Israel's Attack on Lebanon and Hezbollah

[Sniper]

"The Israel Defense Forces deputy chief of staff said on Tuesday that the army could not rule out a massive ground invasion of Lebanon as part of an offensive to force Hezbollah guerrillas to free two soldiers and stop firing rockets into Israel."

[jman220]

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"The Israel Defense Forces deputy chief of staff said on Tuesday that the army could not rule out a massive ground invasion of Lebanon as part of an offensive to force Hezbollah guerrillas to free two soldiers and stop firing rockets into Israel."

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I will admit I don't know much about military tactics, but this seems a more sensical way of rooting out a terrorist organization than air attacks.

[BluffTHIS!]

jman,

Airpower is the best way to both start and hopefully fully take care of any problem for Israel because of its long range and the relatively few lives of its soldiers that are risked due to their total air superiority. This started out with kidnappings of Israeli soldiers and if they feel they have to send in ground forces then more of that will happen, plus they will be surrounded on all sides by unfriendly forces whereas now they just make a series of in and out attacks.

[theblitz]

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So, where does that leave the IDF that has killed hundreds, thousands of civilians.

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... and they promised 70 virgins to each Israeli who was willing to board a bus and blow up Arab women and children.

[ACPlayer]

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So, where does that leave the IDF that has killed hundreds, thousands of civilians.

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... and they promised 70 virgins to each Israeli who was willing to board a bus and blow up Arab women and children.

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So, you do see that both sides are morally corrupt. Good.

[theblitz]

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And the Jews can do it. The Jewish Mafia has been able to maintain a strong foothold in the diamond, publishing & media industries in the U.S., while remaining under the radar.

The only time I can remember the Jewish Mafia being portrayed on T.V., is in the weekly show Hill Street Blues, and then, they were just one of several different gangs assembled at the station house and had no lines. Just two Jews, sitting amongst the Irish, Italian, Puerto Rican Mobs.

All we need to do, is fail to support Israel 100% and the Jewish Mob in the U.S. can rain havoc in the U.S. unlike any terrorist organization.

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.... and don't forget to amputate their horns at the same time.

[Cyrus]

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Arafat was a secular and moderate leader of Palestinians

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Ive got this really nice bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn, and I'll sell it to you at a bargain price.

[/ QUOTE ]Arafat was a leader in a national liberation struggle. If you were to peruse a bit your History, instead of using the tomes to balance the dinner table, you would become aware of the brutality associated with every such struggle. When comparing Arafat's way of doing things with African or Latin American movements' and with Israel's, especially during the years around independence, you see that he was less, possibly far less brutal.

There are shades in everything. It is a gross generalisation to lump the secular moderates of Fatah along the religious fundamentalists or the Marxist/Leninist/Stalinists of PFLP offshoouts. Onme does so at one's preil. And Israel decided, in the end, albeit after a bit of American pressure, to finally talk and deal with Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organisation, even though he was officially considered a terrorist and the PLO was, for the State Dept, a terrorist organisation.

Somehow I don't think Israel is too fond of Brooklyn bridges.

[Cyrus]

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Social welfare issues are not about "the trash getting picked up on time." They're about essential governmental services not being provided because the Fatah leaders plundered and stole the money coming in as aid for the Palestinian People.

[/ QUOTE ]Social services, which include the trash being picked up (i.e. achieving basic levels of cleanliness in everyday life) are important but only when you have settled other things first.

Man has priorities. First comes survival; a person cannot be pondering philosophical thoughts when his life is threatened. After Man ensures his survival, he strives for a decent way of life (this does not mean jet skis), since it's also difficult to wax poetically or write a novel when in squalor. Going beyond that, we arrive at levels where people can be creative, etc.

Palestinians, as I wrote, have been under fifty years of the same sh*t, collectively. What are they getting? They are constantly getting humiliated at the roadblocks, tortured at the hands of the IDF, their neighborhood torn down or a bullet in the head. No matter how Jazeera or other news outlets "explain" the switch of Palestinians to the religious fundamentalists, to me it's a switch to political radicalization, fuelled also by resentment of the previous guys' corruption. But the main motivation was desperation at their plight.

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Yassir Arafat died a very rich man.

[/ QUOTE ]No one disputes, at least not me, that among his many traits of character, Yasser Arafat was (or became) a corrupt leader -- or, at the very least, a leader who allowed and used corruption amongst his cronies.

His own personal wealth was not something he enjoyed, though. Arafat engaged in the minimum amount of luxuries. But the corruption was there, all around him.

[Cyrus]

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So if someone kills 100 civilians and someone else kills 500, the first guy is a "moderate".

[/ QUOTE ]One life is as valuable as any other life. If we accept this, then we can also claim that killing a person is bad and killing ten persons is ten times as bad.

We punish a person for killing twenty others more harshly than a person who kills two others.

If so far the going is smooth and you have no objection to any of the above, you are halfway there. All that remains is for you to examine the historical record more somberly and assess objectively Arafat's conduct during the years of intense armed struggle (eg Fatah blew up hijacked planes on the ground after evacuating everybody; Qaeda does things a bit differently).

I don't want one person killed or 100 person killed or 50 persons killed. But I'd rather make a deal and try to bring the whole thing to an acceptable end by making a deal with the guy "who kills 100 persons" rather than the one who "killes 500".

[BluffTHIS!]

When you choose "the lesser of two evils", you have still chosen evil.