Cal Thomas: Learning from history

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, October 3rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, WORLD commentator Cal Thomas says if Israel is going to engage Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, they need a clear path to victory. And the West needs to give them the space to accomplish it.

CAL THOMAS: The year was 1982. I was in Israel when the IDF crossed the Northern border to root out terrorist sanctuaries in southern Lebanon. The government of Prime Minister Menachem Begin called it “Operation Peace for Galilee.” The deputy press secretary invited me to accompany him into Lebanon.

We went through Tyre and Sidon to the outskirts of Beirut. I saw weapons provided by the Eastern European communist block stacked in parking garages, schools, hospitals and other civilian locations. Nothing has changed since then. The terrorists are called by different names, but they have the same goal. They want Israel to bomb those stockpiles, hoping civilians will be killed so Israel will be blamed for “targeting civilians.”

Forty-two years ago, Lebanese civilians cheered the IDF and offered free coffee and Lebanese flags to the troops, even to me. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is right to ignore the pleadings of President Biden for a cease fire and a “diplomatic solution.” He has heard that before and it only allowed Israel’s enemies to re-group for a future attack.

As former Israeli diplomat Yoram Ettinger writes in his newsletter that Israel must fight Hezbollah because it’s the world’s second largest exporter of “anti-U.S. terrorism, drug trafficking, and money laundering—extending from the Middle East to the American continent.” He goes on to say that Hezbollah is a proxy of Iran’s Ayatollahs, that not only has carried out terror assaults on US installations in the Middle East and beyond, but also collaborates with Latin and South America drug cartels—training terrorists on their way to the US southern border…

So it’s not just in Israel’s interest that Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza be crushed, it is also in the interest of the United States, something too many administrations have ignored. Rather than support Israel’s right to victory over its enemies, those administrations, including the current one, continue with the false belief that terrorists can be appeased by giving them what they want. What they want – and openly say they want – is the eradication of the Jewish state after which they are coming after us, and as Ettinger notes, are already on the way.

In 2006, the UN passed Resolution 1701. Its purpose was to end that war between Israel and the terrorists in Lebanon who were then and are now in control of that country. As the Associated Press reported 18 years ago: under Resolution 1701 “Israeli forces would fully withdraw while the Lebanese army would be the exclusive armed presence south of Lebanon’s Litani River.” The goal was supposed to lead to long-term security, it did not. As with so much else in the region, the resolution eventually became hollow. Lebanon was once known as the “Switzerland of the Middle East.” Now it has been wracked by war and terrorism, fueled by Islamic fanaticism.

In war, victory should be the only goal, lest the war be prolonged and new ones started. It is worth noting two of the greatest statements about victory by two World War II leaders. In 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt said that war against Germany and Japan would not end until—in his words— “total victory” was achieved. The other leader is Winston Churchill. In his inaugural speech after becoming Britain’s war time leader, he said: “Victory at all costs, Victory in spite of all terror, Victory however long and hard the road may be.”

That now appears to be the goal of Prime Minister Netanyahu. It is the right one for Israel, the U.S., and the West.

I’m Cal Thomas.

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