Playing by the rules

The war in the north in going into it's 4th week now with the major event of the past few days still being the Qana attack, and the crazy attempt by the world to try and create some sort of cease fire due to it. Why Crazy? Well, the world seems to judge seriousness of war by how many people are dying (specifically on one side). While people dying is of course a bad thing, using it as a measure for a war is actually quite stupid. What makes it worse is that one of the sides that are fighting is using this fact in order to try and cause as much death as possible.

No matter who is to blame for the deaths in Qana, it really doesn't make a difference now. This is another great situation where the facts really don't matter, and it will find it's place in history next to the "Jenin Massacre" and other great fictions of the Arab world. Why? Because the Hezbollah, and it's supporters love death. No matter what side it's on, death works well for them. If Israelis die - they party in the streets and give out candy. If it's Arabs that die - they make sure to have as much press coverage of it, get the U.N. to convene an Emergency meeting, and make Israel out to be the monster they love to show it as.

While none of this is surprising in the least - what I don't get is why the world plays into their games? The only answer I can come up with, has to do with the great Liberal-Left in the western world today that really believes that the Arab world is just like them, that they both share the same values, etc. Once again the facts don't matter - the fact that the Hezbollah doesn't follow any basic rule of International Law doesn't stop them from treating it as if it does, and therefore maybe they are sorry when people die.

What we all have to start to realize is that the Rules of War were written by the West, under western norms and culture, and that they don't always apply to the Arab world - or more to the point the Islamic Fundamental part of it. While we do every thing possible to avoid killing people, they take pride in it. They don't value life the same way as we do; to them death some times is better than life. Look once again at Qana - those who were living there didn't help Hezbollah at all - only after they died were they of use to Hezbollah. When we morn the death of our own, they use their dead for PR. The truth is that to them this is totally ok. And if that's the case we have to learn their rules in order to beat them. Just like they have done a great Job learning our Rules - since they know how much we care about life - on both sides!

This by no means is a call to go and act like them. We would never do such a thing since we have a base for our norms, and we will never break it. What we do have to do is realize what they are doing and not play into their games. We have to continue this war until we win. Know full well that Hezbollah is most likely planning another "Qana" as we speak - knowing what it does. We have to break them so that they will never try and attack us again, and break them in their terms not ours.

Technorati Tags: Hezbollah, Hizbollah, Lebanon, Qana, Israel, IDF, IAF, Moral, Death, Rules, Shields, Human