Greetings from the French Hill: Great Articles Roundup: Part 1

There are so many great articles that have been put out in the past few days regarding the "ceas-fire" agreement, that it would only do them justice to post in 2 parts, so you can get to them all.
-Concept Wizard has an excellent flash presentation that gives Israel's History, In A Nutshell.

-Andrew McCarthy, a NRO contributor writes how the West's attitude of lack of conviction in fighting the War on Terror will define their loss in history:

When it is finally written — probably in Arabic — the history of the war on terror will convey one over-arching lesson: One side fought with conviction; the other developed a conviction against fighting.

On the winning side were those with no confusion about who they were, and exactly who their enemy was. The losers refused to see themselves as a “side” at all. They wanted, instead, to be the Honest Broker. All things to all people. Not there to win but to help. A neutral arbiter, seeing the merit in everyone’s position — even terrorists and their enablers in the act of besieging a paragon of Western values.

-The Free Republic has a post that shows a man, assumed to be Hezbollah, setting the stage for a Reuters photo shot. Included are pictures that show this man taking toys out a suitcase he found and setting them up amongst the wreckage for the photo-"journalists" to snap up.
-Alan Dershowitz writes 2 great articles in Front Page Mag, analyzing Hezbollah and the terrorist threat to the world.

Hezbollah's Final Sollution
The uniqueness of the Holocaust was not the Nazi's determination to kill the Jews of Germany and even of neighboring Poland. Other genocides, such as those by the Cambodians and the Turks, sought to rid particular areas of so called undesirables by killing them. The utter uniqueness of the Holocaust was the Nazi plan to "ingather" all the Jews of the world to the death camp and end the Jewish "race" forever. It almost succeeded.
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Never before or since in world history has a tyrannical regime sought to murder all of the members of a particular racial, religious, ethnic or cultural group, regardless of where they live--not until now. Hezbollah's aim is not to "end the occupation of Palestine," or even to "liberate all of Palestine." Its goal is to kill the world's Jews. Listen to the words of its leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah: "If Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide." (NY Times, May 23, 2004, p. 15, section 2, column 1.) Nasrallah is one of the most admired men in the Muslim and Arab world today. Hitler made similar threats in Mein Kampf but they were largely ignored. Nasrallah has a reputation for keeping his promises.

Hezbollah's Triumph
Sunday was a day of great triumph for Hezbollah. Its tactics had worked. By launching rockets at Israeli civilians within yards of a building filled with refugees, Hezbollah had induced Israel to make a terrible mistake. Its defensive rocket had missed the Hezbollah launchers and hit the civilian building. That was Hezbollah’s plan all along. As Israelis wept in grief over the deaths of the Lebanese children, Hezbollah leaders celebrated its propaganda victory.

Yes, Hezbollah was happy that an Israeli rocket had killed Lebanese children. The children were now in paradise, martyrs to Hezbollah’s cause. Israel was being condemned throughout the world for “killing” children—“massacre” was the most common word used in the Arab media. The Israelis apologized, but that was not enough to put out the flames of anger or to quiet the shrill calls for revenge.
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-Also in Front Page Mag, P. David Hornik discuss how the West "sold out" to Israel and the Hezbollah terrorists with Resolution 1701.

If America got fed up with Israel and decided to accede to a UN “ceasefire” resolution, there were reasons for it. For a month an inexperienced Israeli prime minister who had said he was tired of fighting and wanted to turn Israel into a fun place, with an underqualified defense minister at his side, paraded Israel’s delusions in an effort to defeat Hezbollah on the cheap.
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Security Council Resolution 1701 “Calls for a full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hizbullah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations,” drawing a precise parallel between jihadist aggression and the effort to ward it off. The document also calls for the release of the abducted Israeli soldiers only in the preamble, while also claiming a need to “settl[e] the issue of the Lebanese prisoners detained in Israel”—in other words, terrorists who include the sadistic child-murderer Samir Kuntar.
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Allowing Israel to take a few more weeks and rout Hezbollah—preferably also with some sobering strikes against Syria—would have created a different scenario and, most important, perceptions of a Western victory and humiliating jihadist defeat. That may have allowed the truly moderate Christian, Druze, and Muslim forces in Lebanon to start trying to retake control of their country while leaving the Iranian-led jihad axis reeling.

Instead the United States and the world community have chosen with this dire Security Council resolution to create a powerful scenario of perceived, and to some extent real, jihadist victory while ensuring continuing instability and endangerment of Israel. It is a moment that will come back to haunt America and the West.