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WORLD OPINION IS OVERRATED |
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Written by Jack Kelly
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Friday, 04 August 2006 |
Hezbollah and its sponsors, Iran and Syria, are relying upon
our soft hearts and softer heads to destroy us.
Many think Israel suffered a major defeat last Sunday (July
30) when the Israeli air force bombed a
building in the village of Qana, near the Lebanese port city of Tyre.
Initial reports were that 57 people -- most of them women
and children -- had been killed. The Red Crescent (the Muslim version of the
Red Cross) has been able to confirm only 28 deaths.
The bombing's aftermath featured some of the most dramatic
pictures of the war. Several featured a man wearing an orange reflective
vest and a green helmet, carrying a dead child from the rubble to an ambulance.
Dr. Richard North, a British Web logger, noticed something
odd about the photos. Some of the workers are wearing different gear in
different photos, yet they were clearly carrying the same corpse.
For instance, by the time the man carrying the dead child
reached the ambulance, he had shed both the green helmet and the reflective
vest. The time stamps on the photos suggested they'd been taken hours apart.
The AP, Reuters, and Agence France Presse denied the photos
had been staged. The time stamps "could" reflect when the
photos were posted, not when they were taken, the AP said.
But the event clearly was stage-managed by Hezbollah.
Within hours of the first reports of the tragedy in Qana, there was a
demonstration in Beirut. The protesters had a 30-foot color banner featuring a
photograph of Ms. Rice, and an Arabic caption blaming her for what happened
there.
The banner -- at least that portion of it with Ms. Rice's
photograph -- had to have been prepared before Israel dropped its bombs.
"Hezbollah gunmen placed a rocket launcher on the roof
in Qana and brought disabled children inside, in a bid to provoke a response by
the Israeli air force," charged Libanoscopie, a Lebanese Christian Web
site.
I won't address in this column the interesting question of
why so much international outrage is directed at the Israelis for the
accidental killing of civilians, and so little at Hezbollah for its deliberate
efforts to kill Israeli civilians, and its use of Lebanese civilians as human
shields.
Nor will I address the equally interesting question of whether
some in the news media are dupes of Hezbollah propaganda, or complicit in it.
The point I want to emphasize today is that Hezbollah's
hopes for victory depend entirely on its propaganda campaign.
What constitutes "victory" for Hezbollah is the imposition
of a cease fire that will prevent Israel from crippling the terror group, and
would permit Syria and Iran to rearm it.
There is little Hezbollah, Syria or Iran can do to impose
such a cease fire by force of arms. The terror group can "win"
only by so tugging on heartstrings in the West that we act contrary to our
interests (again).
Support for Hezbollah in Europe and the Middle East has
surged since Qana, wrote the Washington Post's Jefferson Morley Wednesday.
"At Qana, Israel lost the information war beyond all
hope of recovery," wrote retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters in the New
York Post Tuesday.
"Israel is headed for the greatest military humiliation
in its history," declared Bret Stephens, a former editor of the Jerusalem
Post, in the Wall Street Journal the same day.
Mr. Peters and Mr. Stephens were dour (and Mr. Morley was
gloating) because they assumed world opinion would force upon Israel the
premature cease fire Hezbollah and its sponsors desire.
But world opinion is overrated. Intellectually and
morally, it is no more valuable than Mel Gibson's opinion after he has consumed
a bottle of tequila. But leave that aside.
The only non-Israeli whose opinion matters much to Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert is President Bush, who remains steadfast in his support.
The propaganda war matters more than ever before, but still
matters less than what happens on the battlefield, where Hezbollah is getting
its clock cleaned, though that's difficult to tell from the news coverage.
The news media emphasize that Israel has been unable to
prevent Hezbollah from shooting rockets into Israel. But those rockets
have done little damage. It has taken, on average, 100 rockets to produce
a single Israeli fatality.
In the fire fights in Lebanon, Hezbollah has been losing
more than 9 fighters for each Israeli soldier killed, a lousy exchange ratio
for a numerically inferior force.
Hezbollah's supply lines from Syria largely have been
interdicted, and the raid Tuesday (August 1) on Hezbollah's "capital"
of Baalbek in the Bekaa valley indicates the Israelis can strike wherever they
want, whenever they want.
If President Bush doesn't succumb to world opinion, Israel
will win, soon, a decisive victory. And then world opinion will
change.
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