July 26, 2006

Global Goodwill Proven Worthless, Israel Fights to Win

Hezbollah has been in control of southern Lebanon for a very long time, which is ironic when you consider that Hezbollah is an organization that has virtually no interest whatsoever in Lebanon. Terrorist real estate is about location, location, location, and southern Lebanon offers a choice view for the “Party of God.”

The only reason Hezbollah exists is for the purpose of destroying Israel. Oh, they see the big picture. Destroying an entire country isn’t easy, even a small country, because the small country has big allies. So you need to create problems for them too.

But no one should make any mistake about Hezbollah’s reason for being, or its reason for taking up space where it is.

Israel certainly doesn’t. This tiny nation – roughly the size of New Jersey – has been dealing with both the threat and the reality of attack from its neighbors since its birth in 1948. That’s when the reality set in, in the form of an attack by the Arab League on the very day Israel was established. The attack failed to destroy the infant state, as have subsequent attacks, and Israel has learned well from the experience.

So no one should be surprised when modern-day Israel takes acts of aggression seriously and responds with only one objective – to win.

Israel does not respond in the way the mealy-mouthed “international community” wants it to, which is with “proportionality.” Hezbollah kidnaps two of your soldiers? Well, maybe take two of theirs to lunch. Anything more would be an overreaction. So says world opinion, at least as represented by most at the United Nations.

But they’re not the ones whose country is constantly being threatened with annihilation by any number of its neighbors, at least one of which is racing against the clock to develop a nuclear weapon while supplying weapons and training to the aforementioned Hezbollah.

Jacques Chirac and Kofi Annan can talk all they want about restraint. When people are talking about wiping you off the map, then those very same people arm guerillas just across your border who subsequently use the weapons to launch attacks against you, do you think maybe you might want to take those threats just a tiny bit seriously?

If Israel treated the threats against it the way much of the world wants it to, Israel would probably no longer exist. I’m not sure the so-called world community would be heartbroken by this. But you can hardly blame a nation – established three short years after millions of Jews perished in gas chambers and ovens – for believing that every struggle must be treated as a fight for survival. Especially when, by the evidence of its enemies’ own words, Israel’s survival is in fact their grievance.

So Israel fights to win. Launch a bloody attack against it, it will launch a massive attack at you – destroying you and yours if possible. Perhaps you could try attacking Israeli civilians, only to hide among Lebanese civilians screaming “You can’t shoot now! You’ll hit civilians!”

Boom. You’re in a million pieces. Don’t like it, leave us alone.

Start a war with Israel, lose, and lose territory? What makes you think you can say, “Hey, give it back!”? They’re keeping it, thank you very much. Oh, you needed that territory? Then stop starting freaking wars with us, because we don’t play that ****!

Israel fights to win. It plays for keeps. World diplomats and the New York Times can wring their hands all day long about the injustice of Israel’s enemies suffering more deaths than Israel itself. Oh, the disproportionality of it all. Here’s a little translation help: When people are moaning about Israeli military actions being disproportionate, that is code for, “Oh crap, Israel is winning.”

Israel always wins. Because it fights with no other purpose. Not to avoid criticism. Not to garner sympathy. Just win. Israel is not attacking Lebanon to be mean. It is not accepting the inevitability of civilian casualties because it likes killing women and children.

It is doing all this because it has decided to completely and utterly destroy Hezbollah, whose own leader had admitted that mere survival is the closest thing to a victory his group can hope for. Considering the enemy they’re dealing with, they’d be wise not to even count on that much. Hamas? Islamic Jihad? You want to be next?

It’s been said that the United States had the world’s goodwill after 9/11, but then “squandered” it, presumably by actually taking the fight to the enemy and refusing to play the helpless victim. Jews understand that. Under the Nazis, they were sympathetic figures. They were being slaughtered en masse, but at least everyone felt bad for them!

No more. Now Israel fights to win. And if the Israelis seem remarkably unmoved by all the criticism, perhaps it’s because they understand what the world’s goodwill is worth.

This is Column # DC43.  Request permission to publish here.