John McCain on the deaths of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser:
I wish to extend my deepest condolences to the families of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser. When I met the Regev and Goldwasser families in Israel, I was moved by their profound love for their sons, who were kidnapped by Hezbollah in the summer of 2006. Now we know that Eldad and Ehud made the ultimate sacrifice for the country they served and loved. In spite of this tragic loss, Israel and the United States will remain united in their struggle against terrorism. The continuing attacks on Israel by Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorist groups supported by state sponsors of terror like Syria and Iran pose a severe threat to Israel. Our democratic ally is under siege, and these two deaths are just the latest in a long line of brave Israelis who have been killed by vicious terrorists. Though we mourn the loss of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, we are reminded by this that we must never waver in our support for Israel, and we continue to demand the re lease of Gilad Shalit, taken captive by Hamas and held illegally since the summer of 2006.
Israel cares about its sons, and so it paid a high price just to get the bodies of their brave men back…Hamas views its sons as excellent guided bombs and so much cannon fodder. They call this “asymetrical warfare” - where the weaker side will make the stronger pay a higher price than they want to bother with. This is very tough to be, but it is beatable.
We have shown in Iraq that the evil of terrorism can be defeated, even when backed by outside players - the ultimate resolution of the problem of Lebanon will require, I believe, military action. But not another foolhardhy grinding match in the hills of Lebanon…no, when push comes to shove, Israel (with US backing, if need be) must strike at the real heart of Hamas, which is in Damascus…hold Damascus hostage to a complete Syrio-Hamas withdrawal from Lebanon.
Its either act decisively, or Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser will just become two of a long line of Israeli dead.
Tags: Hamas, Israel, John McCain, Lebanon, Syria, Terrorism
July 18th, 2008
Mark Steyn takes note:
By most measures, the Jewish state is a great success story. The modern Middle East is the misbegotten progeny of the British and French colonial map-makers of 1922. All the nation states in that neck of the woods date back a mere 60 or 70 years — Iraq to the Thirties, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel to the Forties. The only difference is that Israel has made a go of it. Would I rather there were more countries like Israel, or more like Syria? I don’t find that a hard question to answer. Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East (Iraq may yet prove a second) and its Arab citizens enjoy more rights than they would living under any of the kleptocrat kings and psychotic dictators who otherwise infest the region. On a tiny strip of land narrower at its narrowest point than many American townships, Israel has built a modern economy with a GDP per capita just shy of $30,000 — and within striking distance of the European Union average. If you object that that’s because it’s uniquely blessed by Uncle Sam, well, for the past 30 years the second largest recipient of U.S. aid has been Egypt: Their GDP per capita is $5,000, and America has nothing to show for its investment other than one-time pilot Mohammed Atta coming at you through the office window.
Jewish success against the odds is nothing new. “Aaron Lazarus the Jew,” wrote Anthony Hope in his all but unknown prequel to The Prisoner Of Zenda, “had made a great business of it, and had spent his savings in buying up the better part of the street; but” — and for Jews there’s always a ‘but’ — “since Jews then might hold no property…”
Ah, right. Like the Jewish merchants in old Europe who were tolerated as leaseholders but could never be full property owners, the Israelis are regarded as operating a uniquely conditional sovereignty. Jimmy Carter, just returned from his squalid suck-up junket to Hamas, is merely the latest Western sophisticate to pronounce triumphantly that he has secured the usual (off-the-record, highly qualified, never to be translated into Arabic, and instantly denied) commitment from the Jews’ enemies acknowledging Israel’s “right to exist.” Well, whoop-de-doo. Would you enter negotiations on such a basis?
Since Israel marked its half-century, the “right to exist” is now routinely denied not just in Gaza and Ramallah and the region’s presidential palaces but on every European and Canadian college campus.
The most crucial mistake Israel has made since the 1967 war was to unilaterally withdraw from southern Lebanon. Israel was worn out with south Lebanon - the expense, the slow bleed in lives lost, the world condemnation over Israel’s presence (with nary a peep about Syria’s much larger presence in the rest of Lebanon) - so Israel bugged out, no questions asked. For the Islamists who had been sniping at the Israeli effort, the lesson was well learned - just keep up a grinding pressure on Israel and eventually she would quit. This is why in spite of all Israel has done to fight Hamas, the fight continues - because Hamas is convinced that Israel was forced out of Lebanon by Hezbollah, and thus can be forced out of Israel, itself, by Hamas. This is the sort of situation one gets when there is a “peace process”.
The ultimate solution to the problem of Israel vs Islam is for Islam to finally accept that Israel isn’t going away - from first to last and without exception, the key to peace lies in the acceptance of the Arab leadership that they cannot and will not ever be able to remove Israel. As long as the Arab leadership keeps preaching the destruction of Israel and as long as the terrorists of Hamas, etc are fed on the concept that eventually Israel will be forced out, so the war will continue. This will require some rather strenuous economic, political, diplomatic and military efforts - key to which will be to sustain the democracy in Iraq and to force not just Syria but Syrian and Iranian backed groups out of Lebanon. Israel made an effort at this is 2006 and unfortunately made a complete hash out of it - the IDF not being built to slug it out in the mountains with a well-entrenched foe. This effort will have to be revisited - especially as a re-occupation of south Lebanon by Israeli forces which are in the process of destroying/driving out Hezbollah will recover for Israel the sense of invincibility once shared not just by Israelis, but also by the Arabs.
Hamas will also have to be taken out; and Syria brought permanently to heel; and Egypt will have to tone down the anti-Israel rhetoric or lose US aid. By use of power (military, economic, diplomatic, etc) we must force the leadership of the Arab world to admit Israel’s permanence, and that will lead to a drying up of revanchist feeling amongst the broader Arab population. Don’t be fooled by siren songs of how we can talk our way out of this - or that as long as the current leadership of the Arabs is in place that we’ll have anything better than a temporary truce. This will have to be fought out, and hard measures will have to be taken by the US and Israel, working in tandem.
Tags: Hamas, Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon, Syria
May 11th, 2008
Was the Israeli move the best to make, or should we have sent Obama to talk to the Syrians and North Koreans?
WASHINGTON — A Syrian nuclear reactor built with help from North Korea was weeks away from functioning, a top U.S. official said Thursday after lawmakers were briefed on the site destroyed last year by Israeli jets.
The official, who wanted anonymity, told The Associated Press that the facility was mostly completed but still needed significant testing before it could be declared operational.
Still, Syria’s ambassador to the United Kingdom denied that North Korea’s cooperation with Syria had any nefarious purpose…
…Intelligence officials told several House and Senate committees that the destroyed site was designed to produce a small amount of plutonium, a highly radioactive substance.
Plutonium-producing reactors are of international interest because the material can be used to make high-yield nuclear weapons or “dirty bombs” that disperse radioactive material when they explode, rendering an area potentially unsafe for humans for years.
The reactor was not finished when it was blown up, but U.S. intelligence officials had acquired videotape and other evidence to demonstrate that it resembled the nuclear reactor at Yonbyon, North Korea. No uranium — the fuel for a reactor — was evident on site.
Given Syria’s close links to Iran, we cannot rule out that the Iranians were also involved - it would be rather logical for Iran, under pressure on its own nuke program, to shuttle some of it over to Syria, which wasn’t nearly under the scrutiny that Iran is under. Also, North Korea needs money - of which Syria has none; as we haven’t noted a willingness on the part of North Korea to be charitible, we must presume that North Korea was getting something out of the deal…perhaps some Iranian petrodollars? Certainly, very extensive investigation is needed, and the hope is that our intelligence services are investing a lot into this.
We must ensure that of all the lunatic regimes in the world that North Korea be the last one of them to obtain nuclear weapons - diplomacy and diplomatic pressure, by all means, but when push comes to shove, we must be willing to act decisively to prohibit regimes like Syria’s or Iran’s from becoming nuclear.
Tags: Iran, Israel, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Syria
April 24th, 2008
