Jewish World Review July 24, 2006 / 28 Tamuz, 5766
 

 The scenes are heartbreaking. Mangled civilians, wailing children and wholesale destruction fills the landscape. Lebanon is being shredded by the whirlwind of Israeli bombs.

"Stop the violence" is the natural human response to these grisly images. It's how most of us feel and it's how United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan reacted, saying forcefully, "hostilities must stop." Thank G-d for that, for if it were easy to accept such suffering, all mankind would be doomed. It's the job of the UN to make sure that never happens.

Yet now is not the time to stop this brutal war. Human nature notwithstanding, peace is not always the best answer. Not when wrongs have to be righted. Sometimes, deadly force is the righteous option.

Like a schoolyard bully who deserves a thorough butt-kicking, Hezbollah needs to be taught a lesson. It can either learn to live in peace, or it can die. But it cannot win by playing the terror card and it cannot be allowed to think it's going to.

Most civilized countries acknowledge that Hezbollah started the fight by crossing the border to kill three Israeli soldiers and kidnap two. But a growing chorus of international critics and much of the American media are saying, as Annan did, that Israel's response has been "disproportionate."

The criticism, and its attendant calls for an immediate ceasefire, have three flaws.

First, to urge restraint is to suggest Israel should play by different rules than its enemies. Hezbollah, Hamas and the other Muslim terror groups don't warn Jewish civilians to leave a pizza store or a bus before they blow it up. They aim to kill as many as possible in order to terrorize the entire population. Israel, on the other hand, has dropped thousands of leaflets telling Lebanese civilians to leave and has taken precautions to limit civilian casualties. That about 300 are dead and thousands of others are displaced is tragic, but the blame belongs mostly to Hezbollah, which hides fighters and weapons in civilian areas precisely to deter attack.

Second, expecting Israel to limit itself to a tit-for-tat board-game response delegitimizes Israeli suffering, as though its individuals should not grieve for their dead or fear for their safety because Israel possesses more military punch. But with Hezbollah continuing to fire rockets indiscriminately into population centers, it has no moral standing to determine Israel's response. War is war.

Third, and most important, the call for restraint reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of terrorists. Their barbarism, including the beheadings of hostages, sets them apart from mankind. They have proven they are not subject to rational approaches. They are not interested in compromise any more than a mad dog will share its bone. Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons don't want to make a deal with Israel. They want to destroy Israel. And then America and Europe and Christians and ... .

From European capitals to American living rooms, one of the great debates today is whether we can talk to Islamic terrorists. Is there something we can say or do that will entice them to rejoin the human race?

Personally, I don't think so.

The only hope I see is that they must first be defeated and, like murderous Germany and Japan after World War II, they will then adopt civilized norms of behavior.

That is why Israel deserves our support and our gratitude. It is fighting for its own survival, and much, much more. It is fighting for the survival of the civilized world against the darkness.

Michael Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Daily News.

© 2006 NY Daily News Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services

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