Israel has a "right to defend itself" but...

And the answer MUST BE the demolition of all of Lebanon as a functioning country?
The last time they tried this strategy -- when they were after Fatah and the PLO -- Hezbollah was born.

 

Whoa there. While I feel terrible that woman died. She did it wastefully, for the complete wrong cause. Yeah, support the Palestinian Authority. They really care(d) about their people. Give me a break. Israel's destroying terrorist's tunnels, but she wants to protect them. ISM, and those affiliates, are a joke. I've been there, worked there, no one respects them. She thought she was doing a good thing, as most of these people do, but use your head. Protest all you want but c'mon...

 

Rest easy, world.

Condoleezza Rice is on the scene.

http://news.yahoo.com/fc/world/mideast_conflict

 

Of course the last Lebanese politician who tried to loudly distance himself from Hizbollah was assassinated by the Syrians.

Israel was told for years that the way to achieve peace in the middle east was to give back some land. So they gave the Palestinians Gaza and they got out of Southern Lebanon.

Their reward? Shells being lobbed from Gaza and Southern Lebanon into Israel without provocation and the kidnapping and killing of their soldiers by terrorists who infiltrated Israel from Gaza and Southern Lebanon.

What other way should we expect Israel to respond? And why should we expect them to stop? If the Lebanese government wants Israel to stop bombing they need to kick Hizbollah out of their country or Israel is going to do that for them. It's not Israel's fault Hizbollah is made up of a bunch of cowards who hide among civilians.

As far as I'm concerned Israel's being a hell of a lot more restrained than they should be.

 

Ragu --
And there are a number of stories out there now about how Hezbollah's influence was waning, but how some of those same Lebanese are now enraged at Israel for blowing up those parts of the country that have nothing to do with Hezbollah rocket attacks. There is no longterm benefit to a devastated Lebanon for anyone except the extremists. It's easy to be an "objectivist" when the only battle you're fighting is on a message board.
As to your last paragraph, well, now you can fuck off. There's nothing I've posted on this board that can remotely be drawn to support this snotty bullshit. I love my country, as much as you do, and I daresay more than the think-tank cowboys and bloodthirsty chickenhawks who have done so much to screw it up over the past six years. I believe, in your hypothetical, that the United States would not attempt to destroy all of Canada and/or Miexico, and I believe that, if we tried, Canadians and Mexicans would hate us for generations. Believe it or not, US and Israeli interests might just not coincide this time around. This might be time for me to get all snotty about "dual loyalties" here, but I won't.

 

Alan Dershowitz has checked in;

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/07/24/blame_the_terrorists_not_israel/

THE HEZBOLLAH and Hamas provocations against Israel once again demonstrate how terrorists can 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 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 human rights organizations should stop falling for this 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 into the hands of the terrorists and cause 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 Hezbollah 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. That is 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," or martyrs, even if they did not volunteer for the lethal jobs. Under the law, criminals who use human shields are responsible for the deaths of their shields, even if the bullets that kill them come from policemen's guns.

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 killing of their own civilians. Now that some of those who are launching rockets at Israeli cities have announced that they have new surprises in store for Israel that may include chemical and biological weapons, the stakes are 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?

The world must come to recognize the cynical way in which terrorists exploit civilian casualties. They launch antipersonnel rockets designed to maximize enemy civilian deaths, then they cry ``human rights" when their own civilians -- behind whom they are hiding -- are killed by the democracies while trying to prevent further terrorism. The idea that terrorists who use women and children as suicide bombers against other women and children shed crocodile tears over the deaths of civilians whom they deliberately put in harm's way gives new meaning to hypocrisy. We all know that hypocrisy is a terrorist tactic, 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 seek to kill enemy civilians and give democratic enemies little choice but to kill some civilians behind whom the terrorists hide. Those who condemn Israel cause more civilian deaths and make it harder for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank.

How the world reacts to Israel's 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 announced its intention to engage in further withdrawals -- this time from large portions of the West Bank. Israelis think of it as ``land for peace."

But how can Israel be expected to move forward with any withdrawal plan 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?

 

Of course, I do. And I apologize if I responded with too much heat. I've just had enough of that line of arguments from the moles and trolls.
The Dersh's piece is a strange one, coming from a guy who advocated "torture warrants" a couple of years back, in that it's considerably softer than the one he ran in the LA Times last week, arguing for some nonsense called a level of "civilianilty."

 

Um, Christians in Lebanon have been terrorized by groups like Hezbollah for decades, so I don't think they will be joining in a coalition with Hezbollah anytime soon.

Israel's actions here: Against a non-contained, dangerous enemy.
U.S. actions in Iraq: Against a well-contained, neutralized enemy.

 

Hey, guys, a slight threadjack here. Here's a link to a Washington Post story in which researchers showed news coverage of the previous Israel-Lebanon conflict to admittedly pro-Israeli and pro-Arab viewers and got their responses. Both sides reported that the coverage was clearly slanted against their side. There are also a couple of other interesting findings.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/23/AR2006072300512.html

And for what it's worth, I think Israel's response to all this is clearly the only thing they can do. They've been attacked from all sides for 50-plus years. I don't think they want to start wars -- they want to be left alone -- but if someone else starts one, they don't mess around. Nothing less than the existence of their country is at stake and they are painfully aware of that.

And Dershowitz's assessment is right on target.

Carry on.