The Spleen In Spain Falls Mainly On Israel
How unfortunate it is that countries like Norway and Spain find it politically and socially expedient to declare their contempt for a country like Israel, having to cope with its geography in a manner not likely to challenge those countries. Their moral outrage at Israel's need to defend itself from ongoing attacks from fanatical Arabs, now that moderate Arabs have declined to further assault the Jewish state, leaves them open to questions about their murky vision.Spain is responding to a complaint lodged by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights with respect to what Judge Fernando Andreu terms a "disproportionate and excessive" attack. How Europe revels in those denunciations of a small state having to arm itself and conscript its young into the warrior arts of defence because they are not permitted by surrounding enmity to live like a normal country at ease with its place in the world.
Everything, in fact, is forever 'disproportionate' and 'excessive' when it comes to Jews and so much of the world's apprehension of their intrepid insistence on the right to live, unmolested by hatred and retribution of one kind or another. Certainly, when it comes to arrogance the Jews demonstrate an ultimate chutzpa; collectively denying that they haven't the same rights of survival as any other ethnic group, despite all the best-laid plans of collective execution.
Israel's very particular sin in this instance was to target an unrepentant and determined mass murderer, who planned and assisted in the execution of hundreds of deadly attacks on Israelis. As such he was singly responsible for the atrocious destruction of countless Jewish lives. What to do with someone like Salah Shehadeh, behave in such a civilized manner as to ignore his presence, his ongoing threat, and simply submit to it?
Or do as the commander of Israel's air force at the time and the defence minister did at that time seven years before the protective wall was built, and defuse this terror-master's determination to keep on planning and sending suicide bombers into Israel? By the simple enough expedient of using reliable intelligence to pinpoint his whereabouts and dispatch him. In the process, and most sincerely unfortunately, taking a number of innocent lives, along with his.
"I do not regret the decision I made as defence minister to take (Shehadeh) out. He was one of the biggest murderers", Benjamin Ben-Eliezer commented in an Ynetnews interview. "A hundred Israelis were killed under his orders. At the time, suicide bombings took place on buses, at coffee shops and on the street on an almost daily basis. If we hadn't assassinated him, he would have continued with the attack and killed more Israelis."
What's that old adage? Live by the sword, die the same way? Or, more currently, engage in bombing of innocent civilians, expect to be aerial-bombed by repetition-avoiding retribution. The Spanish judge, Justice Fernando Andreu, claims the assassination may represent a crime against humanity. Because the focus of the attack lived in a densely populated area, resulting in the incidental deaths of civilians.
Justice Andreu has based the legitimacy of his prosecution on a law that permits Spain to prosecute crimes in the commission of terrorist acts, or of genocidal intent, regardless of where they take place, beyond Spanish borders, and not impacting on or involving citizens of Spain. Spain, in fact, has herself been the target of terror attacks, thanks to their own separatist terrorists.
Nor has she been immune to dread attacks killing hundreds of Spaniards through al-Qaeda-inspired sources. March 11, 2004 marked Spain's own al-Qaeda-inspired jihadist attacks in the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people, and wounded another 1,800.
It's fascinating to muse about what Spain would do, how she would react, if her next-door neighbour consistently insisted on attacking within her borders, and she had knowledge of the presence of the main fomenter.
Labels: Israel, Political Realities, Terrorism
posted by Pieface @ Friday, January 30, 2009
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