Proportionate madness

Don't miss A Proportionate Response is Madness:

The list of those who have accused Israel of not being in harmony with its enemies is long and, alas, distinguished. It includes, of course, the United Nations and its secretary general, Kofi Annan. It also includes a whole bunch of European newspapers whose editorial pages call for Israel to respond, it seems, with only one missile for every one tossed its way. Such neat proportion is a recipe for doom.

The dire consequences of proportionality are so clear that it makes you wonder if it is a fig leaf for anti-Israel sentiment in general. Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that proportionality is madness. For Israel, a small country within reach, as we are finding out, of a missile launched from any enemy's back yard, proportionality is not only inapplicable, it is suicide. The last thing it needs is a war of attrition. It is not good enough to take out this or that missile battery. It is necessary to re-establish deterrence: You slap me, I will punch out your lights.

I was watching BBC news this morning and was amazed at how their reporters tried to tap dance around the facts of

• missiles filled with ball bearings being fired from Lebanon today (and the Beeb was showing the damage on a Haifa city bus)
• from entire border towns that are being run by Hezbollah;
• large underground tunnels surrounding Israel
• terrorists hiding among civilians, and being proud that they had lost very few fighters, and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of casualties which even UN guy Jan "give me more money" Engeland recognizes as a fact (yet he thinks the Gaza offensive is "disproportionate")
• while the Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah is telling al-Jazeera that the Lebanese government explicitly knew that Hezbollah would invade Israel and abduct Israeli soldiers
• Hizbullah's representative in Iran says they're going to widen the war, because

  "This war will be remembered as the beginning of the end for Israel," Safiadeen said.

• Iranian Revolutionary Guard soldiers were killed in Lebanon (are we supposed to think they were on vacation?)

While you ponder this, read Walid Phares's article on Hezbollah's Iranian War in Lebanon, which killed the Cedar Revolution in its cradle.

The legacy media will do what they can to reassert the memes. But some are starting to see things differently (hat tip Sigmund Carl & Alfred)

Pajamas Media's extensive coverage and its new Politics Central site are the places for more news.

Update
Via Barcepundit, one photo you won't be seeing at the Beeb:

(click on photo for article)

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(technorati tags BBC, Israel, Lebanon, Hezbollah)