picking up from nirvana's post:

there is a wide range of political opinion in israel--i know that there are many israelis who oppose the position like those you read above, which fall somewhere between likud and those tiny extremist rightwing parties whose politics are explicitly racist---hell, the range of people that i know personally encompasses a great diversity of positions about the ways in whih the israel government chooses to act---many many people are very distressed about the decision to destroy lebanon, even as "collateral damage" for a more focussed campaign--this distress cuts across usual political divisions. what i find remarkable is that out there in 3-d land, there is a far greater range of positions, even amongst people who in general support israel's action in lebanon, than you see amongst those who choose to support it here.
and far more ambivalence.
but no matter--it makes no sense to assume that israel is of one mind, any more than it makes sense to assume any other complex society is of one mind, on this or anything else. to impute a single motive to all israelis is idiotic.
for example:
not all israelis support the state's brutalization of the palestinians.
not all israelis support the wall.
not all israels support the state's efforts to destroy the pa in order to prevent hamas from assuming power--hamas was moderating and everyone knows it--perhaps it was easier for the state to maintain the old hamas.
not all israelis support the military repression in gaza.
not all israelis have forgotten about gaza.
not all israelis function with a disconnect when it comes to thinking about the obvious empirical connections between idf actions in gaza and the present conflict with hebollah/destruction of lebanon.
not all israelis support the olmert government. not all israelis never ask themselves about the connection between this carnage in lebanon and the weak status of the olmert government.
nto all israelis simply repeat the official state arguments for the destruction of lebanon/conflict with hezbollah.
not all israelis assume that all arabs are terrorists.
not all israelis are mystified about the connection between routine brutalization and radical politics.
not all israelis do not understand that much of the trouble israelis have with their neighbors they bring down on themselves through the brutality of measures taken to "prevent" such trouble.

it seems to me that most who support israel's actions and who post in this space operate with a discourse that is particular to the right in israel--but here they present it like it is the only way to speak about israel, the only way to understand this conflict.
because, for whatever reason, the political spectrum reproduced in the united states from israel is to pitifully narrow.
how is that?
that only one of a whole range of political positions within israel about the conflict going on now is ever represented in this space?
what imagines folk to assume that by parroting a rightwing view of israeli actions that they speak for or even coherently on behalf of israel?
where did this presumption come from?
it is unbelievable.
and it is really tiresome.

willravel, if my memory serves me right olmert ran on the campaign of pulling out of the west bank. i might be wrong so if i am , anyone please correct me. i find it funny that you find anyone labeling the people of lebanon as supporters of hezbollah wrong and immoral (which it is) but you have no problem using such a blanket generalization for those "gun toting, bulldozing" israelis, eh? hezbollah, a shiite radical group, is actually made up of 15% of the entire lebanese population (they are shiites. also hezbollah makes up about half of the entire shiite population of lebanon) with supporters scattered around the country. clearly that is not the majority of the population. the same thing applies to israelis. the most radical who claim relgious property of the land, etc only constitute about 12% of the population. that 12% is "ultra conservative" and in my opinion is just as messed up as any other group of people with fundamental religious beliefs. about half of the population defines itself as "secular." these are the people that I was around and generally, these people are in agreement. they wanna raise their children, work, and live in peace. maybe they were just hiding their bulldozers, though.

Please tell me you took my last post as being ironic. That's the way it was intended. Maybe I didn't make it clear enough.

lol well by the tone of my post, it's safe to assume that's not the way i took it. no harm, no foul.

Sorry, it was a bit sarcastic. I carry no resentment or ill will towards the populace of Israel. I'm sure most of them are honest, hard working people simply trying to live their lives and make their way in the world. It honestly isn't their fault that some very stupid and bad people want to kill them.

i apologize for my sarcasm as well. thats pretty much what i wan't for the middle east. i just wan't those people who genuinelly want peace and not the destruction of each other to finally get it. both sides and all of the "side players" need fresh mind because unfrotunately, all that these people see daily is death and destruction.

It's good to know that we both want the same thing...now if only we can agree on how to get there....

i don't think either one of us or anyone here for that matter wants innocent people to be killed. i've always thought that is both sides were to just agree to at least a 6 month non-violence period to show that they are series, maybe to a certain degree that would lower some supiciopns of both populations and bring talks forward. however, i just dont think its going to go any farther until that violence does stop and both sides loudly and boldly say "we support your right to exist" and really mean it. if something to that effect ever happens, we'll just have to wait and see.

also im starting to feel this thread has moved away the whole lebanon-israel thing but thats ok, threads grow and evolve into even more interestig discussion,

Now if only Hezbollah and Israel could kiss and make up like you two... :lol:


/me wipes away a tear.

The biggest problem I see is that if there were ever peace in the Middle East, Israel would still exist, but the various extreemist groups would not. This outcome isn't favorable to the extreemist groups, so that makes the peace process all the more difficult (trying not to oversimplify). The trick to peace in the region, in my humble opinion, would be a complete pull out of all outside forces. No more US support to Israel. No more Chinese or Russian support to Iran or Syria. No more economic support to Saudi Arabia. Most importantly: no more oil. That damn stuff seems to breed corruption.

Of course that's never going to happen...at least not in my lifetime.
Yeah, but at the same time, I can't help but feel like I've threadjacked more than a few times. I do want the discussion to evolve, but I don't want to disrespect the reason we clicked on the "Israel invades Lebanon, Hezbollah attacks N. Israel" link.

The outside support will never stop, like you said, until all the oil is gone. but then there will be other problems such is floundering economies because a lot of those economies depend on their oil exports. who knows what additional problems that will bring. to a certain degree though, i have a feeling that if foreign support does disappear, the violence won't end. i feel like it will escalate fast into somehting big. to a certain degree, while foreign support causes a shitload of problems, it does prevent others.

on a side-note, i saw a discussion i saw on pbs mentioned that the middle east is ready for democracy, but the outside world needs to allow fundamentalist pan-islamist groups to take power first and wait until the population can eventually overthrow them due to a desire for refrom. i think that reform will be what eventually gets rid of a lot of these extremist ideologies as well. however in the current climate of the middle-east, i don't think anyone has the patience to allow these groups to take place. who knows though, we have a whole lifetime ahead of us to see what happens.

I'm not looking for the moral high ground, as shocking as that may sound. I'm looking for victory. Maybe thats a suprise to you, perhaps hard to understand. But we aren't going to beat the terrorists by taking it easy. There is one thing islamists respect and that is strength. negotiations and unilateral concessions might be the "moral" thing to do, but in the eyes of the terrorists you are weak and acts like that only serve to embolden them, make it look to them that you are on the run, that you don't want to fight any more. The situation would be different if we were fighting a different enemy. But we are fighting a people who do not want peaceful co-existance. They are fighting for total victory and will stop and nothing short - that alone requires us to do the same. they will never give up, so we have to kill them. If, if they were willing to negotiate a truce and live peacefully side by side with israel and the rest of the western world we would not be fighting.

Over 40,000 Canadian citizens live in Lebanon. Over 25,000 have registered with the embassy to be evacuated. So far only approx 1400 have managed to get out (100 of whom hitched a ride on the Prime Minister's flight which diverted from Paris to snag a few refugees).

This is a huge logistical nightmare. Not to mention a tragic one. 8 members of the same Montreal family were killed by an Isreali bombing raid. They were visiting relatives for summer vacation.

We have a lot of emotional stake in this situation.

i agree with stevo that there are groups out there that want nothing short than the destruction of israel. let's say that there was peace tomorrow. i have strong doubt that these groups will stop their assault. because for these groups, their is the idea of a middle east with sharia law (hezbollah wanted that for lebanon) and they thrive on pan-arab, pan-islamist (notice i didn't say pan-islam) ideology. i am postive these people won't rest until the area is no longer "infested" with jews.

this is probably the best analysis i have seen yet.
read the article, check the source and site, etc.

source: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5154.shtml

thought id keep you updated.

my wife was meant to leave on sunday on a ship organised by the australian government to cyprus or turkey. this was the last ive heard from her. she is up north in tripoli, so she is relatively safe i think. however, i got an sms from a friend telling me she will be going through the border to damascus now. no idea why yet as ive been anable to contact her for the last 2 days.

apparently israel bombed telecommunications towers in nth lebanon. no mobile phone network whatsoever now. i have no landline number for her. ive contacted the australian embassy, and they cannot help me.

..and they keep telling me its all about hezbollah? this is collective punishment! there is no hezbollah in nth lebanon, and this is totally unjustified. ..oh thats right..hezbollah uses mobile phones, so its ok to bomb the telecommunications towers...reminicent of how alqaeda justifies its attacks on innocent civilians..

ktspktsp ..how is your family????

Ok, I've just scanned six pages of notes here, and have neither the time nor inclination to cut and paste, nor to make sure I'm not repeating some things. Let me try to bulletpoint this situation:

1. Why is there a current armed conflict? Isn't it because Hezbollah (and Hamas) grabbed some Israeli soldiers and had been firing rockets into Israel?

2. Why is Hezbollah allowed to set up shop in Southern Lebanon? If the Lebanese goverment don't want them there, then aiding Israel in rooting them out would be the proper course of action; if they want them to stay, then they have sided with the enemy of Israel. There is no middle ground, no area of grey on this point. Destruction of the Lebanese infastructure is a means to the end of the elimination of Hezbollah.

3. A cease-fire demand by anyone that doesn't carry with it clear and unambiguous penalties for violation is worthless.

4. If the accounts of Hezbollah refusing to allow civilians to flee is correct (and I'm not sure where I read/heard it), then the deaths of said civilians is not on the heads of Israel. Those that use human shields are the ones responsible for said shields.

5. While I'm thinking of it, aren't Hezbollah members also "civilians?" They aren't a military force in uniform, fighting under the banner of a country. Are those "civilian death" totals we're getting counting those folks (and their family members)?

6. If Israel has fired missiles indiscriminately into Lebanon (that is, with no military or stategic target), then it is proper to make a moral comparison with Hezbollah's firing of rockets into Israeli cities. I'm not aware of such, but it may be that it's happened and I just don't know about it.

IMO, if the "conflict" could be reduced to the first sentence in your bulletpoint <b>"1."</b>, in the "real world", you might have made some important points in your post.....

But.....you don't get to frame the discussion based solely on where you decide, for the sake of your argument, where <i>"a current armed conflict"</i> begins. The "conflict" is influenced by the history of the region, and that history contains everything in my post here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...3&postcount=21

I could ask, with what I've supplied in that post, how two "terrorists"
could be allowed to "set up shop" in the office of the Israeli PM....ever? Could such a thing happen in the U.S.....could the POTUS be a former terrorist leader???

You fail to mention that Israel has responded in the past month to two incidents where armed opposition, not officially sponsored by either of the elected governments of it's two neighbors, staged attacks on Israeli military positions and killed and kidnapped Israeli soldiers, by launching large scale attacks on civilian infrastructure in both of those neighboring jusrisdictions.

If I post that the "current armed conflict" began in 1983, when more than 250 U.S. soldiers were bombed to death in their barracks in Beirut....an attack that Hezbollah is said to have taken "credit" for, would that justify U.S. military intervention in Lebanon now?

Israel has "tolerated" sporadic attacks of a few "dumb" rockets per incident, fired into it's territory from southern Lebanon for at least the last six years. Has invasion of it's neighbors and large scale exertion of force, brought lasting peace to the region inhabited by Israel, in the 30 years since official armies of sovereign neighbors have ceased attacking Israel? What is the goal that you believe will be accomplished by Israel's disproportionate use of force, this time?

You hold the "Lebanese goverment" responsible. How can you expect a fledgling government of a poor nation with a small army, a government tentatively knit together that is comprised of several opposing elements of both religion and nationality, to control Hezbollah, when Israel, with it's mighty IDF, occupied that region for 18 years and could not eliminate or signifigantly reduce Hezbollah?

The U.S., many times more powerful militarily than Israel, has no success in controlling illegal entry at it's own southern border, or the insurgency in Iraq.....yet you give Israel a "green light" to collectively punish all of Lebanon, and I assume, all of Gaza, too.

I see a new "game", here. A game where, in a new era of popularly elected political factions of "terrorist" labeled insurgents, the voters themselves become "fair game", in order to justify disproportionate military responses....like Israel's on civilians and civilian infrastructure.

By that measure, are all of the U.S. voters who backed Bush/Cheney 2004, "fair game" for Queda or Sunni "sleeper cells" in the U.S.

Where is the collective voice against all violence, beyond defense?
Pre-emption seems to be a spreading disease. Was diplomacy so flawed that it is to be abandoned in favor of whipping up the discredited cycle of violent retribution? Take the U.S. for example.
Has our government's violent response to "terror", in Afghanistan or in Iraq, or by abondoning the "peace process" in the M.E., made us "safer", or wealthier? Are there less "terrorists today, that "hate us for our freedom", than there were in the autumn of 2001.

Can't we stop picking sides, stop the madness of the cycle of violence, and talk ourselves to death, face to face with our adversaries instead? It will happen anyway, but the question is, how many will die in vain before it falls to diplomats to attempt what could have been tried, all along? Empty finger pointing to justify killing that accomplishes nothing for those who allow themselves to be caught up in it, and escalate it, only obstructs the path to peace.

Taking "sides" is only useful if the plan is to exterminate all men of fighting age on the "other" side. Is that the plan?

I was curious in what information has led you to this conclusion.

Because Lebanon, who fought a very long and very bloody civil war, has never made ammends for the causes of the war.

They have a Constitutionally Split government, 60% Marionite Christian 40% Muslim according to the 1919 Census. The figures today, with the Palistinian fleeing and the effects of Black September put the population closer to 68% Muslim, 2% Druze, 30% Marionite Christian.

These are simply estimates, as the Marionite Christians refuse to allow more Census' because they would lose seats. It's a "form" of democracy, where the quotas are set by your religion. It worked well early on, but the rigidity left it open for Civil War.

The "government" wants Hezbolla out. By that I mean the 60% Marionite Christian government. However if they support Israel, which even the Christians hate, Civil War would undoubtably resurface.

It's hard for people to understand, I studied it for 3 semesters and I find it hard to explain, but absolutely nothing was changed at the end of the Civil war. There were no winners, no reforms followed, it just ended.

That left many, many, armed and highly trained militias after the war. Hezbolla was the only one who maintained and upgraded their training and arms afterwards. But because their aim, officially, was aimed at someone else the government was too tired and weak to do anything. Now, well, we'll have to see.

dlishsguy,

Thank you for asking about my family. They're still in Lebanon (I don't think they'll be leaving anytime soon). They're still in safe areas and I can still call them everyday (I can't reach them on their cell phones but the landlines still work) so I'm grateful for that.

Did your wife make it to Syria? I hope she's safe now.

Seaver:

The general content of your post is correct, but I thought I'd rectify some incorrect details:

The census was in 1932.
The parliament is now evenly divided between Christians and Muslims, and generally so is the Gov't. The ratio of Christians to Muslims in the parliament used to be 6 to 5, but it was changed to 1-1 after the war.
Druze make up more than 2% of the population (5 maybe?).
Both Christians (Maronite and others) and Sunni Muslims tend to be more politically opposed to Hezbollah, which is a Shia militia.

And yeah, the war just ended one day. General amnesty for everybody. The warlords of yesterday are the political leaders of today :P.

Thanks for the clearification Kts, I mistook the 1919 Census... the 1919 was Eygyptian. My fault... after reading through 8 different countries Census'.. well... they start to blend together. Lets just put it this way, if you ever have the bright idea of forming a large research paper supported by a populations' employment by what religion they adhear to... dont. It's a LONG process.. and you wont find many professors who'll translate the arabic required.

And as far as the Druze go, do 3% really matter? They're very much a minor minority. While their militias fought (arguably) more fiercely than any other, their size was a primary limiting factor. However they are extremely minor in comparison to the Marionite-Muslim factions.

And I never read anything about the 1-1 changes. Maybe I was simply relying on sources which were too old.

This article by an Israeli professor of political science (based in Tel Aviv) is quite interesting. It's taken from http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/742257.html, an Israeli newspaper. That's right, even some Israelis don't believe they have a moral high horse in this issue... would be nice to see more coverage like this in American newspapers.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...23714384920696

this is a good 1 hr 10 minute documentary that focusses on american media coverage of the israeli/palestinian conflict, and that offers the outline of an actual explanation for the appallingly one-sided view of this horrific conflict that is presented day in day out to televiewers of america.

it is well worth the time to watch.
it also explains how and why folk on either side of debate about israel's massacre of civilians in lebanon differ from each other--fundamentally different information.

7. What concessions of any sort has Hezbollah ever made in the interest of peace?

"Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man,
His enemies say he's on their land.
They got him outnumbered about a million to one,
He got no place to escape to, no place to run.
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He's criticized and condemned for being alive.
He's not supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick skin,
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land,
He's wandered the earth an exiled man.
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn,
He's always on trial for just being born.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized,
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad.
The bombs were meant for him.
He was supposed to feel bad.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he'll live by the rules that the world makes for him,
'Cause there's a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac.
He's the neighborhood bully.

He got no allies to really speak of.
What he gets he must pay for, he don't get it out of love.
He buys obsolete weapons and he won't be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, he's surrounded by pacifists who all want peace,
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease.
Now, they wouldn't hurt a fly.
To hurt one they would weep.
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Every empire that's enslaved him is gone,
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon.
He's made a garden of paradise in the desert sand,
In bed with nobody, under no one's command.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon,
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on.
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth,
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health.
He's the neighborhood bully.

What's anybody indebted to him for??
Nothin', they say.
He just likes to cause war.
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed,
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed.
He's the neighborhood bully.

What has he done to wear so many scars??
Does he change the course of rivers??
Does he pollute the moon and stars??
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill,
Running out the clock, time standing still,
Neighborhood bully."

-Bob Dylan, "Neighborhood Bully"

I'm glad Bob Dylan was able to chime in on this.

Maybe I should ask this: since the creation of the Israeli state after WWII, how many Israelis have died? And how many arabs have died? Now put thatr on a giant, depressing scale. I'm normally not a fan of moral equasions, but this one's a doozy.

willravel, you yourself have said that human life is important and precious, no matter what nationality that life is. what's the point of weighing the death tolls on scales if that's the case?

I dunno. I guess I was thinking outloud. Do you feel the same way? Do you believe that all human life and consciousness is such a mericle that to lose a life in an untimely mannor is a tragic loss on the scale of all humanty? Yes, I am indeed a bleeding heart liberal. Of course, being such a softy, I would like to explore the possibilities in saving life or avoiding untimely death. Let's say, for the sake of the discussion, that the ratio between the dead is 300:1 between Arab and Israeli deaths. Would that have meaning? Would that have bearing on the perceptions of the topic at hand?

The arguments about Israel and Arabs eventually seem to boil down to moral high ground (or apologism). I've seen quite a few people that *seem* to think that Israel can do no wrong. Maybe this is my perception, but when I try to take a centeralist stance on the subject of Israel and Palestine or Israel and other Arab nations, I am branded as a terrorist sympathizer or anti-semetic. That, of course, is silly. My wife is half jewish and I love her mother dearly. I would never condone the act of terrorism, no matter who carries it out. What this tells me is that if I am taking a centerist stance, and am being branded as being anti-semetic, then that means that those doing the accousing are apologists for whatever reason. "Israel can do no wrong" and all that jazz.

Maybe I should ask this: What could Israel do right now to arabs or Palestinains that would make you think that they were wrong (short of nuking them all)?

source: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/741795.html

this is an interesting perspective on things, dont you think?

just to let u guys know, my wife safely made it to damascus early friday morning and caught a flight to dubai the same day where she is currently staying for a few days.

i'd like to thank those who gave me support and had my family in their prayers. even though my wife and in laws are safe, my heart still bleeds for Lebanon. And honestly, it bleeds for Nth Israel too. it bleeds for any form on injustice against any people regardless of race, colour, religion or creed.

now for the remaining 11 family members still stuck there...

I find it fascinating that peeps here quote from israeli newspapers, which run editorials and articles against the war. Doesnt everybody wish the Arab countries would allow the same freedoms to any arab newspaper free from censorship?

Hey, what do you know, there is no such thing. Every arabic outlet I've read espouses hatred, injustice and vengeance against Israel and 'The West".
Does anybody really believe that that is what the individual arab person feels? I can only imagine that the individuals suffer because they have allowed their governments to be hijacked by (and i hate to use these terms because they are so broad) radicals, fundamentalist Islamists, who only care about killing and hate.

"There will be peace only when the Arabs start to love their children more than they hate the jews".

Israel is the only democracy surrounded by a sea of unilateral, fundamentalist Islamists/Monarchists. Does anybody dispute this statement?

Does anybody actually believe Israel WANTS to be at war???? That they want their sons and daughters to die in war??? If you do, you need psychological help and quickly. I'm jewish and i have two teenage boys. If we lived in Israel, the oldest would be in the IDF right now. What parent wants their child to die for something as stupid as this? Every day when I hear more young Israelis and arabs are getting killed, I die a little bit myself. I cant belive that arabic parents dont feel the same way. :confused:

Respect each other, leave each other alone, (mlitarilarly at least) and be done with it.

Forgot to mention one truly ironic and tragic fact. Iran, the primary backer of Hizbollah and all these other arabic 'radical' groups, are NOT EVEN ARABIC. They are persian/aryan.

Where are all the arabs helping broker some type of peace, or try to help Lebanon and Syria rid their countries of terrorist groups? Complete Silence.

Very sad.

mobo: you should watch this film for starters:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...23714384920696

then maybe we could start to have a conversation about this massacre in lebanon.

roachboy, i must ask. Are you jewish? Because if you arent, you dont, and absolutely cannot, understand how jews feel about war and how important Israel's survival is to the deepest part of the soul of every single jew.

I watched the video. Interesting. I found it upsetting to witness the misery the lebanese are going through. I also agree that two wrongs dont make a right.

However, all the videos in the world cannot describe and understand the jewish psyche and what it is to be jewish. Unless you are one, you can never understand what it feels like and what it is to be jewish to understand how jews truly believe that war is truly abhorrent.

Dont you believe that the killing of civilians is a sin and a crime? I agree it is.

However, when these groups hide among the civilians, what choice is there but to go where the militants and the arms caches are? Hezbollah is an extremely cynical and hypocritical group. They claim Israel is purposely murdering innocents. Israel has dropped thousands and thousands of leaflets begging the innocents to leave. Unfortunately, there is no place for these people to go. :(

Jews also know, implicitly, that the entire world hates the jews. Just look through history. From the inquisition in spain, to the pogroms throughout Europe, to the holocaust, the 1948 fight for independance, the six day war, etc etc etc. We know that and accept that. Why do you think Israel ignores the UN? Every single resolution that is submitted re" the middle east condemms Israel. So what else is new?

But most important, non-jews can never understand how important it is to be jewish and live free, free in our own country, free from attacks, free from being kicked around, free from pogroms, from being persecuted, murdered and massacred for 5,000 years.

Israel, just like the US, will lash out like the most violent beast there is to protect it's very survival. and that's what this is about. Survival. It's not about conquest, lebensraum or any other political bullshit term. It's survival. Period.

The arabs dont give a shit about their own people. If they did, their 'army's' woudnt hide among women and children for their own protection.

I dont believe that you can ever fully appreciate that. No criticism of you.

It's just that you've never lost family in the holocaust. I have. My entire family consists on one cousin living in Tel Aviv plus my parents and one brother. That's it. Everybody else was murdered in the camps.

A very cruel irony of this fact is that when i went for my physical exam. My doctor asked questions about family history (diabetes, etc etc). So I asked my mother. She said she didnt know because none of our family lived long enough to develop any of those diseases.

Once you understand that, then maybe, you could understand why Israel is doing what it is doing.

Last, the final tradegy is that there will be no winners after this episode winds down. The arabs will continue to hate the jews as fierce as ever. The world will continue to despise Israel despite whatever false words they utter in support of Israel.

Did you happen to catch the german PM, Merkel, come out in support of Israel? That made me laugh because at the same time, a neo-nazi group in Bavaria is parading around, supporting the arabs while claiming that Israel is the new hitler. That was amusing in a very sick sense.

So, this war will solve nothing, will prove nothing and will benefit nobody. It's a total clusterfuck.

She also stated "There was no such thing as Palestinians...
It was not as though there was a Palestinian People in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people, and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist."

Ironic; being a Ukrainian immigrant herself.

willravel, all I said was that life, whether it is one or one million, is important. so what is the point of weighing death tolls on imaginary scales if even one life is important. the rest of the post seems irrelevant.

mobo...

what happened to the jews is no excuse to what they are doing in lebanon. i feel that your post was there only to make us feel sorry for the past victimisation ofthe jews and how they deserve better and how they are 'hated by the rest of the world'. this is exactly what this whole conflict is about, trying to gain sympathy from the worlds media about who is the biggest victim in this whole thing. it happens in the jewish and arab media. period. you are just doing the same withouty being subjective. i could tell you that as a lebanese muslim how we went through hell in the civil war, how muslims have been treated unfairly all over the world..but i dont. lets just stick to the current facts, cos what hitler did 60 years ago is irrelevant in what is happening now. the only connection now is that the victim has become the oppressor.

oh yeah...just for your info..the spanish inquisition was targeted at jewish AND muslims there. lets not forget that the moors were driven from spain by queen isabella, in which the jews and muslims lived in relative harmony in a golden age of knowledge for both. so lets not victimise the jews.

one other thing... there is no 'army' fighting the jews (or hiding in civilian areas). just a bunch of rag tag hezbollah fighters. the lebanese army has reletively stayed on the sidelines in the conflict so far.

dlishsguy, i agree with you on the certain facts you raised. The inquisition was indeed persecuted aganst ANY non-catholic religion. That obviously includes muslims. I cant even speculate how many muslims were burned at the stake because they refused to renounce their solemm right to practice their religion of their own choosing.

But regarding my statement: My point is not to simply re-hash history and make people feel sorry for the jews. First and last, nobody is ever going to feel sorry for the jews. The German PM's word's carry as much weight as a fart in the wind. (sorry for the crude analogy).

I obviously missed that which you read, which stated that Israel has the right to run roughshod through Lebanon because of the horrible historical treatment of the jews.

My point is simply this: Survival. Period. End of story. Israel is surrounded by a sea of enemies. Thankfully, they have peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. As cruel as it seems and IS, Israel will do what they feel they must to survive in a world that wishes Israel doesnt exist.

and since we are sticking to current facts, remember, Israel didnt start this conflict. There wouldnt be a war had Hezbollah not kidnapped those soldiers, whom they still havent repatriated.

Had the soldiers not have been kidnapped, Israel would just be going through their normal daily routines. There would be an occasional rocket or three every day fired into Israel, just like every single country on this planet expects to happen daily in their own country; There would continue to be suicide bombers in pizza parlors and bars, shreddng and killing innocent civilians, just like every single country in the world expects to happen in their own country and so forth and so forth.

My point is that Israel isnt just a regular, everyday country. It is, for lack of a different or more apt term, chosento suffer these atrocities. and why? 5000 years of hatred, jealousy, extremism, sectarianisms, fundamentalism, and 'ism' after 'ism' you can think of.

Israel is going anywhere, and that's what drives the extremists crazy. The average arab person just wants to live, feed their kids and lead a normal life. But, as i said before, they have let their countries be hijacked by these 'organisations' that seek to destroy not just Israel but their own country. When, by god, or Allah, will they realise that?

If you could think of a way to negotiate a lasting and REAL peace between Israel and all it's neighbors, including that maniac in Iran, I will personally nominate you for the Nobel Peace Prize.

On a side note, you, being muslim and me, jewish, both must laugh at these christian fundamentalists who support Israel to the end of the world. Does anybody actually believe fundamentalist christians give a damm about the jews? Not for a second. Their rationale is that by keeping the jews in charge of Jerusalem, Muslims wont come in and bar Christians from visiting the birthplace of jesus. F.C's are scared to death that if Muslims take over control of Jersulem, they will stand by their pledge that ONLY muslims will be allowed in. That's the sole and only reason F.C's support Israel. It's certainly not out of love or care for the jews. :icare:

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This is a post I found from a member of a different board I am part of. He is lebanese christian and has an interesting perspective. I wont try to correct his english because he makes his points perfectly.

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ok lemme try to break this down to you.. because noone here really knows whats going on in lebanon cause non of u lived or live their... well at least non that are speaking so..
anyway, lebanon IS capable of taking out hizballah.sure, hizbalah are very strong now, just as they were 20 years ago.
now, what i mean by are capable is this
Lebanon has its own militias. Many of them, but there is only 1 extremely powerful militia. its called the uwait.
i was part of the uwait 20 years ago, and we faught against hizbllah and themuslim population to keep our country. the uwait is extremely strong, it consists of 32 groups of 150-250 men. All of us who are in the uwait.. some call it mgaweer are skilled with almost every weapon, and we get our weapons from america
now 20 years ago we had to fight of the muslim population and we suceeded, we ended the war pretty much, driving them to the south and west.. Now we can do it again, the uwait is still a very strong militia, but its all behind the lebanese president, and other people in power. See they dont want to fight off hizballah, they are the only reason that they are in power and they want to stay that way..
they are also scared for their life, because if they give the militia the go, yhe will be killed
so the bottom line is.. lebanon is capable of getting hizballah out, but dont want them out........ at least the people in power

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He also said this about the relationship between the lebanese christians and muslims:

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yes they have hated each other... heck the land is split into sections
for eample, if any christian was to go to dahye he would be killed. and if any muslim would go to deir el qamar he would also be killed.. but most other parts muslims and chrisitan leave together peacfully, like in beirut.
most arab muslims and chrisitians have always hated each other, and always will, but that doesnt mean the whole country should suffer for hizballah mistake..



My opinion? Lebanon is a total clusterfuck. :| The christians hate the muslims, the muslims hate the christians and everybody hates the jews. :rolleyes:

I alternate, in the course of what I find in my researching reports on the current, "out of control", Israel/Lebanon/Palestinian/U.S./U.K./Iraq "situation" in the M.E., of trying to surpress, alternately, and sometimes....even simultaneous....an urge to scream, or to laugh uncontrolably.....

Once, upon a time....there was a guy, Wayne White, at the State Dept., where he worked as State's chief inteligence expert on Iraq. I detailed his middle east expertise here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...73&postcount=2

Mr. White has an impressive background; he seems qualified to reliably say:
Now....a challenge to any of you folks who support Mr. Bush. I'm assuming that, if you read Wayne White's answer, above, regarding Sec. of State Rice's efforts at diplomacy....can anyone read the following Q&A, and then watch the 90 second video of it, and tell us your version of what the fuck it was the Mr. Bush had to say....in response to David Gregory's simple question?
You can watch the 90 second video of the above "exchange", here:
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Bus...ir-7-28-06.wmv

IMO, 30 percent of the world's petroleum is supplied by the M.E. region. The region is currently descending into escalating violence/chaos, and the U.S., formerly looked at and listened to as the diplomatic arbiter that could subdue violent exchanges between the regional "players" and get the parties talking to each other, instead of shooting, <b>has lost both the will and the ability to lower tensions, or be respected as a fair and trustworthy arbiter by anyone, except the Israelis.</b>
The increased chaos and the loss of U.S. influence in containing it, will support an uncertainty premium on petroleum prices, at minimum, and possibly interrupt supply. <b>In addition to the higher costs of petroleum:</b>
So far, I wonder <b>what</b> the folks who backed the invasion of Iraq, the "reality" of Iraqi WMD, the GWOT, and the Bush encouraged, at least since 2003;total support for anything Israel decides to do, diplomatically and militarily, regarding it's neighbors, <b>have assessed correctly.</b>

None of these policies.....WMD or Democratization "justified" invasion and occupation of Iraq, or the 2002 shift in focus and military presence from Afghanistan to Iraq, or the unequivocal U.S. support for Israel, have been in the national interest of the U.S. Time is beginning to reveal both the costs and the "results" of these M.E./GWOT policies.

<b>IMO, David Gregory asked a simple question to Mr. Bush, on behalf of all of us.......</b>

]

p.s. need i send you my details for the nobel prize?

/Sigh....

There were many violent attacks against the Jews in Spain during and after the reconquest. The Inquisition was not aimed at non-Christians, believe it or not they were left primarily alone. It was aimed at Christians who did not adhear closely to dogmatic tradition.

People who had recently converted with the reconquest, old Muslims and Jews who threw thier hat in with the new conquerors and converted. The purpose was that they carried along with them too many "heretical" traditions and faiths.

The violence towards the Jews were by Muslims and Christians, however by different reasons. The Attacks in Cordoba were because the Muslims saw the Jews gaining too much power in a state that was crumbling. Therefore the Jews were responsible for the crumbling power and caused the weeks of attacks.

Christians had rumors that Jews would steal and crusify Christian babies, so these would erupt in riots that would kill the jews. But the institutionalized slaughter of jews by the Inquisition is a myth.

ok i was just watching an interview with thomas friedman, writer of From Beirut to Jeruslaem. Thomas Friedman, as you may or may not know, is a decorated New York Times columnist and he has great kowledge of the middle east, spending many years there since the 80s or so. he said that he was in syria talking to three journalists. one wanted the complete destruction of israel. the other, as he put it, got a "buzz" from watching hezbollah fight israel. the final journalist said that hezbollah and nasrallah is a menace. three verying opinions. then he commented that too many people in the arab world get the same buzz as the second reporter and have similar hopes as the first reporter and that they need to get over it. he said there will be no new middle east when people like Rafik Hariri, who in my opinion was one of the most progressive and hopeful minds in the middle east, get assassinated and "old-timers" liek nasrallah keep their shit up. he said that these people need to get over their hate and idea of destruction (both ideological and physical) destruction of israel and concentrate on building and moving forward. he also said that the cycle of violence needs to stop because all it does is continue this pattern.

then earlier in the day, i saw comments from the ambrassador of lebanon to the U.S. say that Nasrallah has his respect and the president of lebanon himself has said he holds nasrallah in high regards and that he upholds "arab honor" in the middle east. this is exactly what Friedman was saying. they need to let go of this hope of trying to regain arab honor and to bounce back from what many arabs se as humiliation after losing wars to israel and concentrate on building up. what has been going on in the middle east clearly doesn't work, so it's time for a change.

he then made a commentary on India, a country that has the second most muslims in the world. after the bombings in mumbai weeks ago, he showed how calm india was. why? because india concentrates on building up. they have a muslim president. their leading movie actress is muslim. the richest computer software developer in the country is muslim. in my opinion, thomas friedman knows his stuff.

Nirvana, I agree totally with what you said. But there is that question you and everybody have raised: How the hell do we stop this blind, institutional hatred? How do we stop the killing and bring about a lasting peace among people, neighbors and co-workers, actually, who learn in school to hate?

Has anything ever been done to rid the world of those schools, those Madrassa's (I hope i am spelling that correctly). Instistutional hatred starts very young with arabic children.

Seaver, you're facts are indeed correct. I didnt go into great detail about the inquisition. I could have because my family was orginially from spain but fled because of the inquisition. My family migrated first to greece for about 300 years and then settled in Bulgaria, which is where my father is from. My mother's family had been settled in Vienna for hundreds of years. Not a really healthy place to be a jew in the 1930's.


dlishsguy- send me your addy and i'll forward it to Oslo for consideration. :thumbsup: But seriously, Israel's killing of the innocent children tears at me horribly. Why? first, it's tragic to the extreme. Second, that is NOT how jews think or wish to act. Killing is breaking one of the ten commandmants. Not a good thing. Remember what i said earlier; There is nothing more painful to a jewish parent than the loss of his/her child. Personally, I would choose my own death if it would protect my children if such a situation arose.

Why cant arab's feel the same way? Why cant hezbollah respect their own countrymen, their own people, their own neighbors? Why do they allow such brutalities to occur to their own people?

Ok, you say hizbollah is a rag tag army. Get them all together, get them away from all civilians and then have at it. That's one solution. But they will never do it. They prefer screaming headlines, "Israel bombs mosques', "Israel bombs house with children in it".

You talked about Israel trying to play the high road, using the past injustices as a means for this onslaught. But what do you call how hizbollah operates? They know they are going to be attacked but they choose to hide with the very youngest and oldest, the most vulnerable. So, who's the culpable party here? Who's is trying to play the media here?

God, i wish we had some answers. :(

But Israel explained what they did what they did last night. That area was filled with arms, militants, etc etc etc. I have no idea if this is true or if it just propoganda. I can only hope and pray that the latter is true. Otherwise, it's just state-sanctioned murder. Israel was NOT built to allow that.

I know that this is horrible. How can anyone deny it? On the surface, the wanton destruction of Lebanese infrastructure is insane. But when you look at it from a miliatary and political view, it makes sense. For thousands of years, armys/countries at war have always destroyed civilian's as a means to force their gov't to try to stop whatever conflict/war that was going on. Perfect example: Sherman's march to Atlanta. The union soldiers burned, stole, murdered, raped and pillaged their way through the south, leaving nothing left.

Israel is doing the same thing but, sadly, tragically, that strategy wont have the same effect. The intensity of the arabic hatred is only rising. Hatred of Israel is at an all time high, if that is even possible. So, current Israeli strategy is not even close to being in the best interests of Israel. :(

I just wish someone, anyone, knew and could implement a permanent, rationale, working solution. I just dont know if it could ever happen.

But what else can Israel do? How can they stop these militants from attacking Israel whenever and whereever they want? I dont mean to sound mean or vindictive but do YOU have an answer on how to stop these daily attacks?

Diishguy, you failed to answer one issue i raised. Prior to this war, the daily rocket attacks, the suicide bombers. How many countries on this planet have to deal with that every day? In your case, what would John Howard and the aussie govt. do if Australia was attacked every single day by a foreign country or foreign extremists? I doubt they would just throw another shrimp on the barbie.

Got a destabalized and still deteriorating M.E. region on our hands here, with no inclination to even call for a cease fire, or any influence to broker one, even if the will in the U.S. existed to do so????

It is telling, that.....on a politics forum with a primarily U.S. membership, there is no will to discuss the politics and policy failures that are the root cause of the descent into violence in the M.E.

Israel has so successfully achieved it's goal of unilateral U.S. support, that it's leadershp apparently saw no need to consult with the U.S. before destroying the runways at the Beirut airport, cutting off the possibility of a low risk and timely evacuation of any of the 25,000 Americans in Lebanon, at the time, who might decide to leave after hostilities commenced.

Thomas Friedman and most other posters are either "missing the boat", or are avoiding admitting what has actually happened in the M.E. In my last post, I demonstrated that at least one white house correspondent asked the right question, but got no coherent answer from the POTUS, so he asked again:
With a U.S. V.P. from "JINSA", a U.S. "recess appointed" ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, on record as believing that <b>"Israel should insist on Arab recognition of its claim to the biblical land of Israel,"</b>, and the POTUS himself, reported as <b>"Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical On Mideast Policy""</b>, for Israel, the current <b>"the loss of American influence in the region."</b>, is a:
I sense my own level of anger at this administration and horror over the obviously avoidable violence. If I was an M.E. Muslim or a person of any faith living now in Lebanon Gaza, or in Iraq, I would not be inclined to sit with and sip tea with the NY Time's Thomas Friedman!

In the many times I've been there I was treated politely by both Palestinians and Israelis. It was unusual seeing pretty 18 y/o girls with automatic weapons strap to their backs (Israeli settlers), but no one was rude. Most of the people around Bethlehem were Palestinian, and everyone was extremely polite. I Understand the Crusades happend because of the Fatimid prohibition of Christian pilgrimages, but is that the stance presently? I searched the net trying to find where more about what you stated referencing Palestinians would not allow others into Jerusalem. Could you provide a link from a neutral source? There are also Palestinians that are Christians as well.

Many of the times I went was spent helping an archeologist dig and do research. An unexpected conclusion I arrived at is the Israelis are looking for the Ark of the Convenant. Alot of where their primary attention for digging is below Dome of the Rock, whether the Arabs like it or not.

In my opinion one of the main areas of fury is the use of temporary fencing. The plastic make-shift material. An obvious problem lies ahead for Palestinians and Israelis living side by side; especially in the West Bank. Currently, when an Israeli settler that has immigrated from literally anywhere in the world decides they want to expand their property they move the fence over absorbing property that is Arab owned. The courts are obviously going to be biased. So if the Arab defends his land by any other means, they are considered a terrorist.

I know there are extremists on both sides. Each stating that the entire land is rightfully theirs. There was a time that Israel respected the UN; namely when it was recognizing it's statehood. At the same time the West Bank and Gaza was mandated to a majority of the indigenous population. Its from that period of time to the war that most seem to overlook. The terrorism and the motivation behind it happening then, fuels very much of what's happening now. Who is doing it has changed.

in my opinion, the israeli army is not doing exactly what sherman was. if that was the case, lebanon would be in a much worse state. any military operation is going to be difficult when the enemy hides within civilian homes and territories. israel tried to limit casualties by dropping leaflets into areas that were going to be hit. how succesful that is, who knows. while i don;t beleive this military campaign will be too successful because to win you have to keep face and to be honest, it looks like no one wins here.

host, if you weren't able tot ell from my post, im rehashing what he said in an interview. i though you might be able to tell that it was based off one interview where he answered questions that he was asked. those were the answers and i posted them on here in a short summary. so i don't know what your post has to do with mine because they are adressing different things.

P.S. no one isn't arguing that JINSA isn't shit so a reference to JINSA doesnt address what I said.

Funny you should mention that. I would hope that most people would believe that Canadians are neutral observers of this situation and would tend towards believing this report rather than casting it aside.

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/...9-7f94d5fc6d50

Hezbollah was using UN post as 'shield'
Canadian wrote of militia's presence, 'necessity' of bombing

The words of a Canadian United Nations observer written just days before he was killed in an Israeli bombing of a UN post in Lebanon are evidence Hezbollah was using the post as a "shield" to fire rockets into Israel, says a former UN commander in Bosnia.

Those words, written in an e-mail dated just nine days ago, offer a possible explanation as to why the post -- which according to UN officials was clearly marked and known to Israeli forces -- was hit by Israel on Tuesday night, said retired Maj.-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie yesterday.

The strike hit the UN observation post in the southern Lebanese village of El Khiam, killing Canadian Maj. Paeta Hess-von Kruedener and three others serving as unarmed UN military observers in the area.

Just last week, Maj. Hess-von Kruedener wrote an e-mail about his experiences after nine months in the area, words Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie said are an obvious allusion to Hezbollah tactics.

"What I can tell you is this," he wrote in an e-mail to CTV dated July 18. "We have on a daily basis had numerous occasions where our position has come under direct or indirect fire from both (Israeli) artillery and aerial bombing.

"The closest artillery has landed within 2 meters (sic) of our position and the closest 1000 lb aerial bomb has landed 100 meters (sic) from our patrol base. This has not been deliberate targeting, but rather due to tactical necessity."

Those words, particularly the last sentence, are not-so-veiled language indicating Israeli strikes were aimed at Hezbollah targets near the post, said Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie.

"What that means is, in plain English, 'We've got Hezbollah fighters running around in our positions, taking our positions here and then using us for shields and then engaging the (Israeli Defence Forces)," he said.

That would mean Hezbollah was purposely setting up near the UN post, he added. It's a tactic Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie, who was the first UN commander in Sarajevo during the Bosnia civil war, said he's seen in past international missions: Aside from UN posts, fighters would set up near hospitals, mosques and orphanages.

A Canadian Forces infantry officer with the Edmonton-based Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and the only Canadian serving as a UN military observer in Lebanon, Maj. Hess-von Kruedener was no stranger to fighting nearby.

The UN post, he wrote in the e-mail, afforded a view of the "Hezbollah static positions in and around our patrol Base."

"It appears that the lion's share of fighting between the IDF and Hezbollah has taken place in our area," he wrote, noting later it was too dangerous to venture out on patrols.

The e-mail appears to contradict the UN's claim there had been no Hezbollah activity in the vicinity of the strike.

The question of Hezbollah's infiltration of the area is significant because UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, speaking Tuesday just hours after the bombing, accused the Israelis of the "apparently deliberate targeting" of the base near Khiam in southern Lebanon.

A senior UN official, asked about the information contained in Maj. Hess-von Kruedener's e-mail concerning Hezbollah presence in the vicinity of the Khiam base, denied the world body had been caught in a contradiction.

"At the time, there had been no Hezbollah activity reported in the area," he said. "So it was quite clear they were not going after other targets; that, for whatever reason, our position was being fired upon.

"Whether or not they thought they were going after something else, we don't know. The fact was, we told them where we were. They knew where we were. The position was clearly marked, and they pounded the hell out of us."

Even if Hezbollah was not firing rockets at the time of the bombing, Maj. Hess-von Kruedener's e-mail indicates they were using a terrorist tactic of purposely drawing out enemy forces near a neutral site, said retired Capt. Peter Forsberg, who did two UN tours between 1993 and 1995 during the Bosnian war.

The UN's limited mandate, meaning that its observers are unarmed and have few options, put the observers in a poor position, he said.

If indeed Israel was attempting to hit Hezbollah fighters in the area, it hasn't yet used the excuse to explain its actions because it wouldn't make it any less guilty in the world's eyes, Capt. Forsberg said.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2006

First, as a follow up to my last post, former U.S. treasury secretary Paul O'Neill may not have realized the impact of what he revealed 2-1/2 years ago, in the book he published about the time he spent in the Bush cabinet. His description of Bush declaring, in the first national security meeting of his presidency, that the M.E. peace process would be abandoned, in favor of a "tilt back toward Israel". The repurcussions of this "tilt" in U.S. policy, described in Bush's rambling, disconnected answer to news reporter Gregory's question, detailed in my last post, have resulted in the irrelevancy of the U.S. in the current conflict between Israel and it's neighbors, and gradually, in Iraq, as well:
.....and Mobo123, please provide one link to a MSM report that supports what you claim Christian Zionism to be motivated by:
That description seems to be a poorly written cover story for the actual F.C. "madness", quite pervasive goals of "using" the Israelis to bring about the conditions the F.C. believe are necessary to "trigger" their own rapture, and the destruction of most everyone else in the world, including most of the Israelis who they are "using"!
All nuts....IMO, all very dangerous....and all are indistinguishable from the religious fanatic,
Iran's Ahmadinejad. "Our" fanatics now have many millions of followers who "vote", and they have the ear of the POTUS and half of congress. They intend to "side" with Israel, use the Israelis and rise to heaven to sit at the "right hand of god", and watch as all but 144,000 of the world
s Jews are incinerated. This is serious business. Pastor Hagee has made 23 visits to Israel, and Ted Haggard presides over the "National Association of Evangelicals", and recently built his own mega congregation, from scratch, into an 11,000 member, "worship center", in Colorado Springs, directly across from the U.S. Air Force Academy, which, not coincidentally, seems to have become a recent bastion, itself, of Christian Fundamentalist influence.

Rapture was the term i was searching for. I coudlnt remember it.

But i am lost by your message. 144,000 F.C's people will ascend to heaven while the rest of us die horribly? Is that what the Rapture says?

Has anything ever been done to rid the world of those schools, those Madrassa's (I hope i am spelling that correctly). Instistutional hatred starts very young with arabic children.


yes quite a lot has been done to moderate madrassas after 911. especially in pakistan where the taliban first emerged. i dont think that your comment about institutionalisation of 'arabic children' is acturate at all. all kids are impressionable and many teachers with agendas will teach their pupils what they believe is truth. be it muslim jew christian agnostic gay and lesbian leftist communist buddhist hindu animist...need i go on.

my point? its not just arabic kids being brainwashed. i was brainwashed as a kid when i went to school here in australia. they kept telling me how brave and righteous our soldiers were in gallipoli..yes they were brave. it was only later when i read into it that i realised that the world war wasnt righteous at all.. does that mean that aussie kids are institutionalised and hate all things foreign? sure, its one sided, but lets not generalise that arab kids are taught hate at a young age. the same could be said about every other race religion or creed.

dlishsguy- send me your addy and i'll forward it to Oslo for consideration.

ill send it in private msg... just dont pass it on to mossad

But seriously, Israel's killing of the innocent children tears at me horribly. Why? first, it's tragic to the extreme. Second, that is NOT how jews think or wish to act. Killing is breaking one of the ten commandmants. Not a good thing. Remember what i said earlier; There is nothing more painful to a jewish parent than the loss of his/her child. Personally, I would choose my own death if it would protect my children if such a situation arose.


killing innocent civilians isnt sanctioned by islam either contrary to what many may believe. theres a verse in the koran that states that if you kill someone, it is like you have killed all of humanity. that is the importance that islam puts on human life.
Why cant arab's feel the same way? Why cant hezbollah respect their own countrymen, their own people, their own neighbors? Why do they allow such brutalities to occur to their own people?

like i said in an earlier post.. they're nutcases. simple. they dont have the support of most of the lebanese, but with continued bombings, israel only strengthens the resolve of hezbollah. people dont see hezbollah as their champions, but they'd arther side with hezbollah rather than a neighbour thats bombing the crap out of them.
Ok, you say hizbollah is a rag tag army. Get them all together, get them away from all civilians and then have at it. That's one solution. But they will never do it. They prefer screaming headlines, "Israel bombs mosques', "Israel bombs house with children in it".

like i said..both sides are sensationalists. ive been reading both sides of the news. in israeli news only stoires of grief in haifa.. in arabic news only stories of grief in lebanon. get my drift? the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

You talked about Israel trying to play the high road, using the past injustices as a means for this onslaught. But what do you call how hizbollah operates? They know they are going to be attacked but they choose to hide with the very youngest and oldest, the most vulnerable. So, who's the culpable party here? Who's is trying to play the media here?

of course they are playing the media. but israel helps them achieve their goals when you kill 60 odd lebanese in a single bombing.
God, i wish we had some answers.

just a question..why didnt you say G_d? just curious...

But Israel explained what they did what they did last night. That area was filled with arms, militants, etc etc etc. I have no idea if this is true or if it just propoganda. I can only hope and pray that the latter is true. Otherwise, it's just state-sanctioned murder. Israel was NOT built to allow that.

ive heard a few stories now..israel is saying hizbollah may have bombed it themselves, and if hizbollah didnt bomb it themselves then they are to blame anyways cos they started this thing. barely logical.

Quote:
see..most lebanese are sick of war. as you'd know they are still recovering from war. so to 'rock the boat' so to speak and plummet the country back another 50 years is ok by some in the west. but we realllly dont need that now. within 3 weeks we have taken lebanon back 20 years now.



I know that this is horrible. How can anyone deny it? On the surface, the wanton destruction of Lebanese infrastructure is insane. But when you look at it from a miliatary and political view, it makes sense. For thousands of years, armys/countries at war have always destroyed civilian's as a means to force their gov't to try to stop whatever conflict/war that was going on. Perfect example: Sherman's march to Atlanta. The union soldiers burned, stole, murdered, raped and pillaged their way through the south, leaving nothing left.

Israel is doing the same thing but, sadly, tragically, that strategy wont have the same effect. The intensity of the arabic hatred is only rising. Hatred of Israel is at an all time high, if that is even possible. So, current Israeli strategy is not even close to being in the best interests of Israel.


couldnt have said it any better myself. pillaging is definately not the way to go when the worlds media is watching. israel and the USA has lost a lot of supporters in the last 3 weeks i must say. especially crucial arab support among allied arab nations.


I just wish someone, anyone, knew and could implement a permanent, rationale, working solution. I just dont know if it could ever happen.

are you questioning my nobel prize?
But what else can Israel do? How can they stop these militants from attacking Israel whenever and whereever they want? I dont mean to sound mean or vindictive but do YOU have an answer on how to stop these daily attacks?

yeah..its called an immediate ceasefire. israel is by far more superior in every sense of the word. does that firepower scare hizbollah fighters in taking up arms? or alqaeda fighters taking up arms against the coalition forces? or why palestinian youths throw stones at israeli armoured tank? no. you ask why? most of these fighters have nothing to lose. so if a condition was created where these people had something to live for, im more than certain that they would come to the party. i read a book by karen armstrong called 'the battle for god' which looks at religious fundamentalism. im sure most of you should know who she is. it'd recommend it to anyone.

Diishguy, you failed to answer one issue i raised. Prior to this war, the daily rocket attacks, the suicide bombers. How many countries on this planet have to deal with that every day? In your case, what would John Howard and the aussie govt. do if Australia was attacked every single day by a foreign country or foreign extremists? I doubt they would just throw another shrimp on the barbie.


well.. i thank god that i live in a country that shares no borders. though i think aussies are scared shitless that if one day indonesia decided to attack, we'd be finished, hence our strong alliance and unquestionable allegiancy with the USA. indonesia being a muslim country..and myself being a muslim. if they attacked, i know i'd be fighting for my country...after we're done with indonesia, we'd throw a shrimp on the barbie


just a question though..how do arabs living in haifa feel about being bombed?



Quote:
Originally Posted by Nirvana
ok i was just watching an interview with thomas friedman, writer of From Beirut to Jeruslaem. Thomas Friedman, as you may or may not know, is a decorated New York Times columnist and he has great kowledge of the middle east, spending many years there since the 80s or so. he said that he was in syria talking to three journalists. one wanted the complete destruction of israel. the other, as he put it, got a "buzz" from watching hezbollah fight israel. the final journalist said that hezbollah and nasrallah is a menace. three verying opinions. then he commented that too many people in the arab world get the same buzz as the second reporter and have similar hopes as the first reporter and that they need to get over it. he said there will be no new middle east when people like Rafik Hariri, who in my opinion was one of the most progressive and hopeful minds in the middle east, get assassinated and "old-timers" liek nasrallah keep their shit up. he said that these people need to get over their hate and idea of destruction (both ideological and physical) destruction of israel and concentrate on building and moving forward. he also said that the cycle of violence needs to stop because all it does is continue this pattern.

then earlier in the day, i saw comments from the ambrassador of lebanon to the U.S. say that Nasrallah has his respect and the president of lebanon himself has said he holds nasrallah in high regards and that he upholds "arab honor" in the middle east. this is exactly what Friedman was saying. they need to let go of this hope of trying to regain arab honor and to bounce back from what many arabs se as humiliation after losing wars to israel and concentrate on building up. what has been going on in the middle east clearly doesn't work, so it's time for a change.


this whole shit is too detailed to go into, but the crux of it is this..british colonialism in the arab world fucked everything up. double dealing and installing puppet regimes that could fall over any minute without the help of the USA. the lebanese system is no different.

Right now i'm too tired to write a lucid reply. It's almost 2:00am for me and i have to be up and at work by 8:00am.

But one last queston for tonight: What would australia do if indonesia was attacked daily by some fanatical group? Please answer that. I'll read your answer as well as your previous response in a more in-depth form from my office.

night, guys. :)

Thank you for asking, Mobo123. This ignorant, U.S. based, religious fundamentalism is the driving political influence behind the U.S. administration's policy shift that has facilitated Israel's "new dominance" in the U.S./Israeli M.E. "alliance", that has destroyed any ability for the U.S. to quickly bring about a cease fire.....to "muzzle" Israel, as it always quickly did, before the Bush administration changed everything. Note in my last post, that the "shift toward Israel", according to Paul O'Neill and others interviewed by author Ron Suskind, was not influenced by "9/11". Bush announced the new "no peace", "hands off" policy, on Jan. 30, 2001, more than 8 months before 9/11.

There is no way to know what the true influence on the Bush "shift", can be attributed to Cheney, Bolton, and Feith's involvement in JINSA, or the influence of the PNAC folks who were welcomed into the Bush administration in 2001.

Here is a briefing for you, Mobo123. I can't say that Bush believes this crap, but he responds to it, and he is advised how to mine these sentiments for votes and contributions. His M.E. foreign policies couldn't be more in synch with the "goals" of the "believers", than if they wrote the policies for him.
Scottish "promoter" John Darby, inspired by the 1830 "visions" of a 15 year old girl named Macdonald, influenced Scofield, the founder of the Dallas Theological Seminary. Many of the most prominent southern U.S. pastors were schooled there, and now this delusional belief system has a lock on southern baptists, and many other evangelical sects.......
...and for the record...I believe that a more plausible approach to all of this, is to embrace the traditional interpretation: (Jesus was speaking of these things circa 30 AD, and the second temple, rebuilt by King Herod, was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, in the apostles' generation. It has never been rebuilt...)

Host, i read your reply with great interest. Do these F.C.'s REALLY believe in this religion crap? Are they truly serious? It is so far fetched, it sounds like L. Ron Hubbard wrote it.

Which brings me to this question: Who DID write this section of bible? From what i remember, the Bible wasnt 'faxed' down from heaven. What lunatic wrote this stuff? :confused:

Are people really so naive, or so desparate or just so plain dumb that they take this stuff as truth? Wow. :eek:

Mobo, I'll take this chance to answer your questions, since I spent a good part of my life as an evangelical Christian. ("Spent" is the key word... I don't run with that crowd any longer.)

Yes, FC's (as you call them) REALLY do believe in that religion crap (as you call it). I lived and breathed Revelation (the last book of the Bible, predicting Armageddon) and all of the other books as well... that's a requirement for being a card-carrying evangelical. And I wasn't a Southern Baptist or anything of the sort... I was a confirmed Lutheran, and spent my college years at a Free Methodist university.

As for who wrote that section of the Bible... well, Host quoted from Matthew, so that is one of the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), written by the people they are named for. Revelation, which contains all the apocalyptic stuff, is accredited to John. He is supposed to have received a vision when he was on the island of Patmos, and hence the book of Revelation.

As for people being naive, desperate, and/or dumb... well, that's quite a jump to make. For myself, I had specific cultural, psychological, and other contextual reasons for being very religious, and none of them included being naive, desperate, or dumb. I wouldn't label any of my friends who are still "in the fold" with those adjectives. And yet, it does make you wonder. What IS this beast known as American Protestant (particularly evangelical) Christianity? What makes it interesting is that it occurs among one of the most highly educated and most wealthy populations in the world... and it simply won't go away.

I don't have an answer for you on the last one... that's for another thread's discussion. But I hope I have illuminated something of the movement from the inside out.

Let me try to answer this delicately, if a bit oversimplified...
Would you call a vegitarian niave, desperate or dumb? It's a lifestyle choice you might not necessarily agree with, and you, personally, may think that it doesn't make sense from a scientific standpoint (we are designed to be omnivores, after all, deriving sustenence like protien from meat)....but who is it hurting? And before you answer with some political belief of group, bear in mind that there have always been conservatives and liberals, always people who are or aren't suceptible to influence.

/end threadjack

Who is it hurting? That's a tough question. I dont know. :confused: It doesnt hurt me or mine personally. It's just, for me, at least, way too bizarre and so based in fantasy, it's just hard to believe that normal, smart people could believe this stuff.

Faith and spirituality are wonderful. Religion is a bane. This is all for another thread, though. Israel has agreed to a 48 hour cease fire. Let's hope it not only lasts the 48 hours, but maybe indefinitely.

Well, that was the fastest 48 hours i've ever seen. Both sides are at it again. :|

It often amazes me that people honestly believe that we are simply a fluke, that everything we are and have made is simply a mistake when sludge somehow came alive. That normal, smart people could believe something in which no person in history has been able to describe how simple molecules become alive.

Ok, so I believe in evolution. But take the same microscope to yourself before you apply it to others.

Can you mathematically explain why a lightswitch works instantaniously while electrons go only inches per second? I can, but most people only know that when they hit the switch the light turns on. Can you mathematically explain how your computer turns electrisity into pulses and then into the information that allows you to communicate with the rest of us? Or do you just believe that if everything is right that you will be able to do it?

Religion is simply this on a universal level. That there are things we will never understand exactly how it works, but our belief is that there is good out there. And that good out there is stronger than evil, and we will be rewarded for being good.

I dont understand how normal, smart people would want to believe that stuff.

how strange that a thread on the ongoing israeli massacre of civilians in lebanon gets diverted onto a debate about religion. seems to mirror the general nature of the idiotic "debates" that attempt to reduce the conflict to yet another instance of some imaginary eternal conflict between jews and muslims...blah blah blah, explaining nothing, contextualizing nothing, throwing up your hands rather than trying to understand, its always the same, nothing to be done kill them all let god sort em out.

i am also not convinced of the utility of linking the bush administration's loathesome actions relative to this conflict to any set of far right protestant millenarian ideologies--you could also link it to incomptence--you could link it to the ongoing refusal of the neocon cadre within the administration to face reality (demonstrated by their having used the SAME LOGIC to rationalize standing by and watching a mssacre as that used to rationalize triggering a civil war in iraq)--you could link it to good old fashioned american racism deployed in a western film mode--the function of arab women and children is to die in great anonymous numbers--the heroic American Destiny unfolds across piles of anonymous bodies, less than human, less than us--History Will Absolve Us--see we pay for films that absolve us---we pay for press that absolves us----we are absolution itself----we forgive us...

what seems to me to emerge through the exercize in sustained foulness that is the bush administration is a requirement for some type of systemic reform that would enable votes of no confidence that would bring down a government as a function of ongoing ineptness rather than waiting for freedom to burst out one day every four years.

if there was a god who watched over the united states in particular, she is apparently on vacation. perhaps she is embarrassed by the idiocy of those who speak in her name. who knows. maybe she doesnt exist.

To address this briefly: please see my previous post. I was a hard-core evangelical for a long time. I walked away, consciously but with great sorrow. I am no less of a person for doing so, and I do not believe those who remain evangelical are any less of people for staying there. That was my point.

In any case, this is not the thread to start talking about the miracles of nature; we're talking about effing Hezbollah and Israel bombing each other to shit, for crying out loud. If you want to translate that into good vs. evil, so be it. But take it to Philosophy or something. This is not the forum to haul out personal moralities based on religious interpretation.

/threadjack.

Well roachboy, I'd have to say that I pretty much agree 100% with you here. You said it beautifully. And yet... has any country been able to avoid getting blood on its hands, at some point in history? Are there completely "innocent" countries anywhere on earth? Every nation takes part in a kind of collective 1984... and yet, we Americans seem especially skilled at doing so.

Sometimes I think it would be better if we weren't so good at forgiving ourselves... look at Germany, how 60 years after their own collective sins against humanity, they still labor to forgive themselves. They never destroyed Dachau, never tried to lift the burden of that sin on their land and history... to me, that is the responsible thing to do. It doesn't change the past, but at least the responsible parties own up and admit they were wrong. They keep a long memory of their own guilt... quite the opposite from American consciousness of our actions, both domestic and international. The sad thing is, most Americans are not even aware of our guilt, our complicity. I don't know if that will ever change.

/another threadjack?

Abaya my post was never directed at you. Sorry for the confusion.

Yes.

If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence.

If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.

Here is the quote that I posted the challenge about, magictoy, please highlight the lines in Bush's answer to Gregory's question that support what you posted. I don't see anything that could be interpreted as "If.....put down their weapons today.... My point was that Bush gave an incoherent answer to Gregory's simple question.....Gregory asked it again, after receiving a rambling and incoherent reply, and, if you click on the link and read the whole text.....Bush failed in the second opportunity to answer the question:
magictoy, reporter David Gregory and I are not the only ones who had difficulty deciphering what the goals and the policies of the Bush admin. are now, in the M.E., Here's an excerpt from an attempt by one of only two republican moderates in the senate, to find out what U.S. policy is concerning Israel and it's neighbors. The argumentative and controversial UN ambassador, John Bolton, uses the same <b>"root cause"</b> talking points that Bush used in his "answer" to David Gregory, and IMO, Bolton's answer is similarly incoherent.......
When you consider the following "background", it seems to explain how decisions that the Bush admin. made in 2001, to "shift toward Israel" along with the opinions of Bolton, Feith, and Rumsfeld that Israel should retain "biblical lands" and land Israel occupied because it "won the war", have resulted in the current lack of U.S. influence....or will.....to broker a cease fire:
Consider that the new Bush admin., more than nine months before 9/11, according to Paul O'Neill and others present at the first Bush national security meeting, abandoned pursuit of a diplomatic solution to the Arab/Israeli conflict, and shifted to a focus on toppling Saddam and an Israel bias:
Consider that this article documents the Bush appointments to the DOD and State Dept. of several folks, including Perle, Feith and Bolton, who advocated, back in 1996, removing Saddam, and supporting the retention by Israel, of the "biblical lands", and Rumsfeld's officially distributed opinion that Israel won the "so called occupied" territory, in war.....a seemingly counterproductive opinion, compared to longstanding U.S., M.E. policy.
magictoy, it seems that the Bush M.E. policy has much more to do with a neo-con, christian right, influenced goal to "shift toward Israel", "take out Saddam", and inflict as much pain, militarily, on anyone who stand in opposition to these goals, on the ground in the M.E.

These policy goals were put on paper, by the people in the Bush admin.,who are now carrying them out, as far back as in 1996. There is reliable evidence from former U.S. treasury sec'ty Paul O'Neill, and from other attendees to the first., Jan. 30, 2001 Nat'l Security Council meeting of the new Bush admin., to support the notion that abandoning of the Israel/M.E. peace policy goals of all post 1952, U.S. presidents, was announced as the new policy, along with a "shift toward Israel", and Bush pronouncing that <b>"Sometimes a show of strength by one side can really clarify things"</b>, and then the meeting shifted to Iraq policy, which has dominated the agenda, ever since.

9/11 was still over nine months away, and there was and is, nothing happening that would contradict the present results of a pre-9/11 policy shift that replaced diplomacy with the use of U.S., and now IDF, military force.

Democratic elections have been held in Lebanon, in Iraq, and in the Palestinian state, and the problem is that the U.S. and Israel do not approve or accept the will of the voters who live in those "newly democratic" states.
There seems to be no acceptance by the U.S. or Israel, of the possibility that the voters in all three jurisdictions were influenced to vote for candidates that offered a militant opposition to the armed forces of both the U.S. and Israel.

It seems that the policy of the new, closer U.S./Israeli alliance is to try to kill the entire armed opposition. It isn't working out too well in Iraq, and it won't work in Gaza or in Lebanon, either.

magictoy, if you were an Arab, especially a male in young/middle adulthood, living in Iraq, Gaza or in Lebanon, how would you have reacted to the elections of Mr. Sharon and Mr. Bush and the policies that they pursued together? How would you react if you were living in one of those places, now? Would it make a difference if you were a sunni muslim, experiencing the effect of the rise of shia influence, unleashed as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq?

<b>Since the policy pre-dates 9/11, it follows that the Bush mantra that "9/11 changed everything".....is bullshit propaganda.....</b>

I've just received word that a very good friend of mine lost his life on Tuesday in Lebanon during a bombing campaign. He lost his legs and part of his torso when a bomb hit while he and his family were hiding in a building, and died while en route to a hospital. He was on vacation with his family from Turkey about a month ago, but was apparently pinned down for a few weeks after the initial attacks. His parents and sister survived. His mother called me just before I went to work this morning and told me all she could. He was only my age (about 24).

I have to admit that until today, this whole thing in Lebanon has seemed like a history lesson to me. It was like reading about WWII or the Korean War in a text book. It's easy to stay disconnected, somewhat, from something if you are thousands of miles away and don't have any personal connections to it. I don't really have that feeling any more. I didn't lose anyone on 9/11. I did have a friend have his leg shot off in Iraq, but I've spoken with him since so it never really hit me.

To anyone who's lost someone in war or conflict, I'm very sorry. I know how it feels now. I don't know if this has anything to do with Politics, but this seemed like the right place to put it.

my sincere condolences to you willravel my friend and to your friends family.

losing someone in war or conflict is never easy. while the US and most western nations remain unscathed because most wars are fought in other peoples backyards, its going to be hard for the west to understand what loss of life and destruction actually means.

although ive lost extended family in war, i have not lost a very close family member. as you guys know my wife was in lebanon during this conflict..she's due back in sydney monday morning.. but i guess she'll be back and the shock of it will slowly wear away..for you my friend, living with the memories forever is the hardest thing.

p.s. i never knew how old you are... i was surprised to hear that your a spritely 24?? you come across as much wiser than 24! i would have put at least another 10 years on for you!

Not to make light of the situation, but my favourite webcomic has provided his views on the current conflict... in his classic way of doling out meaningless destruction, I give you this week's Bob the Angry Flower:

http://www.angryflower.com/hiding.gif

Graphic, but telling.