Watching Egyptian President Morsi smile is like watching a shark smirk. When he starts shedding blood, Hillary may regret her hearty handshake...
Interestingly, the man who might have done the most to bring the cease-fire might have been Barack Hussein Obama, who did little other than voice strong support for Israel and disappear into Burma. Which bought enough time for Israel to achieve the majority of her limited objectives.
What were his motivations? Payback to American Jews for not abandoning him in droves? A quid pro quo with Benjamin Netanyahu (who praised Obama to the skies after announcing the cease-fire, praise that was returned by the president, who claimed that Bibi had finally listened to him)? Or just a realization that palling around with the bad guys in the Middle East will get him nowhere?
So Obama wins here, too. A victory at home and overseas that I do not begrudge him one bit. 'Ol George W. Bush could not have done any better...
In the past two years, Dratwa has taken a small operation initially created during Operation Cast Lead to streamline the IDF’s YouTube and Facebook presence and turned it into the most globally visible arm of the Israeli military. In the past year, the new media desk has rapidly expanded into new terrain, from commissioning content designed for viral sharing to creating a Foursquare-style game for the IDF blog that rewards frequent visitors to the site with badges. The IDF is also posting video of its drone strikes, starting with the Jabari assassination, as well as of Israelis taking cover during air raids and of Iron Dome units successfully thwarting rockets launched from Gaza.
“We want to explain to people what happens in Israel, simply,” Dratwa said in a brief telephone interview late last week. “We believe people understand the language of Facebook, the language of Twitter.”
The goal, as Dratwa explained it, is twofold: to get Israel’s narrative out in real time, as people read about red alerts in Tel Aviv and rocket landings in Gaza on Twitter, and to cut out the middleman of “old media” in communicating with pro-Israel activists. “What we try to do is to be fast and get information out before the old media,” Dratwa told me. “We believe people are getting information from social media platforms and we don’t want them to get it from other sources—we are the ones on the scene, and the old media are not on the scene as are the IDF.”
Imagine that. Subverting the mainstream media and getting your message out to an impressionable public before the liberal hacks have a chance to poison minds with preset narratives and talking points.
Maybe, once Dratwa's tour of duty with the IDF is up, the GOP can hire him for the 2016 campaign...
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