Monday, July 21, 2014

Why not sonar?

It is an oft-stated maxim that great power incurs great responsibility. Parents should not get in the habit of beating their children but rather should strive patiently to educate them. We don't chop off a limb each time it gets scratched, and we don't lop off our heads just because we have a headache.

So I'm of the opinion that the Israeli Defense Force should be just that in relation to the Palestinians. It should focus on defense and shun offense. There simply is no justification for the number and percentage of civilian casualties that is being reported today. In war, it may be argued that the best defense is a good offense. But, nowadays, what war lasts for 50 years? And if a war does last that long, then someone should have long ago implemented a more effective solution than the military one.

Israel was and still is concerned about rockets fired from Palestinian territory. But now we see that the Iron Dome defense system has proved quite effective at minimizing that risk. Yes, definitely, the disruption to daily life from such rocket attacks is more than a small headache; but does it call for the deaths of more than 400 Palestinians of whom 70% are non-combatants, many of them women and children? I say No.

Israel is also concerned about tunnels being used for attacking communities on the border of Gaza. Given the circumstances, it is a legitimate concern. But what about sonar? Can it not function under land as well as water? Can sonar not detect underground caverns, construction, and movement? And are there no radar satellites that can detect underground construction? If the technology is not yet up to the standard required for countering the tunnels built by Hamas, then Israel and the world's well-wishers should rapidly bring it up to that standard.

Of course, neither sonar or radar is a long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nor is the so-called two-state solution. As Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar was wont to say, "The present age is not the age of large animals and small states." (Sarkar, Prabhat Ranjan (1984). "Socioeconomic Movements" published in A Few Problems Solved Part 9. Ananda Marga Publications.) The only long-term solution in the region is for Israelis and Palestinians to live side by side as fellow citizens of one and the same nation.

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