Israel--current Events

BTW

All the talk about one side or the other with their propeganda.

They both are putting out propeganda it just comes down to who you believe.

I know one side launched missiles at the other with the intent of killing anyone they could. (abeit ineffectively but not for lack of desire)

I think it is easy to say that Israel over reacted and is over reacting when you are not an Israelie.

I agree that Israel is not without fault as their history truly indicates. I agree they are in this conflict due to actions of their own (but not the one Emmett is talking about and he would likely disagree with me )

I don't think that you can mount a believable arguement for present circumstances based on something that happened a half a life time ago and then throw out what happened a week ago.

Sure the Jews and the Arabs pretty much hate each other. I empathize with the situation more due to past life experience than any need to think Irael right or wrong.

This is a military action, and if I were directing it I would be very ruthless myself with the idea of how to be as thrifty as possible with my ground troop. In other words in order to minimize my own loss of life, I would be a lot less concerned about loss of life on the other side.

If that mean't warning Lebonese to get out of the way because we are going to level you neighborhood because we keep getting missile launched from there and I don't want to spend my ground troops digging it out, that is the way I would do it.
If I was a Lebonese whose house got blown up collaterally I probably would not like the Israelies very much after that even if I had no prior prejudice, but as a military commander that would be very low on my list of worries.

Not a matter of who is more worthy etc... just a fact of how war is fought.

The talk about rules of engagement that come with the concept of limited war are bogus. If you have to live by different rules than those you are fighting, you should not go to war, because you will loose every time. That would be like playing football and one team could do anything that they wanted including clipping, jumping off side, late hits etc... and the other side played strictly by the rules. The honorable rule abiding team would loose.

The US has had experience with limited war time after time and been labeled loosers as a result of their self imposed rules of engagement. If you refuse to fight a war to win then there is only one alternative. If you are not going forward you are loosing. This has been a sore spot for me with the US military for most of my life as I have the attitude that if you are going to war, and are going to spend US lives, you should go in with the intent of giving it everything it takes to win and win decisively using all resources available or you should not go at all.

Good bad or indifferent, I have always respected Israels commitment to a fight once they engage. Whether you like them or not you have to admit that they fight with the intent of ending the issue from a military point of view.

Irsael sports a sizeable motivated army that is made up mostly of civilians that has been cited as the 5th most powerful in the world. They have compulsory military service beginning at age 17 and staying in reserve until age 49 for both male and female. They could conceivably field an army of 3 million should the need arrise and as I said before they are motivated. I would personally say that rating them number 5 in world military power is a serious underestimation.

With this in mind it doesn't make sense to launch obsolete missiles into a populated area that the best you can do is kill 18 people of no military consequence and expect to do anything other than stir up a mess of Hornets.

I guess it comes back to whose propoganda do you believe?

MIkel

This is perfectly true in common sense, and I think it's what Israel has always had as a general philosophy of war. It helps that Israel's leaders have so often been military people, and that all the citizenry is at least nominally in the military too -- and that they are literally surrounded and constantly threatened with hostility. Certain things are just assumed in a very hard-headed, no-nonsense way. One of the images that really stuck with me when I visited the upper Galilee years ago was a little mountain kibbutz with a bomb shelter with Big Bird and Cookie Monster painted on the doors. They grow up with it in their faces.

There's always the problem of spin, though, and leaders do have to worry about world perceptions, approval and condemnation, and alliances. Israel has been a headache to more US administrations than this one, because the rest of the world does not hold its attitudes about this. There is also the problem of what humans under a lot of pressure are capable of in terms of atrocities -- just about limitless, and personally I don't even trust the comfy armchair perspective I myself am in, not can I say what I would do under extreme threat. If we really can countenance throwing out the Geneva Conventions and the idea of war crimes altogether, and simply saying s*** happens sometimes when people are really fighting to win (like Sabra and Shatila, or Dresden, or My Lai), then most of the problem goes away. Somehow, though, I think (and I hope) that we have something innate in us as a species that prevents us from losing all sense of empathy (or more strongly, shame) about "collateral damage" (read: screwing up and whacking civilians) and other abuses and inequities. So if we have to be atrocious in order to fight to win, the propaganda that arises out of this shame as a face-saving cover must continue. It's foolish to condemn it. You might say wading through it is the civilian citizen's price to pay.

I am not saying throw out "War Crimes" altogether. (i.e. rape, torture, gathering up and assasinating - ethnic cleansing type stuff) I just think that intent and context needs to be considered. Collateral damage and friendly fire would not qualify. Even if one does not believe the collateral damage bit, it is a fact of war and it would be difficult to prove it was otherwise in this case since the attacks on Israel have come from civilian populated areas, hence the strikes to take out that threat would have a higher incidence of colateral damage.

All I know is that if I had a neighbor launching missiles at Israel and I valued my life, I would be moving to another hood

Mikel

Israel launched air attacks against Lebanon first. Still, I'm not sure of the value of chicken-or-the-egg arguments at this point.

Not to "throw out what happened a week ago", but I don't think it's at all possible to understand "what happened a week ago" in any depth divorced from the historical context of what is obviously an ongoing conflict of some sixty years duration.

So you would willfully and intentionally violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, UN Resolution 1674, and Article 7 & 8 of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In other words, you would intentionally commit war crimes.

But perhaps that should figure higher on your worry list if, as you observed, the result of your cavalier attitude towards the suffering of the Lebanese or Palestinian people is very likely to result in a marked increase in popular support for Hezbollah and Hammas among the general population (with a proportional decrease in support for more moderate political forces amenable to negotiation and peaceable accommodation), and a new influx of extremely angry and vengeful young recruits with little or nothing to lose. What about the loss of international sympathy and goodwill such brutality will engender? What happens when those young victims of yours inevitably regroup and retaliate with whatever crude weapons they can cobble together? Wouldn't all these considerations tend to make any transient battlefield victory you achieve rather Pyrrhic in the long run? Israel invaded Lebanon to exterminate the PLO. In the process, they killed 18,000 Lebanese. As a direct result of their efforts, they got Hezbollah. Now, Israel has invaded Lebanon to exterminate Hezbollah. Don't you think that renders the deaths of all those Israeli soldiers killed in Lebanon between 1982 to 2000 rather pointless?

As of today, 19, but you're right; it's certainly not a force even remotely capable of "pushing Israel into the sea"; not much of an offensive armory at all.
However, when you're under attack, you defend yourself with what you've got, however impotent and inconsequential it may be.

Citation? You seriously used the word citation? You make an assumption here that is unwarranted; and that is your citing your sources makes your posts more credible than mine. Or have you forgotten how you regarded my comments as worthless early in the conversation?

N.S., you likely won't get a better feeling discussing the Israel/Lebanon situation with me. You have indicated your view that Israel can do no wrong because they are protected by God. I, on the other hand, have been quite frank about this, even referencing Psalm 80, in which Israel was begging God to allow them back in His good graces:

As a Christian, I feel it my duty to try to be honest in my world-view. This does not mean viewing the wold apart from my religious beliefs, but it also does not mean being so dogmatic as to assert that any group of people are above reproach for their wrongful actions simply because they are "God's chosen people." There is absolutely nothing in the Christian bible to indicate any one group of people is not accountable for their actions. Quite the contrary. So, while I do agree with you that Israel (the people, not the stretch of real estate) has ordinance with God, I do not believe they even remotely deserve amnesty. As for Islam, the evidence is overwhelming. So much violence has and is committed in the name of their god--overtly, proudly, shamelessly--and with very little condemnation for this violence voiced from their leaders. Sure, Khamenei,Abdulaziz, or some other Islamic country's leader may publicly denounce violence committed by Muslims in the name of their god, but that is about as much an Islamic statement as President Bush denouncing a Christian's similar crime would be a Christian statement.

Now, where does this leave me? Well, I think we can all use a little more level-headedness from time to time. I think people who you only hear damning the actions of those who attack Islamic people and never the other way around, need to be more honest with themselves and everyone else. I think you need to be more honest about Israel, and stop with this "God's chosen people" rhetoric. In the end, we are all basing our opinions on what we believe to be right and wrong. And trust me, you do not have to have family members who are Islamic, Jewish, Christian, Israeli, etc., to distinguish between right and wrong. Lastly, I do not agree with the barbaric nature of Israel's attack on Lebanon's people and infrastructure. No good can ever come from the mass murder of innocent civilians. However, win, lose, or draw, I hope they utterly crush Hezbollah.

Disclaimer: none of my words are intended to be confrontational, so please don't hit me with your flame thrower

I was concerned that I may have been too harsh in my response based upon conversations we've had on this topic before, so I went back, re-read it, looked at your citation (The Religion of Peace, a particularly virulent bit of hate speech on the Web)....and sadly, I was correct in my original asessment;

Again, my criticisms (harsh or otherwise) are directed towards the policies of the political state of Israel, not Jewish people in general. My citations have included the Geneva Conventions, United Nations resolutions, the International Criminal Court, the Nuremburg Charter, and the charter of the United Nations, among others...feel free to Google them. The web site you cited in your post is clearly bigoted (oh yeah; I cited Webster's Dictionary, too) hate speech directed explicitly at Islam and Muslims, apparently, all 1.6 billion of them. I find it patently offensive. No apologies.

Shalom and Salaam in both Hebrew and Arabic; the symbol in the middle means the same.

You really have to assess what you find on the web very carefully. We discussed this "Religion of Peace" webheap a long time ago when Sniper and Shamalama were posting a lot of similar comments and citing this same site. It has very little to commend it in terms of verifiability, and the website authors who won't divulge their names are still buried 16 links in somewhere down low, professing fear of assassination if they admit who they are. However, the Geneva conventions, UN resolutions, and other documents of international law, such as it is, were crafted back in the days when you had to do more than cut, paste, and photoshop a dumpload of odds and ends and hit "send." I'll grant you that those old official documents are a lot less fun and rage-titillating, because they are a very long and demanding read, and there are no pictures to look at.

Emmett, Emmett, ,Emmett if you ever want any respect from me for you or you views this is certainly not the way to earn it. (Mikel shakes head while smiling, much as he would at a recalcitrant child)

You are really a piece of work

I find your edited out of context deliberately misinterpreted responses to my posts amusing. You really should be ashamed of yourself

Anyone that wants to know what I really said should just refer back to my posts at the top of this page so that it is clear what I was really saying and not take to much stock in Emmetts revisionist reprints.

Of course I did not mean any of the things you suggested and only someone who had the intention of deliberately twisting or misinterpreting what I wrote could have possibly come up with that.

I know you feel superior to me on this issue Emmett but come on use a little common sense. All anyone has to do on this last one is look a couple of posts above yours and they will clearly be able to see that the parts you left out give a totally different picture than you paint have a beer

I saw interviews tonight on the PBS news programs with lebanese who were in the affected areas that heard the announcements that Israel was getting ready to target their neighborhood and guess what they did..... they left. Sure they aren't happy but they are alive just the same. Cavalier realistic is more like it.



Best of luck with your agenda

Mikel

Since we ALL seem to have calmed down a bit and explained our point a bit better, then I will take the time to do so also.
First, I am NOT a christian, I follow the traditional beliefs of my people. You can belive what you want, and as an American I will fight to the death for you to do so. This does not mean that I take anything you shove at me (religiously speaking) as gospel or the truth. I belive "The Big Three" to be the biggest bane to mankind that has ever come down the pike!
That being said, from my personal point of view, it is much easier to draw corelalations between my people and Hesbollah, the PLO and Hammas than it will ever be with israel (The nation and Political unit, NOT the jewish people!)
Based SOLELY on actions and attitude it is far easier to identify with them (The PLO, etc) as being the in the same situation, than it is to see israel in any sort of GOOD light, filling the role of the Whiteman. I have looked at this situation for close to 45 years and CANNOT see israel as being in the right ONCE! They have grabbed land that was not their's and then killed those who lived there for the crime of daring to object.
My reference to the invalidity of the bible still stands. It is ALL based on jewish texts, and as such, of course they are the chosen of THEIR god.
I'm sorry, but NOTHING will ever convince me that israel is right and those who oppose them are wrong. You see, I'm culturally conditioned to reject their argument.

But we COULD all still have a !

I dismiss your entire post with the exception of the explanation of the symbol. Thank you for that, as I was very curious.

The source I linked for you was just for the extensive list of terror activity that resulted in death which was perpetrated by Muslims. You can use any list from any source you wish, so long as it is accurate. I'm not saying we should be keeping score here, but rather hoping to shed light on the duplicity of hanging Israel, and excusing terrorists. I think my views have been thoroughly expressed, and continuing will probably be useless---so I'll leave posting further comments to the rest of you. I'm glad the discussion has remained as civil as it has.

Later

As I pointed out in a previous post, not all citations are created equal.

As for my "duplicity of hanging Israel, and excusing terrorists", I've never "excused" terrorism by any of the combatants. The Arab-Israeli conflict is the direct result of Israel's brutal subjugation and repression of the Palestinian people, illegal occupation of the Golan, West Bank, Palestinian Jerusalem, and Gaza, and the carte blanche we provide them to terrorize their neighbors like Lebanon with impunity. You want peace in the Middle East? Eliminate the raison d'être of the terrorist groups. Israel secure within her original 1967 borders, with a commitment not to shell, bomb, kidnap and kill (terrorize) her neighbors at will or to interfere in their internal politics in any way, that security defined by mutual regional treaty and guaranteed by the UN. How effective do you think Hamas and Hezbollah recruiting drives would be then? Spreading outright hate-filled lies like frothing-at-the-mouth rants about "Islamofascists" and dire warnings of how America will soon become an Islamic theocracy, and claims that the bombing of Qana was actually a Hezbollah psy-op, a fraud staged (complete with the dead bodies of 54 villagers, about 1/2 of them children) for the media, only promotes further baseless suspicion and hatred and does nothing to increase the understanding among different peoples or promote peace, which I would have kinda thought would have been a Christian's approach to the problem. What was that whole thing about "not bearing false witness against thy neighbor" anyway? Thanks, but between your sources and mine, I think I'll stick with people like the BBC or the International Red Cross for firsthand verifiable information from the actual scene of events.

Emmet, The next time I raise a glass. It’ll be toasting you, and those who think like you.

jc

Read this report today. Thought it would be an interesting insertion into the debate. Have a great day!

"Wonder why civilians are still being injured and killed, when Israel long ago warned them through leaflets to leave Hezbollah areas?

As related by Lebanese Christians, Hezbollah brings the war right to their homes. So if they weren't in a Hezbollah area before, Hezbollah brings rocket launchers in the midst of Christian homes, knowing the Israelis will fire back at the launcher. Hezbollah is apparently hoping for Christian civilian deaths, to help them win the PR battle in the west. As noted in a July 28 NY Times article, "Christians Fleeing Lebanon Denounce Hezbollah," by Sabrina Tavernise,

...for some of the Christians who had made it out in this convoy, it was not just privations they wanted to talk about, but their ordeal at the hands of Hezbollah -- a contrast to the Shiites, who make up a vast majority of the population in southern Lebanon and broadly support the militia.

" Hezbollah came to Ain Ebel to shoot its rockets," said Fayad Hanna Amar, a young Christian man, referring to his village. "They are shooting from between our houses."

"Please," he added, "write that in your newspaper."

Many Christians from Ramesh and Ain Ebel considered Hezbollah's fighting methods as much of an outrage as the Israeli strikes. Mr. Amar said "Hezbollah fighters in groups of two and three had come into Ain Ebel, less than a mile from Bint Jbail, where most of the fighting has occurred. They were using it as a base to shoot rockets, he said, and the Israelis fired back."


Since Lebanese civilians have been warned by Israel to leave any area where there are rocket launchers, the Christians try to leave, but are sometimes prevented by Hezbollah.

One woman, who would not give her name because she had a government job and feared retribution, said Hezbollah fighters had killed a man who was trying to leave Bint Jbail.

"This is what's happening, but no one wants to say it" for fear of Hezbollah, she said."

It doesn't sound unlikely at all, unfortunately. With the truck-mounted missile launchers, they could draw fire to wherever they wanted to and then scoot. It's another example too of the complexity of the relations among these people, very difficult to disentangle and interpret if you're not a member of the group.

Leo asked me to post that he has not deserted/lost interest in this debate but has temporarily lost his primary access to this site.


He sends his

To everyone

Mikel