Behind the Headlines: Hezbollah, Israel and a Risk Worth Taking
Posted By Gary Rosenblatt
Behind the Headlines: A Risk Worth Taking
Is it possible that if Israel didn't pursue Hezbollah, the terror group would leave Israel alone -- even though it is based on the commitment to liberate Jerusalem, which means destroy the Jewish State?
That's why I have a problem with the premise of an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times by Yediot Achronot corresondent Ronen Bergman ("Bracing For Revenge," Feb. 18), who argues that the assassination of leading Hezbollah terrorist Imad Mugniyah may have been a mistake because it will lead to escalated reprisals against Israel and Jews around the world.
Bergman notes that Israel has denied involvement in killing Mugniyah, who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans and Israelis, as well as for murdering French, German, Argentinean and British citizens. It was Mugniyah who was believed to have been the mastermind behind the bombing of the U.S. Marines barracks in Lebanon in 1982, which killed 241 American soldiers, and the two bombings in Buenos Aires against Jewish institutions that killed 114, among other atrocities.
But Bergman writes that when Israel has targeted and killed top Hezbollah fighters in the past, the group has retaliated and taken innocent lives and, "once more it is bent on vengeance."
"As Hezbollah draws no fine distinctions between the United States and Israel," he writes, "both nations, along with Jews around the world, might well have to pay the price for the loss of the man whose mystical aura was as important as his operational prowess."
This is a sobering conclusion, and may well be true. But it begs the question: if Israel did not pursue terror leaders, would they give up their arms and ideology and turn their swords into ploughshares?
We know they would, and will, continue to wage war against Israel in any way possible, and the only reason they have not retaliated already is because they have not been able to, aided by the fact that their leaders are worrying about whether they might be next.
Terrorism cannot be defeated through diplomacy, compromise or logic; it must be rooted out. And that is why free men and women everywhere took comfort this week in knowning that Imad Mugniyah will never take another innocent life.
Fair and balanced?
02/19/08 @ 10:27 PM | Posted By joelsk44039I agree with you 100%! Seems now that Syria is going to do an investigation of what happened to Mugniyah. I'll bet that it will be "fair and balanced" -- NOT!!