Peres: I Never Imagined Qassams After Disengagement

A few bloggers have picked up on Shimon Peres' "stupid" quote:

I did not imagine that we would leave Gaza and they would fire Qassams from there; I did not imagine that Hamas would show so strongly in the elections.

I haven't seen anyone comment on how this is far deeper than a personal lack of intelligence. This goes to the heart of what it means to be on the Left vs. the Right. To do so, it would be helpful to review what I wrote prior to the 2005 disengagement from Gaza:

According to the left, terrorism is fueled by grievance. Eliminate the "occupation" and terrorism will lose its appeal. According to the right, terrorism is a tactic in an overall strategy of winning a war. Show that terrorism pays and the tactic will be used more. If anything, it is in the Palestinians' interest to temporarily minimize attacks until the retreat from Gaza is complete. Terror could cause a swing in public opinion and therefore possibly derail the withdrawal.

Mark my words and check back in a year. If Palestinian terror subsides now that Israel has given up Gaza (and Sinai a couple of times, and Taba, and Lebanon) I'll admit I was wrong and change my opinion. That's what makes me a conservative and that's what makes conservative predictions so much more reliable. Leftists just fight harder to impose their vision on the world.

The purpose of this blog is to help our society succeed through policy driven by an accurate understanding of the world. The Gaza disengagement was an excellent scientific test of a clear hypothesis--do concessions to eliminate the articulated grievances of the enemies of Israel (and the West) obviate or accelerate their aggression?

Unfortunately, the Left, as I predicted, would not change their wrong-headed belief in the face of incontrovertible evidence. (Here is one notable exception, a must-read.) Leftism is as reliably wrong as George Costanza.

If we would only let the outcome of these experiments drive our policies we would be able to defeat our enemies with ease.