Palestinian terrorists naturally want to learn from the best.
That's why they have spoken to military leaders from Latin America, Vietnam and Algeria in search of advice on the kinds of tactics that will accomplish their goal of destroying the State of Israel and sending the Jews packing.
Last month, Hamas deputy political chief Musa Abu Marzouk gave an interview to Russia Today comparing the Hamas war against Israel with the Vietnamese War with the US:
“It’s not like it was in Vietnam and elsewhere, where things ended up with negotiations. This is just one of a [series] of wars, and a war will come when we negotiate with them [i.e., the Jews] about the end of their occupation and their leaving of Palestine.”
But despite the contrast with the results in Vietnam, Palestinian leaders apparently see similarities.
So much so that Palestinian terrorist leaders made a point of traveling there for pointers from General Vo Nguyen Giap:
Giap was one of the great strategic minds of the twentieth century, a former schoolteacher who played a central role in developing the strategic thinking and organizational capabilities that transformed ragtag rural provincials into a military force that would rout the most powerful nations in the world, from the Japanese occupation to the French and the Americans over three long decades of conflict culminating in the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.In the mid-1990s, two IDF major generals were coming to the end of their military careers. Meir Dagan had led commando squads, armored brigades and the Mossad. Yossi Ben Hanan served as one of Israel’s most successful tank commanders during the 1973 war and later led the armored corps and was in charge of the IDF’s R&D. Both of them were students of military history in general and that included the Vietnam War.
The two men applied for visas and specifically requested to meet with Giap.
The
request was unexpectedly approved and the 2 Israelis had a long meeting with
him.
When the Israelis rose to leave, Giap suddenly turned to the Palestinian issue. “Listen,” he said, “the Palestinians are always coming here and saying to me, ‘You expelled the French and the Americans. How do we expel the Jews?’”
The generals were intrigued. “And what do you tell them?”
“I tell them,” Giap replied, “that the French went back to France and the Americans to America. But the Jews have nowhere to go. You will not expel them.” [emphasis added]
"We have a secret weapon in our conflict with the Arabs: You see, we have no place else to go.”
Same idea.
But with a difference.
Golda was right. In 1973, there were about
3.3 million Jews in Israel.
Where would they go?
But there is an implication in the way Giap phrases it.
For France and America, regardless of their reason for being in Vietnam, they had their own countries to return to -- and even under the best of circumstances they had no intent to set up Vietnam as an extension of their own country for their own people to live.
France can always go back to France and America can always go back to America
Where do Jews have to go back to?
Even if Giap was not trying to imply that Jews have ties to Israel, he clearly saw that Jews were not about to leave as France and the US did -- not only because they can't, but because they won't.
They won't because Israel is home.
Our indigenous home.
The French went home to France.
The Americans went home to the US.
And
Jews who are home in Israel are there to stay.
