The nearsightedness of aid organizations

I'm against violence. Really. I belong to that 50% of the Israeli population that would be very happy to see a Palestinian state neighboring Israel: a free, democratic state, which respects human rights and the right of Israel to exist. And I think many actions taken by the Israeli governments over the years have needlessly hurt and alienated the Palestinians.

But I'm really angry at all the peace activists who think dialogue is going to solve everything, and who see Israel as the aggressor in the current Israel/Hezbolla/Lebanon/Syria/Iran conflict.

An article on the BBC news website briefly mentions that "Top UK aid agencies united to call for a ceasefire". If true: this is absolutely appalling. What are those aid agencies trying to achieve? In the 6 years since Israel left Lebanon, Hezbolla has built highly fortified guerilla bases inside civilian villages. Hezbolla have fired hundreds of rockets from within the Lebanese villages - and have intentionally aimed their fire at Israeli civilians. Some of those rockets were armed with metal ball bearings - the same killer pellets used by suicide bombers - designed to kill as many people as possible. What do these aid agencies think? That those rockets were placed there to protect human rights???

The only thing that a ceasefire would achieve at this point would be the restoration of Hezbolla's full ability to threaten Israeli civilians.

Aid organizations and human rights activists should not call for a ceasefire: they should call for the disarmament of terrorist organizations. But most importantly: they should harshly criticize the use of civilian villages as hiding places for rocket launchers!


Update - Nov 16, 2006

I'm reviewing old posts now - and it's interesting for me to see how much my point of view has changed. The dialog I have conducted on this blog has allowed me to understand the Arab point of view. Only a few months since I wrote this post - and I now understand the power of dialog. I used to think that the Israeli point of view is the whole and absolute truth, but I now know that this is not the case. Not that I'm saying that the Arab point of view is the whole and absolute truth - there are many many errors in how Arabs see Israelis. But the errors on both sides could be corrected if each side would really listen to the claims of the other side.