Jerusalem Post columnist Evelyn Gordon has composed an excellent and clear argument why Israel does in fact have a military solution to escalating rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, despite claims to the contrary by Israel’s political leadership.

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As if its first two reports regarding the summer’s Lebanon war were not enough, Amnesty International this week released a third report making sure everyone is clear that it believes Israel is guilty of war crimes.

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Israel’s leadership is making the predictable error of being dragged into a process of thinking it can deal with PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and talk peace with him, while somehow bypassing the democratically-elected representatives of the Palestinian Arabs - the Hamas terrorist organization.

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US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested following talks with her Saudi counterpart on Tuesday that the Arab world has come to a concensus on the need to recognize Israel’s right to exist as the Jewish state.

Either Rice is visiting a Middle East in some parallel universe, or she is severely out of touch with the will of the Arab street.

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Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Mualem Saturday indicated his nation is ready to resume some kind of peace process with Israel. That news got Israeli ultra-leftists, some foreign diplomats, and the mainstream media all excited.

But this purported peace overture must be seen as a deception, just like every one before it.

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An Islamic studies professor from the Hebrew University got real with participants in last week’s counter-terrorism conference in Herzliya about why true peace between Israel and the Arab world just isn’t ever going to happen.

While Israel and the West do their best to separate religion and the governing of the state, Professor Moshe Sharon explained that in the Middle East, Islam is everything, influences everything, is the basis of everything.

“The root of the problem between us and the Arab world is Islam,” which views Israel’s rebirth as an unacceptable “reversal of history.”

As such, peace agreements between Israel and its Muslim neighbors can never be anything more than “pieces of paper, parts of tactics, strategies” that have “no meaning” so far as true peace is concerned.

Contrary to its nature, Amnesty International has released a report accusing a Muslim entity of committing war crimes against the Jewish state.

The “human rights” group rightly says that Hizb’allah’s rocket barrages against northern Israel this summer, which purposely targeted civilian population centers, were in violation of international law. The organization also rightly rejected Hizb’allah’s counter-claim that the rocket attacks were merely reprisals for Israeli aggression against Lebanon.

It will be interesting to see if Amnesty and those affiliated with and influenced by it now seek to prosecute Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and other Hizb’allah officials in the same way they do alleged Israeli war criminals.

I wonder also if Amnesty will read enough of the Geneva Conventions to realize that, while regrettable, the deaths of so many Lebanese at the hands of Israeli forces does not constitute a violation of international law since Hizb’allah was using the civilian population as a shield (Convention IV, Art. 28).

A nation has a right to defend itself against deadly aggression, even if its attacker is hiding behind innocents, and Geneva recognizes that right.

But maybe I am getting ahead of myself. We cannot expect too much balance from Amnesty all at once.

Been writing about Kofi Annan a lot lately, but he just keeps making such ridiculous, two-faced statements that he is practically picking on himself.

So, everyone remembers that when the UN put an end to the recent Israel-Hizb’allah war, part of the deal was that Hizb’allah would be disarmed and no longer capable of threatening Israel.

That was then revised, with the UN saying it could not and would not be the one to disarm Hizb’allah, that Lebanon was responsible for doing so. Beirut, naturally, said it was not going to take the guns out of the hands of a group it views as a strategic military asset.

On Wednesday, Annan looked to further clarify things from his side by stating that any Lebanese armed terrorist organization could only be disarmed by national consensus. (Wonder if he would take the same position if a well-armed murderous group like Hizb’allah was operating out of, say, England or Germany or Italy, and attacking neighboring states?)

Anyway, where Annan’s hypocrisy makes itself evident here is in the fact that he expects Israel to comply with UN dictates, regardless of national consensus. In Israel, I guarantee a majority of the population - and a large majority at that - was for continuing the war a little longer and crushing Hizb’allah. And I would wager they are now for maintaining the blockade on Lebanon as long as necessary to ensure their abducted troops are returned and Hizb’allah is unable to replenish its arsenal.

But who cares about Israeli national consensus? Apparently not Annan.

As anti-terror operations in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip draw to a close, Israel is teaching its terrorist antagonists some lessons, but if recent media reports are to be believed, they are not the lessons most would have hoped for.

According to Israel’s largest newspaper (and Egyptian newspapers before that), Jerusalem is prepared to release up to 800 jailed terrorists in return for the freedom of IDF Corporal Gilad Shalit. This after weeks of clandestine negotiations, despite Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s public declarations that Israel would not negotiate with terrorists or succumb to blackmail.

Similarly, rumors are rife of a possible prisoner exchange with Hizb’allah.

Interestingly, both of these prisoner swaps, if indeed they are in the works, would take place after major Israeli military operations sparked by the abductions. Israel could have agreed to and conducted an exchange without going to war in Gaza and Lebanon.

It would seem to defeat justification of going to war (to create a future deterrent) if Israel anyway intends to give the terrorists what they wanted in the first place. And it certainly signals to both Hamas and Hizb’allah that future kidnappings will be worthwhile.

Israel is apparently operating under the misguided assumption that the terrorists will view future kidnappings as too costly because of the men they lost during this summer’s fighting. What Jerusalem for some reason fails to grasp, even after all this time, is that the numbers of men lost in the fighting or gained in the subsequent prisoner swaps are unimportant to the terrorists. What matters is the precedent, the damage to Israel’s morale, and the further deterioration of Israel’s image in the region as a power not to be tempted.

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.