Posted on 07/31/2006 9:38:15 PM PDT by BurbankKarl
The wife and father of kidnapped Israeli soldier Ehud Goldwasser, Karnit, holding a wedding photograph, and Shlomo Goldwasser arrive at Heathrow Airport in London, Monday July 31, 2006. Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers on July 12, triggering an Israeli offensive against Lebanon that has killed hundreds of people, mostly civilians.
The IDF attacked the nearby Lebanese Army Base.
darlin I do too
Would be great if we could smash him like a fly.
Now that's one I will want to read. I keep telling people this goes back to WWI....
Who would have thought in 2000 there was someone we'd detest more than Clinton? I didn't think I'd live long enough.
I don't know that I loathe him MORE. Possibly.
But they are all traitorous peas in a pod hardly worth P-ing on.
But SKERRY is more pathetic.
The Klintoons--especially Shrillery are just plainly more foundationally EVIL as in E V I L.
I loathe this guy even more than Clinton.
I don't know about that, but it's pretty damn close!
Wouldn't we enter to help our ally at that point?
As Israeli ground forces cross over into Lebanon in an effort to destroy Hizbullah's capacity to fire rockets and missiles at Israeli civilians, the president of Lebanon Emile Lahoud is taking sides and flexing his nation's muscle for the first time.
He told a German magazine that he "respects Hizbullah" and its terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah, and he has threatened to turn the Lebanese army against Israel. This would cause a self-inflicted, and perhaps lethal, wound on Lebanon.
Militias associated with several Lebanese political parties -including the party of the speaker of the parliament and of the Lebanese Communist Party - have already joined Hizbullah in attacking Israel.
Up until now, the Lebanese government has claimed that it has no real army, not even one capable of controlling the Hizbullah terrorists who have "occupied" southern Lebanon. It has claimed an inability to enforce UN resolution 1559 which, adopted by the Security Council in 2004, "calls for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias," meaning Hizbullah. And it has disclaimed any responsibility for Hizbullah atrocities against Israeli civilians and kidnapped soldiers.
NOW, ALL of a sudden, its tune has changed. Suddenly its army is strong enough to take on Israel, and it is willing to collaborate with the terrorist organization from which it previously sought to disassociate itself. Nor can the Lebanese government plausibly argue that this about-face has been caused by the Israeli decision to have its ground troops cross over into Lebanon.
Intelligence sources have confirmed that elements of the Lebanese army have been working with Hizbullah terrorists from the beginning of this conflict, providing the terrorists with electronic, radar and other logistical supports.
The Lebanese government is not as innocent - not as much of a victim - as it has gotten the international community and the media to believe. It is playing a dangerous and two-faced game of both sides against the middle.
Large segments of its Islamic population in Lebanon support Hizbullah, while much of its Christian population is terrified of the radical Islamic goals of Hizbullah but too intimidated to speak out. Israel and the United States do not want to turn Lebanese moderates into anti-Israel and anti-American zealots, but the tragic reality is that moderates have little influence in Lebanon these days.
Israel made a serious blunder by worrying too much about the impact its military actions might have on Lebanese public opinion, and was consequently quite tentative in its initial response to Hizbullah rockets.
If this decision was made for military reasons, I would have insufficient expertise to question it. But it appears that military considerations may have been compromised in order to influence Lebanese public opinion.
If that was the reason, it was self-defeating.
ISRAEL WILL be criticized regardless of what it does or refrains from doing. If it succeeds in destroying Hizbullah, it will be criticized for the civilian deaths it caused, even though the civilian deaths are the fault of Hizbullah for operating from civilian population centers.
If Israel fails, it will be criticized for leaving the poor Lebanese in the grip of an emboldened Hizbullah.
Israel was attacked from areas that it does not occupy. It gave up this land as part of what peace-lovers in Israel believed was a swap of "land for peace." But Hizbullah and Hamas turned it into "land for rocket launching and kidnapping."
Israel is entitled to fight back and defend its citizens from aggression, as every other democracy would do.
The media and international organizations are focused on the plight of the Lebanese who have had to leave their homes, paying little attention to the thousands of Israelis who have had to leave their homes in Haifa, Safed, Nazareth and other cities in range of Hizbullah rockets. They are obsessed with comparative body counts, as Hizbullah complains that more Lebanese than Israelis have been killed.
Would they be satisfied if more Israelis had been killed? Would that render Israel's actions more proportional? Should Israel be blamed for having built bomb shelters for its civilians, while Hizbullah has built bunkers only for its leaders, leaving civilians exposed?
Should Hizbullah be given credit for deliberately increasing the number of civilian deaths on both sides by firing its anti-personnel rockets into densely populated areas and from densely populated areas? Should Israel be blamed because many Israelis left their homes in dangerous areas while many Lebanese decided to remain in war zones in order to serve as human shields for the terrorists?
HIZBULLAH IS on the wrong side of morality, international law and human rights. If the Lebanese army now joins it in fighting against Israel's efforts to stop terrorism, it will become complicit with terrorism and a legitimate military target.
It will share responsibility for the deaths of its own civilians.
It would be wise and moral for it to stay out of the fight and preserve its firepower to use against the real enemy of Lebanese democracy - Hizbullah.
The writer is a professor of law at Harvard and the author of Preemption: A Knife that Cuts Both Ways.
I want to watch that movie again this weekend
Yes we will. But we don't have a large force there now, and to be honest we may have to fight our way out of Iraq.
The current Iraqi administration is not as friendly to Israel as we could have hoped.
I appreciate the posting. I think it will be hard to get present info in such a hot conflict. It's normal for the IDF to confirm things well after events so it will take a while.
Time for a Bibi Bump.
AP: Hezbollah claims Israeli fighters trapped in hospital.
Does the AP still try to verify stories or do they just report whatever the DNC and jihadists tell them to?
Well, I hope the military planners are making contingency plans. I'm sure they are.
Do you remember when Greta Van Sustren worked with Dershowtiz on the Claus Von Bulow case in NYC?
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