There Can Be No Peace

I know a great many people smarter than I who are praying for peace in the Middle East, or working toward some time of peace agreement between the warring parties. I, however, have come to the conclusion that efforts at establishing peace in the region are a waste of time. There will be no peace in the Middle East as long as Israel or its enemies (be they nations or ideologies) continue to exist. The two are mutually exclusive as far as peace is concerned. Brief interludes of peace may be possible, but a lasting peace will never happen.

Don't get me wrong - I don't hold Israel anywhere near as responsible for the fighting as I do the radical Arabs and Muslims who constitute her enemies. I firmly believe that if a good peace agreement was possible, Israel would honor its part of the commitment. However, there is no peace agreement possible that Israel's enemies would honor over the long haul. They would simply use the downtime to rearm, regroup, and plan for their next attack. The only peace that Israel's enemies would not break is one that first involved the destruction of the State of Israel and the death of all Jews. A lot of feel-good types don't want to believe that, but that's the way it is and we need to quit kidding ourselves otherwise.

Therefore it is in the best interest of the world, and certainly the U.S., for Israel to continue their operations in Lebanon and Gaza until those who wish the destruction of Israel are eliminated. Even this will only buy peace for a short time, but since neither Israel nor their enemies are going to disappear, it's the best everyone can hope for.

The U.S. is the only real friend Israel has, which makes it all the more important that we don't try and bully them into a cease fire. We know the terrorists are good at the P.R. game, and certainly they have much of the world's press on their side. On Sunday following the bombing in Qana there was nearly universal condemnation of Israel. Yesterday, as over 200 rockets were fired into Israel for the express purpose of killing Israeli citizens, there was silence from those who condemned the deaths of civilians just three days ago. Israel will never win the P.R. battle.

They can, however, win the war and we need to let them finish the job.