Reply to: 10,000 Britons are stranded in Lebanon

[Fungus]

That is fair enough but Israel has been trying to engage even Hamas in the South and it has not been pursuing targets or military actions in the North. Israel has begun to dismantle settlements. It is my view that the principla agenda for Israel is peace, that where its version of peace may be at the expense of fairness with its arab nations it is for the diplomats to fine tune. History shows that whenever Israel relents its control it is immediatly attacked.

It appeared to me that Israel was peacefully working its way towards peace with its neighbours and was for no good reason attacked on two fronts.

No. Israel has dismantled tiny 'illegal' settlements i.e. ones not authorised by the Israeli state. But thet have been actively growing 'legal' ones, in contravention of the various peace deals. This is all part of Israeli spin. It is very very hard to figure out the reality behind the Westernised Israeli spokesmen. They make Northern Irish politicians sound like beginners.

And I'm not sure the massive incursions into Gaza can be described as peaceful. They were a response to kidnapping ONE soldier. FFS, we had a woman PC murdered by a Libyan in London. Did we declare war on Libya? The response is so massively disproportionate and is collective punishment in contravention of numerous treaties. The Arab terrorists are a nasty bunch, but at best Israel is behaving in a brutal and tyrannical manner towards millions of Palestinians.

What about the numerous unarmed innocent westerners, including Brits, shot dead by the IDF? Did we declare war on Israel?

[TwoWolves]

Turned out nazi again!

Best of thread..

[DaveB]

Heh! Excellent!

Turned out nazi again!

[Fungus]

DaveB: You make a cogent argument that pretty much agrees with my own viewpoint.

You ask what Israel has to gain by destabalising the region in this way? I don't know, why not ask them? They seem to think it's a good move right now.

Even when the Arab extremists were on ceasefire, Israel carried on targeting their leaders. Why? Why break a ceasefire if they want peace? Why target the Palestinian Authority, which would lead to increased anarchy? And why has Israel never obeyed the terms of the last peace proposal whereby they were supposed to stop expanding settlements. Instead it has been business as usual. And why has the US not criticised them for breaking the agreements, but criticised the Palestinians?

IMO Israel does not want peace because it wants land and water. A peace deal according to the UN terms would not give them what they want as they would have to retreat to the 67 borders, and that would not be acceptable to the voters. It would be seen as humiliation, giving in to terrorism, and the road to abandoning the Jewish homeland dream.

Ideally they want all of the West Bank and Gaza, but they know that unless they exterminate Arabs, which is out of the question, they cannot integrate the territories and remain a (semi)democratic mainly Jewish state with laws that give more rights to Jews than others. So they will compromise and take the best parts of the West Bank.

I suspect they are trying to destabilise the Palestinians and others, to create anarchy, and provoke terrorist atrocities. Then they will paint the situation as the brave Jewish state facing up to the nasty terrorists, with no alternative but to annex some land, deport the Arabs, and build big walls round the Greater Israel. America will swallow it and that's all that matters.

The rest of the world might whine, but so what. Do they care? I suspect the Holocaust gives Israeli Jews a "Stuff the world, they screwed us, so now we'll look after ourselves" viewpoint of the world.

Bloody religion.

[AlfredJPruffock]

DA

If Israel is justified in attacking Lebanon then do you think that Turkey has a case for millitary action against the Kurds, whom as you are aware have been fogring good relations with Israel.

Certainly the Turkish PM think so , and this is where the cycle of violence leads to inexorably ...

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan rapped the United States on Tuesday for tolerating Israel's attacks on its enemies in Lebanon while refusing to allow Ankara to crush Kurdish rebels hiding in northern Iraq.
Erdogan is under mounting domestic pressure to get tough with the rebels, who have killed 16 Turkish security personnel in separate attacks over the past week.

"The way they look at terror there (in Israel) and in Turkey is not the same. They show tolerance towards country A (fighting terrorism) and show a different approach to country B. This is unacceptable," Erdogan said.

He did not mention the United States or Israel by name but it was clear to whom he was referring. Erdogan, whose roots are in political Islam, has previously criticised Israel's actions.

Erdogan also repeated hints that Turkey might send troops across the border into Iraq to tackle the rebels if U.S. and Iraqi troops continued to ignore Ankara's demands to act.

"Turkey knows how to take care of itself. The relevant security institutions are working on this matter," Erdogan told a meeting of the foreign economic relations council.

[bogeyman]

I'm hanging from a lamp post at the corner of the street.........

Heh! Excellent!

Turned out nazi again!

[The Lone Gunman]

George Formby's best ever track, a classic

I'm hanging from a lamp post at the corner of the street.........

[Dundeegeorge]

I'm a right wing crypto-fascist

George Formby's best ever track, a classic

[NickIT]

I'm a right-wing crypto-fascist yet I find it hard to support Israeli strategy on many occasions.

In part because its irrational or self-defeating but mostly because we, in Europe and the US pay a high price for their stupidity.

Sometimes it gets so hard to see the truth because of this very kind reductive logic.

Well then you are living up to crypto-fascism....

So I am not surprised you say what you have. Of course the issue is one of your being truthfull and honest.

Always a problem with crypto-fascists.

[DodgyAgent]

I'm a right-wing crypto-fascist yet I find it hard to support Israeli strategy on many occasions.

In part because its irrational or self-defeating but mostly because we, in Europe and the US pay a high price for their stupidity.

Sometimes it gets so hard to see the truth because of this very kind reductive logic.

That is fair enough but Israel has been trying to engage even Hamas in the South and it has not been pursuing targets or military actions in the North. Israel has begun to dismantle settlements. It is my view that the principla agenda for Israel is peace, that where its version of peace may be at the expense of fairness with its arab nations it is for the diplomats to fine tune. History shows that whenever Israel relents its control it is immediatly attacked.

It appeared to me that Israel was peacefully working its way towards peace with its neighbours and was for no good reason attacked on two fronts.

[TwoWolves]

I am getting away from my original point here, which was that those who oppose Israel so vigorously are part of a left wing politically correct consensus.

I'm a right-wing crypto-fascist yet I find it hard to support Israeli strategy on many occasions.

In part because its irrational or self-defeating but mostly because we, in Europe and the US pay a high price for their stupidity.

Sometimes it gets so hard to see the truth because of this very kind reductive logic.

[DodgyAgent]

Your points are a little jumbled, but I'll try and take them one at a time.

What is it that means Israel cannot be a just, tolerant and fully inclusive society? Why does the fact that some of it's neighbours are hostile mean that it cannot include all it's citizens in that society. Democracy in Israel today is no better than the democracy of Aparteid era South Africa. Full inclusion of Arab Israelis and others in a secular Israeli state would go a long way to resoving a lot of the tensions and mistrust at the heart of the problems in the reigion.

Ok, I do recognise Israels right to exist as a country, I have never said otherwise. Indeed, in my original post I recognised Israels right to respond to attacks on it's territory and armed forces.

What I dont accept, and what the rest of the world doesnt accept to one degree or another, is the disproportionate nature of that response. The Israeli govt. should not be ordering the deliberate killing of civilians and the destruction of civilian targets in Lebanon in response to the kidnapping of members of it's armed forces. If you think this response is justified then please say so.

As far as Hezbullah firing rockets at Israeli towns is concerned, I have no more support for that than I had for the IRA pub bombings in the 70's or the Brighton hotel bomb. However, the British govt. didnt order the bombing of Belfast or order a blockade of the Irish Republic in response to IRA bombs on the mainland. Israel should not be using these as an excuse for the indescriminate targeting of civilians in retaliation. It makes them no better than Hezbollah, in many ways worse.

You ask what Israel has to gain by destabalising the region in this way? I don't know, why not ask them? They seem to think it's a good move right now.

Israel is operting segregation in order to prevent arab suicide bombers from attacking Israeli citizens. I am pretty sure that were these extremists to be denied the support of the likes of Syria and Iran and that the threat of suicide bombers were to go away that Israel would open itself up more to the prescence of Arabs. Israel is not deliberatly attacking civilians it is attacking terrorist targets and civil infrastructure. Yes it is killing children and innocent people in the process but unlike Hezbollah it is not deliberately targeting the helopless. Were it to do so it could easily wipe out many many thousands of inncocent children.

You say that Israel's response is disproportionate, to which I would ask what is proportionate given that these terrorists are hidden amongst the lebanese population. By reacting so vigorously the Israelis are switching the onus of responsibility for allowing Hezbollah to strike back onto eh government of Lebanon. You could call any war disproportionate to the initial conflict that started it.

I am getting away from my original point here, which was that those who oppose Israel so vigorously are part of a left wing politically correct consensus. These people see Israel as the embodiment of everything they hate about Britain. It is always politically expedient for people to pretend that they somehow care about the oppressed (Geldof, Bono Vanesssa Redgrave) in order to give themselves some sort of moral integrity. After all few people dare question or challenge others who purportedly sympathise with the weak and poor. How else does socialism survive?

[DaveB]

It is that old appeasement argument again. I suppose the Israelis kidnapped their own soldiers?

http://timesonline.typepad.com/david_aaronovitch/

Maybe David Aaronovitch describes the argument a little better than I do.

The point that I make is that Israel is hardly in a position to go further than it has in terms of freedom and democracy given that it is surrounded by regimes that are bent on its total destruction. I am not really quite sure on what your point is here DaveB. Either you recognise it as a sovereign state or you do not. If you do not then yes argue that the rest of the world is entitled to wipe it out. If you do then presumably a compromise needs to be reached in order that people can move on towards peaceful co-existence. The question I then ask is what has Israel got to gain by continually destablising the middle East?

Your points are a little jumbled, but I'll try and take them one at a time.

What is it that means Israel cannot be a just, tolerant and fully inclusive society? Why does the fact that some of it's neighbours are hostile mean that it cannot include all it's citizens in that society. Democracy in Israel today is no better than the democracy of Aparteid era South Africa. Full inclusion of Arab Israelis and others in a secular Israeli state would go a long way to resoving a lot of the tensions and mistrust at the heart of the problems in the reigion.

Ok, I do recognise Israels right to exist as a country, I have never said otherwise. Indeed, in my original post I recognised Israels right to respond to attacks on it's territory and armed forces.

What I dont accept, and what the rest of the world doesnt accept to one degree or another, is the disproportionate nature of that response. The Israeli govt. should not be ordering the deliberate killing of civilians and the destruction of civilian targets in Lebanon in response to the kidnapping of members of it's armed forces. If you think this response is justified then please say so.

As far as Hezbullah firing rockets at Israeli towns is concerned, I have no more support for that than I had for the IRA pub bombings in the 70's or the Brighton hotel bomb. However, the British govt. didnt order the bombing of Belfast or order a blockade of the Irish Republic in response to IRA bombs on the mainland. Israel should not be using these as an excuse for the indescriminate targeting of civilians in retaliation. It makes them no better than Hezbollah, in many ways worse.

You ask what Israel has to gain by destabalising the region in this way? I don't know, why not ask them? They seem to think it's a good move right now.

[DodgyAgent]

It is my belief that Israel's destabilisation of the PA, and refusal to hold a ceasefire even when the loonies were on ceasefire, handed power to Hamas. Hamas is in many respects a creation of Israel.

It is that old appeasement argument again. I suppose the Israelis kidnapped their own soldiers?

http://timesonline.typepad.com/david_aaronovitch/

Maybe David Aaronovitch describes the argument a little better than I do.

The point that I make is that Israel is hardly in a position to go further than it has in terms of freedom and democracy given that it is surrounded by regimes that are bent on its total destruction. I am not really quite sure on what your point is here DaveB. Either you recognise it as a sovereign state or you do not. If you do not then yes argue that the rest of the world is entitled to wipe it out. If you do then presumably a compromise needs to be reached in order that people can move on towards peaceful co-existence. The question I then ask is what has Israel got to gain by continually destablising the middle East?

[DimPrawn]

Hamas is nice in pitta bread with salad.

HTH