Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Morality, collective punishment and collective responsibility

One of the favorite memes of Palestinian Arabs is the notion that Israel engages in "collective punishment." This is viewed as immoral and illegal and de facto wrong.

One can sympathize with this viewpoint. After all, one would naturally think that innocent people should not suffer for the crimes of others. The idea of people being individually responsible for their actions is a strong one (and, I would argue, a Western one.)

There is a flip side though that those who trot out this argument will never address: Do the Palestinian Arab people have any collective responsibility?

Not only must people act responsibly, but nations (and other groups of people) must as well. This is not an unreasonable expectation. It also makes sense that the larger group will be inconvenienced as a result of the criminals' actions.

If a nation decides to act aggressively against another, one cannot expect the victim to keep the same level of economic or diplomatic ties. Even if the first nation is dependent on a specific product or service of the second, and the people of the first nation will suffer from its loss, that doesn't mean that the second nation has any reason to take that into consideration.

In other words, the idea of "collective punishment" being inherently bad is not so cut and dried. The US didn't allow high-tech equipment to be exported to the Soviet Union in the 1970s, depriving them of most computers. Isn't that a form of collective punishment?

Let's look at another angle. One group of people votes to eradicate the other group of people. If the vote was 90%-10%, the second group has every right to defend itself - even if the 10% suffers.

What percentage of a people acting immorally makes collective punishment a moral choice in response? And if the threat to the second group is imminent or present, how should the second group react?

I spent the better part of two years on this blog carefully differentiating between the Palestinian Arab people and their corrupt, terrorist leaders. My theory was that for the better part of their existence, most ordinary Palestinian Arabs didn't care about geopolitics or land or occupation or nationhood - they only cared to be able to provide a safe and secure place to raise their families.

As a result of years of propaganda, though, it is hard to argue that anymore. I recently posted the results of a few polls of Palestinian Arabs and the number that support terror against Jews is not only a majority, but a large majority (depending on how the question was asked.) No matter how hard one tries to spin it, Israel's neighbors want to see it destroyed and the Jews dispersed or killed or subjugated. In other words, no matter what you think, most Palestinian Arabs are in fact immoral.

Does this mean that collective punishment is always justified? Of course not. I cannot see justification for purely punitive actions that serve no defensive purpose. I also admit to feeling uneasy at punitive actions designed to compel a population to act in certain ways. The sentiment may be correct but the probability of success is rather low, IMHO.

So while deliberate collective punishment is problematic, there are fewer moral qualms about doing defensive actions like striking at terrorists in ways that can peripherally hurt the population at large. The complicity of the host population to the terror is a significant factor. Going after hostage takers, for example in Beslan, obviously requires more care than going after a terrorist in a building where the other people are aware of and condone his activities.

It is a tricky ethical problem trying to minimize casualties while trying to aggressively eliminate a threat to your own people. It may an ethical problem that the Palestinian Arabs do not spend one minute worrying about, but Israel should not take morality lessons from those who celebrate murderers.

Even so, it is worthwhile not only to explore the parameters of not only collective punishment but also collective guilt and collective responsibility. Taking responsibility for one's actions is what distinguishes a mature person from an immature one - and taking responsibility for one's people is an even greater level. It is a shame that Palestinian Arabs have shown no ability to even take that first step.

And it is a bigger shame that most of the world community doesn't expect them to.

One of the Israeli accidental bombings

Here is a rocket launcher:

Here is a water driller:

Beirut Spring asks sarcastically whether you can tell the difference between them, because Israel bombed two water drillers in a Christian neighborhood and apparently thought it was a rocket launcher.

I would guess that from a thousand feet up, they look very similar. And I would rather see Israel bomb the truck (apparently no civilians died) and play it safe rather than let it go.

Also this came after Israel dropped leaflets asking Lebanese not to drive certain types of trucks so Israel would have a better chance to target Hizbollah weapons smuggling trucks - and not kill civilians.

Beirut Spring may have been trying to show Israelis to be bumbling idiots, but to me it proves their unprecedented morality during an especially difficult war against those who use innocents as human shields. They hit a seemingly legitimate target, accurately, without human life being lost.

All mistakes should be like this.

Pigs are flying - Arab Times editorial

H/T Pastorius:

By Ahmed Al-Jarallah
Editor-in-Chief, the Arab Times

PEOPLE of Arab countries, especially the Lebanese and Palestinians, have been held hostage for a long time in the name of “resisting Israel.” Arab governments have been caught between political obligations and public opinion leading to more corruption in politics and economics. Forgetting the interests of their own countries the Hamas Movement and Hezbollah have gone to the extent of representing the interests of Iran and Syrian in their countries. These organizations have become the representatives of Syria and Iran without worrying about the consequences of their action.

Recently Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier and bombed Israeli settlements with locally manufactured missiles. Soon Hezbollah followed suit, kidnapping two Israeli soldiers. Both these organizations claimed they had kidnapped Israeli soldiers to exchange them for Arab prisoners who are being held in Israeli jails. The fact that Hamas and Hezbollah gave the same reason for kidnapping Israeli soldiers gives us a glimpse their agenda, which is similar to the one followed by Syria and Iran in their conflict with the United States.

While the people of Palestine and Lebanon are paying the price of this bloody conflict, the main players, who caused this conflict, are living in peace and asking for more oil from Arab countries to support the facade of resisting Israel. With the Palestinian Authority close to collapse and the Lebanese government beginning to give up responsibility for what is happening in its territory, Saudi Arabia has been forced to come out of its diplomatic routine and indirectly hold Hezbollah responsible for what is happening Lebanon.

Without mentioning Hezbollah by name Saudi Arabia blamed certain “elements” inside Lebanon for the violence with Israel and said “it is necessary to make a distinction between legitimate resistance and uncalculated adventures adopted by certain elements within Lebanon without the knowledge of legal Lebanese authorities.” While reiterating its support for Palestinian and Lebanese resistance against Israeli occupation, Saudi Arabia has clearly said it is against irresponsible adventures undertaken by certain elements in the region without consulting the legal authorities putting all Arab nations at risk. The Kingdom has also said “these elements must take responsibility for their irresponsible actions and they alone should end the crisis created by them.”
This angry response from Saudi Arabia has politically isolated Hezbollah and Hamas besides holding them responsible for their actions.

This attitude of Saudi Arabia, which has been doing all it can to protect the Arab world from Israeli aggression, is enough to unmask the adventurers, who have violated the rights of their own countries and tried put their people under the guardianship of foreign countries like Iran and Syria. A battle between supporters and opponents of these adventurers has begun, starting from Palestine to Tehran passing through Syria and Lebanon. This war was inevitable as the Lebanese government couldn’t bring Hezbollah within its authority and make it work for the interests of Lebanon. Similarly leader of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas has been unable to rein in the Hamas Movement.

Unfortunately we must admit that in such a war the only way to get rid of “these irregular phenomena” is what Israel is doing. The operations of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon are in the interest of people of Arab countries and the international community.

While this is hardly pro-Israel, it shows some clear thinking that is sorely lacking in the Arab world. More importantly, it shows that the Arab world does not have to be held hostage to their terrorists - it is all too rare to see any real criticism in the Arab world towards the extremist elements.

One can hope that what an editor says clearly in Kuwait is in fact what many Arabs are thinking in Jordan or Egypt. And one can hope that this would empower them to spit out the terrorists from their midst, and then act as real partners for peace.

Arab death porn

I noticed a number of Arab blogs and websites, while arguing that Israel is barbarian and pure evil and all that crap, will use lots of images of dead children (don't click if you don't want to see dead kids.) The sources are rarely given but the pictures themselves zoom through the terror-supporting blogosphere, and people such as Juan Cole link to them.

For some reason, the West doesn't need to see pictures of dead people to get upset. We didn't need to see pictures of the bodies on the ground outside Ground Zero - the pictures of the planes smashing in the buildings were enough.

Why is this?

Let's ask a couple of other questions. If it is a cultural thing that Arabs are just used to seeing pictures of dead people, how come there are so few pictures of Arabs who have been killed by other Arabs?

And, finally - why do Arab terrorists like to take videos of decapitations?

The answer is that these photos aren't meant to inform - they is the Arab equivalent to pornography. Both the pictures of dead kids and the videos of chopping heads off are meant to incite hatred - against Jews, against America, whatever. Combine that with a culture that celebrates death, that proudly pretends to desire death (just not for the leaders, only the hapless martyrs), and you have photos whose entire purpose is to create lust - lust for revenge, lust for murder.

There's also a faux macho component to these photos - just like insecure men flock to hardcore porn to make themselves feel superior to women, so do Jew-haters and Arabs surreptitiously enjoy the hardcore sight of dead kids to make themselves feel a little less self-hate for their own, purposeful and deliberate terror attacks aimed at civilians.

The pictures are never shown in the context of "oh this is so sad." They are without exception shown as a means to create strong emotion without having to think about context or motive or anything else that could end up showing the truth: that by any objective measure, the Arabs are far more depraved than the people they are trying to demonize. (This guy is so thrilled to have some dead-kid pictures that he repeats each picture 5 times on his website!)

Not once will you see Israelis celebrate the deaths of Lebanese or Palestinian Arab kids. Once again, the only people who gain anything by the death of Arab kids are Arabs themselves. And too many of them are more than happy to show off their latest bonanza of pornographic pictures (whether they are real or not) on the Internet.

Genocide? Ethnic cleansing? No, just Arabs killing Arabs

The PalArab self-death count is now at 32, with the latest additions:

At approximately 14:10 on Sunday, 16 July 2006, masked gunmen traveling in a car fired at Mohammad Zaki Dahalan, a 24-year old member of the Preventive Security Apparatus. He was hit by several bullets in the chest and abdomen as he was standing near his house in the Jorit El-Aqad area in Khan Yunis. He was taken to Naser Hospital for treatment, but died shortly after arrival in the hospital.

In a related development at approximately 16:00 on the same day, a number of Dahlan's friends and colleagues gathered near his house and fired bullets and threw bombs at the house of Dr. Walid Amer, a lecturer in the Islamic University and a senior figure in Hamas. No injuries were reported in the house, which sustained material damages to the windows and outside walls.

Yesterday afternoon, a guard was killed at the house of a Preventive Security officer, Nabil Tammous, and two others were injured when unknown gunmen detonated explosives in the officer's house in Naser Quarter in Gaza City. The house was partially destroyed.

And the world headlines screamed "Genocide! House demolitions! Ethnic cleansing! Nazi-like methods!"

Oh, sorry. The world ignores Arabs killing Arabs, because that doesn't fit in with the meme of Israel being the source of all the problems and terror and bloodshed in the Middle East - the latest proponent of this absurd view being none other than CNN's Lou Dobbs.

Hint to Lou - Between the Lebanese civil war, the Hama massacre, Black September, the Iran/Iraq war, the North Yemen civil war (complete with Egyptian chemical weapons) and the internal Palestinian Arabs killing each other, the amount of bloodshed attributable to Israel is a drop in the bucket.

Clueless Reuters Caption of the Day

Supporters of Lebanon protest outside the Israeli consulate in New York, July 18, 2006.

Let's take a closer look at the poster in the background. I recognize it from a previous blog post where there was a similar protest at Ground Zero:

These protesters are not supporters of Lebanon - they are crazed Muslim fanatics who want to subjugate the world! They are from the "Islamic Thinkers Society" and they represent the vilest, most violent Muslims on the planet. The only Lebanon they support is a Jihadist Lebanon with nary a Christian in sight, except to pay the Jizya.

Here they are peacefully protesting a cartoon and threatening to exterminate all of Europe:

Reading material

There have been many great articles and postings over the past few days. Here some good ones:

Eurasia.net - Iran talks tough, but
Treppenwitz - A difficult lesson
Soccer Dad - Cohen's mistake
Ha'aretz - New army of women suicide bombers (what I would call a "target-rich environment")
National Review - Eradication first before diplomacy, also Fight to the Finish

Welcome also to the many, many readers who came from the Truth Laid Bear. I feel guilty because I am not an Israeli blogger as TTLB indicates, but I hope that I have something to contribute anyway.

Arab American organizations support Hizbollah

Here's the press release from the Congress of Arab-American Organizations in an article at the Arab American News:

"CAAO members strongly condemn the indiscriminate killing of civilians, especially of children," said CAAO Chair Abed Hammoud. "Over the past few days, the Israeli Army has launched an aggressive campaign in Gaza, then expanded this campaign of terror on a more severe level into Lebanon. So far, the U.S government has justified and supported the Israeli crimes under the guise of 'self defense', although Israeli leaders have bluntly stated that the objective of their bombings by air, land, and sea is to destroy the country of Lebanon and its infrastructure and collectively punish its people."

"CAAO members are appalled that, while the international community has condemned the Israeli actions and called for a cessation of its criminal behavior, our own government is not only supporting the killing of hundreds of civilians, but it is also encouraging the systematic destruction of two blooming democracies in the Middle East," said Osama Siblani, head of media relations for CAAO. "U.S. officials also do not seem to care that tens of thousands of the civilians under attack by Israel are U.S. citizens currently visiting Lebanon on vacation.".....
Alluding to an incorrect version of an eye for an eye, Imam Mohamed Ali Elahi said that the Israelis are "making millions blind, just for two Israeli eyes."

Even Palestinian Arabs would mouth words of condemnation when their co-patriots blew up innocent Jews in Israel. These Arab-Americans, on the other hand, don't have a single word of condemnation for Hizbollah's kidnapping, nor for rocket attacks against Israeli civilians. They have plenty of time to lie and claim that Israeli leaders have specified a goal of destroying Lebanon.

Of course, this is not the first time that Arab Americans have publicly supported Hizbollah. And this link has the classic quote:

I have never been to the South of Lebanon until my recent trip earlier this month. I went from Beirut all the way to the border in the South. I want all of the American officials to know that I did not see a single person with a firearm from Beirut all the way to the border, except at one Lebanese Army checkpoint. What I have seen calls for us to be proud: people living their lives, smoking the water pipe, playing cards, watching their kids play on both sides of the border without threat! So why are you calling Hizbullah a terrorist organization, and why do you want to take their arms? I didn’t see any arms.”

It is mind-blowing that the culture of death and lies can flourish in the United States.

Iranian hate rhetoric - bluster or strategy?

Yesterday, the Iranian parliament speaker spoke:

The Iranian parliament speaker said on Tuesday the war against Israel has only just begun and there is nowhere in Israel safe from Hezbollah attacks.

“The war has just begun, today is the day of resistance, today is the day of liberation of Palestine and there will be no safe spot in the occupied territories (Israel) anymore from Hezbollah attacks,” Gholam-Ali Hadad-Adel said at a anti-Israeli gathering in the Palestine Square in downtown Tehran.

“The day has come when everybody returns home, the day when Palestinians return home, return to the land of their origins and its is also the day when the Israelis have to return to the countries where they originally came from,” the speaker added.

Thousands of Iranians attended the state-organized gathering and declared their readiness to be dispatched to Lebanon to fight against Israel.

“We call on the United States and the West to cut their support for the Zionist regime, otherwise there would never ever be peace and reconciliation with over 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide,” the speaker said.

Hadad-Adel, who is head of the Abadgaran (Development) party which currently dominates parliament and of which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a leading member, once again declared Iran’s full solidarity with Lebanon and the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah.

“There will be no help which we would not render to Lebanon and the resistance (Hezbollah),” the speaker said.

He compared Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah with the late leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and said that ”the Ayatollah’s blood was running in Nasrallah’s veins.”

“Inshallah (so God wills), we will soon hold our thankfulness prayers in Qods (Jerusalem),” Hadad-Adel said.

Iran has ratcheted up its non-stop Israel bashing in the past week, with many daily speeches inciting the Muslim world to war, even during speeches about other topics. What interests me about this speech is that it could be interpreted two ways.

So far, even though everyone knows that Iran calls the shots for Hizbollah, Iran has publicly made it appear that they only support Hizbollah but are not the ones making the decisions. Otherwise, Iran would be admitting that they declared war on Israel, something they are not prepared to do.

But this speech can be interpreted as more than just support, rather as a description of Iranian plans for how Hizbollah should act. This comes very close to admitting that Hizbollah is an Iranian proxy.

The speaker added another twist of rabid, slobbering hate, from a different article:

"The Americans should know that as long as this filthy tumor lies in the body of the Islamic world, Muslims will not stop hating America," Hadad-Adel told thousands of regime supporters. "Either stop this support or do not expect any peace with the Islamic world."

This is almost comical, as he pathetically tries to convince the West that Israel is the only reason radical Muslims hate them. He also puts in a hint of the old "Arab street" (now "Muslim street") argument that has been used for decades as a blunt instrument to get Western powers to bend to Muslim will. (Not to mention he vastly exaggerates the number of Muslims in the world as a means of scaring the West.)

Because he knows that there is no shortage of Western dhimmis who are eager to believe his arguments and to submit to second-class status under an worldwide Islamic 'ummah.

Yet another example of Arab projection

A Palestinian Arab blog called "Sabbah's Blog" is indignant over a few wire service photos: (sorry, the permalink doesn't work, this is a link to the main blog)

Israeli girls write messages on a shell at a heavy artillery position near Kiryat Shmona, in northern Israel, next to the Lebanese border, Monday, July 17, 2006.

He comments:

Dear Lebanese/Palestinian/Arab/Muslim/Christians - Kids,
Die with love.
Yours,
Israeli Kids

Hate, disgust, extreme…. I don’t know what word can describe these photos.

And they say that we are teaching our kids hate to Israelis!

He then goes on to a popular Palestinian Arab pastime - showing gruesome photos of dead children.

What righteous indignation! What a defense of the Lebanese!

What a crock!

Palestinian Arabs have a long and colorful history of celebrating the murders of innocents. Hell, they have a long history of murdering innocents. Just today, a crowd showed great happiness in front of cameras while playing with the body parts of a dead Israeli soldier. Palestinian Arabs celebrated 9/11, they created shrines to the Sbarro's pizza bombing, they put up posters of their heroes the murderers, they name sports stadiums and town squares after people who specifically targeted children, they encourage hteir own children to die as martyrs and hand out sweets when the martyrs manage to kill a few Jewish kids along the way.

Moreover, Palestinian Arabs were responsible for the murders of tens of thousands of Lebanese Christians during the civil war there. They killed more innocent women and children, on purpose, than Israel ever will accidentally. The sudden pretense of pain on behalf of the Lebanese is more than a little hypocritical on behalf of this suddenly moral blogger.

Here's where the fun psycho-analysis comes in.

Ask the children in the pictures who the rockets are earmarked for, and ten out of ten will answer the same thing: The Hizbollah murderers who are shooting rockets at these very children.

Who live in the same town that is on the front line, within reach of the shortest-range terrorist missiles.

Which are aimed squarely at these very children.

Not one will say they want to see innocent Lebanese children die. Not one of these girls would even crack a smile when they see the gruesome pictures that Sabbah likes to plaster all over. Not one of them would dream of celebrating the deaths of children the way that Sabbah's people do routinely.

In other words, Sabbah is projecting the behaviors and attitudes of his own disgusting people onto these Jewish kids for whom such thoughts are utterly foreign and repulsive.

One of the goals of the Hizbollah thugs is to make Israelis - specifically, Jewish Israelis - feel helpless. Whoever asked these girls to write messages on the rockets that will ultimately save them from terror was a genius. Israel changed the natural feelings of helplessness into action, into involving everyone in the nation to be a part of the solution.

The solution that will wipe the terrorists off the face of the planet.

UPDATE (7/1): I noticed that Slate just linked here, implying that the message is quite the opposite of what I am saying. But since you're reading, look closely at what the handwriting on the rocket says (I didn't notice this initially):

Dear Nazralah (sic)
From Israel
and Danielle

I wholeheartedly support sending personal messages to terrorists in this fashion. And it neatly proves that I was right, notwithstanding the funny Daily Show piece.

Whoops!

Hizbollah (via their partners at Al-Jazeerah) claimed earlier today that they had shot down an Israeli airplane, and that they had the plane parts to prove it.

It turns out that the parts they saw fall out of the sky were from their best Iranian Zelzal missile (reportedly 200 km range). Israeli planes struck a truck carrying these missiles en route to a genocidal attempt by Hizbollah to mass murder Jews, perhaps in Tel Aviv.

As a result of the bombing, one of the missiles flew up in the air and then came crashing down again - and that was what the Arabs saw.

Of course, a Syrian commenter on the Jerusalem Post article linked to above is certain that Hezbollah really did shoot down an IAF plane - with a Katyusha. Showing once again the amazing ability of Arabs to disregard facts when they interfere with their own fantasies.

France's disproportionate response in 2004

This happened less than two years ago:

Ivory Coast’s latest crisis began when Gbagbo’s military broke a more than year-old cease-fire in the country’s 2-year-old civil war with airstrikes on the rebel-held north.
Warplanes bombed a French peacekeeping post in the north on Nov. 6, killing nine French peacekeepers and an American aid worker and plunging the country into chaos.
France wiped out Ivory Coast’s newly built-up small air force on the tarmac. The retaliation unleashed a violent loyalist uprising, with Gbagbo-allied Young Patriots popular militia leading looting, burning and attacks that targeted the French.
No deaths have been reported among French or other non-African foreigners targeted by the militia. France says attackers raped several expatriates.
The Associated Press and hospitals confirmed at least 17 deaths in the rioting, all or most among Ivorians.
Gbagbo’s government claims 62 of its supporters were killed, many of them when French forces opened fire on anti-French demonstrations in Abidjan.

France initially denied shooting protesters, but admitted it a couple of weeks later:

France has acknowledged that its troops in Ivory Coast killed about 20 people in early November during clashes with supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo.

A French defence ministry spokesman said the victims included both civilians and Ivorian soldiers.

The Ivory Coast government has put the number of Ivorians killed at 60 and condemned the French actions.

I don't know enough about the situation then to say whether the French actions were justified, but killing 20-60 people and destroying an entire air force in response to the killings of 9 sounds disproportionate to me! Why, it is a ratio of up to 6-1! And innocent civilians lost their lives!

Amazingly, the UN didn't condemn the French then.

Today, Chirac went beyond the "disproportionate" tripe and called Israeli actions "aberrant."

Arab life really is cheaper - to Arabs

Terror apologists in Britain are up in arms over a statement made by a British columnist and actress on the BBC:

Press release: CAABU condemns Maureen Lipman’s comments on the BBC

The director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding (CAABU), Chris Doyle, has written to the BBC to condemn the comments on the BBC television programme "This Week" by leading British columnist Maureen Lipman.

Unchallenged by the presenter, Andrew Neil, Lipman commented on the situation in the Middle East and denied that the Israeli actions were disproportionate.

"What’s proportion got to do with it. It’s not about proportion, is it? Human life is not cheap to the Israelis. And human life on the other side is quite cheap actually because they strap bombs to people and send them to blow themselves up."

The idea that somehow Arabs, whether Palestinians or Lebanese, do not value human life as much as anyone else is disgraceful.

In the letter, Doyle wrote:

"Is it acceptable that what most people would consider a racist comment is merely allowed to pass like this? It is simply outrageous. The comments were made in the context of discussing proportionality; therefore, implicitly she is saying that you could not measure proportion because there was no equivalence between an Israeli and an Arab life. All Arabs, like all other people, value human life.

Of course, Lipman is entirely correct. Arab life is, by their own definition, cheaper than Jewish lives.

Why else would they be asking to trade 1000 Arab prisoners for 1 Israeli?
Why else would they be killing their own civilians on the same scale that Israel is?
Why else would they produce TV shows encouraging their children to want to die?
Why else would they celebrate whenever they kill Jewish civilians in Israel, while no Jews celebrate the death of Arab civilians? (Here's Hamas' celebration of the Hebrew University massacre:

Why do they teach Palestinian Arab mothers to rejoice when their sons die while killing Jews?
Why does the Arab culture even consider the idea of honor killings?
When have the Arabs ever mobilized an entire country for the sake of a single soldier's life?

In fact, the one nation that seems to care the most about Arab lives is Israel. Israel spends enormous effort and money to minimize civilian deaths in its operations. Israel is still sending medical aid and food and electricity and water to Gaza even while at war with its people who overwhelmingly want to see Israel destroyed.

It is because of Israel that the Palestinian Arab mortality rate in the territories dropped a huge amount from 1967 to 2000 and the Palestinian Arab life expectancy shot up in the same time period. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs are alive today because of Israel that would have been dead or never born had Jordan and Egypt kept the territories in 1967.

Above all - why do Arab terrorists like to hide their activities and weapons among the Arab civilians that you pretend that they love so much? It is because they themselves know that Israel values Arab lives more than Arabs do!

Mr. Doyle, as someone who claims to value Arab life, can you provide me with any press release or interview where you condemned Hamas and Hizbollah for hiding among civilians and endangering their lives?

So yes, Mr. Doyle. Arab life is cheap - to Arabs and to people like you. And because people like you blame the Jews for this phenomenon rather than do any serious self-examination about the psychotic culture of death in many Arab societies, you are part of the problem.

PalArab self-death count now at 30

Those people who love wailing and shooting at funerals have added seven more self-inflicted deaths since my last update. These include:

A 12-year old girl who died from a PalArab rocket;
A 45-year old man who was shot during a wedding celebration;
A 16 year old boy who was shot during a funeral celebration;
3 killed in a Clan Clash®;
and one more who was killed in a different Clan Clash®.

So we now have 30 PalArab civilians killed by other Palestinian Arabs since Israel's incursion began.

None of which will ever be mentioned on CNN or the BBC. Because Arabs killing Arabs are like Israelis dying in auto accidents - it is just par for the course and hardly newsworthy.

Unless they blame the Jews, of course.

Is there a Trojan horse waiting?

As many people have already concluded, Iranian fingerprints are all over this Hizbollah operation. The Iranian missile attack on the Israeli navy boat as well as the Iranian rocket attack this morning in Haifa shows that pretty clearly.

What worries me is that Hezbollah/Iran are not yet showing all their cards. The initial attack was not just a kidnapping, but also an ambush. If this morning's rockets were Fajrs, their range extends far beyond Haifa. And from all accounts, Israel has not managed to kill too many terrorists yet by air.

Almost inevitably, Israel will commit ground troops to this operation. So far, Israel has been caught by surprise at least twice. Iranian war strategists are far more sophisticated than the enemies Israel has faced so far. And the Muslim definition of "victory" at this time is to inflict heavy casualties, not necessarily to win. Iran may also have a completely different agenda in which this entire theatre is a diversion - or bait.

I am no expert, but under these circumstances I hope that Israel is fully aware of what she is getting into before starting the ground war.