What They Are Saying

Richard Cohen

"If by chance you have the search engine LexisNexis and you punch in the words 'Israel' and 'disproportionate,' you run the risk of blowing up your computer or darkening your entire neighborhood. Israel may or may not be the land of milk and honey, but it certainly seems to be the land of disproportionate military response -- and a good thing, too.

"The dire consequences of proportionality are so clear that it makes you wonder if it is a fig leaf for anti-Israel sentiment in general. Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that proportionality is madness. For Israel, a small country within reach, as we are finding out, of a missile launched from any enemy's back yard, proportionality is not only inapplicable, it is suicide. The last thing it needs is a war of attrition. It is not good enough to take out this or that missile battery. It is necessary to re-establish deterrence: You slap me, I will punch out your lights.

"Israel has been in dire need of such deterrence ever since it pulled out of Lebanon in 2000 and, just recently, the Gaza Strip. In Lebanon, it effectively got into a proportional hit-and-respond cycle with Hezbollah. It cost Israel 901 dead and Hezbollah an announced 1,375, too close to parity to make a lasting difference. Whatever the figures, it does not change the fact that Israeli conscripts or reservists do not think death and martyrdom are the same thing. No virgins await Jews in heaven.

"Gaza, too, was a retreat. There are many ways to mask it but no way to change the reality. The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon concluded that Israel was incapable of controlling a densely populated area full of people who hated the occupation. The fact remains that for Israel to survive, it must withdraw to boundaries that are easily defensible and hard to breach.

"Israel is, as I have often said, unfortunately located, gentrifying a pretty bad neighborhood. But the world is full of dislocated peoples. As for Europe, who today cries for the Greeks of Anatolia or the Germans of Bohemia?

"These calls for proportionality rankle. They fall on my ears not as genteel expressions of fairness, some ditsy Marquess of Queensberry idea of war, but as ugly sentiments pregnant with antipathy toward the only democratic state in the Middle East. After the Holocaust, after 1,000 years of mayhem and murder, the only proportionality that counts is zero for zero. If Israel's enemies want that, they can have it in a moment."

Arabs Also Sit in the Line of Fire
Columnist Richard Z. Chesnoff writes in the New York Daily News (www.nydailynews.com) on July 24 that Iran is pulling Hezbollah's puppet strings:

Richard Z. Chesnoff

"Make no mistake. Israel's raging war with Hezbollah is more than a battle between the Jewish state and a fanatic Islamist enemy. It is a bloody, ruthless struggle, whose outcome could determine the future shape of the entire Middle East -- both Arab and Israeli.

"The Shi'ite terrorists of Hezbollah may be Lebanese, but they are the servile puppets of Iran. The enthusiastic decision to provoke war with Israel was made by Tehran -- not Hezbollah, and certainly not the emasculated Beirut.

"Hezbollah's Iranian masters have two intertwined goals -- one short-term, one long-term. The first is to stir up enough trouble to divert global attention from Iran's determination to build a nuclear weapon. The second is connected to the bitter, centuries-old rivalry between the two primary branches of Islam -- the Shi'ites and the Sunnis.

"I agree with those Mideast experts who warn that Tehran's real goal is to create what Jordan's King Abdullah calls a 'Shi'ite crescent,' an Iranian-led band of nations stretching from Pakistan through Iran to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and ultimately, Palestine. This Shi'ite empire would try to dominate and rule the entire Middle East. Israel, which Iran's extremist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has frequently sworn he wants to 'wipe off the map,' would be the immediate target. But the true full aim would be an Iranian hegemony that would eventually eclipse and take over such moderate, pro-Western Sunni Arab states as Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

"The ultimate irony is that in the current war the Jewish state is defending the Arab world as well as itself and Western interests."

Will the Real Democratic 'Role Model' Please Stand Up?
Author William J. Bennett writes on www.Townhall.com July 26 that promoting democracy in the Middle East doesn't mean appeasing terror:

William J. Bennett

"In some respects, it is unnecessary to ask whether Lebanon 'harbors' or 'harbored' Hezbollah; but one definition of 'harbor' is 'to provide refuge,' and there is no question that at the bare minimum, Lebanon allowed Hezbollah to operate in its country -- gave it ministerial portfolios in the cabinet and allowed the seating of its elected officials in parliament. It may, as a fragile, burgeoning, democracy have had no choice but to do this. But the question remains: Was that fragile democracy slowly moving to eradicate Hezbollah from its midst, or was Hezbollah growing stronger and stronger? If Hezbollah had believed Lebanon was constricting it rather than allowing it to thrive, it would not have launched an incursion into Israel.

"The question arises, however, that if the U.S. sides alone with Israel, would that not be a terrible message to send to the broader Middle East democracy initiative. This is the question that is the most lopsided of them all.

"We have long believed that, paraphrasing former CIA director Jim Woolsey, democracy is not one vote, one time. Israel is in the Middle East, and is a democracy that passes the Woolsey test and has done so for almost 60 years. Lebanon has had one election in recent times, and it weaved Hezbollah into that democracy. The Palestinian Authority had an election, and it put Hamas in charge. It seems that if one wants to further the Middle East democracy project -- and not be cynical about it -- the U.S. is doing precisely what it should: showing support for the established democracy, not the fragile and inept one that allows, tolerates or -- at a minimum -- turned a blind eye to Hezbollah in its midst.

"What model should the U.S. be pointing to to the Iranian dissidents, the Egyptian dissidents, the Saudi dissidents? Would we be right to say, ... 'Look at Israel: It comes to the aid of others around the world, it has a minority population with full democratic rights that even serve in government, and its economy, free of oil, works.'

"If the U.S. is to be held accountable for initiating and supporting democracies, the one that is one-year-old and hosts Hezbollah is not the model we should be propagating.

"So the next time the question is asked about the Middle East democracy project in light of Israel, Lebanon and the Middle East -- the reminder needs to be made: Israel is a democracy, and it is in the Middle East."