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The Israelis have been warning the enemy before they attack by dropping leaflets telling civilians to leave the area.  Still there has been "collateral damage" and Israel has been criticized for killing babies and U.N. observers.

Hezbollah has killed innocent civilians too.  But not as "collateral damage". In Hezbollah's case civilians are the targets as well as the shields.

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Do Arab leaders fear Persian Iran more than they hate Jews?  A USA Today editorial thinks Hezbollah overplayed it's hand by provoking war with Israel.

"Speaking in an unusually blunt tone, Saudi
Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain openly rejected what they described
as unilateral "adventurism," … More important, indications are surfacing that a
long-silent Arab majority has had enough of being hijacked by
extremists in its midst."

Or maybe not. The International Herald Tribune says Hezbollah is popular with the "Arab Street".  The paper quotes a Sunni Egyptian lawyer named Ahmed Mekky:  "We are praying that God would make Hezbollah victorious,"… "All
the Arab governments are asleep."

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Israel seems hellbent on destroying Hezbollah.  The western powers say, "take a deep breath and count to ten, or ten million."

David Ignatius of the Washington Post thinks Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah  invited the counterattack knowing it would destabilize Lebanon.

Charles Krauthammer asks, "where's the grievance?"  Israel has evacuated Gaza and Lebanon and is rewarded by attack.  Proof that Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, and Syria have a grievance with the existence of Israel.

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Israel is shellacking Lebanon in pursuit of the bad guys.  The Jerusalem Post frets that Israel may be playing into Hezbollah's hands by radicalizing Lebanon's weak democracy.

In today's New York Times (on-line subscription required), Tom Friedman thinks the behavior of Hamas and Hezbollah could be an effort by their sponsors, Iran and Syria, to hijack the fledgling democracies of Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq.

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Palestinian voters face the same problem as Americans.  Not much to choose from  political partywise.  We have Democrats and Republicans but they're all members of the Beltway / K street coalition of perpetual office holding.  Still, every so often, voters do rise up and throw the bums out.

Palestinians have Fatah and Hamas  - the corruption party and the terrorist party.  Perpetual office holding for Fatah ran up against its limits when Yasir Arafat assumed room temperature. Fatah hacks gobbled up foreign aid donations like they were Indian casino kickbacks.  Plus they couldn't fix the streets or control the street thugs.  So the voters threw the bums out and replaced them with more disciplined, higher octane terrorists.  Hamas actually can make the trains run on time.  Whether it can wipe out Israel, a major plank in its platform,  remains to be seen. 

One thing is sure.  If Hamas wants to govern it will have to survive the victory party.

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Pat Robertson offered a few words about Ariel Sharon's stroke on his 700 Club show last Thursday: "He was dividing God's land, and I would say, 'Woe unto any prime
minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the [European
Union], the United Nations or the United States of America.'"  He also said, "God says, 'This land belongs to me, and you'd better leave it alone."

In seperate comments, Iranian president President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad carried that line of reasoning a step further saying, "Hopefully, the news that the criminal of Sabra and Chatilla has joined his ancestors is final."

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