"Eat them for lunch before they eat you for…

“Eat them for lunch before they eat you for dinner” has been used in Middle East politics since at least 2005. The saying means that it is better to launch a pre-emptive strike before the other side launches a strike. It’s better to strike early and win than to wait and lose.

English Sabia Discussion Forums
ToomuchaT
02-01-05, 01:37 AM
.. i think there r many according to the situation! لكل مقام مقال
~General usage:Eat them for your lunch, before they eat you for dinner!!

Gulf Times (Qatar)
TV channel’s Iraq images stun viewers
Publish Date: Thursday,21 December, 2006, at 12:25 AM Doha Time
By Rohit William Wadhwaney
An Iraq-based rogue TV channel, which advocates violence between Sunnis and Shias and airs real life videos of bombings and killings in Iraq, has found its way into television sets of Qatar over the past one week.

The free-to-air satellite channel called Al Zahraa, being broadcast from a “secret location” in Baghdad, has stunned Qatar residents, who have accidentally viewed the extremist-Sunni station while surfing channels.

Wearing an olive green Ba’ath Party uniform, the newsreader boasts about Iraqi insurgent strikes on US troops, as a venomous ticker runs at the bottom of the screen in Arabic: “Chase the Shias from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. Eat them for lunch before they eat you for dinner. Defend your houses by killing them.”

Google Books
Snake Eyes
By Sonny Girard
Milwaukee, WI: Wisconsin Regional Library for the Blind
2008
Pg. 173:
Benny then added, “But if you sense something is not right, do not hesitate to follow the proverb: Eat them for lunch before they eat you for dinner.”

Google Books
Jihad and Genocide
By Richard L. Rubenstein
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
2010
Pg. 153:
As we have suggested above, there is a possible way out for Israel: Adopt an “Eat them for lunch before they eat you for dinner” strategy and cripple or destroy Iran as a nation before Iran is capable of taking out Israel.

NewsMax
Pre-emptive Plan Needed to Stop Iran
Tuesday, 28 Feb 2012 11:44 AM
By Tawfik Hamid
(...)
If soft power can effectively solve the Iranian issue and prevent Iran from getting nuclear bombs, it is certainly advisable to use such an approach. However, if these measures fail, the wise approach to be used with Iran in this case is the old saying, “Eat them for lunch before they eat you for dinner.”