Unalienable rights

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

I've seen two or three posts on the Corner over the past couple days, regarding the question, "When should Israel stop?" When should Israel stop its bombarding of Gaza, the ground troop incursion it recently began, etc.? And there were a few answers: Victor Davis Hanson, who originally posed the question, said, "When they think there is a good chance the rockets will stop — and not until then." Responding to Hanson, Andrew Stuttaford said that there were no easy answers, but that, from the U.S. point of view, it would be a mistake to ignore the propaganda Israel is giving terrorist recruiters in the form of dead Gaza civilians.

Here is a good place to point out of that I have great respect for both Hanson and Stuttaford, and that I agree with them on most things. But here, they are wrong. Very wrong.

When should Israel stop? She should stop when her children are safe. She should stop, not when there's a good chance of the rockets stopping, but when they have stopped, and Hamas offers complete and unconditional surrender. She should stop when she has secured the rights of her citizens. Americans hold that ALL people are given the right to life-- but how secure is that right when you're a civilian and cowards are dropping bombs in your (civilian) city? How secure is your right to liberty when you're terrified to leave your bomb shelter? And how happy can you be when your children are under constant, deadly threat?

The people of this world who think they are enlightened like to portray the Palestinians as victims. And maybe, in the beginning, they were. I don't know, and can't speak to that. But Israel and Israelis have been in existence as long as three of your average suicide bombers. If every country in the world dealt with every historical grievance as they seem to condone Palestinians doing, the world would be in constant, never-ending war. If any other country tried it, the "elites" would be quick to point out the idiocy. But Israel, according to the "elites", may not defend herself. She may not defend her children. She may only accede to the demands and whims of the barbarians across the way.

Palestinians as a whole are not victims. They have the right to life-- and they blow it away in order to strip that right from others. They have the right to liberty-- and they exercised it by electing terrorists and launching rockets. They have the right to happiness-- and every time they failed to condemn a suicide bombing, a rocket launch, or incitement to another Holocaust, they forfeited that right by terrorizing others, including the innocent of their own people, whom they use as living shields with one hand and dead propaganda with the other.

Propaganda value is not more important than doing what is right. International opinion is not as important as drawing a line in Israeli sand and saying that barbarism has come thus far, but no farther. If Israel can stand up for herself, she has a golden opportunity to show terrorists that civilized people are not something to be trampled over on the way to the caliphate. If Israel can win first and then show mercy, she can show the Muslim world another light-- not one that requires murder, mayhem, and conversion or death, but one that allows all peaceful people to live. Without barbarians like Hamas.

There is an easy answer-- just not one that most people like to hear. It is to do what our grandfathers would have done, and did do: defeat evil, and defend their children.