My Thoughts on The Situation in Israel and Lebanon and Gaza (July 30th)

First, a warning. There is some foul language below. I found myself unable to discover or remember less colorful words that conveyed adequately the information that needed to be conveyed.



Next, a sampling of some of the most current news out there:



As usual, Israel has it right while the rest of the world has it wrong: Israelis resolve to use more force



In other news. Bush-Blair call for international force. With a new UN resolution to enforce. What I want to know is how this would be different than all the other UN missions, all the other UN resolutions. Insanity: Trying the same solutions and expecting different results.



neo-neocon on What does Ariel Sharon have to say. I've seen many articles of the sort she refers to, teaching Palestinian children (and others in the broader Arab world) to hate Jews. They get ignored, because it doesn't fit the reader's preferred world view. Bill Whittle has something to say about that.



Via Dr. Sanity, a series of photos that should put anyone's doubts as to Hesbollah tactics to rest here.



Belmont Club writes some theoretically speculative fiction that is spot-on the probabilities, as far as I can tell.



I, for my part, am disgusted and past disgusted at people who have the evidence put up right in front of their eyes that these terrorist (Hesbollah) are never going to quit trying to exterminate Israel and the Jews so long as there is one Hesbollah or one Jew in the world, and still refuse to believe it because that one point of hard data conflicts with all of the things they want to believe, but have not one shred of hard evidence in favor of.



Given the fact that Israel has shown they are willing to live with Hesbollah, but Hesbollah has shown it is spectacularly unwilling to accept any compromise as anything more than a platform from which to launch their next attack, there is only one rational thing to be done. Exterminate Hesbollah. I can hear the shocked gasps from here. Well, screw that. There is no moral equivalence here. Israel has shown itself willing and able to abide by agreements that it's negotiating partners live up, or even sort of live up to. Witness Jordan and Egypt. Hesbollah is not. Indeed, they are making use of an Islamic technique that goes back to Mohammed and works because all of the decent people of the world that are farmers and bus drivers and especially real soldiers want peace so badly they will go to absurd lengths to preserve it, even when it is plain that hope is completely false. Well Hesbollah doesn't. They don't even pretend they want peace. It is so far past time to wipe these murdering terrorist scum off the face of the earth that I still have difficulty with the fact that Ronald Reagan didn't order it in 1983. Israel is doing the world a favor with every one of these hard-line extremists they kill, and if they ever did succeed in their goal of destroying Israel, the rest of the world would then reap the fruits of their labors. So consider Israel told "Thank You!" from me every time one of these enemies of civilization falls over dead. If I ever have the opportunity to thank an Israeli in person, I will.



Yes, it bothers me to see kids killed in the exchange of hostilities. It bothers me severely. But I put the onus for that squarely where it belongs, with Hesbollah, who hides in their midst, shoots out from groups of civilians, and hopes and prays that Israeli answering fire kills some "innocent" children and women and old men. IT IS A WAR ZONE! From time immemorial, civilians have known to get out of war zones. In Croatia, In Bosnia, in Kosovo, there were refugees. In Rwanda, Uganda, Congo, Sudan, there are refugees. Evacuate, at least until the bullets stop flying. From the dawn of time, civilians have gotten out of the way of hostile militaries. Why does the civilian population not evacuate southern Lebanon? Why can the civilian population not evacuate in this one instance. I'll tell you why! Some of them are Hesbollah supporters. The rest are being prevented from leaving! By Hesbollah! The Hesbollah supporters have made the determiniation that if Israel kills them while shooting at Hesbollah fighters, it'll give Hesbollah ammunition to claim the Israelis are uncivilized brutes who go looking for civilians to shoot. This is Bullshit. No, I'll go one better. This is utter Bullshit, purified and refined three times, down to the most essential, concentrated elements of Bullshit. It is bullshit so lost in its own self-justification, it has no clue as to even go about locating the truth. If Israel had wanted - or even been willing - to inflict those kinds of casualties on civilians, anytime in the past, it would not currently be under such heavy threat from all sides. It is a miracle that anyone in Israel is even willing to negotiate for peace under any circumstances. If the United States had ever been, since 1945, under such heavy attack as Israel thie entire time since its creation, there would be a nuclear desert surrounding us. If the Soviet Union, or China had been under that kind of threat, there would have been worldwide nuclear devastation just because they might as well do the rest of us in while they were at it. Israel has been nuclear armed for decades, and that they have not lobbed so much as one of them at their dedicated enemies is such a tribute to their will to stand for the essential principles of civilization that if the sorry nations of this world are ever looking for the best possible guardian for all the nuclear weapons of the world, I will nominate Israel. Compared to them, the Amish are quasi-pacifist weaklings.



I've said it before and I'll keep saying it. In the war between Israel and her enemies, the vast majority of the reason that there is even talk of a war - so close to 100% of the reason that there is fighting that the remainder just isn't worth talking about - is that the Islamists and other people think Death to Israel is more important than Life for their islamic co-religionists. This war will continue until either that changes, or every single one of the participants on one side or the other is dead. Israeli soldiers stand apart from civilians, shelter civilians behind them, even enemy civilians, and do not fire upon them except when they absolutely must to preserve their own lives. Israel as a nation has acted with so much decency and self-control that the rest of the world should be praising them for their saintly restraint. Their opponents target civilians, conduct war from population centers, hide within civilian populations, and use human shields as much as they can. I would prefer that the Islamists, Palestinian and otherwise, changed their minds, and decided Death for Israel just wasn't important any more. But neither I, nor anyone else, nor any combination of anybodies, has the power to force those Islamists to make that choice in their heart. It has to come from within, and it is showing exactly zero evidence of even being a debate. If they will not change their minds, if that must be the case, I'd rather'd share this world with the Israelis than the Islamists. I'd rather my daughters got to share this world with the Israelis and their self-control than had to share it with the Islamists and their hate and self-immolation. If anybody has any doubts as to what the Islamists would do to Israel if the situation were reversed, and they had the military advantage, exorcise them. Israel would be gone in fifteen minutes, and no UN or EU or American handwringing would change that or even put it off by the amount of time it takes to say "Mind Your Own Business!" We would be completely ignored. The only reason those kidnapped Israeli soldiers are even alive is that the Islamists hope to exchange them for literally hundreds of Islamists being held in prison - nice, civilized, prison, having been convicted in open, public, trials - who are being held because they committed or were intentionally involved in deadly terrorist attacks upon Israeli civilians. What happened to the Israeli civilians that that the Islamists captured but didn't think they'd be able to exchange? Research it yourselves. The answers are available on the internet. I found the original stories (and others from the same day) in less than sixty seconds.



I am so glad that Israel finally had the intestinal fortitude to go after these enemies of civilization that my only worry is that some other enemy of civilization pretending to be a nice, diplomatic, civilized human being will talk them out of finishing the job.