Damned and Hopefully Doomed? or Just Damned?

Lindy McDowell in Belfast hasn't lost the main point in this battle.

Here are two excerpts from her op-ed, Israel: damned or doomed?

Disproportionate. That's the term that's being used over and over again to describe Israel's response to the terror campaign of Hezbollah - a terror campaign which has included literally hundreds of rocket attacks upon the Israeli civilian population.

Disproportionate is an interesting word.

Used in the context of the Middle East, it appears to be acceptance that Israel has a right to defend its people by hitting back at the madmen of Hezbollah. But it is also saying that such retaliation must be measured in a "proportionate" way.

They kill two, so you're allowed to kill two - that sort of thing, perhaps?

...And compounding the anti-Semitic violence of 21st century Europe and the relentless threat and sponsorship of terror from Israel's neighbours, is the consensus in the 'liberal' West that this is somehow acceptable.

I can think of no other situation where leaders of neighbouring nations would talk openly about wiping out a country and its people and in Europe so-called liberals would just shrug their shoulders as if this was entirely in order.

In Western 'liberal' eyes, Israel must eternally be regarded as the ogre. This despite the fact that the current conflict, provoked by terrorist Hamas and Hezbollah, came after Israelis, having vacated Gaza and voluntarily removed settlers from the West Bank, elected a Government that in aggressive expansionist terms is the equivalent of our local Alliance party.

Israel is well aware that, in responding to attacks upon its people, it will be damned if it does - but doomed if it doesn't.

And needless to say the media damnation of Israel in recent days has been fulsome.

Is it, you have to wonder, motivated entirely by a natural and understandable human revulsion at the killing of innocent civilians? On one day this week bombs in Iraq killed 10 times the number Israeli missiles killed in Lebanon. But guess which made a downpage story while the other dominated page upon page of analysis, comment and condemnation.

Closer to home, we've had cries about innocent civilian casualties from those who adhere to the 'wrong but not a crime' argument with regard to terrorist killings in Northern Ireland. Disproportionate?

Overall, I can think of no better word to sum it up. Not the violence in the Middle East but the hypocrisy in the West.

(Kippah tip: FrankB)