Israel vs. Hezb'Allah

[kpaske]

choose to ignore that these cowards choose to place their bases amongst innocents so that they may then ask for intervention by third parties;

Have you heard any lebanese complaining about such tactics? You would think these innocents would be pretty damn pissed about being used that way.

I concur with most of your statements, but I have to interject on this one. When bad men come to your village or town and recruit a handful of your most able-bodied men, it's very easy to control the entire village. Especially when there is an absense of anyone else (i.e. policemen, soldiers) to prevent it from happening. When half the policemen and soldiers are also corrupt, it makes resistence for those villagers nearly impossible. Besides, the situation looks very different from the outside looking in. We can sit here and talk about how the "innocent" should kick all the bad people out of their villages, but the immediate reality to them is that there is very little incentive for putting up a fight and the best stance to take from their point of view is neutral or indifferent.

[maxw]

WyrreJ feel free to believe what you wish and support whom you wish. I have lived it and continue to do so. I strongly disagree with your position. You have missed the point of my response through your own bias.

Dennis Miller recently said the following about the Middle East situation:

"A brief overview of the situation is always valuable, so as a service
to all Americans who still don't get it,
I now offer you the story of the Middle East in just a few paragraphs,
which is all you really need.

Here we go:

The Palestinians want their own country.
There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians.
It's a made up word.
Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years.
Like "Wiccan," "Palestinian" sounds ancient
but is really a modern invention

Before the Israelis won the land in the 1967 war,
Gaza was owned by Egypt, the West Bank was owned by Jordan,
and there were no "Palestinians."

As soon as the Jews took over and started growing
oranges as big as basketballs,
what do you know, say hello to the "Palestinians,"
weeping for their deep bond with their lost "land" and "nation."

So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word "Palestinian"
anymore to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy
at our deaths, until someone points out they're being taped.




Instead, let's call them what they are

:
"Other Arabs Who Can't Accomplish Anything In Life
And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In
The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death."

I know that's a bit unwieldy to expect to see on CNN.
How about this, then: "Adjacent Jew-Haters."
Okay, so the Adjacent Jew-Haters want their own country.
Oops, just one more thing. No, they don't.
They could've had their own country any time in the last thirty years,
especially two years ago at Camp David
but if you have your own country, you have to have traffic lights
and garbage trucks and Chambers of Commerce, and, worse,
you actually have to figure out some way to make a living.

That's no fun. No, they want what all the other
Jew-Haters in the region want: Israel.
They also want a big pile of dead Jews, of course --
that's where the real fun is -- but mostly they want Israel.

Why? For one thing, trying to destroy Israel - or "The Zionist Entity"
as their textbooks call it --
for the last fifty years has allowed the rulers of Arab countries
to divert the attention of their own people
away from the fact that they're the blue-ribbon most illiterate,
poorest, and tribally backward on God's Earth,
and if you've ever been around God's Earth . . . you know
that's really saying something.

It makes me roll my eyes every time one of our pundits waxes poetic
about the great history and culture of the Muslim Midleast.
Unless I'm missing something, the Arabs haven't given anything to the
world since Algebra, and, by the way, thanks a hell of a lot for that
one.

Chew this around & spit it out: 500 million Arabs; 5 million Jews.
Think of all the Arab countries as a football field,
and Israel as a pack of matches sitting in the middle of it.
And now these same folks swear that, if Israel gives them
half of that pack of matches, everyone will be pals..

Really? Wow, what neat news. Hey, but what about the string of wars to
obliterate the tiny country and the constant din
of rabid blood oaths to drive every Jew into the sea?
Oh, that? We were just kidding.

My friend Kevin Rooney made a gorgeous point the other day:
Just reverse the Numbers.
Imagine 500 million Jews and 5 million Arabs.
I was stunned at the simple brilliance of it .
Can anyone picture the Jews strapping belts of razor blades
and dynamite to themselves? Of course not.

Or marshaling every fiber and force at their disposal for generations
to drive a tiny Arab State into the sea? Nonsense.
Or dancing for joy at the murder of innocents? Impossible.
Or spreading and believing horrible lies about the Arabs baking their
bread with the blood of children? Disgusting.

No, as you know, left to themselves in a world of peace,
the worst Jews would ever do to people is debate them to death.

Mr. Bush, God bless him, is walking a tightrope. I understand that,
with vital operations in Iraq and others, it's in our interest, as
Americans, to try to stabilize our Arab allies as much as possible,
and, after all, that can't be much harder than stabilizing a roomful of
super models who've just had their drugs taken away.

However, in any big-picture strategy, there's always a danger
of losing moral weight. We've already lost some.
After September 11th, our president told us and the world he was going
to root out all terrorists and the countries that supported them.
Beautiful.
Then the Israelis, after months and months of having the equivalent of
an Oklahoma City every week (and then every day),
start to do the same thing we did, and we tell them to show restraint.

If America were being attacked with an Oklahoma City every day,
we would all very shortly be screaming for the administration
to just be done with it and kill everything south of the Mediterranean
and east of the Jordan.

Please feel free to pass this along to your friends
Walk in peace! Be Happy! Have a wonderful life"

[WyrreJ]

WyrreJ feel free to believe what you wish and support whom you wish. I have lived it and continue to do so. I strongly disagree with your position. You have missed the point of my response through your own bias.

Just what do you think my bias is?

I'll tell you. My bias is that conflicts are never one-sided. That's it.

I'm pretty sure that the point of your responses is that this particular conflict is one-sided.

Do you disagree? Do you really have another point you are trying to make?

[wekilled]

I'll keep it short as I come to this site for VX talk not politics:

Poor Lebanon, huh? (insert brand of choice nano-tech violin here) Lots opinions in the news and the newspaper from people without a dog in the fight. Its all an exercise in abstracts to them-no personal experience.

Sitting here (3rd tour) on FOB Marez in Mosul, and between Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, and Iran all I can see is I'm surrounded a bunch of people who spend inordinate amounts of time trying (and succeeding) in blowing each other (and myself) up on a daily basis because they are sure they are right and they are most definitely (insert your god of choice here) chosen, and most certainly persecuted people.

BTW-cant wait to get home in 11 months smell the interior of my VX again, feel the steering wheel and have a truly Zen moment.

Doug Wekell
MAJ, US. Army
FOB Marez, Iraq

[Dare2Dream]

Dennis Miller recently said the following about the Middle East situation:

"The Palestinians want their own country.
There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians.
It's a made up word.
Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years.
Like "Wiccan," "Palestinian" sounds ancient
but is really a modern invention....

This is such a load of lies, perhaps he has never met a Palestinian to ask him about their families being forced out of their homes during the Naqba (1948). These people were forced out of their own homes, their own land, by force and violence. There are 5 million Palestinian refugees today scattered all around the world. Many of them live in some of the most squalid conditions, in crowded refugee camps, with no means to better their lives, no decent education for their kids, no jobs, not even the freedom to move about.

The Palestinians are living in the largest prisons on earth, occupied by Israel, they have no right to control their destiny. Their land which is their only means of earning a living is continually seized by the government to build settlements. The Palestinians cannot even travel from one city to another. The highways in gaza and west bank are only for the settlers to use. The Palestinians are enduring collective punishment and are being blugeoned into submission.

But they refuse to give up their dream for freedom. They are the Indians who refuse to live on reservations, the blacks who refuse to sit in the back of the bus.

In 1982, Israel occupied Lebanon for 18 years to dislodge PLO and in the procees killed thousands of innocents. Out of that occupation came Hizbullah and unfortunately, again, we are seeing history repeat itself.

The only solution is to address the root causes of the violence. Attacking and killing is not the solution and I hope Israel realizes that some day. The only solution is for Israel to start treating the Palestinians as human being, give them their rights, their freedom and free will to control their destiny. If Israel does not want to give them freedom, then they should be accepted as human being, as equal citizens of the country. Israel cannot hope that they will vanish one day.

Justice is the only way to peace. Too many innocent people have been killed on both sides.

[transio]

The only solution is for Israel to start treating the Palestinians as human being, give them their rights, their freedom and free will to control their destiny.

Not just Israel - the whole world. Even the Arab nations around Israel, who claim to sympathize with the Palestinians, treat them like sub-human beings. It's very sad.

[WyrreJ]

The only solution is for Israel to start treating the Palestinians as human being, give them their rights, their freedom and free will to control their destiny. If Israel does not want to give them freedom, then they should be accepted as human being, as equal citizens of the country. Israel cannot hope that they will vanish one day.

Lol! At least you picked the right handle to go with your opinions. Israel will never accept palestinians as citizens of Israel. If they did, the jews would quickly become a minority. At which point they would either have to give up on democracy or give up on zionism. Since the whole point of the country is based on religious fruitcakism, you know democracy would be shown the door right quick which would be just about impossible to spin enough to keep the billions of American dollars flowing. Kinda ironic how the ideal of democracy is one of the reasons the palestinians are locked out of "the only true and longstanding democracy in the middle east."

[transio]

Israel will never accept palestinians as citizens of Israel. If they did, the jews would quickly become a minority.

Interestingly, the population of Muslims in Israel is growing rapidly. Many Jewish Israelis express fear that they may be ousted from Israel by love (sex) rather than hate (war).