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It's particularly fishy that that the biggest success Hezbollah has had so far in the Israel-Hezbollah war, comes from the events in Qana, in which a number of Lebanese civilians were killed. Let's do a quick bullet-list of how many ways this is fishy:
Given that jihadists have seen this sort of thing play out to their benefit before, it provides additional reason to investigate whether the Qana event was staged by Hezbollah.
Photography notes. Digital photographers may be interested to hear that the snap in the preceding article was taken with no flash in very low light, with a shutter speed of just 1/6th of a second. That's usually too slow to get anything usable from a shot of a person who's moving and talking, let alone something as sharp as that particular picture. To get the shot, I balanced the camera on the back of a chair in front of me, and set it take 5 shots in a row whenever I pressed the shutter button. Out of all those shots, there was a particularly good one. It also helped a lot that the camera, a Panasonic LX1, has image stabilization, to take some of the camera shake out of the image.
Last night, at a private residence in L.A., I attended a talk by Brigadier General Relik Shafir of the Israeli Air Force.
Brigadier General Relik Shafir
General Shafir made a number of significant observations. (Items in quotation marks are from my handwritten notes, and are not expected to be verbatim.)
Last week I received a report from Israelis who were expelled last year from Gush Katif, by their own government. The government has not yet been able to re-situate them in anything remotely resembling acceptable homes comparable to what they gave up.
The report noted a recent visit from Prime Minister Olmert. Now, I'm very impressed that Olmert is doing so much to defend the citizens of Israel, and to show the terrorists that their strategy of purposely killing Israeli civilians will no longer work.
As I recently posted, the Oslo "land-for-peace" strategy has been shown to have results opposite to those intended. Giving away land to Lebanon resulted in more attacks from Lebanon; giving away land in the Gaza Strip resulted in more attacks from the Gaza strip.
So I was surprised to hear in this report, that Olmert is continuing to talk about giving away still more Israeli territory:
Prime Minister Olmert made a brief stopover in our refugee camp after visiting the tent city. He asserted that as soon as the war is over he will execute his "convergence plan", the dismantling of most Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, and bring the guns and missiles of our enemies closer to the Israeli heartland. His plan will create a homeless class of 100,000 Jews. He warned us not to complain that we have not been compensated for our homes, businesses and farms. "After all, soldiers are dying and you are still alive" he sneered.
I've been planning a post on how unthinkable it would be for Israel to give up more land. Today we see a report that this view is widespread, even in Israel.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert' s declaration Wednesday that the war in Lebanon will create new momentum for further West Bank pullouts was met by a harsh response on the part of right-wing parliamentarians as well as members of the PM's own Kadima party.
"The backing Olmert received (for the war) went to his head," Knesset Member Zvi Hendel (National Union) said in response to Olmert's comments, which seemed to stun rightist Knesset members. "How many missiles and rockets need to fall on the North and South in order for Olmert to understand that state security cannot be achieved through bragging…and splitting the nation?"
The Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip (Yesha), meanwhile, said in a statement that "the continuation of the blind rush to realignment provides terrorism with a backwind and encourages Nasrallah to continue until all his objectives are achieved. It appears Olmert is interested in breaking up the consensus around the war, while this tough time calls for finding the common denominator."
Israel Our Home Chairman Avigdor Lieberman was also quick to condemn Olmert, saying that "Just like the disengagement brought Hamas to power and led to the massive firing of Qassams on the South and the abduction of our soldiers, so would the realignment plan lead to the massive firing of thousands of missiles on central Israel communities and Jerusalem."
...Meanwhile, members of Olmert's own Kadima party raised an eyebrow over the prime minister's timing. Party members who declined to be identified said "this is not the time to talk about realignment. First we should examine the war's results, and only then decide on our diplomatic course."
Hopefully Israel will stop this hopelessly failed, absurd, Oslo strategy of "land-for-peace," which in fact results in "land-for-terrorism."
The Islamists don't realize it, but one of the things this war is about, is the theory that Western nations can win a war while avoiding as many civilian casualties as possible.
The past 10 years have been about testing, and disproving, a different theory. Since the 1993 Oslo accords, Israel has tried out the nonsensical theory that if you give land to the Islamists, they will respond with friendship in return. Experience has now shown that this theory is false. Israel gave away land to Lebanan and to Hamastan, and in return has been made war on.
Now Israel is trying out another theory. This theory is that, given its military superiority, it can fight a war in which its enemy purposely and intentionally kills as many Israeli civilians as possible, while in return, Israel does the reverse. As Charles Krauthammer describes it:
Had Israel wanted to destroy Lebanese civilian infrastructure, it would have turned out the lights in Beirut in the first hour of the war, destroying the billion-dollar power grid and setting back Lebanon 20 years. It did not do that. Instead it attacked dual-use infrastructure -- bridges, roads, airport runways -- and blockaded Lebanon's ports to prevent the reinforcement and resupply of Hezbollah. Ten thousand Katyusha rockets are enough. Israel was not going to allow Hezbollah 10,000 more.
Israel's response to Hezbollah has been to use the most precise weaponry and targeting it can. It has no interest, no desire to kill Lebanese civilians. Does anyone imagine that it could not have leveled south Lebanon, to say nothing of Beirut? Instead, in the bitter fight against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, it has repeatedly dropped leaflets, issued warnings, sent messages by radio and even phone text to Lebanese villagers to evacuate so that they would not be harmed.
Israel knows that these leaflets and warnings give the Hezbollah fighters time to escape and regroup. The advance notification as to where the next attack is coming has allowed Hezbollah to set up elaborate ambushes. The result? Unexpectedly high Israeli infantry casualties. Moral scrupulousness paid in blood. Israeli soldiers die so that Lebanese civilians will not, and who does the international community condemn for disregarding civilian life?
Perhaps Israel and the Western world will continue this experiment for ten-plus years, as they did with the Oslo theory.
But Islamists should hope, for their own sake, that the Western nations win against them using this method.
Because if Western nations, such as Israel, using this method, find themselves in danger of destruction, they'll have to go back to war the old-school way, in which each nation kills as many civilians as possible on the opposite side. This would lead to a much faster resolution of such wars; but it would be devastating to the Islamists.
