LEBANON: ISRAEL’S LOST OPPORTUNITY
LEBANON: ISRAEL’S LOST OPPORTUNITY?
IT WILL BE IF THEY DO NOT CRUSH
HEZBOLLAH
by
Ken Eliasberg
In an earlier column on the current conflagration in the Middle East, I urged Israel to do everything—and when I say everything, I meant (and continue to mean) everything short of nuclear warfare to destroy Hezbollah. My reasoning was extremely simple. Israel is faced with a mortal threat—i.e. a threat that puts its survival in question. Israel will be blamed for whatever happens in the Middle East, no matter what the nature and/or source of the current problem. Why? Very simple, when you cut away all the nuanced arguments relating to the realpolitik of the Middle East, it comes down to 4 words—Oil Love, Jew Hatred. So forget all the nonsense about “occupation,” “ disproportionate force,” “cycles of violence” etc., this is what the Middle East problem is all about. If the Arabs had no oil, as previously noted, no one would pay attention to them. Their contribution to the world over the 1ast thousand or so years is decadence, death and destruction.
By the same token, Jews have always had a hard time ginning up much sympathy or support among the nations of the world. Granted, things went pretty well after WWII, while the memory of the holocaust was fresh in people’s minds, but that honeymoon has been over for some time. Anti- semitism is at the highest point in my recollection since the late 1930’s. In fact, this is beginning to look like a 1938 redux (with much of the hostility coming this time from the left and not the right; indeed, Israel is getting a disproportionate amount of support from the right). And this is not an effort to cast Israel or Jews in the victim role; this is just the way it is. Ergo, since you’re going to take the heat for whatever happens, no matter how innocent you may be with respect to the cause of its happening, then why not make the effort worthwhile (because you don’t know that you are ever going to have another opportunity to strike so decisively at the beast that threatens you—and make no mistake about it Hezbollah and their ilk (Al Qaeda, The Islamic Brotherhood, etc. ,etc.) are beasts; they are cowards that prey on the innocent and kill just for the joy of killing).
George Bush has done everything he could to buy Israel time to destroy the monster, and he did it at the price of consuming a not inconsiderable amount of his political capital. For doing so, America owes him a debt; he led by principal, not by polls. He governs in the same manner; unlike Clinton to whom governance was a popularity contest (basically because the man had no principles—other than to follow the call of his libido). Israel is in his debt, as is every American, particularly every American Jew (although you would never know it based on how they vote; they keep forgetting that FDR is no longer in office).
What’s wrong with the way Israel is fighting the war.? They are not fighting to win it. That is, in sports, if you play not to lose, you will lose. You must always play to win. If you are not on offense, you are on defense; if you are on defense, you’re losing. America, at times, has fought recent battles in this manner, i.e. not to lose (the good opinon of our “friends” around the world). Wrong! You fight to win. And that means applying overwhelming force to crush the enemy—to destroy his will to fight. We understood this during WWII, and we did not worry about applying disproportionate force. Indeed, the whole idea of proportionality is so stupid that it never occurred to us. As Patton said, war is not about dying for your country; it’s about assisting the other guy in dying for his country (and these guys just love to die, anyway; all we would be doing then is helping them out—you know, the 72-virgin thing). It’s as if we are either embarrassed by the good fortune of our power or shamed into being afraid to use it, for an excellent column on this point I strongly recommend White Guilt and the Western Past—Why is America so delicate with the enemy?, which appeared in OpinonJournal.com on May 2, 2006; it is a brilliant piece by a brilliant Hoover Institute scholar, Shelby Steele.
Applying that logic to the current maelstrom, you can see the futility of such an argument. Israel has 5 million Jews (and a million Arab citizens, most of whom I suspect would line up with Hezbollah if given the opportunity, see a recent column by Matthias Gebauer entitled Hezbollah’s Israeli Cheering Section, appearing at FrontPageMag.com on July 26th). The Arab countries have about 300 to 400 million people. In that context (or in any context, for that matter), a test of proportional killing is somewhere between absurd and insane—no, it’s worse than that, it’s suicide.
And please spare me this nonsense about “innocent civilians” —unfortunately war is messy, violent, and less than perfectly precise. Or, as General Sherman put it, it is hell. But here there is a major difference—these gallant terrorists hide among civilians, making it impossible not to do damage to their hostages if you want to kill them. The major difference in this war is that one party “Hezbollah—targets women and children; the other party goes to almost absurd lengths to avoid hurting them—even when it means compromising their own safety. Tell me, if someone bursts in to your house, does harm to your spouse and/or children, is it a “cycle of violence” when you kill him? Then why has so much of the media’s treatment of this fiasco (or, for that matter, our war on terror, where some of these barbarians have been portrayed as “freedom fighters” —freedom from what—decadence?) spoken of the incursion and response in terms of “moral equivalence” ? By doing so, not only do we demean the party who is defending itself, we give the murderous thugs who initiated the confrontation a status or a stature that they clearly do not deserve. There is no parity here; there is a forceful reaction to brutality initiated by mindless and heartless thugs.
No, Israel’s problem is that it has been both too slow and too tepid in its response. You cannot destroy Hezbollah through the air. You must launch an overwhelming ground attack, the purpose of which is to destroy so many of these Hezbollah cockroaches as to impair the organization’s ability to launch another attack in the immediate future. Not only must you destroy their infrastructure, you must kill as many of them as possible. You must strike fear into their hearts; it’s the only thing that Arab thugs understand.
You will not win this war with airpower. This is not Bosnia, where Clinton could demonstrate his virility (to men) at 30,000 feet (with women he operated at much closer quarters). He could do so because we had NATO, and the Croats and Muslims—you know those peace-loving guys who are creating so many murderous problems around the world—to assist us. And you certainly cannot and will not win the war with diplomacy—i.e. a cease fire—which would amount to little more than a stay of execution (giving Hezbollah time to retool for their next effort to bring down Israel). To the Arab world it would be a sign of weakness, the manner in which they have viewed almost every previous concession. In reality, it would be little more than putting a bandaid on cancer.
Somehow we are afraid to use the full measure of our power, and either Israel is volunteering to follow our lead or being requested to do so. They are making a huge mistake. They must launch an all out assault on Hezbollah or risk everything. The P.R. battle can never be won by Israel; therefore, it should take great pains not to lose the battle that counts—you know, the one for its survival. And, by the way America, if Israel loses this war, and you think that it will not affect us, you are sadly mistaken—we’re next; Israel is our canary in the coal mine!!! Finally, I’d like to think that if God enters into this equation, he favors those who fight to live for something over those who are all too willing to die for nothing. Make no mistake about it, for the sake of freedom around the world, Israel must win this war and win it decisively.