Informed Speculation

Good piece:

The world is having a Mel Gibson moment. If it does not quite hold Jews “responsible for all the wars in the world,” then certainly it is ready to blame Israel alone for the carnage in Lebanon and, in the addled formulations of some, the war in Iraq as well. Gibson offered his inebriated analysis to a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, but drunk and a skunk though he may be, he put his finger to the anti-Israel zeitgeist and uttered its prevailing sentiment: enough.

The war in Lebanon has thus far proved to be a debacle for both Israel and the United States. It has flipped George Bush into a state of babbling inanity about how this was “a moment of opportunity” — as Britain’s Tony Blair, his steadfast enabler, stood by and watched. This is similar to the opportunity presented by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which offered Bush et al. the chance to rearrange the china of the Middle East by smashing a good deal of it. That, as we all know, has not worked quite as splendidly as promised.

Before Gibson there was Kofi Annan. I do not accuse the United Nations secretary general of anti-Semitism — a slam dunk, in Gibson’s case — but here again there is a rush to judgment, an impatience, an anger and a general vexation that, at best, is worrisome. When an Israeli airstrike in Southern Lebanon killed four U.N. observers last week, Annan was quick to say Israeli had done so deliberately. Why Israel would do such a thing — what’s the benefit to it? — went unexplained or, even it seemed, unconsidered. Annan, who later said he would await an Israeli report on the incident, was having a mini-Mel Gibson moment.

Indeed – why? That’s the question, all right.  Though the answer is plain – Israel had no motivation, so the deaths had to have been a mistake; even a moment’s reflection makes the conclusion inescapable.

Cohen continues:

The world has a responsibility here. If it can no longer put up with Israeli excess, with its (understandable) policy to strike back disproportionately, then it has to put an end to the slow bleeding of that country. The world — the U.N. — created Israel. It ought to safeguard it. It is the only way.

Israel pulled out of Lebanon in 2000. It pulled out of Gaza last year. It was making plans to pull out of most of the West Bank. Still, the suicide bombings continue, the rockets keep coming down and soldiers get kidnapped, maybe never to be returned. Yet the world, appalled at what it can see on television and untroubled by what it cannot, has had it with Israel. Mel Gibson would understand.

Well, the world didn’t create Israel; the UN just acknowledged what had been building for a hundred years.  Nevertheless, the point is taken…