Nick Rahall: “every country has the perfectly legitimate right to respond to terrorist attacks upon its borders and its people…”

“every country has the perfectly legitimate right to respond to terrorist attacks upon its borders and its people, regardless of whether those attacks were provoked or not. Such has been the case in southern Lebanon, the home of my grandfathers, where Israel has undertaken Operation Grapes of Wrath in order to end the terrorist Hezbollah attacks across the border into northern Israel. This tit for tat, this eye for an eye, this cycle of violence has gone on for well over a decade now. Ever since Israel's bombardment into southern Lebanon, and indeed, into Beirut itself in 1982 to rid Lebanon of the PLO, they have occupied what they have called a buffer zone in southern Lebanon in order to protect its northern borders. This Israeli occupation has led to the growth of Hezbollah, or Party of God. This Lebanese group has sought to end this occupation, and therefore has undertaken needless, uncalled for, unprovoked terrorist attacks into northern Israel. These have been undertaken, and in the past have been guided by unwritten agreements by which Israel and Syria, the two main power brokers in the region, have agreed not to attack each other directly. Therefore, Hezbollah operates as a proxy for outside powers, in this case obviously financed and trained by Iran and given the green light by Syria to operate in Lebanon. In order to end these attacks, Israel undertook Operation Grapes of Wrath.”