Harry's Blog

Things are going to hell in a handbasket over in Lebanon. Israel, not a nation used to understand the concept of an eye for an eye, has gone rather over the top in its conflict with Hezbollah.

What seems particularly worrying is the news that Israel shelled a UN position for ten hours and received numerous phone calls to stop. However Israel eventually blasted the position with precision guided missiles, killing four of the UN troops there. Was it deliberate or a genuine failure in the chain of command?

UN chief Kofi Annan has accused Israel of deliberately bombing a UN observation post. Israeli president Ehud Olmert denied the attack was deliberate and has expressed deep sorrow over the incident.

Israel as ever is acting like a bull in a china shop, overacting in the level of force it uses and is decimated areas of Lebanon. Given control of the UK in the seventies one assumes it would have dealt with the IRA by carpet bombing Belfast.

Such behaviour from Israel is to be expected. It has a long history of fighting to defend its very existence, so I can understand the paranoia and overreaction to a point. What seems galling to me though is that the US, which effectively has a free veto on whatever Israel gets up to - seems to have let its client nation run riot in southern Lebanon.

However Israel has admitted that the resistance from the Hezbollah terrorists is much stronger than expected. Yesterday the terrorist group managed to fire 17 rockets into Israel, quite a feat given the strength of the forces arrayed against it. This doesn't seem like an easy nut to crack. One Israeli soldier told BBC Online that all the personnel carriers in his unit now had holes in them such was the ferocity of the resistance.

So what are we going to do about this mess? It now seems that Israel, now faced with a much stronger Hezbollah than expect, wants the United Nations to clear up the mess. But why should it? Israel has caused the problems, it can't back down from solving them. Putting UN troops in the firing line is a cowardly way out.

All this plays rather scarily to the rapture nuts over in the US. It's this kind of thing that has prompted me to take a look at the Left Behind series. Yes to some it's just a fictional sci-fi series. But to many people in the US, including many actually in power, the rapture is a very real thing rather than a corruption of the Christian Faith. Cart blanche support for Israel goes hand in hand with rapture insanity.

The fact that some misguided people are claiming that these tragic events are a good thing makes a mockery of the Christian faith. And while these people look like isolated fruitcakes - it's the strength of the believe in the rapture among politicians, including the US President, that makes the world a scarier place and Left Behind a work of evil.

And what's even scarier, there are those in power that think the end times are coming and have the power to make that come true.