Lebanon

The Israelis and the Palestinians are slugging it out in Lebanon again. Ho-Hum. So what else is new in the world? I have no intention of picking on the Palestinian Arabs for the current imbroglio, but I rather think they are at fault more than the Israelis. However, they’ve had a lot of help in their conflict with Israel in the current dust-up, particularly from Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and the UN as well.

Hezbollah provoked the fight with a bloody cross-border raid and kidnapping. That in itself is nothing new, but it seems to have been the final straw in the Israeli’s present list of grievances, which is understandable if we remember that Israel is a tiny nation surrounded by a lot of implacable enemies, and subject to terrorist attacks nearly every day. The Palestinians are crying about the “Israeli aggression in Gaza” as their current excuse, conveniently forgetting to mention that the Israelis had recently removed themselves from the Gaza strip, tanks, guns, barbed wire and “settlers”, and turned everything over to the Palestinians, who promptly went right back to attacking Israel from that very same area. Which is the reason the Israelis took over in the first place.

To the worlds press as well as to the Arabs, it’s apparently justifiable when an Arabic terrorist blows up an Israeli school bus, but it’s an entirely different story when the Israelis get mad enough to do anything about it. “We’re so sorry that a couple of dozen Israeli kids got blown up in a terrorist raid”, but it’s “Katie bar the door!” if a couple of Palestinian militants get killed in an Israeli counterattack. It’s an unfortunate fact that innocent people get killed in wars, and the mechanics of that phase of the war on terrorism make it inevitable that noncombatants are going to get hurt or killed. Still, despite the growing hatred in the mid-east I haven’t heard of either an Israeli call for holy war, or for the extermination of all Arabs.

Over the last few years Israel has been slowly pulling in her horns, apparently in an effort to get a lasting peace on their borders. The Arabs on the other hand see any peace efforts from Israel as a sign of weakness, and have the idea that peace will only come about with the total destruction of Israel, and a second holocaust. Arabic nations ignore the plight of the Palestinian people while pouring money and weapons into Palestinian terrorist groups. Meanwhile the UN is among the leading voices calling on a country besieged by terrorism to lay down their arms before those who would destroy it. And unbelievably charge Israel with a disproportionate use of force!

UN accusations against Israel are all the more odious because the international organization failed to implement Security Council Resolution 1559, which demanded the disbanding and disarmament of all militias in Lebanon, and the control by the Lebanese government over all it’s own territory. The big glass house by the East River has long nourished an anti-Israel disposition. But rarely have the UN's leanings been more outrageously on display than when Koffi Annan accused the Israeli military of "apparently deliberately targeting" a UN post in Lebanon. It defies reason for Israel to have deliberately launched an attack against the world body, but that was Annan's impulse, one obviously rooted in the animus that informs virtually all he says and does regarding Israel. Since Hezbollah provoked the fight Israel has dropped thousands of bombs and shells on Lebanon, killing roughly 400 people - a figure that testifies to Israeli restraint. Yet Annan is appalled at such Israeli fury. If the UN, at Lebanon’s insistence, had carried through with Resolution 1559, Hezbollah attacks would have long ago ended. Instead the UN let Hezbollah stockpile thousands of long-range weapons.

Ignoring the presence of a miniscule (and unarmed) UN peacekeeping force, Hezbollah remained, and with Lebanon’s compliance has a reported 12,000 Syrian and Iranian supplied rockets. Some of those rockets include Iranian copies of both the Red Chinese “Silkworm” cruise missile, and the Russian “FROG” ballistic missile. Both missiles are quite capable of delivering chemical and biological weapons (or possibly Iranian supplied nuclear weapons), and both have the range to reach nearly anyplace in Israel. Small wonder that the Israelis want to do something about Hezbollah.

On the other side of the coin, the Israelis response consists predominately of air and artillery strikes. Since the invention of tactical bombing, every air force in the world has proven, time and again that, like artillery shells, aerial bombs are notoriously inaccurate weapons for “surgical strikes” in populated areas. (Picture US warplanes accidentally bombing a Red Chinese embassy a few years ago.) The Israelis unfortunately have internal political problems that preclude any other form of attack, and bombs continue to fall on collateral targets. It’s not a case of “pilot error” either, while the IAF is rather small it’s to be considered the most professional air force in the world.

Keep in mind however that this particular fight is not a case of nation against nation, but rather is yet another Islamic fundamentalist group trying to kill infidels, and regain long lost Arab territory. Interestingly enough, Al-Qaeda recently put out yet another call for jihad, with the intent of “regaining” everything from Spain to Iraq! Funny though, I seem to remember that the Spanish finally finished taking their country back from Moorish Islamic invaders in 1492.

If the West does not persuade Israel and Hezbollah to stop or at least moderate the fury of their attacks, that failure will add to a sense that in its fight with Islamic fundamentalism, the West actually is engaged in a modern religious crusade. The CIA has yet to report that Hezbollah has possession of WMD’s, but such weapons are a possibility that must be seriously considered. Simultaneously, Israel has been a nuclear capable power for many years, and has often been reported to have as many as two hundred nuclear warheads. If either Arab WMD’s, or Israeli nukes are used, the mid-east powder keg will certainly detonate, and the rest of the world will inevitably be drawn into a major military conflict that could easily become WW III.

What a tragedy that would be, especially for those who desire a modern, peaceful, Middle East, and what a triumph for bin Laden.