The Middle East, week whatever

Here are some wise words from Bernard-Henri Levy, in The New York Times:

"I’m not one to play the dirty little game of counting corpses. But why shouldn’t what is due to some also be due to others? How come we hear so little, at least in the European press, of those Jewish victims who have died since Israel pulled out of Gaza? I have spent my life fighting against the idea that there are good deaths and bad deaths, deserving victims and privileged bombs. I have always agitated for the Israeli state to leave the occupied territories and, in exchange, win security and peace. For me, then, there is a question here of integrity and fairness: devastation, death, life in bomb shelters, existences broken by the death of a child, these are also the lot of Israel."

And here's a shocker for those who believe this Jew has gone over to the Arab camp. I agree with Levy. It's awful on both sides.

But what still blows my mind is how Hezbollah--which puts civilians at risk in Lebanon--out-strategized the Israelis. It's really at the point now where a military solution can't work. The choice for Israel, at least in the short term, is how to engineer the smallest loss.

But the real scorn has to be reserved for Rice and Bush. All those years of big talk and swagger --when it came to the crunch, they proved themselves to be wimps. Can you imagine what HenryKissinger would have done if the president of Lebanon had told him he wasn't welcome? "My plane will land at 8 o'clock," Kissinger would have said. "Be there to meet me, or I'll give a press conference on the runway like you wouldn't believe." And though he's a war criminal, I would have cheered.

This time around, it seems, the negotiators are the French. The French! Too ironic!