|
America Needs a Decisive Hizballah Defeat
by Charles Krauthammer
 Israel's war with Hizballah is a war to secure its northern border, to defeat a terrorist militia bent on Israel's destruction, and to restore Israeli deterrence in the age of the missile. But even more is at stake. Hizballah is a wholly owned Iranian subsidiary. Its mission is to extend the Islamic Revolution's influence into Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, destabilize any Arab-Israeli peace, and advance an Islamist Shiite ascendancy, led and controlled by Iran, throughout the Levant. America wants, America needs, a decisive Hizballah defeat. Hizballah is a serious enemy of the U.S. (Washington Post)
Terrorism Is What Causes Occupation
by Alan Dershowitz
 Islamic terrorists have sworn to continue terrorism even if Israel were to end its occupation of the West Bank. They regard all of Israel as occupied. And so, occupation does not cause terrorism. But terrorism does cause occupation and reoccupation. Israel would have left Gaza and much of the West Bank long ago if not for the fear of terrorism from that area. It never would have gone into southern Lebanon in 1982 were that area not being used as a base for terrorism. (New York Daily News)
A Question of Values
- Editorial
There will never be peace in the region as long as Hizballah, backed by its sponsoring regimes in Iran and Syria, is allowed to threaten Israel militarily. A cease-fire that left Hizballah claiming victory on the battlefield would hugely strengthen its fighters as well as those of Hamas, draining authority from the Lebanese government and Mahmoud Abbas in the Palestinian Authority, while unsettling further Western-friendly regimes in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt. Defeating Hizballah, though, would strengthen the arm of those Arab leaders who see the benefit of an Israeli-Palestinian two-state solution while also curbing the regional influence of Tehran and Damascus. (Times-UK)
|
Changing the Rules in the Lebanese Arena
by Boaz Ganor
 Hizballah succeeded in creating an unprecedented situation in which it deters Israel more than Israel deters it. Hizballah also succeeded in deterring Israel from carrying out routine operations against it by creating a dangerous equivalency in which any Israeli action that harmed Lebanese civilians would be followed by a rain of Katyusha rockets on Israeli civilian sites. It is clear that Israel needed to change the rules of the flawed game being played with Hizballah. The government of Beirut cannot be accepted by the international community as a legitimate, sovereign government if, at the same time, it is permitted to shrug off responsibility for quasi-military actions and terror attacks launched from its territory against Israel. (Institute for Counter-Terrorism)
Why the Katyushas Are so Hard to Prevent
by Yaakov Katz
 The backs of pickup trucks, side rooms in one-story homes and thick brush in valleys and on ridges are the places from which Hizballah is succeeding in firing rockets despite intensive IDF operations to stop the attacks. On Wednesday, Hizballah fired more than 220 rockets and on Thursday another 150. It is in between the 100 villages in southern Lebanon that Hizballah fires its rockets. The rockets and missiles fired at Haifa and Afula were launched from Tyre, south of the Litani, where the IDF has until now only been utilizing air power. (Jerusalem Post)
Advocates of 'Proportion' Are Just Unbalanced
by Mark Steyn
"Disproportion" is the concept of the moment. When the leader of Hizballah, Hassan Nasrallah, announces that if Jews "all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide,'' that's not in the least "disproportionate.'' When Hizballah launches rockets into Israeli residential neighborhoods with the intention of killing random civilians, that's fine because, after all, they're terrorists and that's what terrorists do. But when, in the course of trying to resist the terrorists, Israel unintentionally kills civilians, that's an appalling act of savagery. (Chicago Sun-Times)
|