Ultra-leftist Israeli journalist and political figure Yossi Sarid was invited several months ago by the Norwegian foreign ministry to attend and address a conference on religious and cultural tolerance in Bali, Indonesia. However, when the Indonesian co-sponsors and national hosts discovered that an Israeli was on the guest list, Sarid was promptly uninvited.

Kind of defeats the purpose of a conference on tolerance when the invitation stage is marred by intolerance.

(Side note: It is also telling that the weak Norwegian - ie. European - response was not to demand that Indonesia soften its stance, but rather to offer Sarid Norwegian citizenship in order to bypass the boycott. Europe’s fear of and capitulation to Islam is by no means confined to the continent.)

Israel’s failures in its month-long war with Hizb’allah continue to mount. As the fighting came to a sudden halt under a UN-imposed ceasefire, it was clear that Hizb’allah had not suffered a crushing blow, was still capable of firing missiles into Israel, and would not release two abducted IDF soldiers.

But, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared, at least Israel had created the conditions for forcing the removal of Hizb’allah as a fighting force from southern Lebanon and its eventual disarmament by the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers.

Unsurprisingly, Israel has now admitted that those achievements were nothing but smoke and mirrors. According to The Jerusalem Post, Israel’s current leadership has resigned itself to the fact that Hizb’allah can’t and won’t be disarmed by Beirut or the UN, and that its deep roots in southern Lebanon make its removal from the area impossible.

Israel’s new focus: making sure an arms embargo on Hizb’allah is fully implemented so that the group cannot replenish its arsenal of long-range offensive weapons.

As it becomes increasingly clear that Lebanon and the UN are not going to use armed force to prevent Syrian shipments to Hizb’allah, it is only a matter of time before that achievement, too, falls by the wayside.

The governing Conservatives in Canada displayed outstanding clarity this week when an opposition lawmaker cited Hizb’allah’s “political wing” as justification for treating with the group’s leadership.

Said Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj:

“Hizb’allah has a political wing. They have members of Parliament. They have two cabinet ministers. You want to encourage politicians in this military organization so that the centre of gravity shifts to them.”

The response from Conservative MP Jason Kennedy was right on:

“There was another political party in the past which had democratic support, which provided social services, which played an important role in the political life of its country in Germany in the 1930s, which was also dedicated to violence against the Jewish people.

“The world was wrong to negotiate with that party then, and it would be wrong to negotiate with Hizb’allah today.”

Fortunately that understanding is, for now, also keeping the world from insisting that Israel negotiate with the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. Shame that Bush Sr. and Clinton did not have such clarity when they accepted Yasser Arafat as a national leader and world diplomat, and strong-armed Israel into talks with the “political arm” of his PLO.

Rightly did Prime Minister Ehud Olmert state that Syria and Iran represent, along with their Hizb’allah proxy, an “axis of evil” determined not only to wipe out the Jewish state, but to bring the entire Judeo-Christian West to its knees.

Amazingly, a growing number of senior Israeli ministers now want to treat with one of the main components of the axis - Syria. And this just days after Syrian dictator Bashar Assad delivered his most venomous warning yet that the Jewish state had better meet his nation’s demands or face a war of annihilation.

According to Defense Minister Amir Peretz, handing over the Golan Heights and signing a piece of paper with Syria will cause the latter to drop its anti-Israel affiliation with Iran and other nasties.

For some reason, many Israelis continue to think they can deal with the Middle East on a state-to-state basis, apparently ignorant of the fact that their Islamic enemy is one, united in its desire to see the “Zionist entity” eliminated. This is evidenced by the fact that the issue of Israel alone is able to cause Sunnis, Shi’ites, Wahhabis, etc to set aside their differences for a common cause.

Israel now risks traveling the route taken by a Neville Chamberlain-led Europe prior to World War II, when it attempted to appease Hitler by sacrificing Czechoslovakia. We all know now, of course, that the concession only whetted Hitler’s appetite for conquest.

It would seem natural that the more powerful of two opposing forces would dominate the cycle of escalation in any conflict between the two. But Israel’s just-ended war with Hizb’allah - fought in a world of up-to-the-minute newscasts and political considerations - has discredited that theory.

Every new Israeli move in the war was immediately met by a Hizb’allah escalation - Haifa was hit for the first time; then Tiberias; then the Jezreel Valley; then Hadera. And just the threat of escalating the conflict by launching long-range missiles at Tel Aviv is certain to have affected Israel’s decision making.

To one degree or another, Hizb’allah’s escalation capabilities helped to shape the way Israel fought this war. Hizb’allah effectively employed strategic deterrence against Israel.

Israel must turn this situation around if it is to have any chance of scoring a decisive victory in the next round. Israel, not Hizb’allah, must dominate the escalation cycle.

Failing to take this lesson to heart will only further whet the Islamic world’s appetite for Israel’s demise, which more and more voices are saying is just around the corner after the debacle in Lebanon.

Kofi Annan’s anti-Semitic core apparently prevents him from taking a rational cause-and-effect view of hostilities between Israel and its Arab enemies. Twice did Annan publicly blast Israel for “violating” a UN-imposed ceasefire by sending IDF commandos Saturday to disrupt Syrian arms shipments to Hizb’allah.

“All such violations of Security Council resolution 1701 endanger the peace in the region that was reached after much talk and time,” Annan said in an official statement released at UN Headquarters in New York.

Of course, the Israeli raid was a reaction to something - an arms shipment that was itself a flagrant violation of the ceasefire. The agreement provides Israel the right to defend itself, which includes thwarting enemy efforts to rearm with the kinds of missiles that pounded northern Israel for 34 days. Common sense provides Israel the right to defend itself in such cases.

Only people like Annan, with a deep (perhaps subconscious) hatred for the Jewish state, would purposely turn a blind eye to violations by the Islamic enemy, while attacking Israel for exercising its legitimate right to self defense.

Having been on the frontlines of or in a position of national leadership during every one of Israel’s major and minor wars with the Arab world, Ariel Sharon was largely recognized as the father of the Jewish state’s doctrine of strategic deterrence.

But Sharon was the last of his generation, and today’s leaderhip appears more concerned with perceived diplomatic successes than with maintaining that deterrence. Continue reading »

There is a lot of whining going on about those poor Lebanese civilians whose lives Israel shattered for no apparent reason (if the mainstream media is to be believed). This excellent editorial helps to put the whole situation in perspective.

I want to just post a few of the points here, though you really should read the whole thing.

The author makes the point most of the media is ignoring as it shows the scenes of “wanton Israeli destruction” - that is if the Lebanese, or any nation for that matter, allow a major terrorist organization to set itself up as a virtual army and then attack a neighboring state, there can be no claims of ignorance, surprise or innocense when the aggrieved come roaring back with their own military response.

But, he goes on, the media is purposely ignoring this aspect of the conflict, purposely ignoring the cause and only looking at the effect, knowing full well that scenes of pitiful Lebanese families will cause most to forget about everything but the Israeli bombs that created this situation. He uses this analogy to illustrate:

Seeing television snippets of wounded or dead Lebanese with people sitting on the ground crying and calling them all “innocent civilians” is the same as looking at a photograph of the armpit of Christie Brinkley and saying, “Here is the photo of a supermodel. Isn’t she beautiful?”

The armpit picture is only a part of the story. When human beings see babies or mothers hurting, no matter what, we feel the pain. If we saw baby pictures of Charles Manson, we would want to cuddle him.

The bottom line for the Lebanese:

You sleep with dogs, you wake up with fleas. You sleep with missiles, you wake up dead.

Israel’s many wars and mini-wars have several things in common. The same Muslim foe (though often wearing different masks), Israel’s unfortunate total reliance (at least for now) on the power of the IDF to win the day, and a deep national sense that even if to the rest of the world the battle appears to be nothing more than a border skirmish, much more is really at stake.

Another thing they all have in common is the inevitability that the United Nations, Europe and even the United States will at some point accuse Israel of employing “disproportionate force.”

The argument, however, seems to be bereft of all logic, especially coming from the US, where the doctrine of “overwhelming force” is the cornerstone of today’s military tactics.

At the Pentagon they understand that unless one side or the other is capable of employing force disproportionate to that of its enemy and actually does so, then there can be no victory. The status quo would be maintained in perpetuity, or at least until the Muslims’ were capable of launching a first strike that left Israel largely unable to respond.

The West today owes its freedom to the fact that no one was holding back America and Britain from employing “disproportionate force” against the Nazis and Imperial Japan during World War II. Likewise, it is in everyone’s best interest that Israel be permitted to truly defeat the forces of Islamic terror and tyranny surrounding it.

The world has entrusted the success of a ceasefire, the basis for peace and stability between Israel and Lebanon, to the Hizb’allah terrorist organization. No one should have to explain why this is a bad idea, especially after a similar decision to put regional stability in the hands of Yasser Arafat and his PLO failed so miserably.

Everyone recognizes that the conditions for a future flare-up will exist until Hizb’allah disarms, and UN Security Council Resolution 1701 seems to acknowledge that. But it seems the terror group has been left to decide for itself whether or not to lay down its arms and allow peace to prevail.

No one - not international peacekeepers and not the Lebanese army - wants to actually confront Hizb’allah militarily in order to make sure it disarms.

Hizb’allah says its disarmament is an internal Lebanese issue, and so the government of Fuad Siniora tried to hold a government meeting on the matter Monday morning. But Hizb’allah refused to even discuss laying down its arms, and, unsurprisingly, Siniora immediately folded and called off the meeting. Will that be the end of the charade? Will the international community view that as a legitimate attempt to implement UN resolutions regarding Hizb’allah’s arms, and simply throw up its hands in defeat?

There is one force willing to do the job, but apparently the world will not countenance having Israel actually defeat an Arab Muslim entity.