Israel Blockades Lebanon

Hezbollah is attacking Israel from private homes in heavily populated neiborhoods in Southern Lebanon. Yeah its hard to see how an Israeli response might kill innocents next door.

Hezbollah has fired missles into Northern Israel for years. Yes it has intensified over the last week.
 
Oh no.... by all means I see the brilliance in your reasoning. I'm all for it.
I'm convinced. Sold 100%. Yes we should bomb the holy hell out of every neighborhood that we suspect Hezbollah may hav operated from.
Sure why not. Hey lets go crazy - reasoning and logic is on our side. Yeah!!!

Like I said - I think we missed the ball with the whole 9/11 thing... we should have just flattened Brooklyn and everywhere else. That'd have solved the problem. Just like these bombings of Lebanon solve the Hezbollah problem.

Let the bombs rain... civilian casulties be damned!

w00t!

/sarcasm






ummm... in case you didn't realize it... whatever Hezbollah's reason for doing anything was.... it doesn't make it right that Israels should be producing copious civilian casulties.

Not anymore that it will solve Hezbollah problem in general. In fact all it does is shore up support for the Hezbollah. For every innocent Lebanese killed - you have probably 20 people who decide that it's time to side with Hezbollah.
Brilliant. Way to solve a problem.

/sarcasm #2
 
Ah, if only you'd stopped for a chat

Now, having spoken to many many Israelis concerning these matters & not for quite a few years I may add, I have often been suprised at the extent of the ultra right wing, downright racism that exists in many Israelis.

The other thing that often comes across, and this is going to be very contraversial indeed, is a kind of moral immunity that seems to stem from the atrocities in WW2.

What was certainly apparent was an almost institutionalised de-humanization of all the surrounding 'Arab' peoples. I have heard comments like "killing a Palestinian is the same as killing an animal" and so forth.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not sayiing every Israeli has views like this, far from it, but you would be suprised at the prevalence of such views.

I think maybe the West's reluctance to critisize Israel is rooted in WW2 and a fear of being branded Anti-semetic.

I do think, historically this "oh, we better not do too much after all it is Israel" does allow them to literally get away with murder.
 
True that.
In many ways it's not too much longer after that the N word starts appear.
That's right... OMG!!!

He just said something contradictory to the Israel/American love affair.
He must be Nazi... he must be a terrorist... he must support Hezbollah/Al Qaeda.. pffffttt.
 
I'l hazard a wild guess here and say that I have a much better sense of the current thinking of the Jewish population at large and in Israel in particulat, having a large number of friends and family living there.

While the views you mention do exist, they are the minority. For a long time the Israeli population could be divided in 3 main groups, a 'peace at any cost' left-wing, a 'we have to restore Greater Biblical Israel' right-wing, both of wich were tiny minority and mostly dismissed, and a large centrist body that favoured a reasonable negotiated peace agreement giving the Palestinians sovereignty over their own state. While the extrem left and right have not changed much, Arafat's rejection of Camp David and the subsequent Antifadah has done much to move the centrist towards the right. And with that came a growing attidute of not hatred but resentment towards the Palestinians. The election of Hamas has not done any good either.

The general consensus amongst moderate Israelis, and Jews in general is that a) for security purposes, Israel will not give up the Golan. b) for historical and political reasons, Jerusalem is our capital. We can share the city butwe will not give it up. and c) the final border between Israel and the Palestinian state will mostly follow the '67 lines. We simply wish that after 60 years, the Arab world would accept the situation on the ground and work to give the Palestinians their own state.
 
So let's let 'em rally up the troops comfortably, because
a) belonging to an organization that is at the sights of a country's army is not bad enough and
b) bombarding them is not enough of a warning

So just let me reinerate, hopefully for the last time that the reason Israel is bombing neighbourhoods is because Hezbollah is bombing Israel from within those neighbourhoods, and it's not counter measuring civilians with civilians.

Again I'm not saying I support killing civilians, but you have to understand that, yes - there is a logic behind this.
 
Since you asked so kindly....

Israel should aid Lebanon's government as it is anti-Syrian which is great for Israel...except for the fact that they may very well be pushing them back towards Syria.

The way I see it, I would look at Lebanon as a little brother and help him gain control of his region. You know, help him militarily, economically, etc...?

As DC said(which I cannot believe), you don't get your neighbor to mow his lawn by smacking the crap out of him and blowing up his lawn mower/garage.

Instead you could show him how to mow the lawn, and give him an incentive for doing so...perhaps financial aid?

There is no way that Israel's current strategy will result in a more pro-Israeli population/government or the eradication of a terror organization. Instead it will result in an anti-Israeli population/government who would support the anti-Israeli terror organization.....
 
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150886035223&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Interesting "journal" of an Israeli pilot.
 
The Geneva convention only applies to national armies, not unaffiliated groups who don't ally themselves with a nation. Now you could say that since Lebanon is too wussy to throw them out that Lebanon should be held accountable for the hezbollahs actions even though everyone knows its Syria and Iran that pulls the puppet strings.

I'd leave Israel on their own on this one. If they want to start a regional war, let them do it on their own.
 
If just about everyone in the neighborhood knew that guy was planning to kill or kidnap someone, had given that person money or other logistical support so he could go ahead and commit the crime, refused to cooperate with the authorities that could've stopped the crime, let him use their basement to hide the weapon that was going to be used to commit the crime, and or helped him destroy the evidence after the crime was committed then you might have an analogy that approaches the situation in Hezbollah dominated southern Lebanon. It is every bit as wrong to think of all the people in these communities controlled by Hezbollah as "innocent" as it is to think that all of them are guilty. Many are collaborators and passive supporters, which is why Hezbollah can successfully control the area in spite of the Lebanese gov't. We'll never know for certain, but it's a good bet that many of the "innocent civilians" that have been killed were not nearly as innocent as Hezbollah would have you believe. If I've never touched a gun in my life, but I let you store rockets in my home, I'm still pretty guilty.
 
So you would agree then that neither Hezbollah nor the GTMO detainees are entitled to nor should recieve Geneva Convention protections? In other words, Israel should be allowed to detain Hezbollah fighters as unlawful combatants indefinately? And as such, there is and should never be any grounds for a prisoner exchange should there, since the Hezbollah fighters aren't entitled to prisoner status? That is what you're saying right, when you say the Geneva Convention only applies to national armies?
 
Normally Slip, even when I don't agree with you, I can see the reasoning you've used to come to your point. But this 9/11 bomb NYC thing is probably the dumbest thing I've ever heard you say. Really, I've come to expect better from you.




So what exactly should Israel be doing to stop Hezbollah from crossing the border, killing Israeli soldiers, and taking them hostage? You're probably right; I doubt Hezbollah has women and children firing rockets either. Instead, Hezbollah puts them in the homes, schools, and hospitals where they store rockets and plan additional attacks on Israel. Or they go to their friends house and get him to cache machine guns and ammo for them; that way when the Israelis blow up his house, they can rightly claim the guy wasn't a member of Hezbollah and an 'innocent' civilian. How exactly do you think it is that a terrorist group can control large population areas of a soverign country in spite of that country's desires? It's because the populace is sympathetic and is at least passively supportive of the terrorist group. At least passive. They hide them, they store weapons for them, they provide logistical support for them, and they provide intelligence for them. No I don't really believe everyone that has been killed is guilty of helping Hezbollah, but I don't believe all of them were innocent either. I know you have at least half a brain in there, so neither should you.



You're probably right. The problem is, every time Hezbollah conducts a successful attack, their prestige goes up and 10 of those 20 you were talking about join up anyway. We've seen the same thing with Al Qaeda. That brings us back to the starting point: if Israel's response is wrong, then how exactly do you think Israel should respond to Hezbollah crossing the border, killing 8 Israeli soldiers, and kidnapping 2 more?
 
The bombs don't discern the difference, the people that are aiming them do. During the course of these threads, you have seen multiple messages condemning Israel for evacuating buildings and going in and saying this building or that building is going to be destroyed because a member of Hamas was there. Once the building was empty they would destroy it. Contrast that with suicide bombers that go to the middle of large crowds.
 
Some Israelis are probably racist. But do you think they are any more so than the Arabs that are surrounding them? If so, I think you are sadly mistaken.
 
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