Diplomacy and the Hounds of Hell, Part VIII

CNN is being used by Hizbullah to spread its message, and no one in CNN thought that odd? Actually, that's standard operating procedure for CNN, which had no problem trading access for journalistic integrity in Iraq and who knows where else. Newsbusters has the details. It isn't pretty. And one shouldn't think that this is limited to CNN. Other news outlets operating in Lebanon are similarly uncritically touting the Hizbullah line without saying as much.

You can bet that the media bias from these stories has an effect on world opinion and the opinions of those diplomats and politicians who are following the issue closely and are trying to determine foreign policy. If they're utilizing these media reports, they'd be coming to the precisely wrong conclusions. Rob at Say Anything has more. A transcript showing just how in bed CNN was with Hizbullah is here.

No one wants to commit troops to an international peacekeeping force, including the US. The US doesn't want to do it, and other European nations are reluctant to send troops because they are stretched too thin with committments elsewhere. That, and they know that Hizbullah has no problem targeting peacekeepers as easily as Israelis. There's also concern that the peacekeepers would be seen as allies to Israel, which is understandable. Israel is a country defending its very existence against Islamic terrorists. Many of the European countries are similarly fighting Islamic terrorists abroad and at home.

So, who would that leave as potential peacekeepers? Middle Eastern countries that have no relations with Israel or would conspire to assist the terrorists destroy Israel? China? Russia? That international peacekeeping force seems far less international when you start excluding countries that have interests antithetical to Israel's existence, or whose interests are something less than honorable here.

Has Hamas thrown in the towel? While some reports suggest that it looks like Hamas is on the verge of accepting a plan proposed by the Egyptians that would save Hamas from the war that they craved so badly, other reports suggest Hamas will not agree to any deal unless they get prisoner exchanges up front. From Ha'aretz:

All groups in Gaza, including Hamas, would now accept a cease-fire deal with Israel which would include releasing Gilad Shalit, according to the Palestinian Agriculture Minister, who also heads the coordinating committee of Palestinian organizations there.

Ibrahim Al-Naja said the factions were ready to stop the Qassam rocket fire if Israel's ceased all military moves against the Palestinian factions in Gaza. They are also ready to release Shalit in exchange for guaranteeing the future release of Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas leaders did not confirm this report yesterday, but if it is true, then this is the first time that Hamas has indicated its acceptance of the Egyptian proposal to solve the crisis.

Egypt's proposal did not include an Israeli commitment to the immediate release of Palestinian prisoners, only guarantees for their future release.

Al-Naja said the Palestinian faction's conditions were that the cease-fire would be mutual and Israel would stop all its actions against the Palestinians.

He also said Israel must provide clear guarantees to free veteran prisoners, minors and female prisoners incarcerated in Israel.

I'm not sure Israel would agree to these terms, but that Hamas is even proposing terms that are at least worthy of a second look shows that the Israelis have taught at least some Hamas a lesson. The problem is that Meshaal isn't going to like this one bit, and they'll claim victory for outlasting the Israelis, despite all the damage done by the Palestinians to their own cause. Dan Riehl also notes that Hamas is talking the talk for the first time because they're getting their butts kicked in a huge way. If he had his way, he'd want to see the Israelis eliminate Hizbullah and Hamas in toto, and not wait for a ceasefire. You do not make deals with terrorist groups that seek to annihilate you.

Secretary of State Rice is meeting with Prime Minister Olmert today, and you can be sure that they'll be discussing a timeline for how long the Israelis think they'll need to eliminate the Hizbullah threat from Northern Israel and what they're looking for in the long term.

Bloggers to check in with for daily updates are Blue Crab Boulevard, Carl in Jerusalem, Israellycool, Dave Bender, Meryl Yourish, Euphoric Reality, Pajamas Media, Hot Air, Jameel at the Muqata, Greetings from the French Hill, R'Lazer, and Live from an Israeli Bunker. Check back with them regularly for updates.

One Israeli was killed and 48 wounded in rocket attacks today. Some in the media are wondering whether the ongoing violence will somehow temper the Israeli reaction and break their will to survive against the existentialist threat, though they're not framing the question that way. They simply want to know if the politicians in Israel will cave to international calls for a ceasefire. And yet, it appears that the current crisis has united Israelis in a way that hasn't happened in more than 30 years.

Israel continues to grind away at Hizbullah, killing more than 40 Hizbullah in and around Bint Jbiel. They're also destroying the rocket launchers used by Hizbullah to hit targets inside Israel, including Haifa.

Several Israelis thus far have been hit by 'friendly fire,' and the IDF is examining whether the helicopter that crashed yesterday was hit by an artillery barrage. Another potential friendly fire incident was averted in Bint Jbiel when controllers realized a mistake in coordinates being used by a UAV to direct fire.

UPDATE:
Via Ha'aretz, the first US aid shipments to Lebanon are arriving today. Israel will let the UN airlift humanitarian aid into Lebanon as well. So why is Saudi Arabia pledging $500 million? To offset the Iranian influence. Sunni v. Shi'ite. This conflict is revealing not for its renewal of the Israeli-Arab conflict, but for how Sunni and Shi'a governments throughout the Middle East and beyond are influencing the events.

Don't bring a knife to a gunfight and expect the gunslinger to put down his gun to engage you with a knife. Yet, that's exactly what Eugene Robinson thinks Israel is doing. He thinks Israel is engaging in disproportionate force against Hizbullah. His proof? Lots of buildings and infrastructure damaged or destroyed, along with civilian casualties. Sorry, but that doesn't cut it. Hizbullah is part of the Lebanese government, controls Southern Lebanon with a tight grip, and purposefully hides in plain sight - putting its military resources squarely within residential areas so as to invite civilian casualties in an Israeli reprisal. Hizbullah came to a gunfight with a knife, and now hopes that the world will call on Israel to put down its gun to deal with it in a knifefight. Sorry, but Nasrallah doesn't know the Chicago rules. And he and his terrorist minions are going to pay dearly for that miscalculation. Even Richard Cohen (yes, that Richard Cohen) gets it.

Perhaps Robinson should get his news from sources other than media outlets enthralled with getting footage in Beirut chaparoned by Hizbullah who are pushing their agenda at the cost of the facts. Quite a few of those buildings, and many of those so called civilians were anything but civilian targets. They were Hizbullah buildings, Hizbullah minions, and their infrastructure was going up in smoke because the IDF pinpointed where they were operating.

Israel will continue fighting to eliminate Hizbullah as a threat. As it must. And the world continues to look at an international peacekeeping force, though how it will look and be composed are up in the air. Are Western Democratic countries too nice to win?

What if Israel's caution about casualties among its own soldiers and Lebanese civilians has demonstrated to Hezbollah and Hamas that as long as they can duck and cover when the missiles fly and the bombs fall, they can survive and possibly even thrive?

What if Israel has every capability of achieving its aim, but cannot unleash itself against a foe more dangerous, more unscrupulous, more unprincipled and more barbaric than even the monstrous leaders of the Intifada it managed to quell after years of suicide attacks?

And as for the United States, what if we have every tool at our disposal to win a war - every weapons system we could want manned by the most superbly trained military in history - except the ability to match or exceed our antagonists in ruthlessness?

Is this the horrifying paradox of 21st century warfare? If Israel and the United States cannot be defeated militarily in any conventional sense, have our foes discovered a new way to win? Are they seeking victory through demoralization alone - by daring us to match them in barbarity and knowing we will fail?

Are we becoming unwitting participants in their victory and our defeat? Can it be that the moral greatness of our civilization - its astonishing focus on the value of the individual above all - is endangering the future of our civilization as well?

So, if the dovish approach doesn't work, the hawkish approach doesn't work, what are the alternatives?
There are no good alternatives. Stoic acceptance of terror attacks wont cut it, not when the threat of unconventional terror attacks with WMD is increasingly likely especially as Iran and North Korea pursue and extend their WMD capabilities. It doesn't leave any good options, which means one must choose the least bad option. To me, that's taking the fight to the terrorists.

John Podhoretz asks the question that keeps lurking. Can Israel win in the face of inflicting high casualties?

UPDATE:
As I first noted yesterday, Israel has more than its fair share of refugees from the fighting. More than 1 million Israelis are living in bunkers and bomb shelters because of the Hizbullah attacks (Israeli Ambassador Ayalon on Whiffleball with Matthews) A video report from Martin Fletcher has the details on the Israeli refugee situation (can access from here - follow link to Israel handling refugees and the recitation of the 300,000 comes about a minute+ into the video).

Meanwhile, Israel is fully in control of Bint Jbeil, and claims that many residents of Northern Israel will no longer come under fire of low trajectory rocket attacks, and that the IDF will soon surpress high trajectory rocket attacks.

The IDF Northern Command reported relative quiet on Tuesday, with few exchanges of fire. They posit that the deployment of artillery, infantry and armored brigades, which created "a finger hold" in southern Lebanon, is having the desired effect. IDF sources say that forces are working in a ways that utilize their relative advantage – they operate primarily at night, for example. According to the sources, Hizbullah casualties are very high.

At least one senior Hizbullah member operating in the Maroun al-Ras/Bnit Jbeil area was killed Tuesday as a result of IDF activities in the area. An IDF source told ynet that the operative was staying in a house serving as an operations room. He further reported that, while searching the houses, forces found many weapons, including light arms, Katyushas, and various kinds of missiles.

This is good news. Also good news: Israel terminated a Hizbullah regional commander. More buildings were targeted in Beirut, and while you can be sure that Hizbullah and some in the media will claim that only civilians were targeted, the fact is that Hizbullah is operating in these residential areas and that their infrastructure is getting hammered. The IDF is also attacking Hizbullah's communications infrastructure.

For a change, I agree with Ahmadinejad - those that caused this conflict will pay.

Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, addressed the current crisis on the Israeli-Lebanese border, saying, "The middle eastern storm is approaching.

Ahmadinejad added that "those who created the winds of the storm will pay the consequences." (AFP)

Only I think that my definition of who caused the conflict and his differs. Iran will suffer for its terrorist funding and support, and its role in spreading jihadis throughout the Middle East, turning Lebanon into a warzone, and its ongoing calls for Israel's annihilation.

The Saudis, meanwhile, continue flapping their jaws. They're worried that the situation might turn into a wider war. Here's a suggestion - have the Saudis stop funding Islamic terrorists and we might just avoid that wider war. They're also concerned about Lebanese sovereignty. Perhaps the Lebanese should have paid more attention to that subject before they ceded South Lebanon to Hizbullah and made the terrorist group part of the government. While that might have kept the country from sliding into yet another civil war, letting the terrorists and their backers in Syria and Iran pull strings meant that Lebanon was not fully in control of its territory - a violation of UN SCR 1559.

Syria has raised the alert level of its military, quite possibly because Hizbullah has been getting pasted by Israel. The Syrians may be weighing how to intervene, but they've got to know that if they do so, they'll receive a harsher pounding than the Israelis are dishing out to Hizbullah. Maybe they're hoping that if Israel does attack Syrian forces, it will get Iran into the act - unleashing one of their surprises. Either way, Israel has to honor the threat and work along the Syrian/Lebanese border to make it next to impossible for Syria to intervene within Lebanon.

In a minor flying pig moment, Russia's Vladamir Putin says the conflict in Lebanon shows the ineffectiveness of the UN.

UPDATE:
Olmert says that Israel has the stamina for a long fight. That remains to be seen. I hope that's true, but one shouldn't lay your strategy and tactics on hope. You need something more substantial than hope. The US says that the Israeli window for their ongoing efforts in Lebanon is 10-14 days. I doubt that's sufficient to finish the job, but it might give Northern Israel a break for a while - although it will do nothing to ensure the release of the Israeli soldiers being held by Hizbullah.

The UN continues to show that it is a failure. They claim that Israel used disproportionate force in Gaza. I refer you to the aforementioned Chicago rule - never bring a knife to a gunfight, especially when you're the one starting the fight with a knife. Hamas, that means you lose. At least the UN isn't trying to claim that Israel has no right to defend itself; a tact that it has tried in the past.

Iran says that it will protect Syria. That's nice, but who's going to protect Iran? It's not like Israel's enemies have a successful track record of beating Israel in any conflict.

UPDATE:
In another NBC video from yesterday's news, there's a curious scene. At 1:07-1:08 into the video featuring Richard Engel, there's an appearance of uncut US currency at what Engel describes as a financial center in Sidon. Doesn't that seem strange to anyone else? It did to some other folks. Why would uncut US currency be present at a bombed out financial services site? It's not like those uncut bills would be there unless someone was, ummm, what's the word I'm looking for, counterfeiting US currency?

There's good reason to believe that Hizbullah is using counterfeit bills to fund their operations, and the US Secret Service has been keeping tabs on this development as well. One has to believe that the Israelis just did the US a big favor in breaking a counterfeiting ring in addition to eliminating a source of funding for Hizbullah.

The NYT had an expose on counterfeit supernotes and among those involved and suspected of producing them: North Korea and Iran. One theory has Iran producing notes via intaglio presses obtained by the Shah from the US, and now passes them on to Lebanon via Syria.

It's always good to follow the money...

UPDATE:
Hizbullah is threatening attacks beyond Haifa, even as they say they were surprised by the Israeli response to their brazen invasion of Israel, the killing of eight Israeli soldiers, and their taking of two others into Lebanon. They have the audacity to say that they wont accept humiliating terms of a ceasefire? Gee, getting none of your demands isn't humiliation, but reality. You started a war you couldn't hope to win, you and your terror backers miscalculated bigtime, and you can still get out with your lives if you simply hand over the two Israeli soldiers and disarm. Hizbullah can even call that a victory. They survived longer than Israel's enemies did in 1967.

Meanwhile, four UN soldiers were killed when an Israeli airstrike hit a UN outpost. Israel is investigating the matter. Expect the usual suspects to use this incident as grounds to call Israel to heel and stop their operations against Hizbullah.

Some are also throwing accusations that Israelis are utilizing human shields in their operations. Never mind that we repeatedly see Hizbullah and Hamas operating in civilian areas, these human rights groups are complaining about Israel and aren't complaining about Hamas or Hizbullah.

Israeli troops entered Gaza City. The IDF also surrounded a building in Ramallah. Rockets are still being fired into Israel.

The counterfeiting story is being discussed at LGF.

Others blogging the conflict: Jeff Weintraub, Boker Tov, Boulder, Gates of Vienna, Wizbang (and here), Blackfive, Powerline, The Jawa Report (and here), and AJ Strata.

UPDATE:
Texas Rainmaker wonders whether he's been operating under the wrong defintion of peace all these years based on the kind of pablum coming from various circles these days. Dr. Sanity notes that Israel's actions have had a clarifying effect on separating the decent Left from the indecent Left.

Others blogging: Jihad Watch, Pajamas Media, Soccer Dad, and Crossing the Rubicon2.

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