Israel in Lebanon: The Choice to Lose

From the desk of Joshua Trevino on Mon, 2006-07-31 07:46

The hysteria over the deaths at Qana continues to mount, and in response, Israel has suspended its air campaign for 48 hours. This is a fool’s move on Israel’s part, which speaks well of its humanity, and poorly of its military sense. Let’s recapitulate, because we must, what has happened here: Israel is fighting an enemy, Hezbollah, that explicitly seeks civilian massacre, and hides amongst civilian populations as a matter of course. The direct result of this, as anyone might expect, is civilian deaths. (I am not, as an aside, convinced that there is a meaningful “civilian” designation here, but we will accept it for the sake of argument.) Now, who bears primary responsibility for those deaths? Ordinarily, one might assert that it’s the combatant that actively sought to place those dead civilians in the line of fire.

But standards for the Jewish state are different, you see. The “international community” does not pound its spoon and sippy-cup on the high chair and demand that Hezbollah fight according to the norms of humanity. Rather, the horrors resultant from the jihadists’ inhumanity are somehow the Jews’ fault – and the Jewish polity, rather stupefyingly, lends the obscene opprobrium credence by standing down.

This, in stark relief, is the hideous enmity toward Israel per se in action. It is a curious war indeed in which one side may assiduously seek atrocity and thereby achieve perceived moral superiority over its foe. One searches in vain through history for a parallel. The closest one comes is the Nazi use of captive European civilians in their war factories: thousands of them were killed at the hands of the Allied air forces. But the parallel ends there, because the blame for those deaths was rightly placed upon the Nazis. That is mere moral sanity – and moral sanity is conspicuously absent when the “international community” pronounces upon the Jewish state.

Conspicuously absent from this very discussion is the possibility that the collapsed building in Qana was not, in fact, destroyed by the Israelis at all: rather, there is a chance it was brought down by the detonation of a Hezbollah munitions cache – stored, of course, in a civilian complex. The facts are not in yet, and will not be for some time, but reasonable people ought to allow for it before passing judgment. One might think this would be a lesson of the idiot braying over the fallacious “Jenin massacre.” But the real lesson of that episode was that one may tar Israel with almost any crime, regardless of truth, and the world will rush to embrace the lie. As then, so now in Qana.

This war is within Israel’s capacity to win. It can clear southern Lebanon, and it can root out, village by bloody village, the murderous fanatics of Hezbollah. But to win, it has to accept two facts: First, it must accept that airpower alone is insufficient to accomplish its end. Second, it must realize – again – that it must pay no heed to the strident voices of Europe, the international bureaucratic set, and the Muslim world that claim the interests of a perverse humanity, and thereby wish them dead.

Jews throughout history

Submitted by BitShifter on Tue, 2006-11-14 10:57.

Jews throughout history always had it bad. With this recent development, they are digging themselves a new grave. Instead of listening to what other people think, they should stand up and eliminate the problem at its root. Seek out the insurgents one by one and stop posing military might. IN this war, looking good has never been more wrong.

"In fact the US is actively

Submitted by Amsterdamsky on Wed, 2006-08-02 09:29.

"In fact the US is actively pursuing a policy of protecting democracy from thugs,"

 

Do you really believe this?  So the US rushes more bombs to Israel so they can trash the rest of Lebanon and its newly elected government?  How is this protecting democracy from thugs?  Israel is playing the role of thug as far as I can see.  Again, the big loser will be the US and ALL the people in the middle east. 

Thugs and the blind

Submitted by marcfrans on Wed, 2006-08-02 16:09.

@Amsterdamsky

The Ayathollahs continue to pursue their goal of 'leading the islamic world' by using their Lebanese proxy Hezbollah to continue to attack Israel. Such attacks are always guaranteed to provoke (prepared and manufactured) 'outrage' on the islamic street and 'sympathy' in parts of Europe.

It is remarkable that you cannot discern which side of this war is "democratic" and which side is not. The reason of course is that you tend to confuse "democracy" with "popularity".

That the people in the Middle East are the "big loser" of these 'games' is undeniable. At the moment it is especially the Lebanese who are the "loser", and tomorrow it will be other Middleasterners (depending on Iran's next moves).

But, why should the US be the big loser? That doesn't make any sense. Americans (and other free people in the world) can only benefit in the long term when a particular democracy, in this case Israel, stands up to fascism (in casu islamofascism or radical islamism) and totalitarianism. History teaches that it is more likely the Europeans who in time will again become the "big loser", after the umpteenth futile attempts to appease any type of fascism.

The right choice

Submitted by Frodo42 on Tue, 2006-08-01 10:24.

Unsurprisingly, Hezbollah couldn't restrain itself from sending more rockets at Israel - who responded appropriately, by cancelling the 48 hour ceasefire, with US consent. The work to uproot the local branch of the Iranian army now continues. Since Israel is effectively implementing US Security Council resolution 1559 (at their own expense), it is important that they are permitted to conclude the work before laying down the arms.

Hezbollah sacrifices

Submitted by truth serum on Mon, 2006-07-31 19:14.

Hezbollah is responsible for those 'innocent civilian' deaths.  They set up their rocket launchers in and around the building. THEY KNEW Israel would strike.

 

Those people were not human 'shields'.   Hezbollah has used them as necessary sacrifices in order to gain world sympathy.   They are disqusting.

 

If they were true men AND wanted to protect those people they WOULD NOT being putting them at risk.  Real men do not hide behind women and babies.  THEY, in fact, should be the "human shields." 

Propaganda wars

Submitted by Emigrantus on Mon, 2006-07-31 18:26.

I guess the Qana incident has finally ended the period of relative temperance in denouncing the IDF offense in Lebanon. The Belgian television now sets the tone by reporting that Israel has "broken its promise" with regard to suspending its air strikes on Lebanon for 48 hours. Never mind that Olmert never agreed on a unilateral cease fire. Never mind that Israel explicitly qualified this unilateral suspension by declaring that they would still monitor the region, and that they would respond immediately if real-time evidence indicated that rocket launching installations were being prepared. Never mind all that... they broke their promise!

Also interesting is the announcement by IDF officials that they are investigating the apparent 7 hour time gap between the actual strike on the building (1 A.M.) and the tentative time of its collapse (8 A.M.). One possibility was that the building became unstable but only collapsed later, possibly in response to shockwaves generated by a later strike (7:30 A.M.) on a nearby building (400 meters away). Given the Israeli modus operandi, this in itself could imply that the Hezbollah was still active in this region after 1 A.M.

An alternative hypothesis however, although it was stressed that this is still being investigated, was that the building's collapse was caused by delayed explosion of Hezbollah weapons stocked inside the building... This would squarely put the focus back on the real issue: Hezbollah's use of civilian areas for military purposes. I guess it's understandable that foreign media will only pick this up once the investigation has turned up conclusive evidence. The problem is that, by the time this happens, attention might already have shifted to other examples of Israel's "criminal methods".

"The hysteria over the

Submitted by Amsterdamsky on Mon, 2006-07-31 14:09.

"The hysteria over the deaths at Qana continues to mount, and in response, Israel has suspended its air campaign for 48 hours. This is a fool’s move on Israel’s part"

Well they lied.  They are now bombing again with US supplied munitions.  The US seems to have completey outsourced its foreign policy to Israel.  So much for democracy in the Middle East.  Vote for who Israel tells you to or be bombed.  This is sure to go over well right?

@ Amsterdamsky

Submitted by George2 on Mon, 2006-07-31 14:45.

So if any country that produces (and donates) arms, automatically outsources its foreign policy, then all of the G8 are outsourcing their foreign policy and probalby the Netherlands too because they are also producing parts for the military industry.

Of course this is utterly nonsense. If I give an assault weapon to someone, and this someone uses the thing for what is intended to be used for, then I am not outsourcing my foreign policy. In fact the US is actively pursuing a policy of protecting democracy from thugs, who are not afraid of hiding behind kids, brainwashing young people to blow themselves up in a crowd.

"So much for democracy in the Middle East." Democracy means that people cast their vote in an election for a government. This government carries out what they promised during the election campaign. People in Lebanon and Palestine do not vote in Israel. They vote in their own country. Please refer to the rules for democracy in your own country.

I respect your opinion that you disagree with Israel's actions. But please, refrain from stacking one one-liner on top of the other.

It is within Israels capacity to do what...?

Submitted by Bart Vanhauwaert on Mon, 2006-07-31 13:14.

This war is within Israel’s capacity to win. It can clear southern Lebanon, and it can root out, village by bloody village, the murderous fanatics of Hezbollah.

This is totally unsubstantiated and seemingly not confirmed by the facts on the ground...

European Muslim

Submitted by Esther on Mon, 2006-07-31 09:34.

If you think it through: expecting Israel to act extra-morally and not bomb buildings in which terrorists are hiding, while not expecting the same from Hizballah, is hidden racism.  It's another way of saying "we don't expect Muslims to uphold basic human standards".  If Hizballah uses children as cannon fodder, that's ok.  What do you expect.

Why doesn't that bother you?

 

Islam In Europe

 

"Now, who bears primary

Submitted by Amsterdamsky on Mon, 2006-07-31 09:12.

"Now, who bears primary responsibility for those deaths?"

 

The US for funding this insanity.  Do you honestly think Israel would be this aggressive witout millions of dollars of free money and weapons being received by the US every hour?  Again, the total humanitarian aid given to Lebenon by the US amounts to about several hours of aid to Israel.  The US will be the big loser in the end.

Whose protesters are they?

Submitted by Pawel Machala on Mon, 2006-07-31 08:30.

We're being flooded with reports from Lebanon and, usually, shown protesters in European countries immediately after. It's significant that they never protest against Hesbollah. It reminds me of a book by Vladimir Bukovsky titled 'Pacifists against peace' in which he argues that most western pacifists of the Cold War era were sponsored by KGB (directly or indirectly). That's why they never protested against Russian nuclear weapons, only against the American ones. Some of the protesters must be paid by Muslim organisations, no doubt about it. Most of the rest are 'useful idiots' who in their stupidity will follow anybody a bit smarter than them.