Hezbollah's Felony Murder

When an Israeli school is bombed, the newspapers of the world give out a collective yawn burying the news somewhere deep down. When an Arab school is bombed, the newspapers of the world give a great cry of outrage and rush to gleefully print every picture they can.

When an Israeli baby is murdered, the politicians of the world caution Israel not to strike against the terrorists and the peace activists of the world are full of 'understanding' towards the murderers who felt driven to do such things. When an Arab baby dies as collateral damage in an Israeli attack the politicians and the media and the activists cry Holocaust. When another Arab baby is killed in a suicide bombing in Iraq, the media has nothing to say.

When Israelis die, their blood is cheap. When Arabs die their blood is priceless, so long as the blame for it can be placed at the door of the Jews.

It does not matter that the Qana story is as full of holes as Jenin. That the building Israel bombed collapsed hours later. That there are news photos of a rescue worker parading around for the cameras with a single dead baby for hours on end, changing his clothes and still smilingly presenting the dead baby to the cameras. It does not matter that Hizbullah uses civilian areas and buildings to launch its rockets from. These are facts and the object of the politicians and the press is not the facts but the blame. The blame always goes on the same target. The Jews.

In every war Israel has fought, Israeli soldiers have died, been sacrificed by their own military, to limit enemy civilian casualties. There is no other military in the world except the United States that does this. By contrast the enemy willingly and knowingly uses civilians as human shields, builds schools over ammunition bunkers, fires rockets from civilian areas, from behind UN positions, from behind children. The following is a letter from a man who used to live in such a village.

I lived until 2002 in a small southern village near Mardshajund that is inhabited by a majority of Shias like me. After Israel left Lebanon, it did not take long for Hezbollah to have its say in other towns. Received as successful resistance fighters and armed to the teeth, they stored rockets in bunkers in our town as well. The social work of the Party of God consisted in building a school and a residence over these bunkers! A local sheikh explained to me laughing that the Jews would lose in any event because the rockets would either be fired at them or if they attacked the rockets depots, they would be condemned by world opinion on account of the dead civilians. These people do not care about the Lebanese population, they use them as shields, and, once dead, as propaganda. As long as they continue existing there, there will be no tranquility and peace.

Dr. Mounir Herzallah, Berlin-Wedding

While Israeli soldiers die to limit the cost to Arab civilians, the Arab side uses its own civilians as shields and uses their deaths to provoke outrage at Israel. To Israel dead enemy civilians are a tragedy, to their own people they're propaganda. Nothing Israel can do can avoid collateral damage by an enemy determined that its own civilians die in the conflict. Nothing Israel can do will change the propaganda the media will put out after such an attack. Israel cannot win the propaganda war because it has no allies in its corner and faces a press which views Israel as the enemy of all that is liberal and progressive; Israel can only win the real war on the ground.

That war will be best won when Israel stops making apologies, stops paying attention to the press and does whatever it takes to win. In criminal law there's something called the 'Felony Murder Rule' what that means is a criminal who perpetrates a felony as a result of which a death occurs, can be charged with murder even if he was not the one who pulled the trigger. If a gunman who holds up a liquor store exchanges fire with police and the police return fire kills an innocent civilian, the gunman can be put on trial for murder because it was his criminal act that caused that man's death.

It was Hezbolah who triggered this war. Hezbollah's felony of invading Israel and killing and kidnapping Israeli soldiers touched off this entire campaign. All the deaths, on every side, military and civilian are Hezbollah's responsibility. Since Hezbolah has additionally actively used civilians as shields, operated in civilian clothing and from apartment buildings, all casualties that occur in such operations are Hezbollah and only Hezbollah's fault.

Israel has dropped leaflets, broadcast warnings, in Gaza Israel even called up the homes of Arabs in strike zones warning them to leave. What other military would remotely go to all this trouble. Yes children will die in this war and whoever kills them, their blood will be on Hizbullah's hands. They sought this war and they got it and they fought in the most dishonorable and cowardly ways conceivable and no matter how much they parade for the cameras with dead children in their heads, they are the killers. End of story.