vebkwjhkpu uvrxscj cbpvztoi…

I doubt, purely by the standard of human nature and selfishness, that any country cares about the Palestinian people’s sovereignty. But you are right that Israel is bullying and spinning; they want the terrorists/extremists/freedom-fighters/… to be boshed and their sovereignty be damned.

The only reason Jewish lands haven’t been settled upon in current times is because of Israeli aggression, but you cant’ blame them for wanting a buffer zone; any country by the above standard of selfishness would. Yet Israel is pulling a double standard of wanting that and allowing settlements of their own. That is good reason why peace isn’t coming; however, I believe the encroachment bias complaint is moot if you consider why Palestinians for the passed 60+ years haven’t been allowed to reciprocate: …invasions of their own…

Concerning occupation, wouldn’t the occupation have ended a long time ago if PLO then Hizbollah then Hamas hadn’t come along? Honestly, no one else is getting rid of them.

If you think Israel is occupying those lands for gold and glory you don’t get the primary function of a government: to defend its borders, and for the last 60+ years its borders have been - how do you put it Marc - intransigent?

Also, concerning the 94% Arab population percentage of circa 1920 Israel: What is their total and how spread out and nomadic were their villages. That is the mystery that I want to know. Until I know more about that, I can’t say whether their claims to ‘owning’ that land are good.

94% Arab is the number you should remember. That was the population of what is now Israel around 1920.

Alls I know is that if you put two strong religious groups next to each other, they are going to fight. It’s been happening since the dawn of time.

I may even agree with him. This makes me want to disagree with him.

Israel aims for the sovereignty of Palestinians? By occupying Palestinian territory for 39 years and building settelements on it?

Come back when you are willing to be intellectually honest.

There is absolutely NO assumption that any of these parties desire peace, by the way. Perhaps that’s why some muscular diplomacy from the world’s only superpower might have come in handy.

It might be an interesting exercise for you to go back a few years in history and review what it was that Ariel Sharon gae such encouragement to Hamas. How odd that Islam has been around for all this time but we dont see the rise of Hamas until several decades into the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. You dont think Israel’s intransigence had anything to do with the rise of the extremist wing of the Pals, do you? What an amazing coincidence.

Strictly for the sake of argument (nothing monstrous here–I am just talking and speculating), let’s suppose the opposite, that none of them should desire peace and that none of them do.

In that case, how could you possibly explain this war? What weapons do either Hizbullah and the Palestinians have at their disposal, that they have failed to use?

What weapons do the Israelis have at their disposal, that they have failed to use?

The answer is none that anyone knows about and most of them.

The Israelis have the military means to murder, and it would be murder, most men, women and children within the borders of both Lebanon and the “disputed” territories. The Israelis also have the means to expel the complete populations of these same areas.

Why don’t they do it?

Restraint, even if it is the restraint of enlightened self-interest. Israel has never practiced Total War and is not currently practicing anything close to it. This isn’t a matter of opinion. Total War means mobilizing your population, your political apparat and your economy to exterminate your enemies. Israel has the means to do so and declines.

This is not a defense of Israel’s current campaign (though on blance I support it—seperate argument).

This is a statement of fact. Israel declines to wage Total War. Israel tolerates peace demonstrations and peace activists within its borders. Israel tolerates people who freely state, on Israeli soil, that the state of Israel is illegitimate.

I am not atempting to convert people who blame Israel anymore than I am people who blame Israel and its enemies equally. The fatuos, sickening arguments of moral equivelance will never end. Anyone who believes that Fatah and Hamas and Hizbullah has ever practiced any form of restraint or has ever tolerated freedom of speech, freedom of the press or freedom of opinion, well, let’s see your evidence.

The declared aim of Hizbulla is to eliminate the Jewish state. The declared aim of its Godfather, Iran, is to eliminate the Jewish state. The declared aim of Hamas is to eliminate the Jewish state.

The declared aim of Israel is Lebanese sovereignty, Iranian soveriegnty, Palestinian soveriegnty and Israeli soveriegnty.

Mr. Cooper suggests that Americans are blood-thirsty simpletons for thinking that some issues are black and white. Americans are neither blood-thirsty nor simple. They are so intelligent that they see the difference, one of black and white, between Israel and its enemies.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3280381,00.html

No mistaking their position.

Virgil protests: \”I only add - and how do you make sure they are capable of doing this? You bomb the shit out of their infrastructure and take out their communications!? Come on folks, this is so patently disingenuous that it is laughable. Do people really believe this bullshit?\”

If Israel wanted to utterly disable Lebanon\’s, economy, transportation and communications, it could have done so by now, rather easily. If Lebanon were utterly flattened, devastated and disabled by now, one wonders why its economics minister is predicting that, with a little patching up, everything should be ready to go for the seasonal tourism peak next summer?

Richard lo Cicero thinks Alan Dershowitz said Lebanese casualties \”don\’t matter.\” As with Dershowitz\’s stance on \”torture warrants\”, people seem to be getting him wrong again. Here\’s what he actually a few months ago about Palestinian terrorism:

—

\”The goal of Palestinian terrorism is to increase the number of civilian deaths on both sides. Yes the Palestinian terrorists who now fire rockets into Israel from Gaza want the IDF to kill Palestinian women children and old men. If they did not they would fire their rockets from isolated areas where there are no civilians. Instead they deliberately fire their rockets from heavily populated civilian areas in order to induce Israel to cause the highest possible number of Palestinian civilian casualties. Every time the Israeli military accidentally kills a Palestinian civilian the Palestinian terrorists win a propaganda and political victory. …

\”This despicable \”culture of death\” promoted by extremist Islamic imams in which an honorable death–even if not voluntarily chosen–is deemed preferable to life is the major cause of Islamic terrorism. Nor can terrorism of this sort be deterred by the prospect of imprisonment or even death. It must be prevented before it can be carried out. That is why the Israeli military has been aggressively attacking those who are preparing to fire rockets into Israeli towns and cities. …

\”[Israel] must continue to attack those who are in the process of firing rockets at Israeli civilians; but it must do a better job of reducing the number of civilian casualties. If it is true that Palestinian terrorists benefit from every increase in both Palestinian and Israeli civilian casualties then it is equally true that Israel benefits from every decrease in such casualties. Among the best deterrents against Palestinian rocket attacks would be for Israel to stop creating martyrs–and propaganda objects–among Palestinian civilians.\”

—

Got that straight? No? Then you\’re illiterate or simply too stupid to be part of the debate.

Now here\’s what Dershowitz said more recently, in the LA Times, when he suggested a \”new vocabulary\”, including the term \”civilianality\” (which I admit isn\’t likely to fly any more than \”torture warrants\” did).

—

\”There is a vast difference — both moral and legal — between a 2-year-old who is killed by an enemy rocket and a 30-year-old civilian who has allowed his house to be used to store Katyusha rockets. Both are technically civilians, but the former is far more innocent than the latter. There is also a difference between a civilian who merely favors or even votes for a terrorist group and one who provides financial or other material support for terrorism.

\”Finally, there is a difference between civilians who are held hostage against their will by terrorists who use them as involuntary human shields, and civilians who voluntarily place themselves in harm\’s way in order to protect terrorists from enemy fire. \”

—

I don\’t know how a sentiment like that somehow compresses down to \”Lebanese civilians don\’t matter\”, a statement so cloddish and brutal that you\’d think Dershowitz was, well, Woody, rather than what he is: one of the sharper legal minds in America. Dershowitz may be an attention-seeking lightning-rod egomaniac as well, I don\’t know, but that doesn\’t make his statements wrong.

Endgame watch: Condi points out, on the plane, that, Y\’know, we actually *do* talk to Syria, we have offices in Damascus, there is dialogue.

Expect Syria to be closely involved in how this settles out. And to come out ahead of the game.

Second attempt at a correction: Richard lo Cicero is nattering again about 250,000 Turkish troops on the border with northern Iraq. Why, oh why, is this idiocy being repeated? Turkey routinely keeps about 200,000 troops in Kurdish areas of Turkey. There are larger numbers of them on the border at the moment (the PKK strikes seasonally, and Turkey responds seasonally), but now Turkey is talking about taking out the PKK stronghold across the border if the U.S. (which categorizes the PKK as a terrorist group) and the Iraqi Kurds (which have fought the PKK themselves in the past) don\’t finally do something about it. Recently Turkey is citing the Israeli attack on Lebanon as support for their right to go in, since PKK violence in Turkey is on the rise. What\’s the excuse so far, for the U.S. and the Kurdish regional government NOT taking out the PKK on their own? A pretty good one: that U.S. troops are pretty damn busy with more important stuff, and so is the Pesh Merga, a force that undoubtedly includes some battle-seasoned troops who have direct experience coordinating with Turkish troops to contain the PKK in past years.

Richard, Virgil, Woody: \”Exaggerations R US\”. I could lengthen the list. But especially Virgil:

\”That was just an “surgical incursion” into Palestinian territory, a bombing campaign of this ferocity and magnitude is beyond imagination, it is a hundred fold worse (probably more). \”

You\’d think Beirut was Dresden.

The Syrians have recently released their own figures for the number of displaced in southern Lebanon: about 130,000. One imagines Virgil placing a panicky call to the Syrian foreign ministry, asking if they haven\’t perhaps dropped a zero somewhere?

Truth is the first casualty of war. 250,000 Turkish troops massed on the border with northern Iraq would be visible from orbit. 500,000 refugees in Lebanon would be visible from orbit. Show me the satellite photographs. Or shut up until you actually know that you\’re not just parroting the propaganda of one side or another.

Well, I have seen the “Angry Arab” posting here before, but I don’t remember what name he uses. Maybe someone can refresh my memory. I know that Marc and rosedog know the professor.

That’s not ahmed. Ahmed is a white female afrikkaner.

I’m not a Christian so perhaps I can be honest. I could careless if the whole Middle East erupted into a conflagaration that laid waste their pretense of civillization for 5,000 years.

Can’t we just sit tight, focus our efforts on energy independence and let them kill each other? It’s been the fashion since the birth of civillization and I for one see no reason to stop it.

If we become energy independent, the entire Middle East is inconsequential. Wow — I wonder how many pebble-bed nuclear reactors we could have built for $300 billion. I’m wagering quite a few.

It’s terrible to see suffering. I feel for the civillians in a remote way. But let’s be honest, there’s a lot of suffering here at home and it would be better if we focused on that and didn’t become embroiled in such foreign adventurism.

“our goal is that our neigbors will be countries wit the responsibility and capability to act against those who carry out terror attacks from within their territory. We want Lebanon to take responsibility for acts against Israel that originate from it’s territory.”

I only add - and how do you make sure they are capable of doing this? You bomb the shit out of their infrastructure and take out their communications!? Come on folks, this is so patently disingenuous that it is laughable. Do people really believe this bullshit?