Jeffrey Gedmin: Responding on Two Fronts

Jeffrey Gedmin has published another one of his brilliant attacks against the hypocrisy of the left in Germany's daily WELT. We are glad to have obtained the right to publish the original English version of his commentary.

Responding on Two Fronts
By Jeffrey Gedmin (Tel Aviv)

Sitting in a beach front restaurant at the port here and life seems so normal, innocent really. The warm summer breeze, music, fresh fish, scores of young people walk the board walk. And on this night, every few minutes, military planes fly by, flying north. Israel is at war again.

I'm learning a lot about rockets at the moment. The Katyuscha has a range of 30-40 km. The Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 can sail some 70 km. When I arrived, I was briefed that Hezbollah may also have a number of longer range Iranian missiles with a reach of about 135 km. That would make Tel Aviv a possible target, I thought. Two days ago Israel found and destroyed an Iranian Zelzal missile with a range of 160 kilometers.

As always, I'm a little bit one-sided. A frequent narrative in much international media goes like this: Hezbollah kidnaps two Israeli soldiers. Israel seeks revenge by bombing the hell out of Lebanon. A Süddeutsche Zeitung headline read, "Israel attack on two fronts." Henryk Broder, writing in Der Spiegel, asked why the paper wouldn't have written that Israel has been "responding" on two fronts. That would be honest.

I feel pretty confident about my narrative. Start with Gaza, which is where this started. Israel withdraws. Palestinians heave 600 rockets over the border over the next six months. They elect Hamas, whose raison etre is to annihilate the Jewish state. Hamas

Source: Cox & Forkum (Cartoon is not part of Jeffrey Gedmin's commentary in WELT)

ups the ante by kidnapping an Israeli soldier. A journalists friend says to me, a liberal-minded fellow here, "If you keep poking a lion, sooner or later you're going to get swatted by a big paw." Now Lebanon. Before nabbing those Israeli soldiers, Hezbollah had started to fire their own rockets into

Israel from southern Lebanon. This began, coincidentally, on the day Iran failed to respond to the magnanimous U.S.-European proposal on Teheran's nuclear program. Dennis Ross, who served as Bill Clinton's top Middle East negotiator, suggest this is no coincidence at all. Hezbollah by the way is a wholly owned Iranian subsidiary.

So the Palestinians have proved again that they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Instead of making it a success story, they've turned Gaza into a terrorist Disneyland. And Hezbollah decided at the most inopportune of times to pick a new fight with Israel. Too bad the Israeli military is forced to bring these folks to heel, in Gaza and in Lebanon where Hezbollah is a state within the state. Where was the so-called international community when these forces were setting this war up?

In all of this, one of the most amusing things I keep hearing is that Israel should release Palestinian prisoners to get its three soldiers back and end the conflict. It is especially remarkable to follow news stories, with much shock and dismay in the reporter's voice, about Israelis holding women and children. Certain details are frequently omitted. One example is the story of Achlam Tmimi. She's 20 years old and serving 16 consecutive life sentences for helping a suicide bomber who blew up a pizzeria, killing 16. She says she would do it again. Or the story of another young woman who made a date with an Israeli teenager on the internet. It was a trap. Her friends murdered the guy when he arrived.

I'll sleep in Tel Aviv tonight. A quarter of a million people an hour's drive north of here will sleep in bomb shelters. The restaurant I was to visit in Tibereas on the Sea of Galleli, was shelled yesterday. They just captured a would-be suicide bomber in Jerusalem where I'll be tomorrow. Sometimes you have to pick a side in a conflict. I've picked mine.

So did we.

Comments

[Dave]

I ve never seen a cartoon that was more hostile towards europe in a whole than this one. Looks like both sides of the atlantic are arming in their journalistic actions.

[Don]

Hostile to Europe, Dave? Don't they show it the way it is?

No mention of the 'kidnapped' Israeli soldiers which supplied the causus belli. Nor a mention of the missles and rockets fired over the borders. Except by Angela Merkel of course. But not Zapatero or the Pope, God forbid!

Peace means - forebeance. Forebearing from kidnappings and firing missles and rockets & killing Israeli civilians (or soldiers for that matter). If these things happen there is no peace, a point which Israel is now pressing Hitzboallah and Hamas in the only medium they appear to understand. Force.

[Gabi]

Gedmin is great!

CNN International (Nick Robertson) has interviews with hezbollah press) (propaganda) officer. When will they learn?!

[Gabi]

press- (propaganda) officer

[WhatDoIKnow]

CNN International (Nick Robertson) has interviews with hezbollah press

Laura Ingraham talked a lot today on her radio show about this. Hezbollah representative takes Nick Robertson on a guided tour, during which he keeps spouting how murderous those Israeli attacks. Can anyone imagine an American (or British) journalist during WWII on a tour guided by the SS, during which the SS complains about the US bombings ? Media bias ? Which bias ?

[Dave]

@ Don

I know that those powers described in the picture have condemned the israeli offense. But they have not been hurting the israelis, as one might guess from a look at the cartoon. That's the reason why it seems so hostile to display Europe this way nonetheless.

[Cousin Dave]

@Dave: The Israeli "offense"? Defending themselves is an "offense"? Who do you think started it? Hint: It wasn't the IDF sneaking over the border to kidnap people in Lebannon.

The position you're backing is that Israel, and by extension the United States, alone among all of the nations of the world, are not entitled to defend themselves against unprovoked attack. In other words, they do not have the right to exist, and their citizens do not have the right to be alive. Can't you see how badly this plays in the Anglosphere? It comes across as, "We, the European elite, have the sole right to determine who is allowed to exist in the world." There are a lot of Jews in America, and Americans have a sensitivity towards the plight of the Jews that Europe, by and large, doesn't seem to share.

Arguably, the citizens of the Anglosphere today are the most productive and most capable (both economically and militarily) in the world. If this is a segment of the world population that France, Spain, and the Vatican feel they can do without, then by all means, they should continue presenting themselves as hypocritical, self-serving elitists.

[TM Lutas]

In defense of the Pope, the Vatican's statements do condemn the terrorist actions that prompted the response. I pray that Cdl. Sodano's successor will clean house because the Vatican foreign policy shop *is* currently biased toward arabs. Personnel was never JP II's strong suit.

I do not consider Zapatero and Chirac to be "Europe" anymore than I thought it was legitimate for Chirac to tell E. Europe to sit down and be quiet. The Pope is a global figure, not european, as will become clear the next pope or two when they go to an african, asian, or latin american. And including Putin as european is great news. When will the EU accession talks begin? If Russia is Europe now, let it stay Europe in all its dysfunctional and strange glory.

[Don Miguel]

"So the Palestinians have proved again that they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."

LOL! Great line by Gedmin.

[Cousin Dave]

@TM: Point taken about Zap and Chirac. With the caveat that Chirac in particular has the political connections to put the EU's mechanisms in service of his words, and that speeches like these give cover to leaders in other nations, like Holland, who might think twice otherwise. I fully agree with you about Putin; who the hell let him into the club? Yeah, he's at the G-8 conference, but he didn't exactly get his way with that.

And yes, the Vatican really does need to clean house. I think we're just now beginning to realize how thoroughly it was infiltrated by the KGB and its fellow travellers on the continent in the '60s and '70s, and the damage that they did.

[Dave]

@ Cousin Dave

"Can't you see how badly this plays in the Anglosphere? It comes across as, "We, the European elite, have the sole right to determine who is allowed to exist in the world."

Now I see :)
Maybe the european leaders are as tired of this conflict as they are of all conflicts in african countries without relevant ressources. I wonder how long it takes to make american leaders tired of it, too. Some problems solve themselves. Maybe the Israelis wipe out all their surrounding neighbours by bombing them into stone age. Maybe the muslim terrorists get armed by Iran and bomb the Israelis out of their cities. Either way, there would be one conflict less to worry about.

The only ones who profit by a constant struggle are the arming industries. Maybe their representatives have influenced european statesmen?
This wouldn't be very surprising as it works just this way in most african civil wars.

[Cousin Dave]

@Dave: Boredom is no excuse. Besides, Europe has an incredible talent for consistently backing the wrong side in African conflicts. If France hadn't wasted so much of its precious few resources in the Ivory Coast, who knows, perhaps it could have spared a few troops for Darfour. As for the rest of your statement, you might think different if, say Ethiopian terrorists had flown airliners into the Eiffel Tower and the Reichstag.

[Don]

@Dave - I've been hearing this more and more lately. the 'poor, misunderstood, abused european' meme seems to be gathering popularity as a response to what many Americans saying nasty things about them.

Not saying there isn't unfair criticism and atacks that go overboard. There are. But many of the criticisms are fully justified.

[joe]

Don,

This is all very confusing for rhe euros and even more so for the Germans. They hold the moral high ground. They are the ones who are suppose to be handing out the criticism, not getting it.

Those evil Americans and Jews are the cause of all the problems they have in their little socialist paradise called euorpe.

[Dave]

@ Cousin Dave

"Europe has an incredible talent for consistently backing the wrong side in African conflicts."

From a humanitarian point of view, you may be right. But when european countries interfere in africa one must admit that they do it from a different point of view. The french are determined to hold their influence in their former colonies. That is often the reason why they have to support "their" governments in africa from being overthrown.

And I dont think germany is an exception of the rule. Securing the first democratic elections in Congo? This would only be believeable if we would have secured other democratic elections there as well. I believe the main reason to interfere for european countries in africa are 1) increase it's influence against other european countries as well as china and the usa and then 2) hand over the ressource-mining towards national companies while 3) keeping up public order to make this profitable.

So there is not much humanitarian in the process I could spot.