Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Investor's Business Daily on Israel
My wife has pointed me, via Yahoo News, to an article in Investor's Business Daily. It's so good I must excerpt it here.
We're not among those who, assuming the moral equivalence of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, condemn a "cycle of violence" in which both sides participate. Pound for pound, over all these years each Israeli raid was unmistakably defensive or preventative.(emphasis added)
To the extent Arafat's "moderate" successor, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, has in the past grim hours won the cooperation of his Hamas foes, Israel's instant shift to war footing can be credited. Remember: Just days ago Hamas, emboldened by its new parliamentary power, was storming Abbas' government offices.
These are not reliable people, as shown by Hamas' kidnapping of 19-year-old Gilad Shalit, an Israeli corporal, offering him (alive or dead) in exchange for imprisoned Palestinian women and children. That appeal is less innocent than it might seem: Hamas regularly send women and children on suicide missions.
So Israel's lightning response should be seen as a massive exercise in self-preservation and an act of moral clarity. The kidnapping (and possible murder) of Shalit constituted an act of war, committed by an outfit born in terror and dedicated to the death of Israel.
Israel was also right to rattle Syrian President Bashir Assad's windows. Syria makes no secret of its long support for Hamas; indeed, Assad may know something about the corporal's whereabouts. Assad recently was forced by a popular uprising to stop his long subversion of Lebanon.
While the European Union and the U.S. fret as Israel and the Palestinians march toward the brink, we're grateful that somebody, at long last, put the big-time worry into a weakened Assad. That's a step toward peace.
I couldn't agree more.
