It’s been a standard tactic of the Arab states for decades: When you can’t have an all-out war, kill as many Israelis as you can one or two or a few dozen at a time. Because world opinion will not come down on the Lebanese sniper who murdered an Israeli soldier on the Israeli side of the border. World opinion will come down on Israel if it retaliates. Note the AP lead:
An Israeli soldier was killed by a Lebanese army sniper late Sunday as he drove along the border, the Israeli military said, drawing Israeli threats of retaliation.
And the headline of the later story:
Israel shoots 2 Lebanese troops after soldier killed
And this:
Israeli troops fire on Lebanon in retaliation for killing of soldier
The AFP goes all-out on the revenge angle.
The Israeli army said on Monday it had fired across the Lebanese border in retaliation after accusing Lebanese troops of gunning down one of its soldiers as he drove near the frontier.
Really? Is that what the Israeli army said? Really? Because in the fourth paragraph, AFP reports this:
“After the incident, we reached the area to conduct searches as part of the investigation, and saw two suspects on the other side of the border,” army spokesman Major Arye Shalicar said.
Does anyone see the word “retaliation” in that quote? No? Of course not. Because that’s not why the IDF fired on the Lebanese.
“We shot at them, and saw we hit at least one. We think they were Lebanese soldiers… involved in the shooting of the soldier,” said Major Shalicar.
Anti-Israel bias in the world media? Surely you jest.
The Israeli soldier entered an Israeli base–inside Israel, not anywhere over the border–in an unarmored vehicle and not by the main gate. Apparently, the Lebanese army is lying in wait for soldiers like him. This isn’t the first time Lebanese snipers murdered Israeli soldiers near the border. Israel needs to do more than complain to the UN. Israel needs to make a show of strength so that the Lebanese will stop intermittently killing Israelis. This is just another shot in the war of attrition. And oh, UNIFIL? They’re on the case.
The U.N. peacekeeping force along the Israel-Lebanon border said it had no information about an Israeli shooting Monday.
But following the Lebanese shooting, Andrea Tenenti, a spokesman for U.N. forces in southern Lebanon, said the U.N. was informed of a “serious incident” along the border. He said the peacekeeping force UNIFIL was in contact with both the Lebanese and Israeli armies, and that they were cooperating.
“The incident happened on the Israeli side of the blue line,” he said, referring to a U.N.-drawn line demarcating the border between the two enemy states. He gave no further details, saying UNIFIL was still investigating.
Does anyone out there think this won’t happen on a regular basis if the Obama peace plan becomes a reality?
The current stage of peace negotiations are the following: The U.S. has offered American troops to be in the West Bank and Gaza Strip for 10 years. How many soldiers will there be? What is their designated mission? Do you really think the U.S. will have thousands of soldiers in Israel and Palestine for a decade?
And you know what? I don’t want American soldiers policing the Israel-Jordan border. If they can’t have peace without a third party forcing it, then it isn’t a true peace. But it won’t be. The Palestinians don’t want peace. If they did, there would be already be a Palestinian state. They want all of Israel–as do the rest of Israel’s neighbors.