British Foreign Office minister Kim Howells has criticized Israeli actions in Lebanon. Mr Howells told journalists Israel's air strikes over the past 11 days were "not surgical strikes".
It's sometime necessary to bear in mind that not everyone who speaks English has the same cultural background as ourselves, so the words they use may not mean the same for them that they do for us. In the case of Howells, it's important to understand what a phrase like "surgical strike" means in the context of a British Labour MP. After all, under the Labour government ruling Britain for the last 10 years, waiting lists for NHS patients seeking surgical procedures have nearly doubled. Under his party's leadership, people desperately in need of, for example, breast surgery, are experiencing an average delay of 107 days - that's nearly 4 months - in order to receive their life-saving operations. (To prove that I've not taken a "worst case" scenario to illustrate my point, the waiting time for colorectal surgery - an even more life-saving procedure - is 112 days and in some areas patients who can live that long have to wait 6 months.)
So, what does a "surgical strike" mean to Kim Howells. It means delaying taking any action until there's a better chance that your patient will die from "natural causes" than that he or she will be saved by the operation they need. For him, this is a positive outcome, since no doubt the death of Jews is a regrettable but unavoidable consequence of appeasement, just as it was in 1939.
For us in Israel, we'll do without the benefit of Howell's expertise in managing crisis situations. We'll take the action that we need to save our own lives, and not rely on his approval or otherwise, thank you very much.
