The Conundrum, Part 21

Iran is at it again. Ahmadinejad is again threatening Israel's existence and the Iranians are refusing to back down on their nuclear program. Why should they? They know what North Korea has gotten away with thus far and know that they can go so much further because they happen to be sitting on a huge pool of black gold that gives them leverage where North Korea has none.

UNIFIL has had a change of heart. Annan denies that any such thing was contemplated. They now say that they will not fire on Israeli overflights. That's good news for those soldiers operating under the UNIFIL banner. Their weapons and tactics would be no match against the Israeli forces, and they know it.

Mubarak is asking for another fatwa. Or maybe yet another attempt on his life. He makes too much sense in questioning whether people are getting bad ideas about Islam. The problem is that the Islamists are doing nothing but reinforcing the fact that the Islamists want to impose their version of Islam on all others, and will use force to impose those views.

Fatah and Hamas leaders are trying to keep things from devolving further into a civil war. Good luck with that. Seriously, good luck with that. Both terrorist groups have so royally screwed the Palestinian people that there's little hope for a resolution that ends peacefully and with a secure and thriving Israel. And that (a secure and thriving Israel) is completely antithetical to the Palestinian terrorist groups, who are engaging in building tunnels to smuggle arms. The Israelis hit one such location today. That's in addition to five others hit yesterday.

And the rocket fire continues on a daily basis.

Additional analysis of the conflict in Lebanon shows that Hizbullah used cluster weapons. That's certainly an interesting issue, as Israel was condemned for its usage of cluster munitions. HRW says that Hizbullah used the weapons on a Druze village. Of course, this is a little late considering that HRW and other groups have been condemning Israel's use for months. The human rights groups have been sitting on this information, which further confirms that they're more interested in pursuing their own political agenda than a sincere concern in human rights:

"Use of cluster bombs is never justified in civilian-populated areas because they are inaccurate and unreliable," Goose asserted.

Gerald Steinberg of NGO Watch questioned why it had taken Human Rights Watch three months to discover Hizbullah's tactic when it reported on Israel's use of cluster bombs much earlier.

"By putting out this report at such as late date basically you are saying they don't think it's very important," said Steinberg. "This report on Hizbullah's use of cluster weapons is far too little, far too late to undo the damage they did by one-sided condemnations of Israel over the last three months."

Technorati: terrorism, nasrallah, fatah, Gilad, Shalit, Olmert, Eliyahu, Asheri, Ashri, Abbas, Regev, Goldwasser, PRC, Hamas, Gaza, palestinian, Israel, hizbullah, hezbullah, hezbollah, lebanon, syria.