Sunday was a day of great triumph for Hezbollah. Its tactics had worked. By launching rockets at Israeli civilians within yards of a building filled with refugees, Hezbollah had induced Israel to make a terrible mistake. Its defensive rocket had missed the Hezbollah launchers and hit the civilian building. That was Hezbollah’s plan all along. As Israelis wept in grief over the deaths of the Lebanese children, Hezbollah leaders celebrated its propaganda victory.

Yes, Hezbollah was happy that an Israeli rocket had killed Lebanese children. The children were now in paradise, martyrs to Hezbollah’s cause. Israel was being condemned throughout the world for “killing” children—“massacre” was the most common word used in the Arab media. The Israelis apologized, but that was not enough to put out the flames of anger or to quiet the shrill calls for revenge.

Israel produced evidence proving that it was largely Hezbollah’s fault. Hezbollah was using Lebanese children as involuntary human shields—surely a war crime. Hezbollah was preventing civilians—who had been repeatedly warned by Israel to leave the battle zone—from moving out of harm’s way. Hezbollah sympathizers were shown on TV defiantly tearing up the Israeli leaflets, as if to say “we’re staying” Hezbollah had refused to build bomb shelters for ordinary civilians—only for their own leaders. Hezbollah knew (and Israel didn’t) that children were in the so-called safe house. That is why it deliberately used the safe house as a shield behind which to five rockets at Israel. Hezbollah used its rocket launchers as “bait” to induce Israel to fire at them in order to increase the chances that Israel’s rocket would misfire and hit the “safe house”. It was a perfect plan. Leaders of Hezbollah knew it could count on the international community to finish its dirty work by condemning Israel, rather than Hezbollah for the deaths caused deliberately by Hezbollah. Israel has, of course, rightly apologized for the deaths caused by its rocket. Hezbollah never apologizes for deliberately causing civilian deaths, except when the deaths are of Arab children, as was the case in Nazareth...