So for a long time now we’ve been hearing a lot about the evil of cross border aggression, the need to respect the UN and all that stuff. It’s worth keeping in mind then that what Hezbollah did was in violation of the UN and Israeli sovereignty. Unlike the borders with the Palestinian terrirtories the border with Lebanon has been settled. It is the so-called Blue Line negotiated with the United Nations. When Hezbollah attacked Israeli soldiers and seized two of them “in battle” according to them, they in effect invaded Israel according to international law. This, by any rational definition, is an act of war. I do feel terribly for the democrats in the Lebanese government incapable of stopping Hezbollah. But the fact remains that Lebanon considers Hezbollah a legitimate organization and gives harbor to them. They might not like it. But how do you get this situation to end if the price for having Hezbollah on your turf is negligible?

Of course, Israel’s borders are mere abstractions according to the UN which tried this week to censure Israel.

By the way, here’s an excerpt from the Week on how Hezbollah plays murderous games along the Blue Line (from the January 30, 2006 issue):

In January 2004, Hezbollah planted five camouflaged “improvised explosive devices” (IED’s) inches on the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon, fifteen miles inland from the Mediterranean coast. Israeli troops detected the IED’s and notified (as per the truce agreement in effect since the end of the 1967 Six Days’ War) the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), “peacekeepers.” A UNIFIL engineer certified the existence of this gross violation of the truce, and “requested” that Hezbollah remove the bombs. Hezbollah declined, stating that as the mines were (just barely) inside the “Zionist” border, Israel could perform the removal itself. The IDF dispatched an armored bulldozer to carry the mines off for safe disposal. This required making a 90-degree turn from the Israeli access to the narrow border trail. Slowly making this turn, the left front corner of the Israeli bulldozer unavoidably had to occupy, for a couple of seconds, about one cubic meter of air space on the Lebanese side of the “blue line” between the two countries. During those seconds a Hezbollah fighter launched an anti-tank missile at the narrow windshield of the bulldozer. The pinpoint strike, which our Israeli sources concede required uncommon training and skill, killed the 21-year-old Russian immigrant driving the bulldozer, Jan Rotzanski. This diabolical murder was widely celebrated by Hezbollah as a confirmation of its desire to kill “Zionists” on any pretext. IDF Northern Command soldiers remain embittered by this killing (and by UNIFIL’s indifference to it) eighteen months later. * On June 29, 2005, an elite Hezbollah team equipped with high-tech optical gear (cameras, binoculars and night-vision equipment) penetrated into Israel from Lebanon to kidnap Israelis, whom Hezbollah planned to torture and kill, eventually exchanging their corpses for imprisoned terrorists in Israel. Intercepted by an Israeli border patrol, the team opened fire and ordered mortar rounds lobbed from Lebanon onto the Israeli defenders. Two of the three Hezbollah terrorists were killed or wounded, as was one Israeli officer. * The Katyusha rockets launched at American ships and at the neighboring town of Eilat, Israel from the Jordanian port of Aqaba, on August 19, were likely shipped to that country by Hezbollah, which has cornered the world market on Katyushas.