Israel / Lebanon.

[SomeGuyOverThere]

God gave the jews Isreal, the Romans gave the Palestiniens Isreal.

Lets just nuke the whole area, then nobody gets it.

 

[ETA123]

But..."Palestine" never existed until the Romans changed the name from Israel to Palestine, named in association with ancient Babylon.

There was no such place as Palestine until the Romans slaughtered countless Israelis around 70 AD and the Emperor decided to change all of the existing maps.

But before the Romans came, the tribes of Israel massacred countless Canaanites, Emorites, Yevusites, etc. All because they claimed that "God" told them to. To quote.

"Kenites, Kenizites, Kadmonites; the Chitties, Perizites, Refaim; the Emorites, Canaanites, Gigashites and Yevusites." Genesis 15:18-21

These are all peoples that were either killed, subjugated or assimilated by the tribes of Israel. There was no such place as Israel until after these historic wars of aggression were waged in the name of "God."

When the army of Joshua marched on Jericho and sacked the city, it wasn't self defense.

 

[bigschlotsky]

But before the Romans came, the tribes of Israel massacred countless Canaanites, Emorites, Yevusites, etc. All because they claimed that "God" told them to. To quote.

"Kenites, Kenizites, Kadmonites; the Chitties, Perizites, Refaim; the Emorites, Canaanites, Gigashites and Yevusites." Genesis 15:18-21

These are all peoples that were either killed, subjugated or assimilated by the tribes of Israel. There was no such place as Israel until after these historic wars of aggression were waged in the name of "God."

When the army of Joshua marched on Jericho and sacked the city, it wasn't self defense.

Both Israelis and Arabs can make claims to the area. It doesn't matter anymore. The reality is Israel isn't going anywhere, and the Palestineans will have their state when they stop trying to destroy Israel's.
By the way I'm curious if the "ETA" in your user name is supposed to represent the Spanish Basque terrorist group. You know, the one fighting for a Basque homeland because of centuries of persecution by the surrounding majority. Just curious. You don't have to answer if you don't want.

 

[ETA123]

Both Israelis and Arabs can make claims to the area. It doesn't matter anymore. The reality is Israel isn't going anywhere, and the Palestineans will have their state when they stop trying to destroy Israel's.
By the way I'm curious if the "ETA" in your user name is supposed to represent the Spanish Basque terrorist group. You know, the one fighting for a Basque homeland because of centuries of persecution by the surrounding majority. Just curious. You don't have to answer if you don't want.

Nope, as explained in my introductory post a month or two back, the ETA comes from video gaming days as "Eric The Awful" (lame, yup, but it's what I used for years playing on line games).

 

[D_Gunther Snotpole]

The reality is Israel isn't going anywhere, and the Palestineans will have their state when they stop trying to destroy Israel's.

That's the point, which the world too soon forgets.

 

[koval]

Here is a direct quote from Wikipedia

'On June 28, 2006, after Hamas militants crossed the border from the Gaza Strip and captured an Israeli soldier, Israel began Operation Summer Rains and sent troops into the territory. On July 12, Hezbollah militants captured 2 Israeli soldiers, sparking the 2006 Israel-Lebanon crisis. Hezbollah has since declared "open war" on Israel. Both Hamas and Hezbollah said that they will only release the soldiers in a prisoner exchange with Israel; however, Israel has said that they will not engage in any prisoner exchanges and will only end the conflicts if they agree to suspend all rocket attacks into Israel and unconditionally release the soldiers.'

Either way they are both too bullheaded to see the harm it's causing to innocent civilians which in turn creates a vicious circle of fear and hate between each other that their children will grow up within :frown1:

Isreal is still technically at war with both the Lebanon & Syria (due to their support of Hezbollah) since the Yom Kippur war and have never formally signed a peace treaty.

 

[col]

What do people here think of this point of view from one of the BBC debate programmes. The lady on the programme suggested that since Hamas came to power of course Israel refused to talk to it because they consider it a terrorist organisation and refuse to agree on its right to exist despite it having been democratically elected. She said that what had been occuring since Hamas came to power early in the year was an attempt to make the people of the country overthrow the government through Israel applying sanctions and force.

The Lebanon situation was said to be similar in the sense that Israel are saying that they are trying to hit Hezbollah targets but are simply destroying the infrastructure of the country in an attempt to make the non-Muslim inhabitants of the country (the Christians etc) rise up and overthrow the Lebanon government which has been the close ties to Hezbollah. Then Israel probably hopes they will either be given a blank ticket to go in and destroy Hezbollah (and by extension Hamas) by any new government of Lebanon, or Hezbollah will be handed over to them.

And those above comments came from a right-winger who believed that Israel was completely justified in what it was doing!

What really irritates me about all this is that this solder situation has been used completely as a pretext by Israel for doing what it is doing. There should have been less drastic ways to sort the situation out, but of course when you have the ear of the US you can do anything. This goes back to the 'War on Terror' and the US saying it needed to defend its borders from terrorists at any price. Of course terrorists is such a loaded term - one persons terrorist is another's freedom fighter and it could be suggested that Bush and Israel are terrorists of the Palestinians just as much as the Palestinians are to Israel.

What this war on terror and terrorist threat statement by the US years ago did was to give everyone else in the world the green light to go after their own 'terrorists'. Rather than acting as the big brother or brake on insane behaviour the US decided to use the sympathy after 9/11 to do its own housecleaning and therefore got people like Saddam but lost all credibility when it tries to take the moral high ground with, say, the Russians.

So you have ETA in Spain simply declared as terrorists, the Chechens declared as such by Russia, the Hamas government by Israel - it's much simpler to say that they are terrorists because then you don't have to try and understand the other sides point of view - they are simply evil.

I don't think Britain would do today with the IRA simply because of the UK's delicate ties with the US and the Irish-American funding issues, but I could imagine if the situation was less stable with the IRA Britain would feel justified in using the same terms to describe them. Then of course you have a situation with the US and Israel where it is obvious that the US is standing back with its arms folded and letting Israel take the next step in a wider conflict.

Although I do think the US and the rest of the world was caught on the hop - it's pretty obvious they wanted to take on North Korea first because they could easily attack that without too much condemnation from the rest of the world. The Middle East has a kind of domino effect that drags the rest of the world in, created through conflicts between people seeing how obvious wrongs are being done but feeling the need to support the US and our now terribly tarnished notions of 'democracy'.

I was thinking of this last night and isn't democracy imposed on countries just another form of colonialism? If we don't like who one country votes for do we have the right to go in and change it? What I'm getting at is whether we have the right to take out George Bush and replace him with Clinton again - after all Clinton only screwed his interns!

 

[col]

The problem I have with politics is that it can seem so futile to get worried about this. People seem to be so disillousioned with politics and politicians and feel that they have little control over events in their own country, let alone feeling that they are represented in the wider world. This is only undermined by politicians doing whatever the hell they like because they have strongly held 'beliefs' that they are doing the right thing, and are only allowed to be judged by history not by the present.

In this climate I can understand why people just give up - everything is just too big. If we go to war, if there is the threat of attack, if I'm going to die tomorrow etc in what way will I be saved by knowing just exactly what is going on and who is attacking me, let alone what is the use of having an opinion about whether I consider the people attacking me to have a legitimate greivance.

What disgusts me about this is that despite all the lip service paid to including people in a democratic process it is painfully obvious that this is the last thing governments want to do. Apathy is a great weapon - you can say as a government we have to attack these people because they are evil, they have weapons of mass destruction, because they just aren't like us etc and people will follow like sheep because they don't know the situation well enough to have an opinion of their own that might go against the government view and that even if they did there would be no way of changing it at all.

Unfortunately people who don't care, who have managed to block out wider events beyond their own lives are probably the majority in the world. I dare say they are probably happier too in their ignorance unfortunately.

This allows a bunch of power hungry politicians to rule with impunity and only a vague awareness of public accountability every four or five years or so when they need to get reelected.

I'm actually really worried about Blair and Bush nearing the end of their terms - neither will be able to run for election again and they don't need to really listen to anybody. This is a very dangerous time because this is their last chance to do something to be remembered by, and they've shown a notable lack of restraint in their actions up until now.

 

[col]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]I'm still depressed about the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin being assassinated late in 1995. He seemed much more moderate and it is telling that he was murdered by an Israeli who 'wanted to halt the middle east peace process'.

Unfortunately he did so with many more extreme Israeli Prime Ministers since (even if they were not as extreme as they could have been), using many pretexts to attact the Palestinians.

I still wonder what the world would have been like if Rabin had lived.

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9511/rabin/umbrella/index.html
[/FONT]

 

[Templar90]

Good Point, Koval! No truce was ever signed.

While this conflict was born through generations of religious and ideological hatred, and is perhaps one of the most complex, long running militant actions in the history of history, many of the posts in this forum demonstrate the simplicity at its core: anti-Semitism.

With few exceptions, the posts favoring the "Arab side" are laden with anti-Jewish rhetoric - most of which untrue. Or at least a convenient retelling of the facts. Like when someone says "Israel has expanded its borders by 50%." How convenient that the poster neglected to mention that this land was retained only after Israel was attacked, and beat the living crap out of a multinational Arab force. The Arab armies turned tail and retreated (as they often do) when they lost advantage. The victorious Israelis then "expanded their borders" into enemy territory to maintain a defensive position. And the Arabs actually had the balls to demand the land be returned. Incredible. Would they have done the same had they won?

By reading some of these posts, an uneducated reader might actually believe that the poor, innocent Muslims were simply victims of the brutish Israeli army; killing their people without provocation. No mention of suicide bombers specifically targeting Jewish civilians. No mention of Iranian and Syrian trained gorillas firing rockets indiscriminately into civilian areas. The Jew haters always forget to mention those facts. Or that the Israelis only strike back at military targets - precision weapons taking out rocket batteries or gorilla HQs. Do innocents get hurt? Yes they do. Typically this is due to the universal ploy of Muslim fighters placing their command and control structures in heavily civilian areas, near schools, hospitals and markets. Then again, considering the incredibly cowardly offensive tactics (suicide bombers) why should their defensive strategy be any less spineless?

And on that note. Consider the Yom Kippur War. The Arab coalition attacked Israel on their most Holy day, knowing its citizens would be with family and not in a defensive position. Now, if Israel had done the same thing, attacked an Arab country on Ramadan, they would have been condemned by the world. Even still, the world called for Israel to control itself. Instead, they beat the crap out of the Arabs. AGAIN.

Look, it comes to this. Many of the Arab countries have a particular disdain for Palestinians; they admit it. None of the - incredibly wealthy - neighboring Arab countries have offered even desert wasteland for the Palestinians to have a home. They prefer to keep them fighting with the Jews as a polarizing effect on the Arab world. If they're all fighting Israel, they won't fight each other. Even if it means destabilizing the new democracy in Lebanon. Even if it means accepting help from their other arch enemies - the Persians in Iran.

It is a highly volatile situation. They only thing keeping Israel from turning the land of its enemies into parking lots is the US. Without our intervention, believe me, the Palestinians, Syrians, Hamas, Hezbolla...all Arabs will truly know the suffering they profess to know now.

Lordpendragan, you say the Jews owe the Muslims a debt of gratitude for their tolerance??? Only an anti-Semite could say something so inane. The radical Muslims openly proclaim that their existence is devoted to the extermination of all Jews. They beat their chests and burn our flags, put on a great show of fervent nationalism. They hide in the hills and fire rockets into apartment buildings. They blow up school buses. They bum rush individual Jews in murderous mobs, beat them to death and then dance on the bodies, proclaiming their strength. That is, until the enemy arrives in equal numbers. In which case they run like cowards.

I say, if they want to meet Allah so bad, let the Jews show them the way.

 

[bigschlotsky]

What really irritates me about all this is that this solder situation has been used completely as a pretext by Israel for doing what it is doing.

This isn't about the 2 soldiers. The solders were just the last straw. Syria and Iran have been arming Hesbollah since Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000. Israel has been watching for 6 years while a terrorist group sworn to their destruction amassed increasingly threatening weapons stockpiles on their border pointed at them. At some point Israel was going to have to go in and quash the Hesbollah threat. The soldiers were just the last straw.

 

[bigschlotsky]

Lordpendragan, you say the Jews owe the Muslims a debt of gratitude for their tolerance??? Only an anti-Semite could say something so inane.

Lordpendragon, in no uncertain terms, has laid out his disdain for Zionism (i.e. the state of Israel) and his general resentment of "the chosen people", i.e. the Jews.

 

[ledroit]

The US has no policy toward Israel or the Middle East, because that would require work, competence, and long term commitments. Did you see the footage of Bush chomping away and encouraging Israel to attack Syria to clean up this "shit"? This is the depth of the US's vision and commitment right now, seen in a hateful face that knows plenty about shit.

The US is being run right now by a gang of fascists thugs. They have no qualms about using both this country and the rest of the world to keep themselves rich and on top. I have plenty of Jewish friends here who hate fascism. They hate it in the US, and they hate it in Israel.

But half of the US has an IQ below 100. Think of how many voters that is. A large part of that group might have a hard time putting two complex ideas together. The GOP easily gets them riled up about gays and abortions, and convinces them that liberals and intellectuals have no morals and values. The rest is fascist history.

 

[Gillette]

Another issue: the average palestinian iq is hovering around the 90's, the Israeli IQ is significantly higher (conservative estimates range from 110-115), the number is probably higher for just the ashkenazis as the average is lowered somewhat by the Arab and Sephardic populations. If the Palestinians accepted peace, they would likely become a permanent underclass, comparable to the black population here. Affirmative action could only disguise this painful fact to a minimal degree; a proud people would be forced to play second fiddle in the economy. I suspect this has a fairly significant role in Palestinian reluctance to de-radicalize, they
would prefer to blame their culture's failure to functionally adapt to modern realities and their economic woes on Israeli aggression rather than innate incompetence.

OH MY FUCK !!!!

You need to STOP smoking crack.

Palestinians are having a difficult time finding adequate shelter and provisions but you think they've paused in their struggle to take a test from MENSA ?

But, hey, thank you for your post. It was quite...something.

 

[Shelby]

OH MY FUCK !!!!

You need to STOP smoking crack.

Palestinians are having a difficult time finding adequate shelter and provisions but you think they've paused in their struggle to take a test from MENSA ?

But, hey, thank you for your post. It was quite...something.

I totally smoke those mensa tests. And look what a dumbass I am.

 

[Templar90]

The US has no policy toward Israel or the Middle East, because that would require work, competence, and long term commitments. Did you see the footage of Bush chomping away and encouraging Israel to attack Syria to clean up this "shit"? This is the depth of the US's vision and commitment right now, seen in a hateful face that knows plenty about shit.

The US is being run right now by a gang of fascists thugs. They have no qualms about using both this country and the rest of the world to keep themselves rich and on top. I have plenty of Jewish friends here who hate fascism. They hate it in the US, and they hate it in Israel.

But half of the US has an IQ below 100. Think of how many voters that is. A large part of that group might have a hard time putting two complex ideas together. The GOP easily gets them riled up about gays and abortions, and convinces them that liberals and intellectuals have no morals and values. The rest is fascist history.

Gotta love how the America haters blame a centuries old conflict on President Bush. If that's not the epitome of the left's pathic, and as of yet unsuccesful "anyone but Bush" strategy to lead this country, I don't know what is. And to top it off, Mkymkus trots out the tired, old, "Repulicans are just a bunch of stupid rednecks that can't think for themselves" rhetoric. Well, thank God I have you intellectual liberals to tell me how to live my life, and lecture me on how socially superior you are. You've really added so much to the discussion about Israel and Lebanon. Then again, you always find a way to make it about you.

Oh and by the way, the facist talk is literally funny. You have no idea. Liberals like you expectantly run to the leftist buffet of conservative put downs and select the "Republicans are Facists" bomb. I am completely sincere when I tell you that I pray to God you never have to know what it's like to live under "facist thugs." I have lived that fearful life, and can honestly say, you have no fucking idea what you're talking about.

 

[systemshock3]

Hmm...

This is a subject that I have a great deal of thought on, so bear with me.

I am not picking a side here. The isrellis have proven themselves to be quite capable of disproportionate use of force. Of course, the rest of the arab world in that part of the globe has proven themselves quite capable of completely irrational attacks on civilians as well.

From a policy/action perspective, the US is in a bind until we have someone in the white House who is willing to say, to both sides, something that I think would get everyones attention: "We are ALL really tired of hearing you talk, begging for aid when you blow each other up, and appealing to our faith to justify the endless cycle of murder and retributuin. Go fuck yourselves, but please dont bother the oil wells...thanks..."

The truth of the matter is, thats really what most people think whenever they hear of of the middle-eastern unrest.

People, including some on this very thread, have brought out faith for one side or another. Well, MY faith (buddhist) compells me to view loss of human life in the name of faith as a bad thing...period.

It cant be justified. Bottom line. But, from a practical perspective, favoring israel without question HAS helped put a giant bullseye on our forhead. Or at least a larger one

In talking with Arab/Muslim friends, and just my own studies of the some history of the region, the key to the entire middle-east, as we all know, is Iran. Dealing with them long ago on diplomatic terms could have resolved numerous issues in that part of the world, from the nuclear issue to their influence in places such as Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria.

I feel that more direct, active talks with Iran would be of GREAT benefit now. HOwever, for our involvement with Iran and other major players to have ANY weight in the eyes of the world (and on the ground), a more public distancing and criticism of Israel IS NEEDED.

That, sadly enough, has proven illusive with this and other administrations. Just my 3 cents . The point is that the resolution to this conflict is going to require some things that this adminstration so far has yet to display anywhere, an understanding of nuances, and a willingness to question EVERYTHING.

And finally. I am really REALLY getting tired of this left-right, facist-america-hater crap. Anyone that criticises the Bush administration or republican dogma is NOT automatically an america-hater.

However, those that embrace at least some of the more libertarian aspects of conservative ideology arent automatically facists either.

Again, NUANCE, people....asking questions. The sad part is that in this country we have had the luxury of listening only to what we want to hear without asking questions and being flexible.

We are now seeing that the real world outside the US isnt exactly that cut and dried. Now if only the Israellis and Arabs could see that...

 

[Templar90]

Well done systemshock3. Well done.

Pope Wave to you , my friend.

 

[Lordpendragon]

Lordpendragan, you say the Jews owe the Muslims a debt of gratitude for their tolerance??? Only an anti-Semite could say something so inane.

I say, if they want to meet Allah so bad, let the Jews show them the way.

No, someone who relied on more than Fox News for the contents of their brain.

I am talking historically from 700BC, when the Arabs were in complete control of the area and parts of Europe and later the Ottomans. The creation of the State of Israel created enmity where there had been little before.

I do not like any religion (maybe Buddhism) as they invariably lead to fundamentalist positions. I find one that tells you that you are the chosen people particularly obnoxious.

I also think that the creation of Israel was poor judgment at the time, and we shall see what it costs us all.

 

[that_other_guy]

No, someone who relied on more than Fox News for the contents of their brain.

Whadaya mean, they really take all the thinking out of the news, so its nicely read by a universal-y attractive anchorman/woman & fits on a ticker ... just how i love the "no spin zone" to be ... hehhehe