16-Jul-06: Striking Back at the Terrorists

In the past 3 days, the terrorists of Hezbollah in its capacity as the de facto army of southern Lebanon have launched more 400 medium-range missiles into Israel. Yesterday (the Jewish Sabbath) alone, they fired more than 90.

Israeli deaths - now 25, with hundreds of injured - have occured to civilians in their homes and at their work places.

Any resemblance between Hezbollah's kill-at-any-price strategy, and a military campaign is insulting to most militaries. Comparing the two is dishonest, misleading and calculated (in our view) to help the terrorists, but it's happening everywhere. Politicians read newspapers and watch television just like the rest of us; like us, they are affected by what the media do report and what they don't.

Israel's response, robust and growing, is focused and specific. The army, in a press release we have just received, has targeted some 130 Lebanese targets in the past 24 hours, 50 of them overnight. The most recent targets give an indication of what Israel aims to achieve:

• 10 Lebanese military radar stations along the coast
• Hezbollah's main headquarters in Beirut (you can see it in the Associated Press picture above - smoke rising amid untouched adjacent buildings)
• Hezbollah's broadcasting compound - its major outlet for hate-based propaganda and incitement
• Structures for storing weapons including Katyusha missiles
• Katyusha launching grounds
• Some 20 Hezbollah operational centers in Baalbek and Beirut
• Several bridges and other Hezbollah infrastructure points across Lebanon.

No one in this country images for a moment that the Lebanese are free of innocent casualties. War is war, and innocent people suffer the most. As parents of a child murdered by terror, that's a lesson we have learned well.

But while striking at the innocent is at the very heart of Hezbollah's and Hamas' campaigns as well as of their ethos and raison d'etre - and of every terror group in every part of the world - Israel's military is led by people trained over decades to make every effort to avoid the bloodshed of civilians. We've mentioned this in several face-to-face arguments with representatives of Arab causes. It doesn't move them. What (sometimes) does is having them acknowledge that the balance of military power is strongly in Israel's favor. Wiping out the other side is technically within the IDF's power. If that power rested with the mullahs of Iran, with the crazies of Damascus, with their clients in Hamas or Hezbullah, or with their colleagues in other branches of Jihadism World Wide, heaven forbid, there should be no doubt in anyone's mind what the outcome would be.