I can hardly believe my eyes, but here are some excerpts, I think fairly chosen, from Alan Dershowitz' recent post:
"...Lebanon is no more a victim of Hezbollah than Austria was a victim of Nazism. In fact a higher percentage of Lebanese--more than 80%--say they support Hezbollah. The figures were nearly as high before the recent civilian deaths. This is considerably higher than the number of Austrians who supported Hitler when the Nazis marched into Austria in 1938..."
Then he goes on to quote a few adult male Lebanese, selected from who knows where--not, for example, Christian neighborhoods in Beirut recently smashed by Israeli bombs--but anyway a few men who support Hezbollah, who say they are willing to be fighters for Hezbollah, or say that they are. I don't doubt any of that. Most Muslim Lebanese hate Israel. Is that news?
Dershowitz mentions children once in this whole post, here's the sentence, and the context sentences:
"The "civilian" death figures reported by Lebanese authorities include large numbers of Hezbollah fighters, collaborators, facilitators and active supporters. They also include civilians who were warned to leave, but chose to remain, sometimes with their children, to serve as human shields. The deaths of these "civilians" are the responsibility of Hezbollah and the Lebanese government, which has done very little to protect its civilians."
So much for all those kids buried under that building at Qana. And all the other kids, hundreds of them in total, according to UN stats, not Lebanon's. If, after seeing and reading what you have been seeing and reading for the last three weeks, all those frantic thousands of Lebanese fleeing Israeli bombing--if, after that, you believe that the "civilian" parents of these children "chose to remain" with their own children for the sake Hezbollah propaganda, well, OK, then this post is not for you.
But if you are as tough minded as Dershowitz, you will have no problem with this. You will believe it. Or you will pretend to. I'm not sure which is worse. But, whatever, here's his conclusion:
"...People make choices and they bear the consequences of choosing to collaborate with terrorism. Lebanon has chosen the wrong side and its citizens are paying the price. Maybe next time a democracy must choose between collaborating with terrorism or resisting terrorism, it will choose the right side."
OK, now correct me if I am wrong--just on the logic. If you were planning WMD attacks on the USA since the reelection of George Bush in 2004, and you sincerely believed that the US has been a state terror actor in the Middle East, would you find anything to disagree with in that paragraph?
One more reason why this whole situation is getting dark beyond darkness, really there is no historical comparison I can think of. The closest is the slide into World War One, only now, thanks to the wondrous technologies the human race owes to Western modernity, it's, uh...much worse.