GUEST COMMENTARY: Arab Nations Are Lebanon’s Real Enemies

 

By Joseph J. Honick

Bainbridge Island, WA – There is a term – “benign neglect” — that often causes problems because theoretically good friends, siblings or parents who say they care also forget to show it sufficiently so that others can see this caring.

To read and hear the breathless commentary coming out the Hezbollah/Israeli conflict, one would believe the Jewish state has declared war on the nation of Lebanon with whom it historically enjoyed reasonably good relations.

It’s a lie, despite the imbalanced journalism out of various networks whose correspondents are either crowded into some safe studios or otherwise protected from most of the bombings. They seem to be in such profusion, not just from CNN and other American outlets, but from all over the world. How can a crowd of such people gather to see this conflict without one bomb from either side doing them in?

I cannot answer this question, but it is clear that there are many unreported facts that should be in the consumer media as well as the more formal publications like Foreign Affairs or an excellent industry sheet like O’Dwyer’s PR Newsletter. The latter for some time has reported the many millions dumped into the coffers of just one American PR/Lobbying firm, Qorvis, to sell the Saudi Arabian ideas and to say nasty things about Israel. And those are just the millions poured into an American firm, millions you have never read about in your daily newspaper or heard on the so called evening news or even seen in the flood of blogs that occupy the internet.

I cannot say why this is so, but there it is. It seems to have little to do with one’s political leanings to Republican or Democrats, though it is interesting that the more conservative elements have seen through the plethora of Arab propaganda without asking some key questions or permitting historical perspective to balance the rest of what we read and hear.

In the end, those Arab countries who have done their best to destabilize Israel for more than two generations, even before the state was born, have much to answer for — as does the so called “international community” which was impotent while holocausts were taking place in Africa and elsewhere but wide awake when it came time to condemn Israel.

Worse than Arab destabilization efforts have been their phony support for the Palestinian refugees. It would be futile to find really positive efforts by the oil rich countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and others to build hospitals, schools, factories and other institutions that could have helped Palestinians to become competitive and productive people without having to rely on employment in Israel, employment cut short by terrorists who worried that peace might actually break out eventually.

Lacking such efforts, the field was left free to terrorists like Hezbollah, Hamas and others to look like saviors while preaching hatred to generations of young Palestinians who became proud suicide bombers and recruits to terror. Of course, the media never publish photographs and articles that feature wealthy Palestinians who seem to distance themselves from the refugees not very far from where they live.

One key question why such questions are never raised by even the most leading and legitimate commentators here and abroad?

Unlike Israel, whose population and geography are virtual specks in relation to her neighbors and the armies, Arab nations have never had a problem to let American put their men and women at risk in their behalf. The same bleating United Nations that so readily condemned Israel in the current campaign did not have the capacity to gain admission for Israel to the International Red Cross for more than 50 years.

Israel is entitled to search out and destroy terrorists like Hezbollah who choose to fight behind the shields of innocent people, from schools, churches and even hospitals so they can then charge Israelis with purposely hitting defenseless civilians — the kinds of people specifically targeted by Hezbollah in Israeli cities and villages.

Could it be that Hezbollah is not only a surrogate for Iran and Syria but the Saudis, Kuwaitis and others who seem not to suffer problems from these terrorist groups which seem to have huge financial resources to pay for immensely expensive rockets and other deadly arsenals? And why does no one ask?

In the end, despite the crocodile tears of governments who should be helping to avoid such conflicts, the real enemies of Lebanon as well as Israel remain the major Arab nations who always seem to lack the will to help themselves except to our money at the gas pump. Only in this and so many other instances over time, the neglect could hardly be called “benign.”

Joseph J. Honick is a contributing columnist to DavidKinchen.com and Huntington News Network and is President of GMA International Ltd.

 

GUEST COMMENTARY: Why the World Should Stand Back and Let Israel Do What It Has to Do

 

By Dave Wilson
Captain (Ret.) U.S. Navy

When I was in the Navy, I once witnessed a bar fight in downtown Olongapo (Philippines) that still haunts my dreams. The fight was between a big oafish Marine and a rather soft-spoken, medium sized Latino sailor from my ship.

 

All evening the Marine had been trying to pick a fight with one of us and had finally set his sights on this diminutive shipmate of mine…figuring him for a safe target. When my friend refused to be goaded into a fight the Marine sucker punched him from behind on the side of the head so hard that blood instantly started to pour from this poor man’s mutilated ear.

 

Everyone present was horrified and was prepared to absolutely murder this Marine, but my shipmate quickly turned on him and began to single-handedly back him towards a corner with a series of stinging jabs and upper cuts that gave more than a hint to a youth spent boxing in a small gym in the Bronx.

 

Each punch opened a cut on the Marine’s startled face and by the time he had been backed completely into the corner he was blubbering for someone to stop the fight. He invoked his split lips and chipped teeth as reasons to stop the fight. He begged us to stop the fight because he could barely see through the river of blood that was pouring out of his split and swollen brows.

 

Nobody moved. Not one person.

 

The only sound in the bar was the sickening staccato sound of this sailor’s lightning fast fists making contact with new areas of the Marine’s head. The only sound I have heard since that was remotely similar was from the first Rocky film when Sylvester Stallone was punching sides of beef in the meat locker.

 

Finally the Marine’s pleading turned to screams…. a high, almost womanly shriek. And still the punches continued relentlessly. Several people in the bar took a few tentative steps as though they wanted to try to break it up at that point, but hands reached out from the crowd and held them tight. I’m not ashamed to say that mine were two of the hands that held someone back. You see, in between each blow the sailor had begun chanting a soft cadence: “Say [punch] you [punch] give [punch] up [punch]… say [punch] you [punch]were [punch] wrong [punch]“.

 

He had been repeating it to the Marine almost from the start but we only became aware of it when the typical barroom cheers had died down and we began to be sickened by the sight and sound of the carnage.

 

This Marine stood there shrieking in the corner of the bar trying futilely to block the carefully timed punches that were cutting his head to tatters… right down to the skull in places. But he refused to say that he gave up… or that he was wrong.

 

Even in the delirium of his beating he believed in his heart that someone would stop the fight before he had to admit defeat. I’m sure this strategy had served him well in the past and had allowed him to continue on his career as a barroom bully.

 

Finally, in a wail of agony the Marine shrieked “I give up”, and we gently backed the sailor away from him.

 

I’m sure you can guess why I have shared this story today.

 

I’m not particularly proud to have been witness to such a bloody spectacle, and the sound of that Marine’s woman-like shrieks will haunt me to my grave. But I learned something that evening that Israel had better learn for itself if it is to finally be rid of at least one of its tormentors:

 

This is one time an Arab aggressor must be allowed to be beaten so badly that every civilized nation will stand in horror, wanting desperately to step in and stop the carnage… but knowing that the fight will only truly be over when one side gives up and finally admits defeat.

 

Just as every person who had ever rescued that bully from admitting defeat helped create the cowardly brute I saw that evening in the bar, every well-intentioned power that has ever stepped in and negotiated a ceasefire for an Arab aggressor has helped create the monsters we see around us today.

 

President Lahoud of Lebanon, a big Hezbollah supporter and a close ally of Syria, has been shrieking non-stop to the UN Security Council for the past two days to get them to force Israel into a cease fire.

 

Clearly he has been reading his autographed copy of ‘Military Success for Dummies Arab Despots’ by the late Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. Ever since Nasser accidentally discovered the trick in ‘56, every subsequent Arab leader has stuck to his tried and true formula for military success:

Instigate a war.

 

Once the war is well underway and you are in the process of having your ass handed to you… get a few world powers to force your western opponent into a cease fire.

 

Whatever you do, don’t surrender or submit to any terms dictated by your enemy. That would ruin everything! All you have to do is wait it out and eventually the world will become sickened at what is being done to your soldiers and civilian population… and will force a truce.

 

Once a truce has been called you can resume your intransigence (which probably caused the conflict in the first place), and even declare victory as your opponent leaves the field of battle.

 

This tactic has never failed. Not once.

 

In fact it worked so well for the Egyptians in 1973, that to this day they celebrate the Yom Kippur War — a crushing defeat at the hands of Israel — as a military victory! No kidding… it’s a national holiday over there!

 

President Lahoud has already begun to shriek like a school girl to the UN Security Council to “Stop the violence and arrange a cease-fire, and then after that we’ll be ready to discuss all matters.”

 

Uh huh. Forgive me if I find that a tad hard to swallow. He allowed Hezbollah to take over his country. He allowed the regular Lebanese army to provide radar targeting data for the Hezbollah missile that struck the Israeli destroyer.

He has turned a blind eye while Iranian and Syrian weapons, advisers and money have poured into his country. And now that his country is in ruins he wants to call it a draw.

 

As much as it may sicken the world to stand by and watch it happen, strong hands need to hold back the weak-hearted and let the fight continue until one side finally admits unambiguous defeat.