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Israel: Offensive or Defensive?
By Harry Fisher
I was a sergeant in World War II. I landed at Normandy and fought the Nazis all the way up with General Patton's army up to and into Germany. I was there when we 'liberated' the concentration camps.
I learned from the greatest generals how to fight a war and how not. I saw the results of being hard and not giving in. We pushed through the mud and we pushed through the rain. We never stopped pushing.
Before we would come into a town that the Germans had been in, we would shell them, just to let them know that we weren't sissies. When we found some Germans, we hit them hard and did not stop firing until nothing moved. Patton was tough, he was there to win a war against a tough enemy who knew how to kill you and liked to ambush you.
Patton was clear. The enemy is afraid of our bullets. Don't put your head down in a ditch and wait for the fire to clear. The enemy loves that. They will find you with their mortar shells, so get up and shoot, shoot, and keep shooting.
Patton was tough. He said things that his superior officer General Bradley had to censor. But I was there. I heard him say "if some one has a gun and doesn't use it (meaning firing it) well, he is about as useless as the prick on the pope."
He was not big on taking captives. He did not want any one standing Germans up against the wall and shooting them. Hell, he said, kill the bastards before you get them to a wall.
Patton's philosophy was simple. "Attack, attack and keep attacking." Never give your enemy a chance.
One time we came into a German village. They put out white flags to surrender. When our boys walked in and came close to the village buildings, they started shooting at them – an ambush. They retreated quickly. Patton gave the order to bring up the artillery and told them to level the whole damn village. Hell, he didn't care who was there, men, women or children. He leveled it and left it as a lesson to them if they were going to pull the same trick again what to expect.
Today Israel is being attacked daily from the Gaza strip. She ignores it and it only gets worse. I want to tell you that building thicker roofs for the people in S'derot is not the answer; the Arabs will only get bigger bombs. How thick can you make a roof to protect people? What happens if they walk outside? Will the Israeli government build them tunnels under the street so that they may crawl to the market and to their jobs?
I believe that the Israeli government is making a mistake in being so lenient with Hamas. It is hard to send men into a war knowing that some of them won't come back. But the more Israel waits, the worse the situation will get.
One time General Patton was talking to the men. He told us that one of his friends, General Scott, was a short, small man, but he said that he would be willing to get into a boxing ring with heavy weight champion Joe Louis if Louis would promise to be defensive. That was Patton's was of telling us that being defense is a sure way to loose.
Here is what I think that Israel can learn from this much decorated hero. Warn the Gaza government and the peoples in the cities from where the missiles are shot that if they do not stop the shelling, their city will be destroyed. Then when some one shoots a missile, shell that city relentlessly until every one in it has either moved out or is dead. Completely level it. It may take a week, it may take longer. Israel has the guns, let them use it. Probably the UN or the USA or one or two of the European countries will cry that we are beasts, but, who the hell cares. It is not their ass being shelled daily from Gaza. Everyone knows that - if one Arab country would shoot one missile at the US or other European country, they would be attacked ten fold in return. What are we, shooting targets because we are Jewish?
It pains me to see a good state like Israel that wants to treat everyone in a humanistic manner being taken advantage of by their own leaders who care more what is written in the New York Times than what happens in S'derot.
Isn't it time to begin to respect your own people who are suffering and stop giving support to the enemy? Only if we crush Hamas, will they begin to respect us. As long as we apologize for every 'innocent' civilian that get killed or injured, as long as we feed them and give them electricity to produce bombs, we are not being humanitarians. We are causing harm to our own people so that the goyim will think we are 'nice' people.
Who cares what they think? We must defend ourselves and the only way to do it is to be on the offensive. Remember, if you want to live in peace, you must be willing to fight for it, and fighting means just that.
Just remember, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. This is not a time to turn the other cheek, this is a time to turn their cheeks. And if the world yells and hollers, just say the hell with it, just keep on driving!
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Harry Fisher was in the American Army when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He served as a drill sergeant bringing the troops up to fighting skills and then he headed to Normandy where he participated in the liberation of France and then the liberation of the concentration camps. He lives today in Jerusalem
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For a previous article by Harry Fisher, see our Archives
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from the February 2008 Edition of the Jewish Magazine
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