The right call in Lebanon

President Bush deserves a lot of credit for his uncompromising stance in support of Israel's right to respond forcefully to attacks by Hezbollah and Hamas.

Hezbollah and Hamas have vowed to destroy Israel, and they are backed by Iran, which has vowed to destroy Israel, and their efforts to destroy Israel enjoy widespread public support in the Arab world.

Along the same lines, the European Union is carping that Israel has responded with disproportionate force to the rocket attacks on its northern border and to the kidnapping of its soldiers. The Europeans want an "immediate cessation of hostilities," even if that means leaving the armed terrorists of Hezbollah on the border and ready to strike again.

With the exception of President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, the whole world is supporting a policy built on the premise that there are worse things than dead Jews.

This sad specter of appeasement has a sickeningly familiar shape. The moderate Arab governments and the Europeans promote a policy of evenhandedness between Hezbollah fighters and their would-be victims in Israel, not wanting to bring the wrath of the terrorists down on their own heads.

Is the whole world unteachable? Do the Nazis have to march into Paris every single time?

Memo to the whole world: People who want to kill the Jews never stop at the Jews. Why? Because killing the Jews never fixes their problem. Killing the Jews will not make a failed economy run, or a failed state succeed, or a failed ideology miraculously deliver on the promises of its proponents.

There are plenty of people in the world who want to give it one more try, but that doesn't mean the United States has to go to the negotiating table and meet them halfway.


Copyright 2006

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