Well the race is on. Who can be the first to strut their flawed theories of moral equivalence the loudest and demand that Israel cease fire in their efforts to destroy the Hezbollah terror machine which has afflicted the Middle East for the past 25 years?
First up is Appeaser in Chief, Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations. Thursday he outlined his "cease fire now, security for Israel maybe" views in the U.N. Security Council. No surprise there, as President Bush pointed out in his candid open microphone comments to Tony Blair that Kofi's "attitude is basically ceasefire and [then] everything else happens. "
How many times have we been down this road before?
Thank goodness we have Ambassador John Bolton at the United Nations. Like President Bush, he understands the problem of yet another one-sided cease fire when he states:"How do you get a ceasefire with a terrorist organization? I'm not sure anyone has done that before and I'm not sure it's possible."
Exactly! How many times has Israel agreed to a ceasefire, only to find that terrorists used the time to rearm and plan the next round of attacks?
Mike's America readers will recall recent history where Israel withdrew from settlements in Gaza to "buy peace." And yet, wasn't there a "ceasefire" in place when Hamas dug a tunnel out of Gaza to attack Israel and take Israel's soldier, Corporal Shalit hostage? Wasn't there a ceasefire in place when terrorists kidnapped and murdered eighteen-year-old Eliyahu Asheri?
Wasn't there a ceasefire in place when Hezbollah violated U.N. Security Council resolutions and crossed the blue line , the border separating Israel andLebanon, and took Israeli soldiers hostage sparking the current crisis?
And are not the rockets raining down on the civilian population of Israel the past week an open violation of every ceasefire agreement?
What good is another ceasefire that allows terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah to escape, rearm and strike again?
U.N. Record for Peacekeeping Not Good.
As pointed out above, ceasefires in the past have not resulted in peace. United Nation's efforts have done little more than create temporary feel good diplomacy enabling the perpetrators of violence to escape defeat while living to fight again with ever more deadly weapons.
Take for example the sad episode following Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. Israel fully complied with U.N. mandates to leave occupied territory by May of that year. And yet, on October 7, 2000 Hezbollah, used vehicles with fake U.N. markings to illegally cross into Israel, kidnap and kill three Israeli soldiers.
What's worse, U.N. "peacekeepers" witnessed the incident and videotaped it, but refused to give Israelis the tape which might have freed their soldiers for fear of compromising U.N. neutrality.
Need more information on the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL), visit their web site. They're led by Major-General Alain Pellegrini, of FRANCE! Need I say more?
Another round of this nonsense is clearly NOT the solution to the problem. What other form of "international presence" referenced by Prime Minister Blair in his open-mic conversation with President Bush remains to be seen. But more of the same is not going to solve the problem.
Next Up: The Usual Demand for Prisoner Exchange
In the past Israel has agreed to cease fires and prisoner exchanges only to see ever more aggressive violence against civilians and renewed hostage taking.
So it should surprise no one that the pattern is repeated with the call yet again by Hezbollah for another prisoner exchange as the solution to the current crisis.
But who would Israel exchange for their kidnapped soldiers? Further Adventures of Indigo Red and Moonbattery point to this report:
(CNSNews.com) - The Arab prisoner Hezbollahallah wants Israel to release in exchange for two abducted Israeli soldiers, is serving multiple life sentences for killing a four-year-old girl with a rifle butt.
Samir Kuntar is one of only two or three Lebanese prisoners still held by Israel, and Hizballah said its July 12 assault is aimed at winning his freedom.
...
While the terrorists rampaged through the apartment, firing weapons and detonating grenades, Haran's wife Smadar hid in a crawlspace above the couple's bedroom together with their other daughter, two-year-old Yael, and a neighbor.
In an effort to prevent Yael from crying out and alerting the terrorists to their whereabouts, Smadar kept her hand over the child's mouth, and accidentally smothered her to death.
Meanwhile Kuntar and his group took Danny and Einat Haran to the beach.
"There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see," Smadar wrote later.
"Then he smashed my little girl's skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar."
Strategic mistake
Israeli police shot dead two of the terrorists. Kuntar and the remaining man were tried and imprisoned. The other man was released as part of a May 1985 prisoner exchange - 1,150 Arab terrorists for three Israeli prisoners-of-war held in Lebanon - but Kuntar was not included in the deal.
Several months later, the PLF seized the Achille Lauro, an Italian cruise ship, demanding that Israel release Kuntar, along with other Palestinian prisoners. The hijackers killed a wheelchair-bound American Jewish passenger, Leon Klinghoffer.
Kuntar remains in jail and has been hailed as a hero among Israel's enemies. The Palestinian Authority last March announced it was giving the Lebanese-born prisoner honorary Palestinian citizenship.
Hizballah repeatedly has agitated for the release of Kuntar, and after the January 2004 prisoner exchange, vowed not to rest until it had done so.
Addressing a large Shi'ite gathering last February, Nasrallah declared: "We are working on making this year the year to free our brothers in Israeli detention - Samir Kantar and his friends."
Moral Equivalence?
How many times have we heard the advocates of a ceasefire or prisoner exchange say that it was important to maintain the path to peace? It's the same "peace at any price" mentality that has resulted in the horrific deaths of tens of millions in the 20th Century. Yet, their voices are heralded as "moral."
Many of these same folks claim that Israel's actions in their defense are on the same moral plain as their attackers. It's this abomination where some equate terrorist monsters who purposely target and kill civilians with Israel Defense Forces seeking to defeat them by attacking military targets. Can anyone tell me that suicide bombers directed at civilians, Arab and Jews, in buses or restaurants in Israel is equivalent to Israel's efforts to strike military and leadership targets?
These same advocates of moral equivalence see the world in shades of gray. There is no right or wrong. Yet they never seem to advance any solution which actually SOLVES the problem of evil that confronts us all more directly now, in the wake of September 11th, than ever before.
Before real solutions to the Middle East problem, or any problem for that matter, can be effective, an intellectually and morally honest appraisal is required. History teaches us that the failure to do this results in nightmares that humankind can do without.
More at Sparks from the Anvil.
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