I finally got hold of a copy of the Jerusalem Post at the hotel last night. I wrote this article last night, too, but haven’t posted it until now because I don’t have an Internet connection in my room.
The front page is mostly devoted to the story of a top IDF bod replacing a lesser IDF bod with another lesser IDF bod. The replaced bod isn’t too happy about it. Shmuel Gordon’s analysis is that the IDF should change strategies from occupation to envelopment of ground. Also on the front page, the cabinet is set to approve a ground push while the UN is still fannying around.
On page 2 is a map showing key developments in day 28 of the campaign (Tuesday). The IAF hit 80 targets — 42 Hizbollah structures, 30 access routes and 6 rocket lanunchers. The IDF destroyed 12 rocket launchers and killed 15 and captured 5 bad guys. Two IDF reservists were killed. (Incidentally, quite a few people from the company where I am working have been called up. Some teams have been badly affected by this.) 140 rockets fell on northern towns, causing mostly property damage.
Also on page 2 is a story about former Mossad chief Ephrain Halevy saying that Iran can’t destroy Israel. He thinks that hostilities will intensify but Israel will emerge successful. “But we have to make sure that our enemies will not be able to to project the image that they are similarly successful. This is very important for Israel’s deterrence image.”
There is controversy in Israel over the disengagement from the formerly occupied territories. The On page 3 is a story about the IDF chief rabbi getting kicked out of a funeral because he was seen by the family as an accomplice to the “criminal expulsion of thousands of Jews from Gush Katif.” I’ve seen various leaflets for charities supporting people from Gush Katif at work. While I think it was probably good diplomacy on Israel’s part to move out of these disputed areas, I didn’t like to see people being evicted from their homes by the army. A libertarian approach would have been to simply withdraw protection — people would then likely have freely chosen to leave.
In the Comment & Features section, Victor David Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, writes an article sub-headed: “A humane democracy is trying to protect itself against terrorists from the 7th century while a corrupt world finds psychic enjoyment in seeing it under duress”. From the article:
Our present generation too is on the brink of moral insanity. That has never been more evident than in the past four weeks, as the West has proven utterly unable to distingtuish between an attacked democracy that seeks to strike back at terrorist combatants, and terrorist aggressors who seek to kill civilians.
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There is no need to mention Europe, an entire continent now returning to the cowardice of the 1930s. Its cartoonists are terrified of offending Muslim sensibilities, so they now portray the Jews as Nazis, secure that no offended Israeli terrorist might chop off their heads. The French foreign minister meets with the Iranians to show solidarity with the terrorists who promise to wipe Israel off the map (“In the region there is of course a great country such as Iran — a great counrty, a great people and a great civilization, which is respected and plays a great stabilizing role in the region”) — and magages to outdo Chamberlain at Munich.
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It is now a cliche to rant about the spread of post-modernism, cultural relativism, utopian pacifism, and moral equivalence among the affluent and leisured societies of the West. But we are seeing the insidious wages of such pernicious theories as they filter down from our media, universities, and government — and never more so than in the general public’s nonchalance since Hizbullah attacked Israel.
These past few days the inability of millions of Westerners, both in America and in Europe, to condemn fascist terrorists who start wars, spread racial hatred, and despise Western democracies is the real stroy, not the “quarter ton” Israeli bombs that inadvertently hit civilians in Lebanon who live among rocket launchers that send missiles into Israeli cities and suburbs.
This guy doesn’t hold back. He concludes, “In short, if we wish to learn what was going on in Europe in 1938, just look around.”