In saying this, Jan Egeland demonstrates that he doesn’t have the first foggiest idea of what Islamic jihad is or how it operates. If he did, he would know that Muslims in Lebanon and elsewhere can’t possibly hate Israel more than they already do simply because it exists, and thereby constitutes an affront to the Islamic idea that land that once belonged to the Dar al-Islam belongs to it forever. If the Israelis had been completely supine in the face of Hizballah’s rocket barrages, Muslims would not love them one whit more than they do now.
Of course, jihadists will use trumped-up Israeli atrocities in Lebanon to stir up a sense of grievance among Muslims, so as to gain recruits. They did the same thing with Abu Ghraib, the Qur’an-flushing non-incident, the Danish cartoons, and many other pretexts. The error that most Western analysts continue to fall into is that they take this propaganda at face value. Not recognizing that it is all actually in service of the jihad imperative, they believe that if they redress these alleged “injustices” by granting various concessions to Muslims, they will make the jihad go away. They don’t realize that the jihadists will simply find another pretext and keep up the pressure.
From the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to all who sent this in:
United Nations humanitarian chief Jan Egeland accused Israel on Wednesday of committing “catastrophic mistakes” in its attack on Hizbullah, which have caused civilian casualties and alienated the Lebanese public.
“It will create a generation of hatred,” he said in an interview held with The Jerusalem Post after he had concluded tours of northern Israel, Gaza and Lebanon.
“I’m talking more as a friend of Israel than as an aid worker,” said Egeland, who noted that he studied at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University as a Truman Fellow, while his brother lived on a kibbutz.
The UN’s under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, Egeland called for an immediate cessation of hostilities. “The rockets have to stop. The terror has to stop. But please remember that for every civilian killed in Israel there are more than 10 killed in Lebanon. It has to stop on both sides.” He charged that Israel had used “excessive” and “disproportionate” force in violation of international humanitarian law, and dismissed Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s contention that proportionality is measured in relation to the threat posed by a force.
This is ridiculous. As others have pointed out, wars are not conducted according to a principle of proportionality. No general ever counted casualties during World War I or World War II or any other war and then told his troops that they could only inflict that same number of casualties on the enemy, and no more. That is not how wars are won. As General Patton pointed out, the object war is not to die for your country, but to make the other SOB die for his. Only in our pusillanimous age have we forgotten that war is an ugly business, and that wars are fought to be won. The media establishment also persists, because of its ideological affinity with the forces arrayed against America and Israel, in refusing to apply the same standards to the jihadists that it applies to those who are resisting them.