Today was the first day of a UN-negotiated "cease-fire" in the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
Surprise, surprise - it didn't last long.
And not only that -- are you sitting down? -- Hezbollah declared "victory." Then, Hezbollah leaders ordered the Lebanese Army to cease disarming Hezbollah terrorists, a key provision of the cease-fire agreement. Was anyone really surprised by all of this?
I wonder, with all of the talk in the air about a non-avoidable civil war in Iraq, why no one is talking about civil war in Lebanon. Hezbollah is a "mafia" that basically controls the entire infrastructure of southern Lebanon. Why wouldn't it be at least reasonable to assume that Hezbollah, emboldened by their "victory" over Israel and now firmly convinced that Allah is on their side, would not consider waging war against the largely impotent soldiers of the fragile government of Lebanon, thus completing their take-over of the entire nation and providing a much more stable environment for operatives from Syria and Iran? Who is going to stop them? The UN?
Some pundits have speculated that Israel is simply trying to call Hezbollah's bluff, knowing that Hezbollah will never surrender its mission to destroy Israel. They will simply wait until Hezbollah fires its next volley of missiles into Israel, then hit Hezbollah again. Perhaps they will keep doing this until Hezbollah's ability to make war is eliminated.
I don't know what the answer is, but I do know this -- no one else is going to lift a finger to really help Israel. The US will provide moral support and arms perhaps, but Israel alone will do the fighting. They have been betrayed too many times by empty UN promises and broken cease-fires not to have learned their lesson.
And speaking of Israel, via a link from Sissy Willis, I found this thought-provoking analysis of why Europe and the UN -- both perfect embodiments of post-modern liberalism -- see Israel as an oppressor and an enemy of humanity. The author concludes with this summary:
... Success is anathema to the Left because it puts an end to victimhood; without victims the Left has no reason to exist. In the eyes of the Left's supporters, Israel's great accomplishments meant that the country no longer qualified as a victim. Israel, through being successful, effectively turned its back on the role chosen for it by the Left.
From the Left's rigidly dialectical viewpoint, the world is made up solely of victims and oppressors, and if Israel is no longer a victim it has to be an oppressor.
One has to wonder how many Israelis or Jews would have died during the last 60 years if Israel had continued to play victim, and let Arab nations like Syria and Egypt and Jordan destroy the Jewish state. In that case, we might have seen yet another Diaspora, with Jewish refugees huddled in camps scattered across Europe, perhaps in worse shape than the UN's chosen perpetual victims, the Palestinians.
But history reminds us that it was the Palestinians, duped by the promise of Israel's annihilation at the hands of Arab nations, who rejected the repeated offers of citizenship and peaceful coexistence extended by Israel.
Had history taken a different course, the roles of the Palestinians and the Israelis might have been reversed. Perhaps there would have been less "war," but there certainly would not have been less death and suffering.
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