Except When you are Killing Jews !

When I was in grade school, spelling traumatized me. I couldn't get the knack -- all those exceptions. "I" before "e" except after "c," except for weigh and weird. The rules have so many exceptions, that even the exceptions have exceptions. I still get heart palpations just thinking about it. That's probably why I studied Political Science in college -- it's so much easier than spelling.

On the world political stage, there is only one exception and it's the same for each rule. It's called, "Except when you're killing Jews." Let me explain how it works.

Take for example, Lebanon-- Hezbollah was attacking Israel from its bases set up in southern Lebanon. These bases were built in residential areas to use the local population as human shields. When Israel warned the civilians to get out and then struck back at Hezbollah by bombing its positions that was called "disproportionate response" and "collective punishment". On the other hand when Fatah al-Islam set up its bases in civilian areas and Lebanon warned the civilians to get out and attacked the terrorist group-- the Lebanese attack was praised as a legitimate battle against terrorists.

See how easy it is. Only one rule "striking back at terrorists is OK, except if the terrorists are killing Jews" It works on a lot of things, like building fences to keep out undesirables from other countries (Israel's West Bank Fence vs. the British Gibraltar fence).

Jacob Laskin of Frontpage magazine thinks that is all a double standard. He obviously didn't take International Relations with Faiz Abu-Jabbar at SUNY like I did. It is not a double standard its an exception to the rule---its OK for terrorists to kill Jews. Its as simple as spelling.

Terror and Double Standards

By Jacob Laksin

FrontPageMagazine.com | June 6, 2007 The fighting in Lebanon has drawn global condemnation. The Arab League has demanded an immediate halt to the violence, and denounced what it calls the army’s “disproportionate response.” That a Lebanon-based terrorist group prompted the violence is irrelevant. “The issue is not this faction or that,” according to Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa.

Diplomats and heads of state have also lined up against the war. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has deplored the army’s “excessive use of force” and insisted that the “collective punishment of the Lebanese people must stop.” European power brokers have delivered comparably stern rebukes, with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana voicing his vocal disapproval and French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy calling the army’s bombardment an “irresponsible act.”

It will not be lost on the observant reader that the war in question is the Israeli army’s counteroffensive last summer against Hezbollah. Triggered by the Lebanese terrorist group’s illicit capture of Israeli soldiers, its naked violation of Israeli sovereignty, and its ceaseless shelling of northern Israel, the war made the Jewish state into an object of international vituperation. For daring to defend herself against terror, Israel, not for the first time, was all but banished from the society of civilized nations.

It is thus a commentary on the shameful double standards of the “international community” that the Lebanese army’s ongoing efforts to root out the Palestinian terrorist faction Fatah al-Islam from the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon have met with an altogether different reception.

Take the Arab League. In contrast to its resounding silence on the criminal aggression of Hezbollah, the organization has leapt to defend Lebanon's right to act against terror. To that end, it has issued a statement in which it “strongly condemned the criminal and terrorist acts carried out by the terrorist group known as Fatah al-Islam.” In addition, the league has pledged to “give its full support to the efforts of the army and the Lebanese government to impose security and stability” in Lebanon, even promising military assistance the Lebanese army.

Equally, when Kofi Annan’s successor Ban Ki-moon recently denounced “criminal attacks” in Lebanon, he was referring to the Islamist assaults on the Lebanese military, rather than the other way around. Javier Solana has also condemned “this terrorist group,” committing the EU to full support for the Lebanese government. Even the Quai d'Orsay has shifted its views. Incoming French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has reportedly traveled to Lebanon to meet Prime Minister Fuad Siniora and "reaffirm France's solidarity with Lebanon." In short, the diplomatic establishment’s line on the fighting in Lebanon is precisely the inverse of what it was just one year ago.

No less revealing is what you won’t hear from these sudden converts to counterterrorism. You won’t hear, for instance, the Lebanese army assailed for its “disproportionate” response. This is despite the fact that the army has vowed to fight until Fatah al-Islam has been routed or killed, whichever comes first. As one Lebanese military insider said last week: “It will only end with the final end of this gang.” Parliament member Saad Hariri seconded the army’s position, saying, “We are not in a hurry.” If Arab leaders fear that this is a prescription for a “disproportionate response” against Palestinian refugees, they have kept their concerns private. One need only recall the outraged censure directed at Israel’s comparatively halting and restrained strikes against Hezbollah targets to detect hypocrisy at work.

Nor will you hear every accidental tragedy held up as evidence of the injustice of military retaliation. Remember that during last summer’s war, Israel was widely accused of intentionally targeting Lebanese civilians, a claim that scanted the fact the Hezbollah terrorists were purposely positioned in civilian areas. Human Rights Watch (HRW) executive director Kenneth Roth accused Israel of “indiscriminate bombardment,” while his HRW colleague Peter Bouckaert published an editorial with the jarringly incendiary, and wholly unjustified, headline, “For Israel, Innocent Civilians Fair Game.” HRW even published a lengthy report, “Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon,” blaming Israel for allegedly targeting civilians.

Now that Israelis are no longer guiding the missiles, critics seem content to hold their fire. How else to explain that, despite the fact that at least 27 civilians have been killed and 125 injured since the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) began their offensive on May 20, neither HRW nor kindred human-rights watchdogs have directed the same level of scrutiny, not to speak of censure, at Lebanon?

Indeed, next to the relentless torrent of anti-Israel demagogy produced by HRW last summer, its judgment of the fighting in Lebanon is a model of judicious restraint: “Fatah al-Islam militants must not hide among civilians, and the Lebanese army must take better precautions to prevent needless civilian deaths,” is all the organization has had to say on the matter. Not even the fact that the Lebanese army’s shelling has indeed been indiscriminate -- eyewitness accounts attest to countless missiles gone astray and the collateral damage from the current fighting has been said to match the worst days of Lebanon’s civil war from 1975–1990 -- has generated the antipathy with which Israel was forced to contend.

And what of the notorious “cycle of violence”? That thoughtless cliché, intended to equate Israel’s defensive retaliation with the Islamic terrorism that makes it necessary, was invoked endlessly throughout last summer’s war. But when a member of Fatah al-Islam exploded his suicide belt in Tripoli last week, no one made the absurd suggestion that Islamic terrorism and Lebanon’s militarily response to it were essentially indistinguishable. Meanwhile, almost all Palestinian factions have distanced themselves from Fatah al-Islam. Suddenly, the “cycle of violence” has run its course.

Also vanishing in the fog of the current war is another anti-Israel talking point. While Israel’s detractors relish citing the alleged mistreatment of Palestinians as the chief source of regional instability, Lebanon has generally escaped such criticism. The irony is that Lebanon’s record in this regard is far worse. Whereas Israel has sought to extend full civic equality to Arab citizens -- even, until recently, going so far as to tolerate an Israeli-Arab parliamentarian, Azmi Bishara, who openly cheered for Hezbollah during last summer’s war -- Lebanon has unapologetically treated Palestinian refugees as a permanent subclass.

The reality is grim. Under Lebanese law, Palestinians are denied property rights, access to state schools and basic medical services, and even the right to legal work, with poverty rates as high as 60 percent the inevitable result. “There’s just not much sympathy for Palestinians in Lebanon,” says David Schenker, a senior fellow in Arab politics at The Washington Institute. Nor are Lebanese unmindful of the fact that extremism -- including support for groups like al-Qaeda -- “is nurtured in the Palestinian environment.” Unsurprisingly, the military campaign enjoys a “broad consensus in Lebanon, and the LAF’s [Lebanese Armed Forces] campaign ignites popular support,” Schenker observed in an interview this week.

It does not follow from all this that Lebanon is wrong to bring its military might to bear on Fatah al-Islam. On the contrary, whether the army succeeds in destroying the al-Qaeda affiliated terror group has important consequences for US policy in the region. “The United States has a strong interest in helping the Lebanese government root out Fatah al-Islam to prevent it from turning Palestinian refugee camps into bastions of support for al-Qaeda attacks on the U.S. and its allies,” James Phillips, a Middle Eastern Affairs analyst at the Heritage Foundation, tells FrontPage. Phillips points out that, like the Taliban before it, “Fatah al-Islam seeks to violently impose its radical Islamic ideology on Palestinians and Lebanese, disrupt Lebanon’s precarious stability, and use Lebanon as a base for terrorist attacks against Israel and the U.S.”

Of equal significance is that the fighting in Lebanon could bear directly on the U.S.-led war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shihab Al-Qaddour, reportedly Fatah al-Islam’s second in command, recently explained his group‘s significance this way: “We adopt guerilla warfare, which no army can vanquish as demonstrated in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.” Defeating Fatah al-Islam would do much to demonstrate that, contrary to popular belief, terrorist insurgencies are not invincible.

That other countries have recognized the justice of Lebanon’s cause is a welcome development. Let it not be forgotten, though, that many of those now rushing to declare their solidarity with Lebanon turned their backs when it was the Jewish state in the terrorists’ sights.