Missiles (Like Revenge) Can Go Both Ways – OpEd

James E. Jennings

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It may come as a surprise to people in Israel and the US who continue to cheer the unprecedented year-long devastation inflicted on Gaza and South Lebanon, that—like revenge—missiles and bombs can go both ways.

So far, Israel’s US-supplied “Iron Dome” anti-missile system has worked splendidly, destroying or deflecting a high percentage of enemy attacks from Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran. For several reasons that success rate appears to be lessening day by day. Looking into the future, some military analysts see a different picture.

So do folk tales and received wisdom from throughout human history, ranging from Aesop’s Fables, essentially teaching that “What goes around comes around;” to Confucian wisdom: “When you plot revenge, dig two graves.”

Israel was born in 1948 using mostly volunteer paramilitary troop units equipped with Uzi submachine guns ranged against the weakly organized Arab League and Palestinian irregulars using old Enfield rifles. Later, with planes, tanks, and bombs supplied by Western arms manufacturers, Israeli forces destroyed huge Arab armies in Syria and Egypt with blitzkrieg air attacks and massive conventional tank formations in the Sinai Desert and Golan Heights.