Ron Proser, Israel's permanent representative to the United Nations asks the question in today's Chicago Tribune:
Silence. Just silence from the U.N. Silence from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. And silence from major media outlets throughout the world.
Imagine for just a moment if this were happening to cities in, say, Texas. Imagine that the citizens of El Paso, Laredo and San Antonio have to stay inside their homes. Schools are closed, businesses are shut and people have to suspend their lives. Not because of some natural disaster or a nuclear or chemical accident, because groups in Mexico have purchased and are firing thousands of deadly missiles at Texans across the border. Sometimes a school is hit, sometimes a grocery store, and every so often someone is killed.
Imagine a similar occurrence in Seattle, Detroit or Cleveland — with rockets raining in from Canada.
Your reaction to this imagined scenario is, no doubt, incredulity. The very thought of terrorists in another country attacking Americans at random is ludicrous. You know the president would immediately order the U.S. military to respond, root out the terrorists and make sure that the Canadian or Mexican governments clearly understood that this behavior would not be tolerated. The United Nations Security Council would immediately condemn this infringement on a country's sovereignty and the safety of its citizens. The U.N. charter makes a country's self-defense as legal as it is logical. This is universally understood.
So if it is natural to be outraged and support the defense against terrorists who attack Texas, or England or Russia or China, why is it not natural to support the same for Israel? Since the beginning of October, more than 70 rockets and missiles have rained down on southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, which remains under the control of the Hamas terrorist organization. Last week, Israel's densely populated northern towns were hit by rockets fired from Lebanon.
Hamas deliberately fires rockets into the heart of Israel's major cities, which have exploded on playgrounds, near kindergarten classrooms and homes. Last month, a man was killed when a rocket struck his car on his evening commute home. Many more people have been injured. In the last month alone, more than a million Israelis had to stay home from work and more than 200,000 students were unable to attend school. You don't read about this because if it's covered at all, it's buried in the back pages of newspapers.
Although these horrific attacks should appall good people everywhere, not one word of condemnation has come from the Security Council in the United Nations. Peace activists that regularly criticize my country are silent on this one as well.
Read the rest here.
The answer to Ambassador Proser's question is so obvious is doesn't merit one on these pages.
So is the solution, and the Israelis themselves have come to realize it. They're eventually going to have to go back into Gaza and root out this cancer.
2 comments:
If America were attacked in this manner, actually I'd not expect much help from the UN nor would I expcet any meaningful help from our "allies," In action and behind closed doors they would be supportive of those attacking America. In public, they mihgt say nice some token things in supoort of America but by their actions they would be anti-American. This would become even more apparent if it appeared as though those attacking America might actually win.
I agree Israel will have to go back into the areas that they vacated to root out the terrorists. The United States faces simillar problems. Once it vacates Afghanistan and Iraq, America's enemies will simply set up forward bases there that will be used to attack America much like what happened with 911. America has two options, 1.)since it is going to have to withdraw any way, redeploy those forces to defensible positions along our borders and try to the best of our ability to get security guarantees from Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan that pledge they will not attack us nor support people who will. This is going to be hard to get in any meaningful way that it can be enforced, however, we can redeploy to defensible positions where we at least have a fightng chance to defend our country. 2.) Go back into the countries we vacate again in a few years to try and destroy our enemies who will have reestabilished themselves. We can't afford to do this and we don't have the man power. As such, the only real option is option 1.
With all due respect I think the Democrats, Ron Paul and his supporters, and many Americans go wrong because they are to quick to embrace enemy narratives about the conflict. As such, while the withdrawl part is easy to achieve, how aggressively will they secure the borders and how agressviely defend America's rights before international bodies? This is a major return I ahve with Dr. Paul.
Israel does not have the option of redeoploying due to their geographic proximity to the enemy and the small size of their country.
The world is silent because of Arab oil and petro-dollars, fear of native Muslim populations in Europe and the anti-semitism that prevails in many countries - including Britain, sorrowfully.
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