I have been following the outbreak of hostilities in Israel and Lebanon, but thus far have refrained from writing about it. On one level the subject is enormously complex and anything less than ten volumes, researched for twenty years, would fail to do the situation any kind of justice. At the same time, on another level, the rudimentary issues are simple, and all you need to know can be ascertained at this distance, without a great deal of in-depth investigation. Hence this post.
Before I say what that point is, let me acknowledge that the whole situation there was caused and created by busy-body world leaders solving some of their problems in a previous generation. Almost all our international problems are actually previous solutions. Come to think of it, that’s true of almost all our domestic problems too. All this to say, back in the day when this configuration was first being thought up by world-class brains, I don’t think Zionism was a good idea. But all these things were set in motion before I was born, and had it been done after I was born, I would not have been consulted. So, here we are.
That said, this is all you need to know. Both Hezbollah and the Israelis kill innocent civilians. That is the nature of war. But Hezbollah does it as a matter of deliberate and avowed policy. That is the nature of Islamo-fascism. Israel does not affirm it as their goal, just the reverse. In other words, when Hezbollah fires a rocket at Israel, if they happen to kill any soldiers, it is entirely accidental. When Israel bombards a position in Lebanon and kills civilians, it is an accident. And that is all you need to know. There is no moral equivalence here.
Even if your view of Israel is entirely cynical, and you believe that they are deliberately targeting civilians, and hypocritically dropping leaflets warning civilians for pr reasons, etc., this still makes the point. The world expects Israel to behave as a Western power. The world expects Hezbollah to behave as an Islamo-fascist band of thugs. And both of them conform to the stated expectations. And with regard to who we should pull for in the current hostilities, this is all we need to know.