Richard Cohen - a self-loathing liberal Jew who usually can't wait to prove his progressive bona fides by blaming Israel every time a sparrow falls from a tree - sees though his ideological dogma in today's Washington Post, and discovers some truths:
It took no genius to see the imminence of war. It takes real stupidity to blame it on Israel...
On some days, dozens of rockets fell on Sderot...I get the impression that Israel is expected to put up with this. The implied message from demonstrators and some opinion columnists is that this is the price Israel is supposed to pay for being, I suppose, Israel. I am informed by a Palestinian journalist in a Post op-ed that Israel is trying to stop "amateur rockets from nagging the residents of some of its southern cities." In Sderot, I saw homes nagged to smithereens.
Anyone could have seen this war coming. The diplomats and demonstrators who are now so engaged in the problem and the process were nowhere to be found when rockets began raining down on southern Israel.
He's right, although he never actually blames Hamas - or discusses Hamas' purely evil intentions - he simply pleads with us not to blame Israel.
Fair enough. I'll take what friends I can in this lonely bunker, a single sharpshooter against the massive armies of Islamofacism, supported by dictators and democracies alike. And I'll allow Cohen to make one more point, as he turns convention liberal wisdom on its head and points out how, in fact, harsh military retaliation can in fact keep the peace:
Conventional wisdom says that when Israel went into Lebanon in 2006, it lost that war. Hezbollah stood up to the mighty Israeli army; Israel could not muzzle Hezbollah's rockets. That may not be the way Hezbollah sees things, however. After the war, its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said he had miscalculated. He was not prepared for the fury of the Israeli attack. He apologized. Now, Hezbollah takes no role in the current war. It will be back, but it still has wounds to lick.
They may be back. A decisive Israeli military victory in Gaza would go a long way towards keeping the dogs of Hezbollah leashed tightly, lest they feel the wrath of the war-weary people of Lebanon...
2 comments:
This column is all the more remarkable because 2 and a half years ago Cohen wrote that Israel was a mistake!
Yes, I remember that one quite clearly. Perhaps one of the most offensive columns I've ever read. Wonder if Cohen ever feels responsible for giving rhetorical ammunition to Hamas?
Naaaah.
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