Alan Dershowitz has a problem with the condemnation of Israel in the international community:

When it comes to Israel, a lot of usually smart people stop thinking with their heads, and start thinking with their guts. Most smart people know that when an armed criminal takes a hostage and fires from behind him, it is the criminal, not the policeman, who is guilty of murder, if the policeman, in a reasonable effort to stop the criminal from firing, accidentally kills the innocent hostage. The same should be true during wartime. But you wouldn’t know it if you listened only to the singular condemnations of Israel by so many in the international community.

But not all. Just days before this Hezbollah orchestrated tragedy, Jan Egeland, the UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, had essential predicted it. He chided Hezbollah for being “a bunch of cowards hiding behind women and children.” He said that he “cannot understand how someone could be proud that there were more women and children hurt than armed militants.” And he “call[ed] for the Hezbollah to immediately stop mixing with the civilian population.” But Hezbollah did not listen to Egeland. Instead they fired their Katyusha from behind the apartment in Qana knowing that it was filled with civilians.

Hezbollah's fondest hope, I think, is that Israel might be provoked into savage reprisals against the Lebanese. Then Hezbollah could claim that Israel behaved like the Nazis.

Of course, they already claim that, but it would help if the Israelis really did it. Never mind that Israel, by taking care to avoid civilian casualties, is doing precisely the opposite.

To illustrate the extreme contrast between self defense and deliberate reprisals against civilians, look at what the Nazis did to the Czech village of Lidice:

On May 27, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the RSHA, the Reichsprotektor of Czechoslovakia, the man who had convened the Wannsee Conference only four months previously, was severely wounded in a grenade attack on his car near Prague by two Czech parachutists sent from London by the Czech government-in-exile. The two Czechs managed to leave the scene and took refuge in the Karl Borromaeus Church in Prague.

On June 4, Heydrich died of his wounds. The Nazis swore revenge: they ordered the execution of ten thousand Czechs and threatened the expulsion of millions. The Karl Borromaeus Church, where the assassins and more than one hundred members of the Czech resistance were hiding, was besieged. Everyone in the church was killed by the SS.

In Lezaky, a village east of Prague, where the assassins' radio transmitter was discovered, every adult was killed. The children were forcibly removed to Germany for "reeducation," a process that only two of them survived.

At dawn on June 10, all the residents of Lidice, a village ten miles outside Prague, were taken from their homes. They were shot in batches of ten at a time behind a barn. By late afternoon, 192 men and boys and 71 women had been murdered. The other women were sent to concentration camps. The children were dispersed, some to concentration camps, although a few who were considered sufficiently Aryan were sent to Germany. The SS then razed the town and tried to eradicate its memory. The name of Lidice was expunged from all official records.

The only reason that the propagandists who dare to accuse Israel of such tactics get away with their comparisons is that people don't know their history.

Israel's restraint has been commendable. If anyone is guilty of the deliberate murder of civilians, it is Hezbollah.

But that doesn't make this war any easier for Israel to fight. Rockets fired from the suburbs invite some sort of response, and Hezbollah has been adept positioning themselves so that any response at all will prove "wrong."

Perhaps Israel could go into southern Lebanon and as a provocation, build "settlements." As a further provocation, Israel might claim that they were permanent knowing all the while they weren't. As "flypaper" strategy, it might bring Hezbollah out into the open.

After all, nothing draws terrorists like Israeli civilians.

UPDATE: Via Pajamas Media, here's Pat Buchanan saying America is responsible for Qana:

...because America provides Israel with the bombs it uses on Lebanon, and we refused to restrain the Israelis, and we opposed every effort for a cease-fire before Sunday, America shares full moral and political responsibility for the massacre at Qana.

At the time of this writing, nobody has taken the body parts of children harvested from some grave-site out along some nameless highway, strewn them across Israeli tank tracks, and then run over them a few times before the appointed photo-op. But it really is only a matter of time, isn't it? After all, in the Terror War children are not only the terrorists' main targets, they are their most effective weapons as well.

In the West and in Israel, which like it or not, is now the front line of the West, we think of children as our most precious commodity. Our enemies think of them as either suicide-bomb fodder or, worse still, "Coming Attractions."

UPDATE: Via Michael Totten, guest blogging at InstaPundit, a report of a Hezbollah rocket hitting the Palestinian town of Jenin:

A Fatah activist from Jenin added that the rocket hit was heard clearly around the city, and a spark and a flame were also clearly seen.

The Fatah member related that local residents cheered when they heard the rocket fall and saw the resulting flames. “Even if it were to fall on our heads, it wouldn’t have spoiled our joy. All of us here are praying for Hizbullah’s success and victory," he said.

Because, after all, it's Israel's fault!