Soccer Dad

Haveil havalim daily edition 07/26/2006

In depth: The Rome Conference failed to achieve a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.

(next 3 via buzztracker)

Dependable Renegade sums it up Heckuva job, Condi.

Jay Reding concludes

The Middle East has already been deeply scarred by such superficial measures – Secretary Rice is correct to reject an immediate cease-fire, and the interests of the entire free world lie with the destruction of Hizb’Allah.

Charming just Charming isn't too disappointed and leaves with this thought

And by the way, Mr.Annan, if I was an Israeli General and saw your U.N. observers obviously supporting Hezbollah..such as they have done in the past, I would order them blown away. Instead of being part of the solution the peace keepers have been part of the problem. I would suggest that you pull them before more get hurt.

In Endgame in Lebanon the editors of the Washington Post correctly understand

The truth is that there is no reasonable compromise to be made with the extremists who began this war: Either they will retain an extra-governmental military force that can attack Israel whenever it suits the interests of the Iranian or Syrian regimes, or they will lose that capacity.

In doing so they adminster a well-deserved rebuke to Kofi Annan who wish to give Syria and Lebanon a role.

Understanding that the crisis isn't the fighting but having a malignant terror organization on Israel's border that is arming for the next opportunity to strike is essential to appreciating the American insistence on no half measures. (And makes the editorial's earlier complaint that "the cost in civilian casualties has been disturbingly high" puzzling. Given that Hezbollah bases itself in civilian neighborhoods, that's unfortunately going to happen. But that can't stop Israel from defending itself effectively. )

Regular stuff:
Media
Jack's Shack and NRO's Media Blog note a remarkable admission by Anderson Cooper.

“And while that may be true, what the Israelis will say is that Hezbollah has their offices, their leadership has offices and bunkers even in residential neighborhoods. And if you're trying to knock out the Hezbollah leadership with air strikes, it's very difficult to do that without killing civilians."

and

“Civilian casualties are clearly what Hezbollah wants foreign reporters to focus on. It keeps the attention off them — and questions about why Hezbollah should still be allowed to have weapons when all the other militias in Lebanon have already disarmed."

Keep that in mind when you read something like that there have been (so far) 391 Lebanese killed, most of them civilians. And when the Washington Post adds that conflicting reports make it difficult to get an accurate total for the death toll you have to wonder how inaccurate the total actually is.

Backspin also acknowledges Cooper's admission but it takes a back seat to colleague Nic Robertson's admission that he had been a tool of Hezbollah.

Life of Rubin wonders if these admission are part of a bigger trend that perhaps Israel is starting to turn back the tide of anti-Israel bias in the media.

Support

Out of Step Jew headed up north with Out of Step Son to bring some relief to residents of the north. (With pictures below.)

Saba Yeshayah recounts how Israeli are helping each other including

I received an email from my wife's family's congregation in Modiin that they are providing housing to families in the North and they have sent people to the North to cheer up children living in bomb shelters. Even former residents of Gush Katif still living in temporary caravans are inviting fellow citizens from the North to stay with them.

Unenlightenment links to a NY Times story that includes a description of Chassidim making sure that there are not atheists in Israeli foxholes.

Aishel has an account of Tuesday's rally supporting Israel in Baltimore. He also links to some pictures.

PostWatch rebuts Deborah Howell's defense of the WaPo running the Haniyeh op-ed.

Howell cites other, pro-Israeli columns, but Charles Krauthammer writing in favor of Israel doesn't balance a terrorist writing against it. There is no balance to be achieved there. If Rudy Giuliani wrote an Op-Ed on crime, I wouldn't look for a rebuttal from Charles Manson.

Would she still advocate giving Haniyeh space if she knew that his government wasn't exactly a great respecter of press freedom?

Abdullah Issa, publisher and editor of the on-line magazine Donia al-Watan, was summoned Monday morning to the offices of the PA attorney general in Gaza City, where he was questioned for several hours about the story following a complaint from Zahar, who is also one of the Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip.

Kevin Sites, though, seems quite willing to do Hezbollah's work.

Kofi. Again.

With SecGen Kofi Annan charging, with no proof other than his own baseless prejudice, that Israel deliberately targeted the UNIFIL troops, It's important to read the Belmont Club

If each of the press releases is read in their entirety is manifestly clear that UNIFIL is performing none of these authorized missions. Instead it has become a kind of ambulance and relief service for the killed and injured on the Lebanese side of the border. The releases are peppered with accounts of UNIFIL personnel escorting what are described as civilians and villagers to places of safety. This is not really part of its mandate, which is not to say that it is immoral or wrong.

All the incidents of IDF fire reported in the press releases are clearly related to some kind of nearby combat with the Hezbollah. In one case the IDF fired on a village into which the UNIFIL had gone, but rockets had originated from the vicinity of the village prior. In another case, an Israeli aerial bombardment detonated mines all around a UNIFIL position. Those mines were presumably not planted by UNIFIL, but they were so close to it that the UN position caught fire. The UN observation post in Maroun al-Ras was hit by artillery, but we know from press reports that Maroun al-Ras was the epicenter of heavy fighting and the location of a Hezbollah bunker complex. The UN even ran a convoy from the Hezbollah "capital" of Bint Jubayl to another area. Bint Jubayl is well known to be the target of an IDF attack. Yet the UN felt that it was possible to move convoys through such areas, albeit at considerable danger.

One reason that they could was that UNIFIL was evidently in contact with the IDF. In a sentence which speaks volumes we learn that "One unarmed UN military observer, a member of the Observer Group Lebanon (OGL), was seriously wounded by small arms fire in the patrol base in the Marun Al Ras area yesterday afternoon. According to preliminary reports, the fire originated from the Hezbollah side during an exchange with the IDF. He was evacuated by the UN to the Israeli side, from where he was taken by an IDF ambulance helicopter to a hospital in Haifa." This strongly implies that UNFIL was able to coordinate their movements with the IDF and that the IDF was willing to risk men and aircraft to help UNFIL.

(h/t Roger L Simon)

Seraphic Press reminds us that Kofi's malfeasance has made him culpable for many more deaths than your average bureaucrat.

The Hedgehog Report's none too impressed with Kofi either

Hezbollah is indiscriminately bombing civilian targets on a daily basis and you practically have to beat a condemnation out of Kofi Annan and the United Nations about Hezbollah’s actions.

Hot Air summarizes one of the problems with Kofi's UN

The UN was founded to keep peace and promote democracy, but by elevating the Hezbollahs of the world onto the same moral plane as its own member states, the UN ends up fostering conflict and war. Under Annan’s corrupt and incompetent watch, the UN has become even more a part of the world’s problems than it already was.

Hot Air links to LGF who notes that Hezbollah was firing from the vicinity of UN position.

Linkfests
A Barbaric Yawp! finds more to like in this week's Richard Cohen op-ed than in last week's. He also list others who agree.

Partisan Times links to quite a few bloggers as he makes his case against Kofi.

Did you know that the latest Carnival of the Insanities was a special Middle East edition?

LawHawk has been doing comprehensive news and commentary roundups.

History

Joshua Pundit writes about history biting back. I figured out where he was going with this. 25 years ago Stephen Plaut wrote an essay in Commentary "Israel 1981, ......" (I can't fill in the rest of the title without giving away the surprise.) (h/t Israel Matzav )

Whenever you come accross a Palestinian (or just about any other Arab)spokesman discussing Israel you'll no doubt read some comment to the effect of "well yes the Holocaust was terrible but nothing compares to occupation." Of course as Daled Amos points out occupation is pretty common feature of conquest in the Arab world. (Nothing about the conquest of the Najran province of Yemen by Saudi Arabia, though.)

Misc.

The Patriette also remembers Major Benjy Hillman.

View from a Height critiques Luttwak's realpolitik. (Odlly it sounds a lot like Thomas Friedman.)

Assignment Desk: I had another response for my original assignment yesterday's assignment, Crossing the Rubicon2 let loose with both barrels blazing. She especially takes issue with the premise that the media is objective or non-judgmental

Now, the WaPo has an opinion. I would be willing to bet that if a poll were taken of the writers and editors and boardroom of the Post, we'd find out that the majority don't favor the foreign policy of President Bush. The majority are not likely to be conservatives. The majority are not likely to vote Republican.

And though she wasn't addressing Washington Post article, West Bank Mama had an excellent critique of the role the media plays in Israel as opposed to the role it should be playing

It is the job of a journalist to ask pointed questions. It is not the job of journalists to further their own personal political agenda using the microphone entrusted to them. This, unfortunately, is what too many reporters in Israel do. This is not my own right wing bias talking. They admit it themselves.

The difference is, I suppose, that in Israel the media may admit their biases, but in the states the media maintains a myth of impartiality.

No new assignments as this feature hasn't been as popular as I'd hoped. However here's some more reading material courtesy of the Shalem Center.

First is Yossi Klein-Halevi's Drawing the Line (registration required)

I don't agree entirely with the article but it contains an excellent observation

The tendency of much of the international community to excuse every Palestinian failure has helped convince Palestinians that victimization--even when it is self-willed--affords immunity from responsibility. Many foreign journalists with whom I've spoken in recent weeks accept the Palestinian argument that the rocket attacks from the 1967 Gaza border into sovereign Israel are legitimate, or at least understandable, given that Israel continues to occupy the West Bank. Yet that argument ignores the historic Palestinian failure to exploit the Gaza withdrawal, which created the first sovereign Palestinian territory. Had the Palestinians shown the most minimal effort at statebuilding--for example, applying foreign aid to rehabilitate refugee camps--the Israeli public would have supported a return to the negotiating table. Instead, the Palestinian national movement proved again that it is more keen on subverting the Jewish state than on creating a Palestinian state. And so one more opportunity for a negotiated end to the conflict was lost.

Michael Oren has written One Nation Under Attack in the LA Times

What makes this Lebanon war different from the last one?

To begin with, Israelis, too, are under fire this time. During the last few weeks, Hezbollah has shot more than 2,500 rockets and mortars at Israel, killing at least 17 civilians, wounding 500 and forcing more than half a million people to flee. The attacks from Lebanon coincided with aggression from Gaza, where Hamas terrorists fired about 1,000 Kassam rockets at Israeli towns and farms.

On both fronts, Israeli soldiers were the victims of unprovoked ambushes and kidnappings. And these attacks have come despite the fact that Israel is no longer occupying any part of either Lebanon or Gaza. The war, Israelis now know, is not about borders but about the existence of the Jewish state.

Technorati Tags: Blog carnivals, haveil havalim, Israel, Judaism, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Haveil Havalim Daily.

Posted by SoccerDad at July 26, 2006 7:51 PM | TrackBack