Robert Rosenberg writes today at Ariga that Ehud Olmert reacted with vague optimism to the Lebanese government’s proposal to deploy 15,000 Lebanese troops in the south in order to reclaim the area for Lebanon. Olmert called it “interesting,” which is about as vague as you can be and still refer to something positively. But Rosenberg notes the increasingly jingoistic Israel press which spurned prime minister Fuad Siniora’s offer:
The Israeli press has taken to depicting Siniora, especially after the Lebanese premier’s tearful appearance yesterday before the Arab League, as ineffective as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. And most Israeli analysts suggested that the Siniora proposal must be flawed, if Hizbollah has signed onto it. Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik seemed to ride that sentiment when she called on Siniora to ‘stop weeping and start doing,’ which rhymes in Hebrew.
Perhaps if Ms. Itzik could start weeping for the 17,000 Kiryat Shmona residents forced to flee their homes for a forced “recuperation,” and if she could weep for the hundreds of thousands for other Israeli refugees and the 40 civilians killed; and if she could weep for the 700 Lebanese (mostly civilians) killed by her air force’s missiles–then just perhaps there could be some humanity and some hope for discourse between her side and the other.
But as long as she insults a man crying for the butchery of his country, there can be no hope that Israel or her leaders will have any empathy either for their own citizens or those of the enemy.
