You know, you guys can argue and nitpick like a couple of school girls all day long, but I would be willing to bet that 90% of the problems in the Middle East would be resolved if people stopped fucking with Israel. It might be my biased Western media talking, but it seems like the Arabs are the ones constantly with the suicide bombers and rocket attacks and abducting soldiers on Israeli soil. Not the other way around.
The Taliban is indeed not like the Lebanese army,but the Lebanese army should have been able to stop the Hezbollah from getting so much of an arms build up. They certianlyl must have been building up for years since it was not intended to be used in Lebanon then what did they need arms for? Now I believe with the help of Iran they purposely wanted to get an a war with Israel so the Iran government could come out looking like uninterested parties and take the world’s attention away from their nuclear project. Iran has openly stated it wanted the end of Israel,so in supporting the Hezbollah they could keep their noses clean!
Monavis
Although adding anything to what xtisme, and especially FinnAgain, have to say about the current situation is rather like gilding the liy, nonetheless…
Well, true enough. But I wonder how it would sound applied to Lebanese civilians.
Actually, I believe Hamas’ and Hizbollah’s express reason for existence is to destroy Israel. Which is the “something” that many Arabs want to be done.
I think the problem is that every time Israel tries to occupy that middle ground (by withdrawing from Gaza, negotiating land for peace, closing down the settlements, etc.) Hamas and Hizbollah respond with increased terrorism.
For example, Israel withdraws from Lebanon after 22 years. The response from Hizbollah is to dig tunnels under the border, and build up an inventory of rockets - in Lebanon - and use them to attack Israel.
In other words, whenever Israel tries to make peace, the terrorists respond by increasing their attacks. What choice does Israel have except to try to destroy the military infrastructure that the terrorists have built up, and reduce the attacks that way?
And as long as I have you here, perhaps you could answer a question. Why don’t moderate Arabs blame Hizbollah and the other terrorists for trying to maximize civilian casualties among their own supporters? Doesn’t that bother you?
If you hate Israel so much because they accidentally bombed a building with children in it*, why don’t you at least mildly dislike Hizbollah for trying to prevent people from evacuating areas the IDF says it is going to attack?
Regards,
Shodan
*Has there been any reliable word on what was going on in that building, or why it collapsed hours after the attack?
Xtisme has already posted text and links tracking that history back 5 centuries. How far back do you want to go?
None of this has anything but the most tenuous relationship to the actual situation, at least not without you saying “X is like Y because”, but I’ll take a swing at the general principle involved here: If I am living in a house that you own, you have every right to notify me that I must leave (consistent with any lease in the case of home rental of course. Geopolitics don’t quite work the same way, but it’s an analogy, not an exact situation) if you desire. You can sell the house to someone else and then I’ll be subject to their rules. You can tell me that you’re renovating the house into a duplex and that I’ll have to move into just one side of it as you intend to rent the other half. You can do all of those things and more, and from my POV I have very little recourse. If my response it to firebomb your house attack your family and start shooting at you in an attempt to claim the house for myself, then I am in the wrong.*
Nope. But again, your analogy is flawed. You, Gozu the private citizen, have no right to attack someone you think of as your “nemesis” at all. However, let’s try and adjust the scenario so it more mirrors reality. Lets suppose that you, Gozu, are not acting as a private citizen, but as the chief of police for Townsville. I am in a car (probably as a hostage. I’ll count the people of Lebanon’s inability to oust Hezbollah from their midst as them being held hostage to Hezbollah’s actions for the purpose of this analogy.) with your nemesis, who just so happens to be randomly shooting citizens on the streets of your town as he drives around. If you use deadly force against your nemesis to protect the citizens of your town, and in the process I get killed, did I deserve to die? Absolutely not. That’s not the question, however. The question is, was your use of deadly force justified, even though it resulted in my death? Absolutely.
Perhaps you could suggest one course of action that the Israelis have not tried in the past 50 years that falls in this middle ground, and what you see the likely results as being if they tried it? You keep banging on this drum, but I don’t see you offering any suggestions.
So, do you support Israel’s attempt to build a wall to protect themselves VIA increased border security? If not, why not, and while you’re at it, can you tell me how a wall will protect Israel from rockets that fly over it?
*FTR, I do not contend that the Israelis were completely innocent in '48. They did make mistakes, and there is blood on their hands as well, but this particular analogy is dealing with the reaction of the proto-Palestinians and other Arabs to the formation of Israel.
Finally, I have one issue with your “debate” style. You posted this as a quote from me:
When what I said was:
You edited my quote by removing part of it to alter what I said. That’s not cricket old bean, and I believe that it is also against the rules of this message board.
Hurrah for some common sense at last.
Well pointed out sir, 10/10
There was a program on Link tv with one of what they call refusniks. These are Israeli pilots who refuse to fly missions into Lebanon. Their claim is they are blowing up the infrastructure and killing manyi innocent civilians. They feel it is wrong and feel very guilty. Well programed and trained indi8viduals who can think for themselves and rejecy mainstream propaganda. There is hope.
You don’t mind if I answer that one, do you?
How about those over flights (with their accompanying sonic booms over populated areas)Israel promised to stop a long time ago but never did?
Countless other “raids” and such by Israel into Lebanese territory have been taking place since Israel supposedly withdrew in 2000.
Who were the Palestinians before there was an Israel? Where was Palestine before there was an Israel? Why was there no outcry against the Jordanians for their oppression of the sovereign rights of Palestine? Why didn’t the Religion of Peace speak out against the cruel oppression of the Egyptians, the Syrians, and the Lebanese against the downtrodden people of Palestine? Where was the outrage of the Islamic World when the Ottomans were the ones deciding the fate of Palestine? Perhaps we should have given it back to the Germans, or the Romans, or the Mongols, or any of the other interests which have ruled Palestine. Have the Palestinians ever ruled Palestine? Saladin was a Kurd, perhaps we should give it to them. We have never given the Kurds anything but promises; why not let them fight with the Palestinians for a generation or so?
The United States would have served its own interests better if it had convinced the British to allow us to put the new Jewish Homeland in New Jersey in 1948. Think of the savings in transportation costs alone. The weapons shipment costs for defense against the Trenton Liberation Front, and the Newark Liberation Army would have been far less, and we could have sent the Pennsylvania National Guard in to monitor cease fires for pennies.
Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
How dumb do you have to be to forget this lesson in less than a generation? Dumb enough to be President, I guess.
Tris
Well the simplest answer usually is the best one. Problem is that no one ever likes it.
The Palestinians I guess were people living for generations in land someone else owned. Maybe because they had the power and said so, it belonged to the Brittish. Then the UN said it belonged to the Israelis. Living there for gemerations apparently entitled them to nothing.No land rights no human rights.
So Hezbollah attacked in 2006 because of something that happened in 2001?
Little delayed reaction, that? (We don’t even need to get into the fact that lebanon was still at war with Israel and Syria was still funding and equipping Hezbollah.)
Again, Hezbollah attacked this time in reaction to which events, in specific, on which dates, in specific? No uncited and undated “raids” please. And nothing half a decade ago, please.
Because by your ‘logic’, Israel was justified in overflying Lebanon because Hezbollah had been attacking it five years earlier.
Countless? Why don’t you count… oh… five in 2006? Or: cite?
Especially for any ‘raids’ which would have given Hezbollah a pretext to launch a military attack just a few weeks ago?
Yeah, that must be it.
It’s not like the article was pointing out that Israel promised to stop the over flights six years ago, but never did according to the UNifil observers reports:
cite(pdf)
No? Still too far back in history for you? Okay, how about the most recent report?
cite(pdf)
You stated earlier in your post that the war between Israel and Lebanon was still technically going on (with Syria supplying arms). In a war, regardless of cold/warm/hot stages, events are not always directly linked. I’m not sure what your ridiculous demands for cites for “which specific events EXACTLY” is meant to be anything other than obfuscation or the “intellectual dishonesty” you keep accusing others of.
Sorry, links don’t work.
Please try this. Links to reports can be found within the bodies of the paragraphs.
No. They gave assurances that they would be suspended. Suspended does not mean stopped. But I guess accurately reporting on what your own cite says is too much for you.
Want to talk some more about intellectual dishonesty?
You are deliberately and wilfully ignoring what I was actually responding to.
A statement was made that Hezbollah captured Israeli troops in response to Israel actions. And in was made the context of talking about whether or not Hezbollah was justified in launching their attacks.
Please, continue to ignore the context, circumstances, background, and thrust of the questions before you wielded your hamfisted ‘gotcha’.
You may now want to compalin that it’s just ever so very horrible of me to expect that those actions which he was claiming Hezbollah responded to actually be identified. How very intellectually dishonest of me. :rolleyes:
Of course, Least original then failed to provide any actions that Hezbollah was responding to, and instead talked about something that happened to the Palestinians.
So yes, a claim was made that they were directly linked. And now you’re deliberately ignoring that, with massive intellectual dishonesty I’d point out. But you already knew that. And you still have not suggested any specific instances within six months time of Hezbollah’s attack that they could’ve been ‘responding to’.
I’ll also note that in your cherry picking of the PDF’s you gave us, you ‘forgot’ to mention that it is was stated, in both of them, that Hezbollah was the one to break periods of calm and/or ceasfires. But I guess that ‘responding to’ a period of peace and a lack of violence by launching attacks for events happening months before is just par for the course in your rhetoric.
Ahhh, the “I know you are but what am I!” defense.
Hopefully followed up by the “I’m rubber you’re glue!” defense.
And simply for the record, no, it wouldn’t be me obfuscating or lacking intellectual honesty, I’d be you making stuff up as I never used the word exactly, let alone all in caps. I asked for substantiation of the claim that Hezbollah was responding to Israeli actions. I know that in your haste to manufacture some ‘gotcha’, you’ve ignored what the acutal question under discussion was.
And no, the fact that there’s a declared state of war does not mean that the claim of Hezbollah’s response to Israel actions can be handwaved away.
But if you can’t argue with any degree of intellectual honesty, need to invent a discussion that didn’t actually occur, misrepresent my actual claims for substantiation… well, go for it.
And I can’t help but wonder if a report that ends in January provides events that Hezbollah was acting in “response to” in July. Is a response time of six months generally considered good where you’re from?
So, just to sum up for those playing along:
-Least original claims that the current attacks by Hezbollah were in “response to” Israeli actons.
-When pressed on what those actions were, he talks about a totally different country/people and conveniently ‘forgets’ talking about Hezbollah or Lebanon.
-Nietzche then cites something from 2001, and claims that answers my question to Least original to provide proof of his claims of an event in July of 2006.
-I point out that it’s half a decade old, and that the claim was that Hezbollah’s current action was in “response to” Israeli actions.
-Nietzche then claims that in a war events are not ‘directly linked’, and even though the claim I was responding to was that Hezbollah acted in “response to” Israeli actions, that it was intellectually dishonest to ask what those actions that Hezbollah was ‘responding to’ were.
As should be obvious to anybody reading along, claiming that an event in January was ‘responded to’ in July is simply absurd, especially if it could have been ‘responded to’ at any point up till then. And that there had been relative peace along the border. It also ignores that fact that if you commit an unprovoked attack six months after something you claim is provocation, then you can’t be said to be responding to anything, but intiating something.
Does anybody here seriously think that Nietzche is arguing with intellectual honesty? That if Israel had waited until january of 2007 to bomb Hezbollah, that he would be arguing that it was in “response to” events in July of this year? Or that he would be arguing, as Least original did, that the ‘response’ was justified?
Ah well.
So, I basically wasted my time with those cites concerning the history of Palestine. Big surprise there that you didn’t even bother reading them.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make someone fight their own ignorance. C’est la vie…
Reading this over now. Would have been nice if you could have quoted what you thought were the relevant paragraphs though. 
What I’ve noticed so far is that (according to UNIFIL), Israel had daily voilations of the blue line due to its overflights…which seem to have been mostly recon flights (with the odd attack on a Syrian radar array and such). Hezbollah’s violations, however, seem to have been in the form of raids and rocket/artillary attacks on IDF positions in the SF region.
So, yes…it does look like Israel was violating the blue line fairly consistently (according to UNIFL ‘daily’) with overflights into Lebanon air space. Yes…thats not a good thing. But…don’t you think that Hezbollah violating the blue line with actual direct attacks is a bit steep as pay back for this? Or, perhaps was DRIVING these Israeli violations? Seems reasonable to me.
I’ve only skimmed your paragraph though so far so I may be missing some stuff…I doubt I’ll have much time today to really engage in this part of the discussion unfortunately. Work is not permitting.
-XT
Nice! By suspended, they didn’t mean stopped. They meant… what? They’d have to stay after school? They were forbidden to go to the beach with their friends? “Suspended” in this context (since you seem to be so all about the context) means stopped, at least for a while. But according to the UNifil folks, they never even reduced, let alone “suspended” or stopped.
Not at all. What’s apparently too much is for you to pull your head out of your ass long enough to read something.
Engaging with the likes of you, I’m sure I’ll be presented with plenty of examples.
And my point was that there have been plenty of “justifications”. You just don’t like them because they make your pathetic attempts at making a point (that the Hezbollah’s July attacks were unjustified) look like the steaming pile of piping hot bullshit that they are. You may not like the fact that in wars, not all actions stem directly and conveniently from some other very recent event. There have been cross-border skirmishes and attacks from Israel and Hezbollah since 2000. You want to pretend that none of those matter and that this single event in July is absolute proof that Hezbollah is at fault for everything that’s happened since, then so be it.
Good luck to you Finn.
I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced a sonic boom, particularly one at low altitude. The shockwave produced is over 200 decibels. That qualifies as a percussion bomb. So no, I don’t think firing rockets in retaliation that did no serious damage, caused no loss of life is any worse than daily over flights with their accompanying sonic booms.
It’s got a lot more details, but I think you’ve already hit on the gist of what I was trying to point out; that there have been skirmishes at the border since 2000 by both sides and that Hezbollah’s July attacks were no worse than what had been happening for the past 6 years. The only thing disproportionate was Olmert’s premature ejaculation in response this time.
I cleaned up your mistake. You were being redundant when you said it was a conjecture. Of COURSE it’s a conjecture. Unless you can travel to parallel universes, I GET that it’s conjecture.
In a nutshell:
Right: They probably would have done this if that had happened.
Wrong: This is just conjecture because this never happened but they probably could have done this if that had happened.
Nothing to do with my debating style. I haven’t used any Ad-hominem attacks and have been reasonably polite I hope.
In any case. I must now withdraw from this debate. It is, indeed, taking way too much of my time to answer the handful of people arguing with me.
S-u-s-p-e-n-d-e-d.
2 a : to cause to stop temporarily <suspend bus service> b : to set aside or make temporarily inoperative <suspend the rules>
Do I now need to define the word “temporarily” too?
Because, Israel never said that they’d be stopped indefinitely, but suspended. (the definition of which you now know. Fighting ignorance is neat) They were suspended. Then Hezbollah broke a ceasefire in October of 2000.
It’s all there in the cite you provided.
You could, ya know, try reading it.
Just a thought.
:rolleyes:
Are you really going to make stuff up when all I have to do is quote the actual report to show you’re doing so? Okay…
Do you also require me to cite other periods that the UN report discusses where the overflights were indeed reduced?
Or would you like to continue making stuff up?
The UN report then says those minor violations were: attritubed mainly to military positions or fences that were built, and then corrected once the UN made mistakes known. Funny… nothing about overflights. They go on to say “Except for hizbollah’s attack on October 7th, the area was relatively calm.”
Funny… nothing about overflights. At all.
Could it be you were just making things up?
Why yes… yes it could.
For those reading along, look at item 5, where it clearly says that Hezbollah had violated the ceasefire.
For those reading along, note the end of item 5 where they clearly say
“Following this incident, the Israeli air force resumed flights over Lebanese territory…”
Now, I ask you, can something which was never suspended… be resumed?
Or is nietzche lying?
So the fact that you evidently didn’t understand what “suspend” means, or that the UN confirmed that there were no Israeli violations of the line of withrdrawal means… that you can treat GD as if it was the Pit?
None of which you can cite within six months. But you want to complain about imaginary instances of intellectual dishonesty consisting of, among other things, actually reading the articles that you present but can’t be bothered to read.
Excellent factual refutation. The fact that there was a period of relative peace that Hezbollah shattered with an attack, which, by the way, your own cite that you presented, but did not read, confirms, is proof that Hezbollah was justified in responding. Kaaaaaaaay. :rolleyes:
Likewise, the most recent report, which you seem unable to find, let alone read or cite:
[
]( http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N06/437/22/IMG/N0643722.pdf?OpenElement)
And you may not like the fact that you’re deliberately ignoring that even your own cite says that the ceasefire was broken by Hezbollah in May. Your own cite says that it was Hezbollah who launched attacks and broke ceasefires and periods of peace, but you want to pretend that they support your claim that an attack during peace is in “response to” something else?
Wow.
No, that’d be you creating a strawman and pretending that it’s me. Or can you cite anywhere, at all, where I said that Hezbollah is responsible for “everything that’s happened since.” You can’t, can you? I never said that, did I? You’re lying, aren’t you?
Your own cite stated that Hezbollah violated the ceasefire and initiated the current conflict.
Do you normally cite things which say you’re wrong? And then pretend that you’re in the Pit when they call you on it?
Except that your own cite says… do we really need to do this dance again? Please continue to ignore what your own cites says.
If you feel a need to hurl personal insults, take it to the Pit.
Do not do this again in this Forum.
[ /Moderating ]
Why yes, in fact I have. Maybe I’m missing something here. Your cite seems to indicate that those air violations were mostly in response to Hezbollah attacks and raids across the border.
I’m not sure why you feel that because those attacks did little or no damage (I see nothing that indicates this was always the case btw), that this somehow makes it ok…or that it takes away any justification for Israel to do overflights (and even low level supersonic runs) into Lebanon in retaliation. Or that, having violated the ceasefire and provoking those overflights, that Hezbollah is then justified in firing more rockets or in more cross border raids…because their attacks are ineffective. I’m really struggling to grasp the logic here. It SEEMS to all be there in your own cite.
Thats true I suppose. Again though, I’m failing to understand why Hezbollah’s repeated violations of the ceasefire, their rocket attacks and cross border raids, are ok…are considered the status quo. And that Israel, getting sick of 6 years (6 YEARS!) of this bullshit is some how ‘disproportionate’ of a response. True, these attacks were no worse than the others. Hezbollah fired more rockets at the northern towns in Israel, using them to cover a cross border raid that killed 2 or 3 IDF soldiers (I forget…working from memory here) while taking captive 2 more. All this provoked by…well, gods know what this time.
No, this was no worse than their other raids…but the fact that these raids have been going on for 6 years now with no end in sight sort of speaks clearly to at least the supposition that perhaps, just perhaps mind you, that this wasn’t exactly a ‘disproportionate’ response…nor was it exactly ‘premature ejaculation’.
-XT