On Israeli Restraint

I read editorial writers in the San Francisco Chronicle and politicians in the European Union decrying Israel's lack of restraint and "disproportionate" use of force in response to the kidnapping of soldiers and the rain of rockets landing on Israeli cities. I wonder what kind of drugs these people are taking. Tell me, if rockets rained down on Chicago, America's third largest city, as they do on Haifa, Israel's third largest city, with over one hundred injured as there are in Israel right now, what would Americans want the government to do? Act with restraint? Be proportional? Nope, they'd want the attacks to stop and want the government to do whatever it took militarily to make them stop.

You know what's really sick? Israel is showing restraint -- too much restraint, in fact, and it works against their own interests. Yael K., a leftist American-born Israeli living in Tel Aviv, wrote this piece in her blog which, in part, describes in detail the Israeli restraint that the Chronicle and CNN and the BBC aren't reporting.. and it's consequences.

I'm thinking of the leaflets and flyers our forces have been dropping into the populated areas that we plan to attack --since this fiasco began -- warning civilians to please leave the area because an attack will be coming. We do this to try to avoid killing innocent civilians. We do this despite the fact that it alerts many of the terrorists we would like to target so that they also can leave beforehand. We do this despite the fact that it endangers our own troops by giving the militants a clear signal of where we will be striking and where they can thus strike our forces. I cannot think of any other country that has ever ever taken such steps to warn an opposing civilian population. Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the five million smaller terrorist groups certainly don't return the favour. No, they actively target our civilians.

I am thinking of what Hamas, led by Meshal, and Hezbollah, led by Nasrallah, and both backed by Syria and Iran have done, what suffering they have caused and are causing to Israelis, yes, but to Palestinians and Lebanese too --in theory to their own people--and I am really beyond words. They do not have the interest of their people in mind. They have power and power of a very personal nature in mind. They should be very glad that we are acting with restraint. They should be very glad that we take more precautions on behalf of "their" people than they would ever deign to.

Gerald A. Honigman, writing for the right-wing Arutz Sheva, puts it this way:

Following the European Union's current demand for "proportion" only perpetuates this conflict. And Israel has been doing just that for far too long.

Again, the recent actions of the enemy are blatant acts of war. And they are committed by those whose openly-stated goal is the utter destruction of their neighbor. No compromise that permits the long-term survival of a Jewish Israel, regardless of size, is acceptable to the Arabs Israel is now confronting.

What would the Brits do with such a neighbor? The French? America? Russia? Who would consent to self-destruction? Would any of these folks agree to a mere wrist-slapping of those aiming to destroy both themselves and their countries, as well?

We all know the answer and all know that the calls for proportionality, while quoting the Geneva Convention, are rooted in hypocrisy and decades of championing the Palestinians as innocent victims and Israel as an aggressive oppressor nation. Facts no longer matter. The political agenda is all that counts.

[NOTE: One more that's crossposted in Blogs of Zion]

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