23-Jul-06: Fallacies and fabrications - nutshell responses

Like most of Israel's friends, we're fairly appalled at the disinformation, superficiality and distortions that characterise a good deal of the media's coverage of the war between Hizbullah and Israel. Here's our nutshell review of a handful of the key issues and how they're being mangled.

Q. Isn't Israel's approach to the fighting disproportionate?

It's claimed that Israel's military response to, initially, the provocative kidnapping of two Israeli servicemen on Israeli soil and, almost immediately afterwards, the Hizbullah missile barrages, is disproportionate. Also, that Israel is striking at civilians and infrastructure and in doing so, is irretrievably and unfairly pushing the fragile Lebanese economy and social infrastructure back into the dark ages of the eighties when civil war devastated the country.

But as we have pointed out in this blog, the IDF reports to the media every day, and in its briefings it discloses the nature and number of the targets it has attached that day. There's no doubt there are civilian casualties on the Lebanese side. But the vast majority result from the deliberate Hizbullah policy of placing its military equipment and its fighters among civilians, embedding them as deeply as possible within the civilian infrastructure. Katyusha launch pads are usually located in residential areas. Katyusha missiles are stored in villages, often inside or underneath civilian homes. Those are strategic realities that no one denies.

The IDF routinely gives advance notice of its plans to attack some emplacements by dropping leaflets onto those residential areas. Paraphrasing the message conveyed by those leaflets, here is what Israel says to its neighbours to the north:

You have terrorists among you, and they are firing on our homes. We would like them to stop but they're not stopping. Indeed, we don't see anyone - and most certainly not your Lebanese government or any third party in our neighbourhood - who is going to step in and stop these barrages. No one is as interested as we are to stop them, and we're going to do it now. So take your families and your possessions and get out immediately, or be prepared for the consequences. Is this fair? No, but the possibility of fairness and a happy outcome ended when Hizbullah took control of your neighbourhood six years ago. So now one of two bad things is going to happen. Either we Israelis are going to engage in self-help and remove the men and the armaments that are raining destruction down on our homes and our families. Or else we are going to remain on the sidelines with our arms folded while the Hezbullah in your midst pack up, move out and leave your neighbourhood restored to its previously peaceful state. Our experience tells us that only one of these possibilities is real; the other is fantasy, and we are suffering too much damage in Haifa, Nahariya, Tsfat, Meron, Acre, Kiryat Shmoneh and all the other towns, cities and settlements now under fire to allow fantasy to dictate policy. So unfortunately our bottom line is: leave now for your own sakes and allow us to exercise the most basic, elemental right which a sovereign state has - indeed which every sovereign state in the history of mankind has reserved to itself since time immemorial. The right to defend its population. If there's going to be damage and unhappiness, we prefer it be yours than ours, though we would much rather avoid all unhappiness and all damage. But in the current circumstances, that's just fantasy.

It ought to be self-evident, but evidently is not, that Southern Lebanon would be tranquil and safe if Hizbullah had not moved in, grabbed control and turned it into a war zone. The Lebanese authorities will have to give an account at some future moment for their complicity in this appalling state of affairs.

Q. Yes, but isn't Israel grossly over-reacting to the kidnapping of its soldier? If Israel would exercise more restraint, this crisis would have blown over sooner or later.Western journalists who hold to this line, and there are many, deserve our contempt. The relevant facts are beyond dispute and journalists who ignore them are ignorant or working to a personal political agenda.

Hezbollah's vast arsenal throughout the southern half of Lebanon comprises thousands of missiles with short, medium and and long range capabilities. Though the organization is not a sovereign state, has no elections and answers to no one, it is lavishly well-supplied in an active manner by Iran and Syria and in a less-active, but no less important, manner by Lebanon. The ability to exploit its uninterrupted control of half of the territory of a supposedly independent country (Lebanon) provides the sharpest possible contrast with the Palestinian Authority which has been miserably ineffective in garnering tangible support from sympathetic neighbours. In this sense, Nasrallah - Hezbollah's supreme leader - has demonstrated world-class political skills and business acumen. The ranks of his well-disciplined terror organization are equipped with outstanding quantities and quality of arms, explosives and training. Without a doubt, Hezbollah today constitutes a concrete and substantial threat to Israel and its people. The kidnappings were the opening gambit; the missile attacks which immediately followed were the fruit of six years of careful planning.

Q. Then what do you believe Hezbollah's strategy is?

Hezbollah has never tried to hide its goal. It's explicit, simple and public. Everything Hezbollah does is calculated to bring about the destruction of Israel. Hezbollah did not commence its operations yesterday, and has been involved in countless terror attacks in Israel and outside Israel (in Argentina, for instance, where scores of Buenos Aires Jews were murdered in two Hezbollah showcase operations in 1992 and 1994).

In practical terms, what's truly life-threatening and intolerable is Hezbollah's unparalleled missile capacity. Where else in the world, or in history, is there a stockpile of tens of thousands of missiles controlled by a self-appointed non-governmental association? And one with an agenda calling for the literal destruction of a nation? Established inside six years' worth of cement infrastructure and scattered throughout a compliant countryside, Hezbollah is the face of terrorist wars to come. It's the prototype.

So far, more than 1,600 missiles have been fired into Israeli towns, homes, cars and hospitals since the Hezbollah war began. 734 were fired between July 13th and July 19th. Pause for a moment and imagine what it feels like to live with a rain of deadly missiles going on for day after day.

More than a million Israelis live and work in communities that are under missile attack right now. Tens of thousands of Israelis will spend tonight in bomb shelters. Hezbollah's strategy, if that's what we can call it, is to do more of the same. They have demonstrated that they will keep doing it until they're stopped. No one is about to stop them, other than Israel. And while there are very few Israelis who believe a resolution can come from military actions, Israeli society from one end of its political spectrum to the other has demonstrated a historically unparalleled unanimity around the idea that - while resolution is something we all want to see - we'll settle right now for taking Nasrallah and his Party of Gd out of the game any way we can.

The sooner this happens, the sooner our neighbours, the Lebanese, will get their country back. And the sooner both countries can get on with developing long-range solutions for living side by side with or without the involvement of outside help.