Israel and Lebanon: A Lopsided War

As the world rejoices and breathes a sigh of relief at the supposed cease-fire between Lebanon and Israel, one wonders if the world has gone stark raving mad. I don't mean this figuratively.

For almost couple of months now, news junkies like myself have been bombarded with the horrific business of war. Every day we see men, women, and always children being lifted from what used to be apartment buildings or commerical business fronts. The avalanche of rubble; the blood streaked bodies torn abruptly from normality into a sudden burst of fiery nightmare. Lebanese officials declared on more than one occasion that Israel is "massacring" the civilians, while news pundits solemnly nod their heads.

The impression you take away from watching the news is that of a blood-thirsty Goliath (Israel) indiscrimately smashing defenseless lambs(Hezbollah and Lebanon) with an iron sledgehammer, with the victims being the poor, faultless Lebanese civilians.


Without even noticing it amidst all the carnage and violent outrage, you forget to wonder: Why are they showing only the suffering of Hezbollah and Lebanese civilians?


Doesn't anyone see something odd about this? Do they seriously expect us to believe that throughout this entire war, over a month long now, that no Hezbollah terrorists were killed, just civilians?


For the first time, the world is witnessing the emergence a terrorist army. It's well-organized and well-trained. As everyone knows, Hezbollah is supported by Iran and Syria. What is also well-known, but no one wants to discuss, is that this army could not come into being, in fact, could not even exist without the assistance and the sanction of the Lebanese people and their government. We accuse Hezbollah of using the civilians as human shields, but we gloss over the fact that it's the Southern Lebanese who house Hezbollah and support them.


In might go as far as saying that Hezbollah is the Lebanese government. I recently watched a news interview with the Lebanese Ambassador to Brazil. He insists that Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the Lebanese government and that they aren't terrorists at all. Hezbollah was within its right to fight off Israel's incursions. What this amounts to in fancy diplomatic language is that Hezbollah IS Lebanon.


If many of these "civilians" aren't combatants, they certainly are participants. Of course, there are people who have no part in assisting Hezbollah and have no part in killing Israelis, but this does not detract from the broader statement that much of the people in Southern Lebanon are complicit in unprovoked attacks Israel. If the modern, liberal Western nations tries to win wars by being paralyzed into inaction by the price of civilian casualties, they will lose every time.

Wars are not neat and tidy with little human loss; to try to make it so is simply a blanket denial of reality, noble as it is. No, wars are an ugly affair paid in blood...


This cease-fire agreement does not bold well for Israel, who, in my opinion, has squandered their chance at destroying Hezbollah. As part of the agreement, Lebanon promises to send 15,000 troops into Southern Lebanon to maintain the tenuous peace there. If Hezbollah and the Lebanese government are one and the same, this peace might not last very long. In fact, if the former is true, the Lebanese army is moving south to reinforce Hezbollah-- not disarm it.

Forget for a minute that Hezbollah has attacked Israel for decades. Forget for a moment that Israel attempted to concede land for peace by totally withdrawing from Southern Lebanon six years ago. Forget for a moment that Israel has been on constant war footing since its existence because implacable enemies surround them.


If you focus simply on the rocket attacks, the killings, and the kidnappings that plague every interaction between Israel and Hezbollah, that in itself would be enough justification for war.

How much is enough?


Whatever fiction the media conjures up, from doctored photographs and deliberately bias reporting, remember that Israel is not the cause of this war.


Most of Northern Israel is a ghost town with hundreds of thousands of Jews fleeing south. The only people remaining are emergency personnel and enough people to maintain the towns' resources. The media doesn't report this fact.


The Katyusha rockets that miss business and homes, sometimes strike fields and hills nearby. We forget that Israel was a barren rock when the Jews arrived, the fruits of centuries of abuse by it's former Arab occupant. We forget that it took an entire generation through blood, sweat and tears to make Israel bloom again, this oasis in the middle of arid, inhospitable desert. Hezbollah even envies their grass.


This is, indeed, a lopsided war.


All the world and its media roots for Hezbollah, while Israel, that tiny sliver of freedom along the Mediterranean, faces the fight of its life-- for their survival; for the promise of a homeland that the world is bent on destroying...


Except America...