There is no reason for the Hizbollah to give up anything. They clearly outmatched the IDF, who, with their Air Force, spent most of their time perpetrating indignity and massacre one after the other in the local villages throughout Lebabon (and not just in the south, as they would have you believe)with the apparent notion that ANYONE in Lebanon had to be Hizbollah. So, they destroyed the airports, the seaports, the utilities, and the roads, even the local roads, in a vain attempt at punishment on Lebanon for 'harboring' the Hizbollah.

Second, I see NOTHING in the record of actions--other than the record of words--that indicates anything near a desire by Israel for peace. Israel's idea of 'peace' is only on its own terms, with its big brother bully the US to run interference for it. What would happen if the US suddenly decided not to support or arm Israel, and simply left them to defend themselves against the people who have lived in the region for centuries? I would bet the 'peace terms' would be quite different.

Israel boasts of its army victories of 67 and 73--but they did that only because they were constantly supplied by the US, France and Britain, who also sent 'volunteers' to the region.

Let's stop with this vision that Israel, whatever it does, wears a white hat, and the others all wear black hats.

Finally, one writer speaks of the total responsibility for this nightmare being on the Hizbollah and Syria. How quickly we forget that the great 'crime' of the Hizbollah was to capture two Israeli soldiers. Isreal responded with widespread and wanton, usually indiscriminate, destruction and bloodshed throughout Lebanon. When the Hizbollah responded in kind, they were condemned by Israel and its Axis of death--the US and Britain, for their actions. Bottom line--Israel kills and bombs--that's good, they are defending themselves. When Hizbollah bombs and kills, that's bad, because the US says so.

Israel has now found its very own Vietnam by following the rules fondly favored by George Bush and company. To wit: win hearts and minds by killing as many as possible. They also find themselves in the company of Sen. Joseph Liberman, another loser as a result of the fatal "kiss" from Bush. Israel must choose her friends more carefully.

WW1 - 17% Civillian casualties
WW11- 65% Civillian casualties
All wars since after WW11 - 90% civillian casualties. How can any moral being take any side in a war when the above statistics make all wars civillian massacres.

Arabs/Muslims, your empire is long dead, and will never rise again.

Israel's destruction cannot ever come by your hands again, (but by the emerging Euro-based 4th and final empire).

....so sad....you waste millions of martys in a hopeless exercise.

Regardless of whatever happens, Israel will never be destroyed, and will infact expand and get bigger until ALL land that was chosen for Her is reclaimed.

The final days will be a battle between the Beast/Anti-Christ and their armies and the saints.

"Blessed be those that bless Isreal (America).....and cursed be those that curse her (Arabs/Muslims)".

Look at the world........Go Figure.

Isreal always retaliated with maximum force against including civilians whenever Hamas or Fatah guerillas attacked her and subdued them.
In This war one finds
1)ben jebil statment of IDF was wrong and Hizbollha was right about its claim of holding it.
2)markava tanks are getting disabled by the anti/tank missiles of hizbollah and IDF has lost 55 of its troops to these missiles.Hizbollah is firing them at correct range and not afraid to face the armour
3)Gun locating radars doesnot seem to help the Isreal airforce as well as IDF in locating the katyushas inspite of Airsuperiority of IDF without any ack ack from ground.
4)Hizbollah is supposed to be a terrorist organisation but it is fighting
a conventional war without ackack and able to hold ground against superior firepower and trained troops of IDF.
Ultimately IDF will win and will flatten the territory upto littany river but if Hizbollah doesnot accept the International force and continue the guerillah war and resistance like the one USA is facing in Iraq/afghanistan; will Isreal has the strength to continue the war.Now it looks as if the ceasefire is in Isreals interest?Now it looks thebombing of civilian targets inside Beirut/tryre seems to be a ploy by Isreal to shakeup the lebanon government to do its job of disarming the Hizbollah or face Infrastructure loss in its land.

How do we know who is civilan and who is Hezbollah in reporting deaths in Lebanon??
It is known that they have recruited women and children. Just curious about who is making the distinction. It is in Hezbollahs advantage to call them civilans and Israels to call them military.

Posted by: tom | August 4, 2006 04:42 PM

Your question frames the reality that most do not yet grasp - that acts of war have no place in a civiled world. They are a lose-lose proposition except for maybe the few who reap the profits from the sales of the weapons used. Why are the war profiteers never mentioned as active participants in these incidents? Shouldn't we know their company names and their CEO names and hold them accountable? Do they have lobbyists who influence policy makers? No one seems to ask these questions in the press, and why not?

Compare and Contrast: the world's respose to bombing of the Chinese embassy in Kosovo vs. the reaction to Israel's targeting of sites where Katyshua rockets were launched from.

Hezbollah launches rockets from mobile launchers. A rocket could have launched from right next to Qana. It is blood libel to believe that Israel would purposefully target civilians.

Get out of the middle east and the fanatism that unfortunately always seems to prevail as the only valid and accepted point of view, this will come to you, just like it did in September 11, never mind all the embassies and airplanes full of people and night clubs full of people and all suicide killings, that was not enough, there had to be a September 11.
What many people fail to see is that Israel only happens to be there but if these islamic fundamentalists like Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad had their way and destroyed Israel one day, the next day the Sunnis will try to anihilate the Chiites and when one of these fanatical groups prevails they will take it against whoever happens to be in the vicinity, the Indians,who the islamic fundamentalists also hate as much as the israelis, and do not think for a moment that they do not hate Christians as much as Hindues or Israelis, they hate us just as much it is just that they somehow are getting their priorities straighten up. First let destroy the israelis, then whoever comes next. Another people they consider almost as another ethnic race are the "American" which for many of these people is the same as saying Pigs or dogs, except of course when it comes to donations and contributions, in that case they are spared momentaneously.

How about we give Alaska to Israel, give nukes to the shia and the sunni and let them settle their own differences.

the united state lost the most liberal country in the arab world and created more hatred. yesterday a friend of mine said "hitler was the only one who knew how to deal with them" some people think that plestinians occupied israel. its a black comedy

Mr. Atkin has got it right in the article "insufficient stomach for war". As Pat Bucanon and Jimmy Carter indicated and echoed the opinion of Lebanon's foreign mimister.
"This is a deliberate massacre against civilians," Lebanon's acting foreign minister, Tarek Mitri, told reporters yesterday after addressing the U.N. Security Council in New York.

"Genocide," cry Lebanese and Middle East leaders and commentators, referring to Israel's actions.

Even Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said in a Senate floor speech yesterday that there was "sickening slaughter" on both sides

The most powerful influences on global opinion are television pictures. An experienced TV journalist will tell you that the picture is the story. No picture, no story. Those same journalists will tell you that a powerful picture will overwhelm reality. The picture becomes reality.

That's why there is such a global outcry for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon. The pictures of death and injury, of lives ruined and property destroyed, are horrifying. All decent human instinct demands a ceasefire immediately. The pictures say that what Israel is doing is out of all proportion to the injury done to it and the threat posed to it. Global opinion seems to be solidifying around the view that it's all Israel's fault.

The trouble is that these reactions, understandable given the power of the images, do not stand up to sober analysis. They contain within them the seeds of greater strife in the future.

Let's start with Israel's ostensibly disproportionate response. It would be disproportionate if Israel were responding just to the kidnapping of two of its soldiers and the deaths of eight others. This was just one small incident, however, in an almost 25-year war conducted by Hezbollah to obliterate Israel. Iran boasts publicly that it founded Hezbollah, is its greatest supporter and supplies it through another of Israel's enemies, Syria.

Many of the same people who accuse Israel of a disproportionate response recount in the same breath, some with barely hidden pleasure, that Israel is having trouble dealing with Hezbollah, which is turning out better armed, better trained, better disciplined and in much larger numbers than expected.

Why hasn't anyone recognised the profound inconsistency of alleging on the one hand that Israel is acting disproportionately to the threat, while stressing that this so-called disproportionate action is barely dealing with that threat.

It's illogical, but logic plays little part when emotion rules and images flood our TV screens with horror.

Next, the question of an immediate ceasefire. Who benefits? Hezbollah, of course. Hezbollah will proclaim that it has fought Israel to a standstill and will immediately begin to rebuild and rearm, even if expressly prohibited by the UN from doing so. If Israel were to take military action to stop this happening, it would be back to the present situation with horror TV pictures of artillery bombardments and bombings, plus this time being vilified for allegedly breaching a ceasefire.

That's why France's insistence on a ceasefire first, before the sending in of credible forces able to enforce it and the beginning of substantive negotiations, would equally be a victory for Hezbollah. Once such a ceasefire begins. there will be no agreement on a serious peacekeeping force, no negotiations on a real solution.

Even stout-hearted figures such as British Prime Minister Tony Blair are joining the chorus that solving the Palestinian problem is the only way to bring peace.

If only the US would exert itself to the maximum, so the argument goes. If only Israel would be reasonable and accept its 1967 borders, we could have a two-state solution, Israel and Palestine side by side.

Why do otherwise intelligent people perpetuate this myth? It wouldn't matter if the US exerted every ounce of its being. It would not matter if Israel went back to the 1967 borders or even to the 1948 borders. Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, most likely Syria, certainly the Islamic fundamentalist world, would not regard this as in any way acceptable. Here's what former Hezbollah leader Hassan Massawi said about Israel and negotiations: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."

On October 22, 2002, Hezbollah's present leader Hassan Nasrallah, said: "If they (the Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."

This is the true heart of the problem. The Palestinian issue cannot be resolved because a significant part of the Arab and Muslim world still do not accept Israel's right to exist. They will not accept the two-state solution beloved of analysts because they do not accept the existence of one of those two states, Israel. This is just not a matter of politics to them; it is a matter of religion. It is non-negotiable.

Until this changes, Israel will remain as it has for 60 years: under siege. Those who seek Israel's elimination will engage in conflict and terrorism against Israel and its friends.

So what are we to conclude? That Israel is just too much trouble? That it causes all of us too much grief? That in defending itself against these implacable enemies Israel offends our sensibilities by the manner in which it feels compelled to use force?

Already there are growing whispers from the so-called realist school of international relations that it would be a really smart thing if we just quietly walked away from Israel because it has become an embarrassment and inconvenience to our larger interests. Such is the consequence of privileging the power of the TV image over reason.

How do we know who is civilan and who is Hezbollah in reporting deaths in Lebanon??
It is known that they have recruited women and children. Just curious about who is making the distinction. It is in Hezbollahs advantage to call them civilans and Israels to call them military.

To: Harold and The Rev

I think that the high tech version of the pen, the internet, will prove mightier than the high tech sword, the F-16. The pen used honestly and respectfully delivers the truth. A sword delivers only destruction, either of the sword wielder's victims or attackers.

The American revolution itself is more a product of the pen than the sword when you consider George Washington lost 7 of the 9 major battles he fought against the British. It was superior ideas that sustained the revolution, not the superiority of weapons.

The most famous Jew ever said, "Then what is the meaning of that which is written: 'The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone?' Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed." Luke 20:17-18.

I like to think that the stone spoken of is the Truth. All sides in this conflict ignore the Truth at their own peril.

That there is so much debate occuring over these issues which are normally so sanitized by US media as to obscure their factual meaning is very encouraging and a testament to the sociocultural revolution of the Internet. In the spirit that the word is mightier than the sword, we must hope that the blog will become mightier than the F16's.

The Topic Should Be: Will Americans Ever Be Able To Stomach The Truth!

Why some Americans are apparently so hard on America, when it appears that we are at times letting the other side off of the hook, the answer is simple, we know and can see what goes on here in America and what America has been doing abroad? We only know what we are being told by people who have lied and misrepresented information to us before about what the other side is doing. Patriotism in America is in trouble because of the current Administration in Washington DC.

Today our country is like a dysfunctional family that pulls down its shades at night in order to conceal its own internal shame in the daytime when it parades around in public pretending that everything is okay and above board.

We are a dysfunctional family that cannot solve its own internal problems, so how dare we attempt to tell other nation families to use our methods in order to solve their problems when our methods contributed to our own dysfunction? We may be able to teach the world how to build a powerful military, how to kill or how to use greed and class-stratification in order to get rich or to die trying, but that seems to be about it. We should admit that we haven't figured out how to respect the rights that we say that everyone has inherently possesses. Folks we need to get it right ourselves first!

Americans, we support terrorism. Americans, what we have been doing and are still doing in Iraq is nothing short of State Sanctioned Terrorism. There is more than one definition of terrorism, other than the one that the U.S.A. helped to construct and put forth at the United Nations which excuses its misbehavior. How can we be right in Iraq, when from day one all that was put forth was lies upon top of more lies?

And if it is truth that makes one free, then we will never be free as long as we cannot stomach the truth about our nation, particularly before trying to straighten out another nation or people!

A Stomach for War
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/060802/photos_sc_afp/92acfcefd5bec3280ab19a564ee977e9&g=events/wl/080601mideast;_ylt=AtS3zpcIXHCYx7SR7fBrFnqbOrgF;_ylu=X3oDMTA3bGk2OHYzBHNlYwN0bXA-

A Stomach for War
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/060802/photos_sc_afp/92acfcefd5bec3280ab19a564ee977e9&g=events/wl/080601mideast;_ylt=AtS3zpcIXHCYx7SR7fBrFnqbOrgF;_ylu=X3oDMTA3bGk2OHYzBHNlYwN0bXA-

A Stomach for War
http://images.icnetwork.co.uk/upl/mirror/apr2003/3/8/0009D51C-DD38-1E8D-A58780C328EC0000.jpg

speak for yourself,

I'm tired of movies where the cars blow-up if you walk near them, we kill 30 or 40 bad guys and walk out with trumpets and fanfares as large breasted girls hug the heroes....

how about, this, 9/11 happens we arrest the complicit congress, CIA/FBI, and most of the executive branch....confiscate their properties and send them away forever...

find an alternative, or alternatives to oil, turn our back on the middle east, using what we have in National Resources, boot out internationals that are raping our country and destroying our citizens...put a national healthcare plan in place, double the frikkin estate tax and

sell tickets to public executions of those that used the military to enrich themselves in a war based upon an illusion

rebuild Americas' infrastructure, reestablish morality, make it manditory that if you serve in congress you have to be clearable....or you don't serve

we don't need any more testosterone based war-stories.....

it's easy to kill people, it takes really mean people to kick the bad boyz in the a ss and tell them to "knock it off...." and mean it....

there is no war, and Israel is the dupe and the bully

.

do you have proof it wasn't CIA backed propaganda?

neh paz?

like using the CIA in Central America, to train the "freedom fighters,"

and how did Al Queerda get trained, CIA wasn't it? School of the Americas? or was it in Argentina?

terrorism....

and your jingoism "back in America Left_wing...."

please you're too stupid to work with, kill yourself

how about mossad, special forces, hezzbollah, mafia

when they're on _your_ side they are the "good guys"

when they are on _their_ side they are "terrorists"...

this moderne day "boogey man," the "terrorist," has given the liscense to steal, to a really_stupid village idiot from texas and his buddies

legitimacy? neither side has legitimacy

but that is not what it's about, it's about the thrill of killing and inflicting revenge....primitive tribal urges

there's nothing evolved going on, put a cage around them and let them havea death match

.

terrorism , yeah right , the United States is obviously not the terrorists are they....

and by the way, block head....yes you, why should someone apologize for something they didn't do.....

look up the WTC bomber s on wikipedia, they're predominately Saudi...trained in America

think slowly now.....we trained them, they're our friends, maybe it's a "false flag attack," so we can go over there and control the friggin oil....

nah, that's too obvious...especially for stupid people

Mr. Arkin makes some untenable leaps of logic in getting from A to B in making many of his arguments. To pick one example, he says there is probably no rationale that will convince the Arab "street" that some use of Israeli military force is justified. Okay, fair enough.

Then he makes the leap that therefor the "chattering classes" will never sanction Israeli use of military force, as if somehow the Arab "street" were a proxy for the "chattering classes" in America. Which, of course, is ridiculous.

Mr. Arkin also assumes as true the oft-repeated argument that Israel is reacting to Hezbollah attacks, when in reality the attacks have been a tit-for-tat affair for years: both sides have made attacks in reponse to action by the other. But when, say, the Israelis drop an air to ground missle in to the side of an apartment building, to kill one bad guy and a dozen innocent people, and Hezbollah drops a missle in to Israel that actually hits somebody less than 1% of the time, it gets reported in the U.S. press as those darn terrorists attacking Israel, with no context.

It's as if after Natalee Holloway disappeared in Aruba, the U.S. had blockaded the island, and fired missles killing the leading suspects (and a few dozen innocent bystandards). By Arkin's standards, well, heck, no reason for those assasinations would ever satisfy the Arubans themselves, so the chattering classes in the U.S. should just be ignored.

Why?

The Revolution Has Been Televised, the one in Lebanon.

How come we have not been terrorvision coverage of the Revolution by America, in Iraq?

Perhaps Mr. Bush ddid not and does not want us to see the little children that were blown apart by American bombs and missles?

in my veiw it is a well paln israeli action for genocide in lebnone. as it sure that UNO is help less in that matter to stop israeli from more killing. and it is also a truth that israeli killed only innocient civilians in that war. As USA encouraging them for their own intrest and want to put presure on Iran. But USA president do it at the cost of their own nation. USA economy is now facing a great challeng and it would be more sever in the next year and half. Now there is a need to stope israel from more attacks and US president should save their nation from starvation.

Ben Caspit, an Israeli journalist wrote this proposed speech for Prime Minister Olmert:

July 31, 2006
Ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world. I, the Prime Minister of Israel, am speaking to you from Jerusalem in the face of the terrible pictures from Kfar Kana. Any human heart, wherever it is, must sicken and recoil at the sight of such pictures. There are no words of comfort that can mitigate the enormity of this tragedy. Still, I am looking you straight in the eye and telling you that the State of Israel will continue its military campaign in Lebanon.

The Israel Defense Forces will continue to attack targets from which missiles and Katyusha rockets are fired at hospitals, old age homes and kindergartens in Israel. I have instructed the security forces and the IDF to continue to hunt for the Katyusha stockpiles and launch sites from which these savages are bombarding the State of Israel.

We will not hesitate, we will not apologize and we will not back off. If they continue to launch missiles into Israel from Kfar Kana, we will continue to bomb Kfar Kana. Today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Here, there and everywhere. The children of Kfar Kana could now be sleeping peacefully in their homes, unmolested, had the agents of the devil not taken over their land and turned the lives of our children into hell.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time you understood: the Jewish state will no longer be trampled upon. We will no longer allow anyone to exploit population centers in order to bomb our citizens. No one will be able to hide anymore behind women and children in order to kill our women and children. This anarchy is over. You can condemn us, you can boycott us, you can stop visiting us and, if necessary, we will stop visiting you.

Today I am serving as the voice of six million bombarded Israeli citizens who serve as the voice of six million murdered Jews who were melted down to dust and ashes by savages in Europe. In both cases, those responsible for these evil acts were, and are, barbarians devoid of all humanity, who set themselves one simple goal: to wipe the Jewish race off the face of the earth, as Adolph Hitler said, or to wipe the State of Israel off the map, as Mahmoud Ahmedinjad proclaims.

And you - just as you did not take those words seriously then, you are ignoring them again now. And that, ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world, will not happen again. Never again will we wait for bombs that never came to hit the gas chambers. Never again will we wait for salvation that never arrives. Now we have our own air force. The Jewish people are now capable of standing up to those who seek their destruction - those people will no longer be able to hide behind women and children. They will no longer be able to evade their responsibility.

Every place from which a Katyusha is fired into the State of Israel will be a legitimate target for us to attack. This must be stated clearly and publicly, once and for all. You are welcome to judge us, to ostracize us, to boycott us and to vilify us. But to kill us? Absolutely not.

Four months ago I was elected by hundreds of thousands of citizens to the office of Prime Minister of the government of Israel, on the basis of my plan for unilaterally withdrawing from 90 percent of the areas of Judea and Samaria, the birth place and cradle of the Jewish people; to end most of the occupation and to enable the Palestinian people to turn over a new leaf and to calm things down until conditions are ripe for attaining a permanent settlement between us.

The Prime Minister who preceded me, Ariel Sharon, made a full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip back to the international border, and gave the Palestinians there a chance to build a new reality for themselves. The Prime Minister who preceded him, Ehud Barak, ended the lengthy Israeli presence in Lebanon and pulled the IDF back to the international border, leaving the land of the cedars to flourish, develop and establish its democracy and its economy.

What did the State of Israel get in exchange for all of this? Did we win even one minute of quiet? Was our hand, outstretched in peace, met with a handshake of encouragement? Ehud Barak's peace initiative at Camp David let loose on us a wave of suicide bombers who smashed and blew to pieces over 1,000 citizens, men, women and children. I don't remember you being so enraged then. Maybe that happened because we did not allow TV close-ups of the dismembered body parts of the Israeli youngsters at the Dolphinarium? Or of the shattered lives of the people butchered while celebrating the Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya? What can you do - that's the way we are. We don't wave body parts at the camera. We grieve quietly.

We do not dance on the roofs at the sight of the bodies of our enemy's children - we express genuine sorrow and regret. That is the monstrous behavior of our enemies. Now they have risen up against us. Tomorrow they will rise up against you. You are already familiar with the murderous taste of this terror. And you will taste more.

And Ariel Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza. What did it get us? A barrage of Kassem missiles fired at peaceful settlements and the kidnapping of soldiers. Then too, I don't recall you reacting with such alarm. And for six years, the withdrawal from Lebanon has drawn the vituperation and crimes of a dangerous, extremist Iranian agent, who took over an entire country in the name of religious fanaticism and is trying to take Israel hostage on his way to Jerusalem - and from there to Paris and London.

An enormous terrorist infrastructure has been established by Iran on our border, threatening our citizens, growing stronger before our very eyes, awaiting the moment when the land of the Ayatollahs becomes a nuclear power in order to bring us to our knees. And make no mistake - we won't go down alone. You, the leaders of the free and enlightened world, will go down along with us.

So today, here and now, I am putting an end to this parade of hypocrisy. I don't recall such a wave of reaction in the face of the 100 citizens killed every single day in Iraq. Sunnis kill Shiites who kill Sunnis, and all of them kill Americans - and the world remains silent. And I am hard pressed to recall a similar reaction when the Russians destroyed entire villages and burned down large cities in order to repress the revolt in Chechnya. And when NATO bombed Kosovo for almost three months and crushed the civilian population - then you also kept silent. What is it about us, the Jews, the minority, the persecuted, that arouses this cosmic sense of justice in you? What do we have that all the others don't?

In a loud clear voice, looking you straight in the eye, I stand before you openly and I will not apologize. I will not capitulate. I will not whine. This is a battle for our freedom. For our humanity. For the right to lead normal lives within our recognized, legitimate borders. It is also your battle. I pray and I believe that now you will understand that. Because if you don't, you may regret it later, when it's too late."

The righteousness of this war which is for self-defence and the survival of Israel and all civilized, democratic, christian and non-secular countries, is very true. We should all wake up to the pan-Islamic ambition/agenda of the muslim extremist groups/countries, like Hezbollah and Iran. We should help Israel , instead of condemning them, for they are not only fighting for their own survival, but they are also fighting for us. Remember, that Hezbollah, Iran, Hamas and others of the same kind, are out to destroy Israel or annihilate or kick the Jewish people out their land. They will not be satisfied until all the Jews give up all the land to them - this is their real agenda. They always initiate the killings/violence by terrorist acts and when Israel hits back, they resort to complaining about the damage to their homes and deaths to their civilians to all TV stations, newspapers of the world and whine/complain of 'Israeli aggression/violence/genocide". They justify and cover up their hidden agenda to destroy/kill Israel/Israelites to make them leave and give all the land together to them, by calling their own terrorist acts as "acts of resistance" against Israeli occupation. In short , they want the Israelites to give up all the land to them and leave, move to Europe, as Iran's president had declared to the world

Isn't it interesting that the Islamic fascists never make a mistake?

We rarely see worldwide demonstrations condemning their consistently barbaric behavior. In violation of a U.N. mandate, Hezbollah has fired thousands of missiles targeting civilians into Israeli cities. Have you seen many demonstrations against that?

How about after 9/11? Did you see mass demonstrations condemning Al Qaeda? Did you see protests when those savages beheaded civilians on videotape?

The answer is no. The terrorists can do pretty much anything without the world condemning them. Want more? Iran is defying the United Nations on nuclear weapons. Any demonstrations? Muslims are slaughtering each other inside Iraq. Any protests?

Back in America, the left-wing press counsels negotiation. OK, it's worth it. We're trying. But let's look at the negotiating record. President Clinton and Israel negotiated with Yasser Arafat until every cow in the world came home.

Arafat didn't want peace. Why? Because his terror activities made him millions of dollars. If you don't believe me, speak to his widow, currently living lavishly in Paris.

The U.N. has negotiated with Iran over nukes for years. No result. Iran doesn't want peace, it wants jihad.

North Korea doesn't want peace either. It signed a nuke agreement with the Clinton administration and promptly violated it.Does Al Qaeda want peace? So what makes anyone believe Hezbollah would negotiate in good faith?

Who changed the rules on warfare?

In the last six months of WW II, the allies killed 900,000 people, not including the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why don't modern military thinkers get over our new moral thinking that we are more enlightened about war and embrace their inner Genghis Khan. We are basically savages in designer suits. Contrary to popular belief, we are not any morally superior to his age. So as Napoleon asid, if you are going to take Moscow, take Moscow. Study the Romans. Study Grant. As Maximus said in Gladiator, "At my command, unleash hell". Do we, does Israel, does anyone. have the stomach for unleashing hell,in 2006, or are we just too damn nice. Nice guys finish last. I'm done with my rant.

The Vietnam War was the first war fought by systems analysts - Stanley Kubrick

This documentary should be required viewing for all Americans.

Your TV news coverage has little in the way of balance (the same can be said for the Washington Post opinion articles I have read in the past week).

Please watch this.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7828123714384920696

Dorothy?

Religion has always been Extreme. And religious people throughout world history have been extremists?

Someone mentioned Cain earlier in the blog. Among other things, why did he kill his brother, he had to do with a 'religious sacrifice'. One's was accepted and the others was not apparently.

So what did Cain do, acted extremely, and killed his brother. We are seeing too much of the same today!

Existentials would agree that God is Extreme!

Defend itself? How is it defending yourself when you kill over 600 innocent people at least a third of them children just to recover 2 kidnapped Israeli soldiers. What moral justification is there for that and what god really believes that is acceptable? Thus far we have been told that the god who condones violence name is Allah but it seems it is also Yahweh.

Extreme Democracy vs Middle-East Extremism

In this minister's opinion, to a certain extent all sides are totalitarian.

What we have, among everything else, are several competing ideologies fighting to dominate or eliminate the other.

We have the extremists on the Democratic side who mostly believe in the Bush-Doctrine, and they believe they are, without exception, right.

Then we have multiple doctrines coming out of the Middle and Near-East with competing Arab, Muslim and Jewish subset ideologies, competing to dominate in that region.

I am not sure if the question should be, who is right or on the other hand, who will win out in the end? But one thing that I am certain of is that Hitler would feel vindicated if he were alive today. For he sought to spread his ideology around in a region, with hopes of spreading it around the world!

How come people cannot simply stay in their own homes and their own territories and mind their own business, and respect the right of disparate people in other places to pursue their own dreams, goals, choice for governance and their destinies?

Americans, we have extremists as well on our side and sitting in our Federal Government, actually some of them are fascists. We have fascists in some of our political parties in the U.S.A...

We may have drawn different conclusions about what is right and what is wrong; however, our behavior in many instances is just the same as those that we criticize. At the heart of the matter lay differences of opinion!

How can America counsel anyone else? We have been trying to force our ideas, on the rest of the world for the past 2 centuries! Is our way truly the right or only way? America has never resolved its own racial divide, how can America lecture or impose its ideology and will upon other more advanced people and nations of the world?.

"...having becomes teachers", America needs to be taught, its racial and class fissures are still present, and they could erupt at any time!

Baron Munchausen

I have been trying to get Christians to understand that Hagar actually had more conversations with God or his angel, than the Virgin Mary did, in hopes of getting them to be more balanced in their understanding.

Clearly God promised to bless Hagar's seed as well, although, he admitted that her folks would have to fight everybody. Both prophecies, recorded in Hebrew scriptures, have apparently come true.

Fundamentalism and radicalism on both sides and in all faiths is problematic at best, and when the latter is coupled with prejudice and violence, it can be deadly.

I strive to get religious and secular people to look internally and to deal with their own biases, and to respect the brotherhood of man. But too many people like in the story of Cain and Abel, are either incapable or unwilling to do so.

My prayers are also for the health and safety of Arabs, Persians and Muslims. I also pray that we will all day learn to co-exist peacefully in the world.

Peace & Grace

Cain and Sarah had a characteristic trait in common. Both had the nerve to lie to God when questioned by God (see Gen. 4:9 and Gen. 18:15). In contrast, Hagar told the truth when questioned by an Angel of God (Gen. 16:8)

I consider the tendency to lie or deceive to be a congenital deficiency as evidenced by Abraham's lie that Sarai was his sister, Jacob's deceipt of Isaac by posing as Esau, the sons of Jacob's deceipt of Jacob about Joseph's death. Therefore, how can any claims recorded by the descendants of liars be taken as perfectly true?

Your reality, people of the Middle East, is lies and balderdash, and I'm happy to say I have no grasp of it whatsoever. There is no moral high ground in your quagmire of quagmires.

The bloody conflict will continue without end as long as deceipt and disrespect persist between the descendants of Hagar and Sarah.

here are some points vs. arkin's idea that criticism of israel's military performance is biased.

1. wars against guerilla organizations are as much about PR and perceptions as they are about actual results of battles.

2. the israel leadership, espeically the chief of staff expected the war to be quick and won thoroughly through air power

3. the war was undertaken with the goals of reestablishing israel's deterrence vis a vis hizbullah. deterrent power depends on the enemy's perception of how much it has lost (potency of threat)and how much pain one can take(credibility). only on the credibility score and thanks to the israel public has israel gained.

4. the israel leaders have presented the war as one that has farther consequences. they have echoed bush in claiming it will be a victory over iran. so perception is very important and thus the edge over hizbullah very great.

see more along these lines at killing the frog. http://frogkill.blogspot.com

If everytime Israeil is hit with a rocket the response is 'they are trying to destroy us' then everytime a Lebanese civilian dies it should be 'they are doing ethnic cleansing.'

Ron: "Lebanon says 57 people, mostly children, were killed at Qana yet the Red Cross reports only a total of 28 bodies were recovered. What number gets reported?"

Ha'aretz yesterday reported the updated number (which is only bodies recovered so far, with more expected; 19 of those 28 were children). And those numbers are getting picked up by U.S. media today.

Qana was a massacre of children, however much you may want to spin baseless conspiracy theories to deny the Israeli military's responsibility.

Citing those denialist conspiracy theories just makes you look like someone willing to grasp at any straws to cling to the mantle of "good guys". There are no good guys in this or many other wars.

Stop, please, and listen to the compassionate human being inside you. Stop this slaughter so that a political solution can be reached.

Your view is civilized - too civilized... you are not writing about governments who have problems with one another; you are writing about people who are committed to killing someone because of their race/religion... go live in Israel and distribute some bibles - see what happens.

middle east,

I like to kill people and to die, because it makes life more exxciting....

I am a primitive middle eastern personality.

.

To win a war you must break the spirit of those you fight to continue. The cost of continuing to fight a war of those whom wish to destroy you must be unacceptable to them. They must belive that they have lost and you have won. Until then there will be no victory.
We did not need to occupy Japan and Germany with huge combat forces at the end of WWII simply because they accepted we had won. There have been no victors on either side in the mideast...only losers.

Unfortunately war has been around since recorded history and the human race has not evolved sufficiently to do away with it. I'm not religious but it is quite clear that biblical predictions of Armageddon might be fulfilled very soon. It is very likely that a "low key" WWIII started on 9/11 who knows. History and a macro-view undoubtedly indicate an unprecedented conflict is imminent. The right or wrong is only judged by the vantage point of the observer.

==Dimitry Yep... you are right, see the problem is that short of Great Britain, the rest of the so called allies have a case of stage fright. They all criticize US policy but surely expect the US to bail them out... isn't it wonderful. Seriously, if the supposedly FREE WORLD does not unite to fight terrorism we have a BIG problem due to what you mentioned... I would not limit myself to the Europeans or Turks I would think that from Australia to Argentina it is an evil that concern us all it is a matter of survival.==

Ahh...my post was done in the spirit of irony. I don't agree with you. I don't think that fighting terrorism by killing large numbers of civilians, occupying countries and forcing them to comply at a barrel of a gun is a winning hand. I think that such a strategy endangers us all.

However, you feel differently and want to attack and occupy Lebanon, Syria, Iran, etc. Then logically you must immediately join the armed forces and/or convince your children to do so.

that's a funny term.

terrorism....

how about mossad, special forces, hezzbollah, mafia

when they're on _your_ side they are the "good guys"

when they are on _their_ side they are "terrorists"...

this moderne day "boogey man," the "terrorist," has given the liscense to steal, to a really_stupid village idiot from texas and his buddies

legitimacy? neither side has legitimacy

but that is not what it's about, it's about the thrill of killing and inflicting revenge....primitive tribal urges

there's nothing evolved going on, put a cage around them and let them havea death match

.

Ben Caspit, an Israeli journalist wrote this proposed speech for Prime Minister Olmert:

July 31, 2006
Ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world. I, the Prime Minister of Israel, am speaking to you from Jerusalem in the face of the terrible pictures from Kfar Kana. Any human heart, wherever it is, must sicken and recoil at the sight of such pictures. There are no words of comfort that can mitigate the enormity of this tragedy. Still, I am looking you straight in the eye and telling you that the State of Israel will continue its military campaign in Lebanon.

The Israel Defense Forces will continue to attack targets from which missiles and Katyusha rockets are fired at hospitals, old age homes and kindergartens in Israel. I have instructed the security forces and the IDF to continue to hunt for the Katyusha stockpiles and launch sites from which these savages are bombarding the State of Israel.

We will not hesitate, we will not apologize and we will not back off. If they continue to launch missiles into Israel from Kfar Kana, we will continue to bomb Kfar Kana. Today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Here, there and everywhere. The children of Kfar Kana could now be sleeping peacefully in their homes, unmolested, had the agents of the devil not taken over their land and turned the lives of our children into hell.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time you understood: the Jewish state will no longer be trampled upon. We will no longer allow anyone to exploit population centers in order to bomb our citizens. No one will be able to hide anymore behind women and children in order to kill our women and children. This anarchy is over. You can condemn us, you can boycott us, you can stop visiting us and, if necessary, we will stop visiting you.

Today I am serving as the voice of six million bombarded Israeli citizens who serve as the voice of six million murdered Jews who were melted down to dust and ashes by savages in Europe. In both cases, those responsible for these evil acts were, and are, barbarians devoid of all humanity, who set themselves one simple goal: to wipe the Jewish race off the face of the earth, as Adolph Hitler said, or to wipe the State of Israel off the map, as Mahmoud Ahmedinjad proclaims.

And you - just as you did not take those words seriously then, you are ignoring them again now. And that, ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world, will not happen again. Never again will we wait for bombs that never came to hit the gas chambers. Never again will we wait for salvation that never arrives. Now we have our own air force. The Jewish people are now capable of standing up to those who seek their destruction - those people will no longer be able to hide behind women and children. They will no longer be able to evade their responsibility.

Every place from which a Katyusha is fired into the State of Israel will be a legitimate target for us to attack. This must be stated clearly and publicly, once and for all. You are welcome to judge us, to ostracize us, to boycott us and to vilify us. But to kill us? Absolutely not.

Four months ago I was elected by hundreds of thousands of citizens to the office of Prime Minister of the government of Israel, on the basis of my plan for unilaterally withdrawing from 90 percent of the areas of Judea and Samaria, the birth place and cradle of the Jewish people; to end most of the occupation and to enable the Palestinian people to turn over a new leaf and to calm things down until conditions are ripe for attaining a permanent settlement between us.

The Prime Minister who preceded me, Ariel Sharon, made a full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip back to the international border, and gave the Palestinians there a chance to build a new reality for themselves. The Prime Minister who preceded him, Ehud Barak, ended the lengthy Israeli presence in Lebanon and pulled the IDF back to the international border, leaving the land of the cedars to flourish, develop and establish its democracy and its economy.

What did the State of Israel get in exchange for all of this? Did we win even one minute of quiet? Was our hand, outstretched in peace, met with a handshake of encouragement? Ehud Barak's peace initiative at Camp David let loose on us a wave of suicide bombers who smashed and blew to pieces over 1,000 citizens, men, women and children. I don't remember you being so enraged then. Maybe that happened because we did not allow TV close-ups of the dismembered body parts of the Israeli youngsters at the Dolphinarium? Or of the shattered lives of the people butchered while celebrating the Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya? What can you do - that's the way we are. We don't wave body parts at the camera. We grieve quietly.

We do not dance on the roofs at the sight of the bodies of our enemy's children - we express genuine sorrow and regret. That is the monstrous behavior of our enemies. Now they have risen up against us. Tomorrow they will rise up against you. You are already familiar with the murderous taste of this terror. And you will taste more.

And Ariel Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza. What did it get us? A barrage of Kassem missiles fired at peaceful settlements and the kidnapping of soldiers. Then too, I don't recall you reacting with such alarm. And for six years, the withdrawal from Lebanon has drawn the vituperation and crimes of a dangerous, extremist Iranian agent, who took over an entire country in the name of religious fanaticism and is trying to take Israel hostage on his way to Jerusalem - and from there to Paris and London.

An enormous terrorist infrastructure has been established by Iran on our border, threatening our citizens, growing stronger before our very eyes, awaiting the moment when the land of the Ayatollahs becomes a nuclear power in order to bring us to our knees. And make no mistake - we won't go down alone. You, the leaders of the free and enlightened world, will go down along with us.

So today, here and now, I am putting an end to this parade of hypocrisy. I don't recall such a wave of reaction in the face of the 100 citizens killed every single day in Iraq. Sunnis kill Shiites who kill Sunnis, and all of them kill Americans - and the world remains silent. And I am hard pressed to recall a similar reaction when the Russians destroyed entire villages and burned down large cities in order to repress the revolt in Chechnya. And when NATO bombed Kosovo for almost three months and crushed the civilian population - then you also kept silent. What is it about us, the Jews, the minority, the persecuted, that arouses this cosmic sense of justice in you? What do we have that all the others don't?

In a loud clear voice, looking you straight in the eye, I stand before you openly and I will not apologize. I will not capitulate. I will not whine. This is a battle for our freedom. For our humanity. For the right to lead normal lives within our recognized, legitimate borders. It is also your battle. I pray and I believe that now you will understand that. Because if you don't, you may regret it later, when it's too late.

it is really between stupid people that need to be isolated.

We, the United States, should seek to create an alternative energy source.

That solution would effectively neutralize the monetary impact of the middle easts' oil reserves. If you don't need something, it's value diminishes and it's impact also diminishes.

Nylon and plastic replaced silk and rubber in WWII....both American inventions, I believe. We can do it again, easily. Nullify and extend the life of existent resources, by having alternatives.

Isolate the combatants and let them destroy each other.

Find alternatives and market them, destroy the current un_needed dependence on oil, and corporations and countries that seek economic advantage by using or controlling a scarce resource....

Including this complicit congress, the Military_Industrial_Complex, and the Executive Branch......pirates disguised as caring citizens.

.

"Maybe we can get the Europeans to contribute troops to the occupation of Iran. Or perhaps the Turks. Oh, gosh darn it, our allies are so feckless about massive wars!"

Dimitry Yep... you are right, see the problem is that short of Great Britain, the rest of the so called allies have a case of stage fright. They all criticize US policy but surely expect the US to bail them out... isn't it wonderful. Seriously, if the supposedly FREE WORLD does not unite to fight terrorism we have a BIG problem due to what you mentioned... I would not limit myself to the Europeans or Turks I would think that from Australia to Argentina it is an evil that concern us all it is a matter of survival.

Demetri -
"I don't think that fighting terrorism by killing large numbers of civilians, occupying countries and forcing them to comply at a barrel of a gun is a winning hand."

When your attacker refuses to negotiate because his goal is to kill you, you must kill him.

Your view is civilized - too civilized... you are not writing about governments who have problems with one another; you are writing about people who are committed to killing someone because of their race/religion... go live in Pakistan and distribute some bibles - see what happens.

==Actually this is a tremendous opportunity to inflict a mortal wound on terrorism and I would hope that both Syria and Iran are dealt the same hand as Hezbollah.==

Then you better get your kids into the military quick, since we will need a lot of bodies to occupy both Syria and Iran, combined population well over 100 million. Actually, we will need more to cover Lebanon as well.

Maybe we can get the Europeans to contribute troops to the occupation of Iran. Or perhaps the Turks. Oh, gosh darn it, our allies are so feckless about massive wars!

Frankly I don't know how any of you can be critical of Israel's posture. Not only have they being provoked but also attacked by known terrorist that have NO concern for civilian lives. Hezbollah is responsible for ALL civilian casualties on both sides. The indiscriminate barrage of TOUSANDS of rockets directed at civilians fired at Israel is more than enough for anyone, with a half of a brain cell working, to realize what kind of principles Hezbollah holds. Furthermore, Syria and Iran are fully supporting Hezbollah and it is a known fact that both countries want the total annihilation of Israel and both patronize, support and finance global terrorism.

Actually this is a tremendous opportunity to inflict a mortal wound on terrorism and I would hope that both Syria and Iran are dealt the same hand as Hezbollah. If Hitler was stopped immediately after the invasion of Poland there would not be 6 million + Jews massacred. By the way, Israel HAS NOT FORGOTTEN and I hope they never will.

I don't know why people are so willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the Israeli idea, which amounts to talking about a war to end all wars in Lebanon. They don't give the benefit of the doubt to critics, accusing all who would say this is a humanitarian disaster of anti-Semitism.

Even if it is a success it still qualifies as a humanitarian disaster, that's number one. And as to the "building of a meaningful ceasefire" by permanently disabling Hezbollah, a little bird is singing something in my ear that makes me doubt it. It goes like this:
"The eastern world, it is exploding, violence flaring, bullets loading...And even the Jordan River's got bodies floating..." (1963, Barry McGuire). This conflict has been going on all my life (I'm old enough to receive promo from AARP). In fact, if you count as the start the Arab killing of Jews in 1929, and the subsequent acts of Zionist terrorism in 1931, and all the tit-for-tat through the 1930's and 1940's, it's been going on all my parent's life, too.

Hezbollah would need to be replaced, wouldn't they? They are also the Shi'a representation in Lebanon. Their militia is officially sanctioned by the Lebanese government, which we claim to be friends of. Can that be done without replacing the so called "militant wing"? With whom, all the young guys whose families have just been displaced and bombed? Blood begets blood, and there will be new heads on this hydra.

Meaningful ceasefire, permanent solution to Hezbollah, war to end all wars? After close to a hundred years, you need more to back up the idea that Israel's ends justify its means than accusing me and all other critics of anti-Semitism. I expected more out of you Mr. Arkin.

Dimitri,

Precisely--Hezbollah has used "TV Diagnosis" as its own PR campaign. I am also a physician, and while I'll leave the Qana event up to the investigators, I found the pictures to be a little bizarre for a rescue mission. While we know Hezbollah stages events, the media fails to investigate this as part of the problem, almost glorifying their tactics.

=="they bombed the children in Qana". As a physician, it is clear how stiff those children's bodies were. What is that called...rigor mortis...a condition that occurs after the bodies have been lying around for more than 24 hours. Where was the blood? Why no explanation about the 8 hour time difference on the photos that the AP and Reuters can't even deny? But then again, Hezbollah is known to stage events and use the media as its bait.==

You and Bill Frist should open a practice. You both are excellent at TV diagnosis!

=="So is Hezbollah like Nazi Germany?" The answer is undeniably yes. The Nazis mission was to eradicate the Jews. Hezbollah, with Iranian backing, as their mission wants to wipe Israel off the map.==

Well, that's the problem right there. Israel judges the enemy based on perceived intent, not actual capabilities. The result is that an irregular force numbering 5,000 fighters is judged as an existential threat to Israel (capable of destroing Israel) and the country that "hosts" it is treated accordingly. Since Israel is a regional superpower and its military capabilities are essentially unlimited (both on its own and fully backed by the US), its response is wholy disproportional (in both common usage, killing many more civilians than it lost and legal usage, killing many more civilians than combatants).

Unfortunately, Israeli response ends up being the worst of both worlds. It is far too strong to address actual danger from a small irregular force, yet is not nearly strong enough to address its parallel goal of terrorizing civilians into stopping support for this force. For the latter to occur, Israel has to kill civilians in the many tens of thousands.

One gets a distinct impression that if Israel was located next to California and was "invaded" by a drunk, anti-semitic Mel Gibson, it would immediately declare that to be an indication of an active plot to "throw jews into the see" and begin "precise" bombing of all areas that Mel Gibson can potentially be (or ever have been). Then, when Mel Gibson evades "punishment", Israeli leaders would leaflet Southern California, demanding its citizens flee north, as an invasion force begins destroying all human habitats in a large swath of the state in preparation for an "international force" to keep Israel safe from Mel.

Arkin: "I, for one, have a hard time conceiving of any Israeli military tactic that would have convinced a prejudiced Lebanon population -- or the "Arab street" -- that the Jewish state was merely defending itself and justified to do so."

In lieu of guided missiles, drop large wads of dollar bills on south Lebanon, wrapped in leaflets that say 'get rid of Hezbollah and you get the next installment'.

"they bombed the children in Qana". As a physician, it is clear how stiff those children's bodies were. What is that called...rigor mortis...a condition that occurs after the bodies have been lying around for more than 24 hours. Where was the blood? Why no explanation about the 8 hour time difference on the photos that the AP and Reuters can't even deny? But then again, Hezbollah is known to stage events and use the media as its bait.

CNN Anderson Cooper:
After letting us take pictures of a few damaged buildings, they take us to another location, where there are ambulances waiting.

(On camera): This is a heavily orchestrated Hezbollah media event. When we got here, all the ambulances were lined up. We were allowed a few minutes to talk to the ambulance drivers. Then one by one, they've been told to turn on their sirens and zoom off so that all the photographers here can get shots of ambulances rushing off to treat civilians. That's the story -- that's the story that Hezbollah wants people to know about.

(Voice-over): These ambulances aren't responding to any new bombings. The sirens are strictly for effect.

When a man in a nearby building is prompted to play Hezbollah resistance songs on his stereo, we decide it's time to go.

Hezbollah may not be terribly subtle about spinning a story, but it is telling perhaps that they try. Even after all this bombing, Hezbollah is still organized enough to have a public relations strategy, still in control enough to try and get its message out.

Isaeli propaganda? No, Hezbollah's tactics that are chosen to be ignored.

Israel compared to Hezbollah: Israel makes phone calls, drops leaflets, blares loudspeakers warning civilians to get out of the way - they target Hezbollah terrorists. Hezbollah loads rockets with ball bearings to tear away flesh of anyone near where their rockets land - rockets sent that target civilians. Hezbollah shoots their rockets from the midst of Lebanese civilians to protect themselves knowing that Israel cares about human lives (why else would Hezbollah hide there?). In so doing, Hezbollah causes Lebanese casualties when Israel fights back even with precision weapons, which gives Hezbollah political gains - a win-win situation for them. If Hezbollah was such a humanitarian cause, why don't help the Lebanese civilians out of South Lebanon? If I were a Lebanese, I would be mad as h-ll at Hezbollah for turning my homeland into a battle ground. Hezbollah is responsible for casualties on both sides.

"Nor am I excusing the incident at Qana."

Why not Bill?

You swallow and regurgitate everything else the Israeli war machine puts out.

David, you are a piece of work.

You say Jews can practice their religon freely in Lebanon. One problem with that; there are no Jews in Lebanon. There are next to no Jews left in any Arab country. It is a tragedy considering most Arab countries were inhabited by Jews first. The indigenous Jewish populations of Arab countries were ethnically cleansed by the Arabs through pogroms in the early 1950's.

No one is talking about balance - simply the idea that it is evil to deliberately kill innocent civilains.

Like the UN pleading with Israel at the weekend for a 72 hour truce to get thousands of civilians out.

And Israel refusing, officially and publically stating that ALL people left in Southern Lebanon would be regarded as terrorists.

Then they bombed the children of Qana, despite the admission by the IDF that they had seen no action from Hezbullah there for at least a day.

Like the US, Israel favors air bombardment of foes who have some artillery, barely an army, but no tanks or airforce or navy. Appropriately, the kill ratio approaches 10:1 in Israel's favor. How's that for military talk? What sort of balanced nuance are you expecting here?

The world has no astomach for deliberate slaughter of civilains by Israel.

Israel can choose to take out a Hizbullah apartment in Beiruit with precision guied misiles.

Or it can choose to take out the whole high-rise apartment building, containing a hundred homes, many with families still in them.

But instead it destroys ten high rise apartment buildings at a time - home to 1000 families - some still inside.

This is deliberate slaughter of innocent men, women and children.

"Thus Israel in theory is granted the right to use force in self defense and yet any actual use of that force is ruled unacceptable,"

This is patently untrue and a false representation of most opinions. They could have used force directed specificly at the actual entrenched Hezbollah militants in Southern Lebanon, rather than pursue a reign of terror all over Lebanon, destroying people's lives and property in a grossly negligent and callous manner.

Why is it so hard for the Israeli Government to listen to the world. If the Israelis are interested in living with the citizen of the world, then they shouldn't they respect the voices of these people. I see the Israeli Government as being too proud of themselves. It is not winning the war that is important but winning the hearts of the world is vital to the Israelis.

""Israel grieves these losses...."

Rubbish. If you go to fairly mainstream sites like J Post you'll see plenty of Israelis and Americans celebrating the child massacres at Qana.

Even Bush dismissed it as "self defence", even though the IDF say they didn't spot any Hizbullah movement in Qana that day.

Dark Shadows and Long Days

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Bill Smith wrote "Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Muslims, Christians, and Jews can practice their religon freely."

Surely you didn't forget about a country called Lebanon????

Or are you trying mislead people with propaganda?

Apart from the risk of being bombed by Israel, they can practice their religions freely.

This is nothing compared to Passover.
What a vicious god these people pray to.

The Israeli government has learned well from Nazi Germany, hasn't it?

I wonder why it is that the MSM puts so much faith into the so called facts and figures from Lebanon yet they pay no attention to facts coming from Israel. For example, Lebanon says 540 killed, mostly civilians. Israel says they killed 300 or 400 Hezbollah fighters. Which number gets reported?

Lebanon says 57 people, mostly children, were killed at Qana yet the Red Cross reports only a total of 28 bodies were recovered. What number gets reported?

There's a report out of Lebanon that Qana was a setup by Hez to make Israel look bad. See:

http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Diplomacy/9011.htm

Does that get any mention in the US media? Sadly, no.

Israel is winning brilliantly against Hezbollah. The goal is to render them unable to do further harm to Israel. If UNSC res. 1559 can be fully carried out, the disarming of that terrorist organization, Israel would be content to stay within her borders. Since the Lebanese govt. didn't do it and since Hez attacked Israel, there was no choice but to attack and invade.

The attacks on the roads and airport are to prevent more arms from flowing into Lebanon from Syria. If Syria would stop the arms shipments, the roads wouldn't have had to be bombed.

Israel is doing all she can to defend herself.

Dmitiry - I worked in a hospital in Israel as a doctor during my training. Arabs, Druze, Christians, and Jews were all treated equally. That compared to it being illegal to have Christian churches or Jewish Syngagogues in many Arab countries. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Muslims, Christians, and Jews can practice their religon freely.

I sense that Mr. Arkin is trying to articulate a rationale for Israel to continue indiscriminate butchery of fellow humans because - hey, it's effective! A count of the unguided, relatively ineffective rockets that Hezbollah may no longer have means little. Israel is willing to sacrifice as many Lebanese Arabs and mislocated Christians as it takes to make her point. Because of that, she will inevitably lose.

Military analysts love to cite the asymmetry of conventional forces fighting irregulars, but the real asymmetry operating in southern Lebanon is per the maxim recited by some of the irreclaimable Jews in Israel, that 100 Arabs are not worth one Jewish fingernail. It is not a new sentiment - the Zionists who were present when the original boundaries of Israel were appropriated from the families living there were fond of calling it a land without people for a people without a land - not because the land was vacant but because the Palestinian Arabs did not count. The flaw in Israel's subterfuge that moms and kids get killed because Hezbollah hides among them, is that Israel knows Hezbollah's tactics, she assumes the innocents are there, but she bombs them anyway. "Hezbollah made us do it!" Killing 50 civilians to take out one or two militants - that is asymmetry!

There were other ways. Having disabled the airport and just the main roads and bridges (to keep the kidnappers from taking the two hostages to Syria, remember?), Israel could have sent envoys to Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. They could asked him to join with them immediately to hunt down the militants and their kidnapped men, while Beirut was still whole and he still had an infrastructure and livable towns in southern Lebanon. They could explain their alternative, the nearly heavy-handed use of airpower. Meanwhile, that superior airpower would be surveilling the terrain, ready to react to suspicious activity.

Israel could have evacuated its northern towns and cities a lot easier than the residents of southern Lebanon can evacuate via bombed out bridges and cratered roads, knowing the demonstrated chance that Israeli jets will fire on them as they flee. With that single act Israel could have largely neutralized Hezbollah's rockets. Then - ideally with the Prime Minister's support or acquiescence - Israel could have entered Lebanon and engaged Hezbollah. Sure, Hezbollah fighters could still hide among civilians - hell, they ARE civilians when they are not marching around for the TV cameras - but house to house fighting would be less brutal than what is going on so far. Of course, that would put Israeli soldiers more at risk, which is a lot to ask to save innocent people who just do not happen to count.

The Israelis briefly had the moral high ground but they could not keep it. They had to fall back on their repugnant doctrine of inordinate deadly force. To protect their fingernails.

Dmitri,

"So is Hezbollah like Nazi Germany?" The answer is undeniably yes. The Nazis mission was to eradicate the Jews. Hezbollah, with Iranian backing, as their mission wants to wipe Israel off the map. The world seems to have forgotten the multiple other terrorist attacks that Hezbollah committed, unprovoked, among them on the Jewish community center in Argentina, not to mention the US peacekeepers in Beirut in 1982.

During an allied bombing in WWII, 30,000 Germans died in a few hours, their infrastructure destroyed. With all of the Israeli sorties flown, only 400 Lebanese civilians have died, and that is the fault of Hezbollah for shooting rockets from the midst of these civilians. Israel grieves these losses while Hezbollah and the Lebanese celebrate Israeli deaths. It is Hezbollah and those that support them who are bloodthirsty.

==Can you imagine an allied cease fire for humanitarian aid to the German or Japanese civilians?==

So is Hezbolah like Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan, then? A huge mechanized army that invaded many countries, a dangerous air force, all supported by a first rate industrial infrastructure?

Maybe even worse - Nazis didn't have katyusha rockets. Soviets invented them during WWII. Most self-respecting militaries stopped using them long ago. The only way they can be used effectively as a military weapon is the way Soviets used them - in massive, mutli-truck-based batteries, to saturate approximate target area with many hundreds of rockets at a time.

Seriously, though, the level of destruction undertaken by the allies in both Germany and Japan is considered excessive by many scholars. We actually killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians with nukes. Imagine that! Well, we may not have to imagine - the current "limited incursion" into Lebanon just might repeat history if Syria and then Iran are drawn into the fighting.

Hmmmm. interesting thought of where we would be if the UN was around during WWII.
Can you imagine an allied cease fire for humanitarian aid to the German or Japanese civilians?

==Its time for the palestinians and arab nations to accept some responsibility for allowing the violence to persist -- a good start would be to NOT teach hatred to your children and to stop training them that martyrdum means blowing yourself to murder people. Blaming Israel for all the violence going on is no way to gain peace in a region that must disengage in fighting all together, and that includes name calling.==

I agree. But I am struck at the casual hatred exhibited by many Israelis toward Arabs, including acceptance of complete destruction of their very existence in response to Israeli grievances. The attitude seems to be "they hate us and want to kill us (and sometimes do, mostly with their bodies) so we can do essentially whatever we want to them." Wouldn't some compassion be in order here, if Israel is to retain some moral standing in its own eyes? I think that in the eyes of many Israelis, Arabs are subhuman.

For example, Israeli plan for Lebanon appears to be complete destruction of all human infrastructure in a wide buffer zone, making the whole area essentially unlivable for a generation. The level of destruction exceeds all bounds and is like capital of Chechnia after the Russians "won" that war. Israelis seem to support that and that seems savage. It gives me pause to realize that fellow jews can be this bloodthirsty.

Americans were like that after 9/11, but after a while one tires of the killing and has some second thoughts. Do Israelis have second thoughts, or is that time long gone?

MSA

Perhaps if the palestinians where ready to have peace they would stop firing rockets into Israel...over 600 of them before these attack even began within the last year. Israel offered Arafat 99% percent of what he wanted but yet rejects peace and launches infatida. Israel leaves southern Lebanon in 2000, Hezbolloh becomes better armed and claims victory. Takes withdrawl as sign of weakness and occassionaly rain rockets down in Northern Israel from 2000 to 2006. Israel unilaterally leaves Gaza, receives rocket attacks in return and Hamas as elected government, which will not even say Israel has the right to EXIST. Israel looks to disengage from Westbank and again its looked at as sign of weakness from Hamas. Hamas kidnaps Soldier in an act of war, Hezbollah follows suit.

Its time for the palestinians and arab nations to accept some responsibility for allowing the violence to persist -- a good start would be to NOT teach hatred to your children and to stop training them that martyrdum means blowing yourself to murder people. Blaming Israel for all the violence going on is no way to gain peace in a region that must disengage in fighting all together, and that includes name calling.

to MSA

unfortunately there is deep and vicious anti semitism in the muslim world, and it pre-dated the state of Israel. And, although they didn't play a major role, many arab nations were aligned with the Nazis during WWII.

"however Israel is the occupier"

Of what? Of Lebanon? Not since 2000.

"Thus Israel in theory is granted the right to use force in self defense and yet any actual use of that force is ruled unacceptable, at least by the chattering classes."

What whiney rubbish.

Propped up by the USA Israel has become the dominant force in the area. They dominate many of their neighbors. They subjugate them in the name of their right to be free and have their homeland. Right, wrong, no matter. You treat people like that and you will inspire hate from some corners and admiration for your strength from others. If you believe in the rightness of it quit your whining. I met Moshe Dyan once. One of the most charismatic, engaging people I have ever met. People were drawn to him like moths to light. He would have pursued the course he believed to be right without excuse and without the self tortured whining about what others may think.

There has been comments which compare European Jews who came or guided by UN, to come to middle east, to the settlers in Alaska. Like settlers in Alaska, they say, it is not practically possible for Jews to go back.

I don't mean that Jews should leave Palestine but there is a big mistake comparing Jews settlers and native Arabs to history of Alaska or for that matter, migration by the Europeans to North America.

1- In Alaska and North America, European settlers became overwhelming majority very soon and as Geranimo, one of the native resistance hero, said in his final analysis about the settlers that "they are so many and they keep coming". This situation is reversed in the middle east. There are so many Arabs and they keep coming.
The native Americans were isolated from the world and they lived in their own world of ancient ways. They could not compete with the numbers and weaponry and technology of the Europeans. Arabs very much are part of the same world that Europeans lived in. They are knowledgeable and lead the world in many areas of science, technology and religion. They have faced Europeans in the past and successfully defended their land from European's onslaught in the past and will keep defending it now. So to hope that Arabs will withdraw to some kind of indian reservation is a mistake.

2- The UN gave European Jewish settlers keys to homes
in Palestine but soon the new comers pushed out Arabs, who were born and lived in the area from eternity. Jews threatened and toppled the political infrastructure of the area, carved new borders and amassed large amount of weapons. I am not sure if UN meant them to do all that when they gave misplaced Jews a home to live. If UN did mean that, they surely did not have permission of the local Arabs which they demonstrated during half a century of bloody resistance. Imagine that USA giving opportunity to Mexicans to live and work in California and Texas. But they go on to create their own government there which will push out millions of locals and take over their homes and farms and start building weapons of mass destruction.

3- If Jewish people were successful in Middle East like European settlers were in Amrica, then might, might have been right. However they are not successful and state of Israel is endlessly in search of security and has killed and displaced millions in search for security. The security is still not in sight. This is 21st century and the world has to stop this killing in the name of security. Why the Jews and the world don't see the obvious that creating state of Israel in Arab world was a mistake? How long the world has to pay for this mistake.

4- Lots of people say Israel is fighting terrorism together with US. That Israel is doing the dirty work of fighting terrorism that the rest of world don't want to do. Excuse me!!

Would there have been 9/11 attack on US if Israel did not have the policy of egression and occupation in the middle east in the name of security? Would there even have been terror that PLO carried out during the last 50 years in the world? Would there even has been Hazbullah? I don't think so. The world would have been much different if Israel did not have the occupation or was located somewhere where it was more blended in the local population. So the argument that Israel is fighting terrorism is incorrect. In fact Israel's policy of occupation is responsible for creating terrorism in the world.

5- There are comments that Muslims hate Jews. Muslims don't Jews, they hate Israel's policy of occupation. They would have hated it even if Israel was not a Jewish state and carried out the same policies. Muslims by nature are tolerant of Jewish people. All the hate is generated by Israel's policies. If that policies change, Jews can live peacefully in middle east. Jewsih people were prosecuted in Europe In the recent past. They suffered alot and they carry that memory where ever they go today. In the past many other people were prosecuted too. South Africans and slaves in America are a couple of examples of the past crimes comitted against one group by another. I think the world is different today. World has learned from its past mistakes and it is not the same world which allowed holocaust to occur. Jews have to stop reacting from the fear of the past. Like there will never be slavery or apartheid again, there will never be another Holocaust. Stop attacking Arabs out of fear of the Holocaust. They did not play any role in the Holocaust. They suffered during the same time when Jewish people were suffering. I can't imagine people who went through the suffering of hlucast will bring same kind of suffering on another nations. Israel is blurring its image with Hitler's.

" clouded by innumerable subtexts -- anti-Israel, anti-American, anti-Bush, anti-air power'

Personally I am anti-dead children. I wonder if the author would be so blase if these were American kids being massacred?

==excessive force in the short term is humane in the long run.==

Only if you are willing to kill them all to ensure your way of life. Partial excessive force is counterproductive. It leaves children behind that grow up and then need to be killed also.

"a well-placed black hole to Earth's center"

Now that would be poetic justice.

Instead of another great flood as survived by Noah, there would be a great, relentless, sucking sound purging the solar system of a species incapable of civilized, cooperative behavior.

God may not be shuffling his feet, but dancing as She operates Her vacuum cleaner.

Willaim

Thought provoking article.

My take on Israel's strategy, whch given its aims has been successful (to date) is this:

Israel perceives that Iran is developing its nuclear weapons capability too rapidly for multilateral pressure (largely ineffective on Iran anyway for the last 25 years) to have any effect.

North Korea's rapid advances in long-range missile and nuclear weapon technology is alarming for Israel. North Korea has sold some long range missiles to Iran. Cooperation in the nuclear weapons area is also possible which MAY HAVE ACCELERATED IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAMME.

Therefore Israel is determined to refocus world attention from US policy on Iraq (and other issues) to threats on Israel which, via Hezbollah, most dramatically means the Iranian threat.

Israel's intense reactions to the kidnappings in Gaza and Lebanon were clearly aimed to create a front page, international crisis to focus attention on Israel's international security problems.

Israel initially envisaged an intense, but short term, airstrike campaign.

Hezbollah's massed rocket reaction (to Israeli airstrikes) surprised Israel. Knowing that peacekeepers could not reduce the intensity of the missile activity Israel resolved to continue to hit missile launchers even if this prolonged the fighting.

Israel changed its strategy by actively delaying an international decision favoring peacekeepers by:
- (very probably) asking the US to delay (at G8 and the UN) a ceasefire and peacekeeper decision, and
- intentionally bombing the UN post partially as a brutal way of dissuading other countries from pushing for the peacekeeper option YET.

If Israel's aim was to:
- refocus world attention on Lebanon;
- prompt a large peacekeeper force to move in - which is bound to fail - thus "proving" the moderate course is weak and wrong;
- "prove" that Iran is a rogue state via the Hezbollah connection; and
- harden the resolve of the US to assist Israel in bombing Iran;
then I think Israel has succeeded.

This whole crisis has made Israel even more unpopular in the Middle East and further afield, but if this postpones a future and determined nuclear threat Israel sees this as an acceptable tradeoff.

Pete
http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com

.

whats this preoccupation with the number of "women and children" killed? its absurd. there are no innocents anymore. especially when you have a terrorist organization thats moonlights as a political party using human shields and the like. western societies' philsophical aversion to war and casualties is dangerous and indulgent. excessive force in the short term is humane in the long run.

Hopefully Aliens will kill us all off with a well-placed black hole to Earth's center before that infection of the mind that is 'religion' can spread throughout the Galaxy.

Apart from that ... what will happen after Israel is satisfied that it has sufficiently depleted Hisbollah to attain less than X attacks per month on its northern border? Iran will just airlift a few additional planes full of madness and C4, Syria will assassinate the last few moderates in Beirut and generally make a nusiance of itself, the population will be attracted to whatever firebrand cleric emerges out of the rubble, a humanitarian crisis will loom, militias roam the land and do some ethnic cleansing of 'unbelievers', while the freedom fighters and assorted rifgraff looking for a good time set up training camps.

Oh noes!

And then Pakistan blows up ...

==it is kill or be killed==

Thanks, man, but I will do my own killing and I strongly advise you do the same. It's really chickensh*t to let others kill your enemy's women, children and elders.

If you feel your life is threatened by Hezbolah or Hamas, get your gun and head out East. Maybe Israelis will let you decorate one of the shells they shoot into Lebanon. It's apparently a popular activity now.

As for "weaselly europeans", I think that the Russians, the British and many national resistance movements may disagree with you.

It is sadly amusing to read the ridiculous statements:

* "Israel is creating more hatred among the Arabs." Obviously, these people have never taken basic math: infinity + anything still equals infinity. Hezb and Hamas have repeatedly stated that they want to drive the Jews into the sea.

* "blah blah the occupation blah blah". There is no occupation in Lebanon. At most, there is some dispute about a small piece of land (Chebba Farms) that the UN says belongs to Syria.

* "blah blah israelis are terrorists blah blah". i don't think so. terrorists and their sympathizers are not the people who apologize when innocents are accidentally killed or drop flyers telling people to leave. terrorists are those who dance happily after 9/11, those who hand out candy when others are killed, those who walk into weddings and blow themselves up.

* "blah blah disproportionate response blah blah". particulary pathetic weaselly europeans who ignore their own history of caving before fascists, to no avail. far more are the heirs of neville chamberlain than winston churchill.

it is excusable from the moderate muslims who are often apologists for the fanatics, but the secular westerners better wake up and realize that the jihadists hate you, too...it is kill or be killed. they are another version of the nazis, wrapped in their self-righteous perversion of their religion.

Sick of it All has written:

• Israel has both satellite and drone aircraft videos unmistakably showing Hizbollah trucks pulling into civilian buildings in Qana loaded with katyusha rockets
• Israel also has videos of many katyusha rockets being launched from the particular building containing civilians that was bombed

From Haaretz.com
--------------------------------------
As the Israel Air Force continues to investigate the air strike, questions have been raised over military accounts of the incident.

It now appears that the military had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time.

The Israel Defense Forces had said after the deadly air-strike that many rockets had been launched from Qana. However, it changed its version on Monday.

The site was included in an IAF plan to strike at several buildings in proximity to a previous launching site. Similar strikes were carried out in the past. However, there were no rocket launches from Qana on the day of the strike.
------------------------------------------

I guess those "unmistakable videos" are mistaken... I guess that "particular building" from which "videos show rockets being launched" was actually not the building from which they were being launched...

Christian ignominy!

Do Christians really know who they are supporting and backing themselves, when at the same time they are criticizing Iran and Syria for purportedly supplying Israel?

Do Christians ever question the fact that half of Israel's population are non-religious secularists?

Are Christians even aware that it is illegal for them to proselyte in most parts of Israel, just as it is in Communist China?

And don't get confused by this but the Koran is actually friendlier to Mary and Jesus than Judaism! So why do Christians write off Islam and accept Judaism which has no place in its heart for Jesus Christ?

Finally, what do the scripture teach you about religious people and prophets who do not accept Jesus Christ? Then why do Christians keep pouring money into the offering coffers in order to support the war effort by Israel? Are you still under the impression that your philanthropic dollars are going to support the synagogues in Israel?

Isn't it ironic that many of the Jews who benefited from t