Fighting Both Enemies to an Actual Victory
by Kyrel Zantonavitch
Nowadays not a day passes without masses of Lebanese people screaming in horror to the sky and at the international media: "Why? Why are they doing this to us? Why are they attacking us? We're not part of the Hezbollah military! We don't support Hezbollah at all! And why-oh-why is the whole world watching Israel devastate our infrastructure and slaughter our innocent civilians while doing nothing in response?!"
This seemingly sincere, heartfelt, and overwhelming cry -- especially from the relatives and friends of the dead -- is also one of visceral revulsion and moral outrage. It's as if most of the actions of Israel in this war are pure evil.
But Hezbollah initiated the current conflict, as virtually everyone in the world admits. And Hezbollah is generally under the authority and control of the Lebanese people and the Lebanese government. Or at least Hezbollah should be thus, and is so by right. Hezbollah is also formally and officially a part of the Lebanese ruling government, playing a large minority role in both the legislative and executive branches.
So Israel evidently has a right to defend itself against the recent aggression coming from this Lebanon-based militia and the heavily supporting Lebanese civilians. This is especially true since the Lebanese Hezbollah is deliberately attacking the seemingly truly innocent Israeli citizens without restraint and almost exclusively.
To claim that Israel may only properly, morally, and legally retaliate against the southern Lebanese Hezbollah, and only against their military wing, is absurd. And if some version of international law does dare to claim this, then international law is wrong -- irrational, foolish, cruel, and malevolent. This is because the "innocent civilians" of Lebanon, as a recent poll massively indicates, are the heart and soul of Hezbollah. To suppose them otherwise and largely guiltless, means being conned by their "good cop, bad cop" game to a stupendous degree.
And yet it has to be noted that Israel herself mostly falls for this scam, and agrees with this line of "reasoning." Thus the usually noble and rational nation of Israel is morally disarmed -- and fundamentally arrayed against itself -- to an incredible extent.
What is needed is for the Lebanese people and government to formally and officially condemn Hezbollah as the lawless, criminal, terrorist, and monstrous organization which it is. Hezbollah needs to be publically identified as a "non-state actor" of profound evil which is Lebanon's sworn enemy. Lebanon needs to repudiate Hezbollah and its recent and historical actions. They also need to declare war on it, and militarily attack it.
Anything less and Israel has a right to conclude that Hezbollah and Lebanon are confederates and allies acting in concert. Anything less and Israel has a logical, legal, and moral right to conclude that Hezbollah and Lebanon are one -- and then act on this.
Israel needs to learn a lesson from World War II and the ruthless but normal way America dealt with Germany and Japan. The proper solution to quiet the shrieks of visceral revulsion and moral outrage emanating from Lebanon is to kill every last one of these earnest and indignant shriekers.
At the very least, Israel should attempt to kill every last one of the southern Lebanese -- the military combatants and the "innocent civilians" -- who support the military wing of Hezbollah morally, verbally, and financially. Even those Lebanese throughout the country who only indirectly back them, and passively allow the militants to live and hide among them, should be targeted.
To quickly end the war and all its attendant suffering on both sides, the Lebanese people and government need to be forced to surrender. At the very least, the southern Lebanese people and government which are ruled by Hezbollah need to be made to surrender. They need to be forced to stop killing and kidnapping Israeli soldiers, and to stop rocketing Israeli cities.
Failing a surrender and a halt to aggression, every last one of the warmongers should be killed. And Israel should capture and annex large swaths of Lebanese territory as an utterly moral and just compensation for lives lost, property destroyed, and wealth spent.
Israel needs to stand up for herself, at long last. It needs to teach the forces of evil a lesson. Western liberalism desperately needs to score this small victory over Islamic jihadism.
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