What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security?
What other country sustains 1,500 indiscriminate rocket attacks into its cities — every one designed to kill, maim and terrorize civilians — and is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the enemy’s infrastructure and strongholds with precision-guided munitions that sometimes have the unintended but unavoidable consequence of collateral civilian death and suffering?
Hearing the world pass judgment on the Israel-Hezbollah war as it unfolds is to live in an Orwellian moral universe. With a few significant exceptions (the leadership of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and a very few others), the world — governments, the media, U.N. bureaucrats — has completely lost its moral bearings.
Charles Krauthammer (via Stephen Pollard).
Pollard also points to a good map showing the tiny area of Beirut that has been targeted by Israel contrary to reports that make it seem like the whole city has been reduced to rubble. He also has a nice post pointing out that for some reason Hezbollah attacks on UN positions in Lebanon are going unreported.
Another issue that’s not being explored very thoroughly is Hezbollah’s tactic of launching rocket attacks from Lebanese villages that Israel is then criticized for striking. Here’s a report from today’s NYT:
TYRE, Lebanon, July 27 — The refugees from southern Lebanon spilled out of packed cars into the dark street here Thursday evening, gulping bottles of water and squinting in the glare of the headlights to find family members and friends. Many had not eaten in days. Most had not had clean drinking water for some time. There were wounded swathed in makeshift dressings, and a baby just 16 days old.
But for some of the Christians who had made it out in this convoy, it was not just privations they wanted to talk about, but their ordeal at the hands of Hezbollah — a contrast to the Shiites, who make up a vast majority of the population in southern Lebanon and broadly support the militia.
“Hezbollah came to Ain Ebel to shoot its rockets,” said Fayad Hanna Amar, a young Christian man, referring to his village. “They are shooting from between our houses.”
“Please,’’ he added, “write that in your newspaper.”
Meanwhile, here’s JJ Goldberg, editor of the Forward newspaper, talking about US coverage of the crisis on NPR’s On The Media. (Via Mediabistro.)
Well, it’s certainly more pro-Israel than the coverage in Europe, in the sense that the American coverage doesn’t begin with the assumption that Israel is in the wrong. You have, in Europe, a sympathy on the left for Muslims, in the sense that in Europe, the Muslim population is the underclass. It’s the immigrant class. It’s the underdog. And since the Muslim population generally comes with the argument that the creation of Israel was a crime, that is a credible assertion.
In this country, it hasn’t been, up until now, a credible assertion to say that the creation of Israel is a crime.
Is Goldberg right? I’m not sure. But I’d wager that many in Europe would be thankful if the state of Israel did not exist.
Israel,
Lebanon,
War
My landlord in Newquay was a news photographer so when I saw