Or, the enemy of peace is not Hamas or Hezbollah - it's Israel
There's a useful history of terrorst strikes against America and her interests in the copy of Human Events for the week of July 31st 2006. (Link)
I won't force those suffering from an aversion to Ann Coulter to read the article - these are the relevant details - but technically speaking this is not an actual quote. I've edited what she has to say in the interest of what I have to say; but I'm very happy to give the Diva of the Right full credit for everything enclosed in quotation marks.
"November 1979: Muslim extremists (Iranian variety) seized the U.S. embassy in Iran and held 52 American hostages for 444 days.
-- 1982: Muslim extremists (mostly Hezbollah) began a nearly decade-long habit of taking Americans and Europeans hostage in Lebanon, killing William Buckley and holding Terry Anderson for 6 1/2 years.
-- April 1983: Muslim extremists (Islamic Jihad or possibly Hezbollah) bombed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 16 Americans.
-- October 1983: Muslim extremists (Hezbollah) blew up the U.S. Marine barracks at the Beirut airport, killing 241 Marines.
-- December 1983: Muslim extremists (al-Dawa) blew up the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, killing five and injuring 80.
-- September 1984: Muslim extremists (Hezbollah) exploded a truck bomb at the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut, killing 24 people, including two U.S. servicemen.
-- December 1984: Muslim extremists (probably Hezbollah) hijacked a Kuwait Airways airplane, landed in Iran and demanded the release of the 17 members of al-Dawa who had been arrested for the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, killing two Americans before the siege was over.
-- June 14, 1985: Muslim extremists (Hezbollah) hijacked TWA Flight 847 out of Athens, diverting it to Beirut, taking the passengers hostage in return for the release of the Kuwait 17 as well as another 700 prisoners held by Israel. When their demands were not met, the Muslims shot U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem and dumped his body on the tarmac.
-- October 1985: Muslim extremists (Palestine Liberation Front backed by Libya) seized an Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, killing 69-year-old American Leon Klinghoffer by shooting him and then tossing his body overboard.
-- December 1985: Muslim extremists (backed by Libya) bombed airports in Rome and Vienna, killing 20 people, including five Americans.
-- April 1986: Muslim extremists (backed by Libya) bombed a discotheque frequented by U.S. servicemen in West Berlin, injuring hundreds and killing two, including a U.S. soldier.
-- December 1988: Muslim extremists (backed by Libya) bombed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 on board and 11 on the ground.
-- February 1993: Muslim extremists (al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, possibly with involvement of friendly rival al Qaeda) set off a bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center, killing six and wounding more than 1,000.
-- Spring 1993: Muslim extremists (al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, the Sudanese Islamic Front and at least one member of Hamas) plot to blow up the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the U.N. complex, and the FBI's lower Manhattan headquarters.
-- November 1995: Muslim extremists (possibly Iranian "Party of God") explode a car bomb at U.S. military headquarters in Saudi Arabia, killing five U.S. military servicemen.
-- June 1996: Muslim extremists (13 Saudis and a Lebanese member of Hezbollah, probably with involvement of al Qaeda) explode a truck bomb outside the Khobar Towers military complex, killing 19 American servicemen and injuring hundreds.
-- August 1998: Muslim extremists (al Qaeda) explode truck bombs at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 and injuring thousands.
-- October 2000: Muslim extremists (al Qaeda) blow up the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole, killing 17 U.S. sailors.
-- Sept. 11, 2001: Muslim extremists (al Qaeda) hijack commercial aircraft and fly planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 Americans."
It's patently obvious that it's not Israelis carrying out these attacks - and just as patently obvious that so-callied allies such as Saudi Arabia are involved to a degree that makes them far more worthy of invasion and national dismemberment than was Iraq. But nonetheless, Israel, it's mere existence, as well as the gross political sponsorship of Israel by America, is at the root of every single one of these attacks.
When the body becomes diseased is it better to treat the symptoms, or the cause? The 'war on terror', already an apparent and open failure, looks set fair to become the equivalent of a cure for cancer that is worse than the disease itself. It breeds those willing to die, so long as they can kill a few of their enemies as they do so. At the same time it makes a mockery of those values enumerated in the Declaration of Independence - the human rights with which God endowed all people, not Americans alone.
"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."
America... bastion of truth, justice, and freedom - except where Israel and those who resist its illegitimate and unlawful depredations are concerned. Israel is the example nonpareil both of the failure of the UN as anything other than a theatre of deceit in which the members of the Security Council strut and preen, and of the irrelevance of so-called 'international law' in the face of determined State action.
I have no love for the UN (as much a joke as its predecessor, the League of Nations) nor for international law, which I consider to be no law at all since none of it was issued by a legitimate Sovereign Power capable of enforcing it. However, much is made of the failures of Iraq and Iran to abide by the 'resolutions' of the UN Security Council - while no mention at all is made of the resolutions which Israel blithely ignores. The current sitution in Lebanon is the most flagrant, blatant and brutal breach of (in particular) Security Council Resolution 425, which reads -
"The Security Council,
1.Calls for strict respect for the territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon within its internationally recognized boundaries;
2. Calls upon Israel immediately to cease its military action against Lebanese territorial integrity and withdraw forthwith its forces from all Lebanese territory;
3. Decides, in the light of the request of the Government of Lebanon, to establish immediately under its authority a United Nations interim force for southern Lebanon for the purpose of confirming the withdrawal of Israeli forces, restoring international peace and security and assisting the Government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority in the area, the force to be composed of personnel drawn from States Members of the United Nations.
4. Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Council within twenty-four hours on the implementation of this resolution.
Resolution 425 was issued on 03/19/1978 (Link).
The following link leads to a list of other UN resolutions, issued between 1955 and 1992, all of which have been treated by Israel with utter disdain. (Link)
How many times, before the invasion of Iraq, was it made plain to the public that a casus belli in that ongoing debacle was Iraq's failure to comply with the resolutions of the Security Council? How many times, in the ongoing furore over Iran, has it been made plain that it is Iran's refusal to comply with the will of the 'international community', as expressed via the UN, that is one of the principal justifications for economic sanctions, and possibly even another military adventure to 'enforce' that will?
The list of resolutions breached by Israel is longer than both my arms put together. But no one mentions that fact.
The origin of every terrorist attack against the USA lies, at its root, with Israel and America's patronage of that criminal, intransigent and bloody-handed monster. For reasons that entirely escape me, America is besotted with Israel, incapable of seeing that its interests require an immediate curtailment of all military, economic and political sponsorship in order to bring Israel firmly to heel and remind the Israelis of exactly which state is the client and which the Patron.
Not until that political nettle is grasped and pulled up by the roots can there be any hope of a 'victory' in the 'war on terror'. Granted, Hamas and Hezbollah carry out the acts, acts that in themselves are no less heinous than those carried out by Israel, but the origin of the disease of political violence is not with them. It lies with the intransigent zealotry and racially motivated hatred of the Israelis - and their treacherous sympathisers here in the USA who, by working to support the interests of Israel, work directly against the interests of America and her people.
I can hear the cries of those who sympathise with Israel - but the Arabs started it all, they attacked first. That might be true had not the Jews of the day (there were no Israelis before the founding of Israel in 1949) been forced upon the region ('Palestine' did not exist until its creation as a consequence of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919) by the British in pursuit of the goals of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which states, in part, that -
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." The failure of His Majesty's Government to fulfil that 'clear understanding' is only one testimony to the demise of Britain as a Great Power.
The land now known as 'Palestine' was expropriated at the hands of the European Great Powers of the day, constituting the first attack in the conflict between Arabs and Jews. What makes the aggression of the Jews in the Middle East even more repellant than it appears to be is the fact that, since 1934, an alternative to Jewish depradations in 'Palestine' has existed in the JAR, the Jewish Autonomous Region of the former Soviet Union, which continues in existence to this day. (Link)
Israel is an illegitimate creation of the European Great Powers of the early twentieth century, fashioned as an answer to the political needs of the day - needs long since forgotten, as relevant to today as are the dietary requirements of dinosaurs; it is equally an illegitimate creation of religious fanaticism at least as great as that of Hamas or Hezbollah. Ancient Israel was destroyed millenia ago: to say that the texts of the Bible give legitimacy to Israel's existence now is on a par with a claim that the ancient kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia ought to be revived simply because they once existed.
"... A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture. Among the Jews there is no large and stable stratum connected with the land, which would naturally rivet the nation together." (Joseph Stalin, 1913).
That remained true until the creation of 'Palestine' as a site of expropriation, and of 'Israel' as the agent of that expropriation - all done in the name of interests that are as dead as Balfour himself. The JAR remains as a viable, peaceful, successful alternative to the chaos produced by the creation of 'Israel'. And if Jews wish to live in peace, as they claim, it is to that homeland that they ought to return - willingly or not.
There is too much at stake, for America and the world, for the existence of Israel any longer to be tolerated. Its mere existence, as the illegitimate creation of regimes long since dead and turned to dust, destabilises a region crucial to the interests of many millions more than make up the population of both ancient Israel and its modern counterpart put together - and those of you who espouse the Utilitarian concept that the good of the many ought to outweigh the interests of the few should immediately begin agitating for renewed and effective control of Israel by the USA, for Israel's termination as an independent political entity, and for the return of the Jews to the only homeland they have legitimately had since the destruction of ancient Israel.
Modern Israel is a plague-spot at the heart of the Middle East. It will continue to infect the world with the violence of its presence until, like any tumour, it is excised and the contamination of its existence is cleansed and healed."