July 06, 2006

A Nation Can Only Be Terrorized When it Doesn’t Fight Back

It's amusing to think that the behavior the U.N. seeks to force on Israel, can be summed up by this famous line from Shakespeare: "Discretion is the Better Part of Valor."

The U.N. seeks to force Israel into inaction. The U.N. never condemns Hamastan for its official policy of wanting to destroy Israel; it never condemns Hamastan for its suicide bombings and rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. But it wants Israel to do nothing. In effect it is siding with Hamastan. From Bridget Johnson:

But Israel is apparently so wicked that it merited the first special session of the United Nations' new Human Rights Council - and we are so blessed to have Algeria, Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba, Syria, Iran, Sudan and Libya, who all participated in the Wednesday debate, spelling out human rights for us.

With nations such as those on the Human Rights Council, there can be no doubt that the U.N. is a corrupt mechanism that acts for the benefit, not of the world's people, but of the world's dictatorships.

Shakespeare wrote the great line, "Discretion is the Better Part of Valor." But to understand what he meant, you have to remember what character of his said it. That character was the immortal Falstaff. And who was Falstaff? From Bartleby:

Falstaff

An endearing, fat, aging rogue who appears in several of the plays of William Shakespeare. He is prominent in the two parts of King Henry the Fourth, where he is the jolly companion of Prince Hal, the future King Henry V. Falstaff is a lover of wine, women, and song; although a coward in practice, he loves to tell tales of his supposed bravery.

The behavior the U.N. requires for Israel (and not for Palestine) is the behavior of Falstaff, the coward. So it's no surprise that the more Israel bows to the will of the U.N., the less it is admired. Israel bowed to the will of the U.N. and gave back the Gaza strip. At the time, my only hope for this to have a benefit for Israel, was the opinion of Charles Krauthammer, (with whom I agree on almost everything), that the Gaza pullout plus the fence would make Israel safe from attack. But it didn't turn out that way. Hamastan regularly rockets Israel from Gaza, recently landing a rocket near a high school.

Now Israel is taking action, the only action possible to a nation that wants to survive, and taking the fight to those who want to destroy Israel. In doing so, it is winning admiration it hasn't experienced in all the many years of trying to please the dictator-loving U.N. From Bridget Johnson (same link as above):

Ever since the June 25 kidnapping of Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit - and the abduction and murder of 18-year-old Eliyahu Asheri in the West Bank - Israel has been poised to open a can of whup-ass on the Gaza Strip.

While that thought may make Ramsey Clark want to sob in his soy, some of us see action in Gaza in a much more positive light.

Yes, war is bloody and ugly. But so was the Popular Resistance Committees' threat that Asheri would be "butchered in front of TV cameras" if the Gaza operation to rescue Shalit did not stop. So was the raid in which Shalit was wounded and snatched, and two other soldiers killed. And so was every ensuing vicious ultimatum. And the fact that Hamas's military wing keeps aiming for distance records with their Qassam rockets, two last night in the coastal city of Ashkelon and one there Tuesday night that hit a school parking lot. Enough is enough.

Frankly, it made my day when Israel nabbed dozens of Hamas parliamentarians and cabinet ministers, and when Israeli forces did a not-so-friendly flyby over the abode of Hamas babysitter and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. I considered the 2 A.M. Sunday airstrike on Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's office a bit of redecorating. Never mind that rampaging Fatah backers already redecorated the place just a few weeks ago - when Israel does it, it's considered evil.

Bridget's article is titled, "It Takes One to Terrorize." But I think I might differ from her on that. It takes two. A weakling can't avoid being bullied; but a powerful nation like Israel, or like the U.S., can only be terrorized when it doesn't fight back.