The Innocent Civilians Of Lebanon

I'm sure there are many people caught in Israel's sites in Lebanon who are politically or religiously unengaged, who are anti-Hezbollah and anti-Syria, who may even be pro-Israel, as I posted yesterday.

But they're in Lebanon and they're in a war of aggression that started in Lebanon against a sovereign nation, so there are no innocents in Lebanon today.

Here's Evelyn Gordon writing in the JPost via IRIS:

In any normal country, a junior coalition member that attacked a neighboring country without its partners' consent would be swiftly disavowed and ousted from the government.

Instead, the Lebanese government has passionately defended Hezbollah's actions on the international stage.

Far from repudiating Hezbollah's attacks on Israel, the Lebanese government has actively defended, facilitated and assisted them at every turn. There are thus no grounds for treating it as an innocent party in this conflict.

And until the international community recognizes this, its efforts to resolve the crisis will inevitably fail.

And cuing off that, here's Pamela at Atlas Shrugged:

I am not buying into the innocent civilians meme. If by ignorance, complicity, neglect or helplessness the Lebanese wouldn't throw Hezbollah out and establish a strong government, then they must pay the price for the sins of Hezbollah. And if people put up with dictatorships, theocracies, totalitarian regimes - as they did in Nazi Germany -- they deserve what Hezbollah deserves. Our only concern should be who started the war. Hezbollah/Hamas initiated the use of force and so stepped outside the principle of rights.

Agreed. The citizens of northern Israel were innocents under the barrages of rockets Lebanon allowed Hezbollah to fire from its sovereign soil to Israel's sovereign soil. The people of Lebanon, suffering because of their government's action, are not.

Related Tags: Lebanon, Israel, Hezbollah, Innocents