America Owes Israel a Debt of Gratitude--if not $5 Million--for Delivering Justice to Hezbollah Terrorist Fuad Shukr

In The U.S. Owes Israel $5 Million, Gil Troy notes that the U.S. State Department offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Fuad Shukr, who they listed as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" because of--among other heinous acts--his pivotal role in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. servicemen. Shukr was the leader of Hezbollah's precision missile project, whose crowning "achievement" was killing 12 children and young adults and wounding over 40 people on a soccer field in the Golan Heights on July 27, 2024. On July 30, Israel provided the best possible information about Shukr: He is dead, courtesy of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut. Troy makes the case that the U.S. owes Israel $5 million.

Unfortunately, we live in a world in which an Israeli hostage rescue operation is derided as "deadly" but Hamas' crimes against humanity before, during, and after their October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack in Israel are minimized, ignored, or--grotesquely--praised.

Troy writes that in the wake of the 1983 Beirut bombing, President Ronald Reagan initially made the mistake of not retaliating, and even redeploying U.S. forces from Beirut to U.S. Navy ships off the shores of Lebanon. This emboldened America's enemies, and led to 1985 being a "banner year" for terrorist attacks according to a now declassified CIA report. Fortunately, Reagan corrected course, and after the infamous 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking--during which PLO terrorists executed wheelchair bound American Jew Leon Klinghoffer and then threw his body overboard--he sent four Navy F-14s to intercept the hijackers, who had escaped to Egypt and were flying to Tunisia. Reagan declared, "You can run, but you can't hide." In 1986, Reagan ordered airstrikes in Libya in response to a terrorist attack linked to Libya at a West Berlin disco frequented by American soldiers. A subsequent CIA assessment concluded that terrorism decreased in 1986 as a result of the West's "unprecedented military, diplomatic, and economic retaliatory measures."

If President Biden and the U.S. government are not going to pay the $5 million reward to Israel, the least that they can do is stop making counterproductive and false statements that hinder Israel's efforts to not just protect herself but also protect American interests. After Biden's shameful abandonment of Afghanistan, the world knows all too well that his administration is weak, and that under his rule America is an unreliable and untrustworthy ally. 

History demonstrates that terrorists are deterred only by the exercise of power against them, not by restraint, and certainly not by capitulation. The notion that killing terrorist leaders is an obstacle to peace is a dangerous perversion of reality. Every time a terrorist leader is killed we are one step closer to the dismantling or surrender of that terrorist leader's terrorist group.