Among the Syrians, Iranians, and their surrogates known as Hezbollah, this latest “cease fire” with the Israelis will only be a time of reorganization and rearming. To those in the West, it is a time of naive and baseless “hope” for a result that has never been and will never be. And this false hope is sure to be shattered whenever the Islamists choose once again to assert themselves.

 

Many Westerners consider President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to operate somewhere between fanaticism and insanity. And among Iran’s leaders he is certainly not the first to give such an impression. When American embassy workers were first taken hostage in Tehran, in November of 1979, this country’s government and its allies were quick to invoke such invective against the villainous Ayatollah Khomeini and his minions.

 

Threatening unspeakable brutality against the hostages throughout the remaining year of the Carter Presidency, the Iranians nonetheless became absolutely serious about negotiating a peaceable end to the crisis from the very moment Ronald Reagan was elected to succeed Jimmy Carter.

 

Hardly the “crazies” they had been portrayed to be, the Iranians suddenly became very rational and desirous of a settlement. Nor did they show any inclination to achieve the martyrdom so greatly esteemed in their religion. In the end, the hostages were released at the very moment Reagan was sworn in as President. No coincidence there.

 

Twenty-seven years later, the status quo still holds in every respect. Hamas and Hezbollah still wantonly murder Israelis, and they still revel in plans to destroy Western Infidels. And, in a pattern that has been unbroken since the modern resurgence of militant Islam, their successes and failures are determined solely by the willingness of Westerners to accommodate them.

 

Israel easily could have moved in an unrestrained manner and vanquished those Islamists of Hezbollah who provoked its wrath by terrorizing its cities and murdering its citizens. Among those who desire true peace in the region, it is understood that this is the exact course they should have taken.

 

Yet, fearing diplomatic repercussions, Ehud Olmert, the current Israeli Prime Minister, chose to pull his punches right from the beginning of this most recent conflict. In so doing he lost his strategic edge while ensuring that the protracted nature of the conflict would result in the very condemnation he had so inordinately feared. Now he seeks to cut his losses by engaging in yet another meaningless “cease fire.”

 

Israeli restraint and capitulation has never garnered anything but an increase in the confidence, and thus the aggressiveness of its mortal enemies. So to expect anything different this time around, as key leaders and diplomats in the West are currently promising, indicates a degree of “wishful thinking” that itself borders on the insane.

 

Abu Heija, a writer for the Hamas publication Al-Risala, expresses the popular sentiment among Israel’s foes very plainly, stating that Israel’s willingness to abide by the “cease fire,” constitutes a “victory” for Hezbollah, and thus signals a “go-ahead” for new attacks from Hamas.

 

Should any rational individual be surprised by such a response from Israel’s sworn enemies? Has that tiny nation ever reaped any other reaction from its continued efforts to mollify or “buy” the good will of its mortal enemies through such ludicrous efforts as the giveaway of strategically critical lands?

 

Despite the almost juvenile wishes of those appeasers in the West, the grim “blessing” of this latest agreement is only that Israel will soon have another chance to properly deal with its enemies. This “cease fire” is no more likely to hold than its innumerable predecessors.

 

Therefore, Israel had better use the finite, intervening time to prepare for its next engagement, in order to ensure that the outcome is resolute and decisive. It can be absolutely certain that its enemies are doing exactly that.

 

In the short term, if it intends to enter into such clashes to a limited degree, only to eventually back out from them, it would be far better to simply learn to live with the periodic incursions and random killings perpetrated by those who hope to annihilate it.

 

But even if such cowardly thinking prevails, the situation will never dissipate into eventual calm. Militant Islam, if left unchecked, will invariably continue to metastasize, just as it always has. Such a reality bodes especially ill, considering that Iran now verges on the threshold of nuclear capability.

 

This conflict will end only when the current multitude of Islamic terrorist organizations are reduced to the status and capabilities of localized crime rings, governments who support them are deposed, and any who remain sympathetic to them are made to realize that it is in their own best interests to guarantee that such evil entities never rise again.

 

The stage has been set. Ahmadinejad and the dark forces he represents will relentlessly advance on the rest of civilization if allowed any latitude to do so. Those who remain in denial do not understand what it is that motivates him and his kind.

 

Like Osama Bin Laden before him, Ahmadinejad does not believe that the West possesses sufficient resolve to stand him down. And in this most recent engagement, the West has given him little reason to contemplate otherwise.

 

Despite all of the myopic moralizing of Israel and America’s reliable critics, neither retreat, nor isolationism, nor the phony stability of a “stalemate” present viable solutions. The only options for those nations that comprise Western civilization are to confront and defeat this enemy, or to face their own eventual eradication.