A skill-testing question, or a riddle, depending upon your point of
view: what do we call a one-sided ceasefire?

The answer to the question, the solution to the riddle, is not nearly
as obvious as one might think. In fact, based upon a cursory review
of sundry media reports and commentaries in recent days, it seems
that quite a few otherwise-sensible people are making demands for
a "ceasefire" that would apply entirely to one side, and not ever to
the other.

If that is the definition that "ceasefire" has acquired (and it has),
the people of Israel can be forgiven for being unenthusiastic. You
would be, too, if someone was firing bullets through your front door –
and a newspaper columnist was simultaneously condemning you for
calling in the police.

Since Qana, however, Richard Bridge and certain media commentators have taken up a tuneless ceasefire chorus – one that requires Israel to lay down its arms, more or less unilaterally. Hezbollah, it is assumed, will cheerfully comply with a polite request that they stop firing rockets at Israeli civilian targets. After all, Hezbollah could not possibly flout the robust humanitarian consensus at the United Nations, could they? Could they?

Well, yes, Hezbollah could continue to do precisely that – because
that is precisely what Hezbollah did in the many months leading up to
Israel's military response. For week after week after week, Hezbollah
fired on Israelis, bombed Israelis, kidnapped Israelis, murdered
Israelis. Israel complained, mightily, but the Richard Bridges of the world shrugged, mainly. Most notably, no one called for a ceasefire. Except Israel.

Now that Israel has finally responded, the Richard Bridge and his friends are inflamed. They are demanding, typically, that Israel conduct itself according to rules of engagement that Hezbollah (or any of Israel's arrayed enemies) are never required to observe, much less
acknowledge.

But that complaint is yesterday's bagels, you might say. It is
nothing new. Richard Bridge and his friends like McGrath of Harlow, Frida Underhill, CarolC, etc. have always held Israel to a different standard. As Charles Krauthammer put it: "What other country sustains 1,500 indiscriminate rocket attacks into its cities – every one designed to kill, maim and terrorize civilians – and is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the enemy's infrastructure and strongholds…?"

But vilified Israel is. Angry demonstrations against Israel
take place on a daily basis, its leaders and people likened to Nazis.

And, in the Mudcat Forum, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories now regularly take the place of serious analysis. Read the Toronto Sun's Eric Margolis, for example: "Israel's attempted destruction of Hezbollah is the first step in a long-planned campaign to strip away Iran's allies and turn Lebanon into a joint US-Israeli protectorate." Or the Toronto Star's Haroon Siddiqui: "The abductions [of Israeli soldiers] provided the excuse to do what Israel was planning anyway – try and destroy Hezbollah and Hamas."

These fiendish Israeli "campaigns" and "plans" apparently also
extended to Israel requiring that Hezbollah rockets be launched at
Israel – and that Israel look the other way while Israelis are
kidnapped by murderers. With the greatest of respect, Messrs.
Margolis and Siddiqui give the sasquatch coverage in the National
Enquirer the glossy finish of high academic research.

But if all of this sounds rather familiar, it is because it is:
whenever Israel responds to organized campaigns of mass murder, as is
its right, sputtering indignation is heard far and wide. Tenured
university professors rail against the Zionist state on newspaper op-
ed pages; McGrath of Harlow and Frida Underhill demand that Israel exercise restraint never practiced by its enemies; and CarolC says the Middle East would be a utopian paradise if the "occupation" was ended.

And therein lays the rub – and the answer to the riddle at the
outset. What do we call a one-sided ceasefire?

Well, we call it suicide. Hezbollah certainly would.