Unsurprising

Via the National Post comes Kinsella:

And, in the media, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories now regularly take the place of serious analysis. Read the Sun’s Eric Margolis, for example: “Israel’s attempted destruction of Hezbollah is the first step in a long-planned campaign to strip away Iran’s allies and turn Lebanon into a joint US-Israeli protectorate.” Or the Toronto Star’s Haroon Siddiqui: “The abductions [of Israeli soldiers] provided the excuse to do what Israel was planning anyway – try and destroy Hezbollah and Hamas.”

These fiendish Israeli “campaigns” and “plans” apparently also extended to Israel requiring that Hezbollah rockets be launched at Israel – and that Israel look the other way while Israelis are kidnapped by murderers. With the greatest of respect, Messrs. Margolis and Siddiqui give the sasquatch coverage in the National Enquirer the glossy finish of high academic research.

No, actually what they're saying is that this plan had been on the books for a long time, and that the kidnapping (which in no way, apparently, do Margolis and Siddiqui support or justify) was the spark/excuse/reason/whatever needed for that pre-existing plan to be put into place.

Whether one agrees or not, it's simply disingenuous to misrepresent the argument like that.

But if all of this sounds rather familiar, it is because it is: whenever Israel responds to organized campaigns of mass murder, as is its right, sputtering indignation is heard far and wide. Tenured university professors rail against the Zionist state on newspaper op-ed pages; editorial boards (not, gratefully, at the Post or the Globe and Mail) demand that Israel exercise restraint never practiced by its enemies; and pollsters offer up surveys, as the Globe did on its front page this week, asserting that nearly 80 per cent of Canadians desire “neutrality.” (In this context, “neutrality” is what happens when someone hurries past when you are being mugged.)

Bolding mine. No, Warren, the analogy would be more like if you saw a mugger's victim setting charges to demolish the mugger's building. Would that get rid of the mugger? Yeah, probably. He definitely wouldn't mug anybody ever again. Thing is, most of the people in that building wouldn't be doing anything ever again, either.

Would you try to stop the victim from pushing that lever, and instead finding some other way to ensure he doesn't get mugged again? Sure, I imagine most of my readers would. But not some, including Warren, who don't get the idea that proportionality means anything, and that you don't drop a MOAB to take out a bothersome mosquito.