WHAT MORTAL DANGER? "I do not see that one can fairly oppose the Israeli campaign against Hezbollah," writes Leon Wieseltier, "without asking a state to acquiesce in a mortal danger to itself." A shockingly large number of Israel's supporters seem to have convinced themselves this is true, but there's just no way Hezbollah's sporadic pre-war rocket launches and cross-border raids can be construed as a mortal danger to Israel. To be sure, to have simply done nothing in response to the raid that launched this crisis might have encouraged Hezbollah to up the ante somewhat, but massive Israeli retaliation has merely led Hezbollah to dramatically increase its level of rocket attacks in response. By contrast, an attempt at a much smaller tit-for-tat style retaliation might have actually decreased the incidence of Hezbollah provocations. Either way, though, mortal danger to Israel just isn't on the table -- Hezbollah doesn't come close to having the necessary juice; surely if history has taught us anything, it's that destroying Israel is hard to do.
Meanwhile, I'm not sure if I'm quite ready for Billmon's level of stridency, but the basic point here is correct. Liberals and Democrats who think Israel policy can just be boxed off in favor of focusing on the Iraq War should consult a map -- Syria and Iran are Hezbollah's backers and Iraq is . . . between Syria and Iran. And as chaos grows in Iraq, Iraqi Shiites are staging mass demonstrations in support of Hezbollah. These issues are all related. Notably, ignoring the threat of al-Qaeda's determination to strike the United States in favor of picking fights with Iran is the new ignoring the threat of al-Qaeda's determination to strike the United States in favor of picking fights with Iraq.
--Matthew Yglesias
