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

Et tu, Zeke? That's too bad. And you showed such promise.

 

Absolutely no clue.
Hope you finish the book before you run out of crayons.

 

Factlessness: 10
Hyperbole: 7. You've done better.
Liberal Bias: 0.

Only 17 this time. Gotta step it up.

 

that was a good post, ragu.

fenian,

nobody wants israel to annex lebanon. regular israeli citizens dont want to annex lebanon. even the government doesnt want to annex lebanon. they want to stop the bombing of haifa, which continued again today. and, you cant seriously believe that hezbollah/syria does not have an enormous power base in lebanon. what, exactly, is the lebanese government doing to stop hezbollahs attacks on israel? nothing. it cant, because hezbollah knows it has the backing of syria and iran, and those are two forces lebanon cant handle.

do i like the bombing of civilians? no, i hate it. but the idea that the lebanese government is going to do something about hezbollah is not feasible right now. if there so angry about what hezbollah is doing, why is the rest of the government not doing anything about it?

 

Ah, because at the moment, the Lebanese government is trying not to get killed. It's also trying to deal with a humanitarian disaster wrought by Israel's attack on the entire country's infrastructure. It's also just a little too easy to say that all Hezbollah is doing is Syria and Iran;s bidding. They can find reasons to launch rockets that have nothing to do with the geopolitical aspirations of those two countries. And Israel may not want to annex Lebanon but. to get what it wants, permanently, this action guarantees it's going to have to own a big piece of the country for a long time.
Do you honestly believe that, say, Maronite Christians in Junieh, 15 miles north of Beirut, nowhere near any Hezbollah base anyway, are going to look at their bombed-out homes and spend days without water or electricity, and then blame Hezbollah for those events? Does anyone think that way? And I'm tired of the we're-sorry-civilians-are-dying-but there's nothing-we-can-do rhetoric. If you're bombing civilians in pursuit of what you believe is your national interest, then own it.

 

come on, fenian. while the second half of your post may be true, the beginning is absolutely ridiculous.

the government is too busy to deal with hezbollah? it's too easy to say hezbollah is doing syria and irans bidding? thats just too weak for words.

if this government had any ability to stand up for itself, israel would leave the south of lebanon and let that countrys so-called leadership deal with it.

 

I vowed to stay off this thread....but just saw this caption on CNN, under a picture of an injured Lebanese child:

So let me just vent and say, FUCK YOU CNN....where are your pictures of Israeli children with nails and bolts and glass shards blasted through their bodies by suicide bombers in malls and on buses? Where are your pictures of children blown to pieces so small that there are actual rescue squads who scrape burned flesh off the streets so the families have something to bury? Can their pain 'possibly be imagined'?

I wrote more but deleted it. I hate fucking CNN's middle east coverage.

 

Right here. Still on CNN's website from 5 years ago.




And this, from 2005.





I'm sure there have been hundreds. If CNN has been willfully ignoring Israeli victims all these years, they sure had me fooled.

 

Yeah, it's actually the other way around. Where's the pictures of Israeli tanks blowing away Palestinian kids throwing rocks at them? Where's the story of Rachel Corrie being run over by an Israeli bulldozer after trying to save a Palestinian home?

 

Ragu --
Not necessarily. Do you think Hezbollah is at the moment fighting simply in Iran's interest? Completely?
Right now, they're also the only force fighting on behalf of Lebanon's territorial integrity. Now, put yourself in the place of somebody who's been bombed out of Junieh, far away from any conflict there's ever been between Hezbollah and Israel. Your country's been demolished stem to stern. Your cousin -- or your son -- is dead in the rubble. An invading force is blocking relief agencies' access to where you are, and there's no electricity, water, or even food. And there's only one force resisting all of this. Which side do you fall on?
Nobody - least of all me -- denies Israel's right to respond to deliberate attacks with proportional force. But to demolish a multiethnic democracy and inflame an entire region -- one in which, I say again, 130K American troops are stuck in a country that doesn't need any more regional turmoil, thank you -- for this purpose is not in anyone's longterm interest.
And, yes, if you say it is permissable to kill civilians because, through their government, they didn't do enough to stop the attacks of your enemy, you are arguing theoretically from the same logic that William Calley applied on the ground at My Lai.