Dude, you totally stole my thunder :slap: :rofl:

Since I have stumbled into this "tar-baby" I might as well throw in my two cents.

First I would like to point out that I know not much more about the current crisis than what I have read in the papers and seen on television. I am neither pro-Israel nor am I pro-Islamic/Muslim. In fact I am decidedly anti-demographic; that is to say I am against any belief system, whether it be religous, political, cultural, or gender based that causes people to forsake their own sense of decency in pursuit of a proclaimed greater good. I am also not naive enough to believe that we can count on this individualistic sense of decency to in and of itself maintain peace amongst a diverse group of societies and religions.

Eric you touched on numerous excellent points which begs the question, with a conflict as complicated and multi-layered as that found between Israel and it's Arab neighbors can a resolution truly ever be had?

I know Hezzbolah is a terrorist organization and has committed horrific acts against Israel. I am not informed enough to discuss the real or imagined reasons why many Islamic nations are anti Semitic and have such an easy time sustaining and growing terrorist organizations. Nor am I informed enough to discuss whether or not Israel is just in it's cause or equally just in it's actions.
What I do know is that when I see the images of the women and children on both sides who have been claimed by this conflict and listen to the rhetoric about how casualties are a necessity of war I take great personal offence. As I sit here typing this now meandering rant, with my six month old son asleep three feet away from me I feel outrage. How dare anyone claim that their cause is just when it "requires" the killing of a child? How dare anyone defend such actions by claiming it was the other sides fault, or an accident or required by their belief system?
I don't have any answers. Hell I don't even know what questions need asking, but I do know that so far nobody is right or just.

Ummm, that's called genocide what you were doing. It's like what Hitler did to the Jews. That's why America stepped in.

Parker:

I agree, particularly with your last paragraph, and your last sentence. Very well put. I was trying to get at the same thing in my post, some pages earlier in this thread, but you said it better.

Yeah, actually it was after I read your opinion I kinda started to formulate my own......... coulda saved myself some effort by just posting a :withstupi under your post back on page 4.

cheers. :thumbup:

Man was that ever a 'general' statement.

Just my 2-cts contribution to this thread; I was incapable to sit here and watch so much verbal diarrhea spill out from such a high number of members of this forum, who obvioulsy suffer from the same unfortunate symptoms of "total collective brainwash" affecting over 50% of the US population. I have much empathy for the US because I do still believe it is a great Nation with great people; but unfortunately one on it's more Obscure facets is how well controlled US citizens are by the all-insidious Mass Media that controls nearly every aspect of human life from the north of Mexico to South of Canada.


The following is a report from the field by an Israeli columnist. So don't call me biased (for either side) because I'm not. Read it and some of you may learn something about this conflict.


PS: for all of you who still believe either Saddam had anything to do whatsoever with 9/11, or that the US invaded Iraq for any justifiable reason, I strongly advise you to make real use of the Internet and read information sources OTHER than Fox...



Days of Darkness
By Gideon Levy
Haaretz.com
Sunday 30 July 2006

In war as in war: Israel is sinking into a strident, nationalistic atmosphere and darkness is beginning to cover everything. The brakes we still had are eroding, the insensitivity and blindness that characterized Israeli society in recent years is intensifying. The home front is cut in half: the north suffers and the center is serene. But both have been taken over by tones of jingoism, ruthlessness and vengeance, and the voices of extremism that previously characterized the camp's margins are now expressing its heart. The left has once again lost its way, wrapped in silence or "admitting mistakes". Israel is exposing a unified, nationalistic face.

The devastation we are sowing in Lebanon doesn't touch anyone here and most of it is not even shown to Israelis. Those who want to know what Tyre looks like now have to turn to foreign channels the BBC reporter brings chilling images from there, the likes of which won't be seen here.

How can one not be shocked by the suffering of the other, at our hands, even when our north suffers? The death we are sowing at the same time, right now in Gaza, with close to 120 dead since the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, 27 last Wednesday alone, touches us even less. The hospitals in Gaza are full of burned children, but who cares? The darkness of the war in the north covers them, too.

Since we've grown accustomed to thinking collective punishment a legitimate weapon, it is no wonder no debate has sparked here over the cruel punishment of Lebanon for Hezbollah's actions. If it was okay in Nablus, why not Beirut? The only criticism being heard about this war is over tactics. Everyone is a general now and they are mostly pushing the IDF to deepen its activities. Commentators, ex-generals and politicians compete at raising the stakes with extreme proposals.

Haim Ramon "doesn't understand" why there is still electricity in Baalbek; Eli Yishai proposes turning south Lebanon into a "sandbox"; Yoav Limor, a Channel 1 military correspondent, proposes an exhibition of Hezbollah corpses and the next day to conduct a parade of prisoners in their underwear, "to strengthen the home front's morale".

It's not difficult to guess what we would think about an Arab TV station whose commentators would say something like that, but another few casualties or failures by the IDF, and Limor's [foreign minister limor Livnat] proposal will be implemented. Is there any better sign of how we have lost our senses and our humanity?

Chauvinism and an appetite for vengeance are raising their heads. If two weeks ago only lunatics such as Safed Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu spoke about wiping out every village where a Katyusha is fired, now a senior officer in the IDF speaks that way in Yedioth Aharonoth's main headlines. Lebanese villages may not have been wiped out yet, but we have long since wiped out our own red lines.

A bereaved father, Haim Avraham, whose son was kidnapped and killed by Hezbollah in October 2000, fires an artillery shell into Lebanon for the reporters. It's vengeance for his son. His image, embracing the decorated artillery shell is one of the most disgraceful images of this war. And it's only the first. A group of young girls also have their picture taken decorating IDF shells with slogans.

Maariv, which has turned into the Fox News of Israel, fills its pages with chauvinist slogans reminiscent of particularly inferior propaganda machines, such as "Israel is strong" which is indicative of weakness, actually while a TV commentator calls for the bombing of a TV station.
Lebanon, which has never fought Israel and has 40 daily newspapers, 42 colleges and universities and hundreds of different banks, is being destroyed by our planes and cannons and nobody is taking into account the amount of hatred we are sowing. In international public opinion, Israel has been turned into a monster, and that still hasn't been calculated into the debit column of this war. Israel is badly stained, a moral stain that can't be easily and quickly removed. And only we don't want to see it.
The people want victory, and nobody knows what that is and what its price will be.

The Zionist left has also been made irrelevant. As in every difficult test in the past the two intifadas for example, this time too the left has failed just when its voice was so necessary as a counterweight to the stridency of the beating tom-toms of war. Why have a left if at every real test it joins the national chorus?

Peace Now stands silently, so does Meretz, except for brave Zehava Gal-On. A few days of a war of choice and already Yehoshua Sobol is admitting he was wrong all along. Peace Now is suddenly an "infantile slogan" for him. His colleagues are silent and their silence is no less resounding. Only the extreme left makes its voice heard, but it is a voice nobody listens to.

Long before this war is decided, it can already be stated that its spiraling cost will include the moral blackout that is surrounding and covering us all, threatening our existence and image no less than Hezbollah's Katyushas.

I bet Levy wasn't present in Germany in 1941.

I also bet Levy is also a pacifist.

Counter-point:


The Predictable Condemners (The Dersh On Israel's Critics Chutzpah On Israel's Self-Defense Alert)
Jerusalem Post ^| 07/23/06 | Alan Dershowitz

Posted on 07/23/2006 8:30:00 AM PDT by goldstategop

The Hizbullah and Hamas provocations against Israel once again demonstrate how terrorists exploit human rights and the media in their attacks on democracies.
By hiding behind their own civilians the Islamic radicals issue a challenge to democracies: Either violate your own morality by coming after us and inevitably killing some innocent civilians, or maintain your morality and leave us with a free hand to target your innocent civilians.
This challenge presents democracies such as Israel with a lose-lose option, and the terrorists with a win-win option.
There is one variable that could change this dynamic and present democracies with a viable option that could make terrorism less attractive as a tactic: The international community, the anti-Israel segment of the media and the so called "human rights" organizations could stop falling for this terrorist gambit and acknowledge that they are being used to promote the terrorist agenda.
Whenever a democracy is presented with the lose-lose option and chooses to defend its citizens by going after the terrorists who are hiding among civilians, this trio of predictable condemners can be counted on by the terrorists to accuse the democracy of "overreaction," "disproportionality" and "violations of human rights."
In doing so they play right into the hands of the terrorists, causing more terrorism and more civilian casualties on both sides. If instead this trio could, for once, be counted on to blame the terrorists for the civilian deaths on both sides, this tactic would no longer be a win-win situation for the terrorists.
IT SHOULD BE obvious by now that Hizbullah and Hamas actually want the Israeli military to kill as many Lebanese and Palestinian civilians as possible. That is why they store their rockets underneath the beds of civilians; why they launch their missiles from crowded civilian neighborhoods and hide among civilians. They are seeking to induce Israel to defend its civilians by going after them among their civilian "shields." They know that every civilian they induce Israel to kill hurts Israel in the media and the international and human rights communities.
They regard these human shields as shahids - martyrs - even if they did not volunteer for this lethal job. Under the law, criminals who use human shields are responsible for the deaths of the shields, even if the bullet that kills them came from the gun of a policeman.
Israel has every self-interest in minimizing civilian casualties, whereas the terrorists have every self-interest in maximizing them - on both sides. Israel should not be condemned for doing what every democracy would and should do: taking every reasonable military step to stop the terrorists from killing their innocent civilians.
NOW THAT some of those who are launching rockets at Israeli cities have announced they have new surprises in store for Israel that may include chemical and biological weapons, the stakes have gotten even higher.
What would Israeli critics regard as "proportioned" to a chemical or biological attack? What would they say if Israel tried to preempt such an attack and, in the process, killed some civilians? Must a democracy absorb a first strike from a weapon of mass destruction before it fights back? Would any other democracy be expected to do that?
The world must come to recognize the cynical way in which terrorists exploit civilian casualties. They launch anti-personnel rockets designed to maximize enemy civilian casualties, then they cry "human rights" when their own civilians - behind whom they are deliberately hiding - are killed by the democracies in the process of trying to prevent further acts of terrorism.
The very idea that terrorists who use women and children as suicide bombers against other women and children shed crocodile tears over the deaths of civilians they deliberately put in harm's way gives new meaning to the word "hypocrisy." We all know that hypocrisy is a tactic of the terrorists, but it is shocking that others fall for it and become complicit with the terrorists.
Let the blame fall where it belongs: on the terrorists who deliberately seek to kill enemy civilians and give their democratic enemies little choice but to kill some civilians behind whom the terrorists are hiding.
Those who condemn Israel for killing civilians - who are used as human shields and swords for the terrorists - actually cause more civilian deaths and make it harder for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank.
HOW THE WORLD reacts to Israel's current military efforts to protect its citizens will have a considerable impact on future Israeli steps toward peace. Prior to the recent kidnappings and rocket attacks the Israeli government had announced its intention to engage in further withdrawals from large portions of the West Bank. But how can Israel be expected to move forward with any plan for withdrawal if all it can expect in return is more terrorism - what the terrorists regard as "land for rocket launchings" - and more condemnation when it seeks to protect its civilians?

TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government; Israel; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; Philosophy; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: 2006ISRAELWAR; ALANDERSHOWITZ; CHUTZPAH; CRITICS; IDF; ISLAMOFASCISM; ISRAEL; JERUSALEMPOST; PREDICTBLECONDEMNERS; SELFDEFENSE; THEDERSH; WARONTERROR
The Dersh has some things to say this morning about Israel's critics and their chutzpah towards Israel's self-defense. Terrorists today use civilians as human shields to carry on their activities. And a democracy's attempts to root them out brings forth the predictable condemners of its self-defense activities. In all this, Dershowitz's point is that if the world does not understand that Israel has to respond in a major way to terrorist atrocities to deter them - what's the point of Israeli concessions?? If you're going to be condemned anyway, you might as well stay in strategically defensible territory. That's exactly what I think Israel ought to do, regardless of what the rest of the world thinks - they don't live in a neighborhood surrounded by enemies bent upon their destruction. Israel deserves wide latitude to protect the lives of citizens and secure the peace on its borders as well as within its sovereign territory. Its about time - and time for the world to get off Israel's case and put its chutzpah aside.