50+ People Dead in Israeli Air Strike on Apartment House.

Odium my hat is off to you....an excellent post and beachcoma very well done too....unfortunately they won't pay attention to a single word you wrote, all they want to hear is reinforcements of their own simple minded "ideas".

This is probably over some heads...oh well.

Published on Saturday, August 4, 2006 by Foreign Policy In Focus

Jihad Against Hezbollah

by Stephen Zunes


The Bush administration and an overwhelming bipartisan majority of Congress have gone on record defending Israel's assault on Lebanon's civilian infrastructure as a means of attacking Hezbollah “terrorists.” Unlike the major Palestinian Islamist groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah forces haven't killed any Israeli civilians for more than a decade. Indeed, a 2002 Congressional Research Service report noted, in its analysis of Hezbollah, that “no major terrorist attacks have been attributed to it since 1994.” The most recent State Department report on international terrorism also fails to note any acts of terrorism by Hezbollah since that time except for unsubstantiated claims that a Hezbollah member was a participant in a June 1996 attack on the U.S. Air Force dormitory at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.

While Hezbollah's ongoing rocket attacks on civilian targets in Israel are indeed illegitimate and can certainly be considered acts of terrorism, it is important to note that such attacks were launched only after the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on civilian targets in Israel began July 12. Similarly, Hezbollah has pledged to cease such attacks once Israel stops its attacks against Lebanon and withdraws its troops from Lebanese territory occupied since the onset of the latest round of hostilities. (The Hezbollah attack on the Israeli border post that prompted the Israeli assaults, while clearly illegitimate and provocative, can not legally be considered a terrorist attack since the targets were military rather than civilian.)

Indeed, the evolution of this Lebanese Shiite movement from a terrorist group to a legal political party had been one of the more interesting and hopeful developments in the Middle East in recent years. Like many radical Islamist parties elsewhere, Hezbollah (meaning “Party of God”) combines populist rhetoric, important social service networks for the needy, and a decidedly reactionary and chauvinistic interpretation of Islam in its approach to contemporary social and political issues. In Lebanese parliamentary elections earlier last year, Hezbollah ended up with fourteen seats outright in the 128-member national assembly, and a slate shared with the more moderate Shiite party Amal gained an additional twenty-three seats. Hezbollah controls one ministry in the 24-member cabinet. While failing to disarm as required under UN Security Council resolution 1559, Hezbollah was negotiating with the Lebanese government and other interested Lebanese parties, leading to hopes that the party's military wing would be disbanded within a few months. Prior to calling up reserves following the Israeli assault, Hezbollah could probably count on no more than a thousand active-duty militiamen.

In other words, whatever one might think of Hezbollah's reactionary ideology and its sordid history, the group did not constitute such a serious threat to Israel's security as to legitimate a pre-emptive war.

Having ousted Syrian forces from Lebanon in an impressive nonviolent uprising last year, the Lebanese had re-established what may perhaps be the most democratic state in the Arab world. Because they allowed the anti-Israel and anti-American Hezbollah to participate in the elections, however, the Israeli government and the Bush administration—with strong bipartisan support on Capitol Hill—apparently decided that Lebanon as a whole must be punished in the name of “the war on terror.”

The rest of the article is very interesting and can be accessed at www.commondreams.org

by Odium: You can use the examples, Zappafan1 does. Claiming, Adolf Hitler, World War Two Germany and many Nation’s are similar to a rag-tag, militia. Is almost laughable but I’ll explain that in his part of the post.
As Zappafan1 decided to use the American Revolutionary Army, he made a large mistake. Firstly, the British Empire was never destroyed by them

REPLY: I never made that comparison, 'nor did I say the British Empire was destroyed. Both of those were examples/answers to the statement that lasting peace has indeed been won through victory; never through appeasement and negotiations.

but not (support) those that are Islamic in origin.

REPLY: It is Islam that has declared worldwide war against all infidels; they've been at it for about 1400 years.

Don't you think that Israeli children are also indoctrinated into the (false) believe that all palestinians are destined to be suicide bombers?

REPLY: No.... I don't think that's the case at all; they merely have to judge from what they see, and have seen, over the years.

Odium my hat is off to you....an excellent post and beachcoma very well done too....unfortunately they won't pay attention to a single word you wrote, all they want to hear is reinforcements of their own simple minded "ideas".

REPLY: Judging by what you said, above, it would appear that you are guilty of that.

[edit on 6-8-2006 by zappafan1]

Thank you zappa you just proved my point.

zappafan1, go check a history book.

You can't find a single militia, which hasn't ended through the use of negotiation. The American Revolution ended at the PARIS PEACE TREATY. They met, sat down what they wanted, the British sat down and said what they wanted and the war ended. The British Government if anything appeased the American Army, as the French did the British.

Again, find one example where all out war has beat a militia or terrorist organisation. Listening Governments such as World War Two shows you can't do this and trying to make out like Hezbollah are anything like Nazi Germany is the most idiotic post yet, I have seen from you.

Odium I posted the full article I quote from above over on the salute for Israel thread...it is quite intelligent and very informed but I have no hope that zappa or any of his buddies could even possibly understand it.

My mistake, its Foreign Policy in Focus, not Foreign Affairs in Focus. Sorry. Still over zappas head though

Odium,

I all honesty I enjoy debating with you.

JudahMaccabbi, the issue with things like Operation Entebbee, is fully understandable. On one hand, you can’t set-up a system which rewards them for these actions. However, you can set-up a system which rewards them for not acting in such a manor and this is where Israel at present is lacking. Take the example of what hezbollah just did.
If Israel, are willing to sit down with them they can set down a framework. They sit with hezbollah and find out what they want - of course, idiotic things such as the destruction of Israel will not happen. However, they can sit with them and say: If we are at peace for X amount of time, we’ll release those who we have arrested. This will limit the ability for hezbollah to radicalise the population. Furthermore, the United State’s can redirect much of the funding to Israel into their own companies to help rebuild Lebanon. This would very much created damage reduction from the recent attacks and would help to show the United State’s and Israel in a positive light to those in the Middle East and would do more to stop attacks than the bombs will.

Setting up a reward system failed with the Palestinians miserably. This can be debated to death but under OSLO they received what they never had self-determination under Palestinian rule. They took advantage of OSLO to stike at Israel wherever possible.
Now with Hezbullah the issue is not detainees or shebaa farms. Hezbullah wanted to 'help' the Palestinians in their war one Israel. You see the Palestinians are now under Islamic rule (Hamas) and Hezbullah itself is also a radical muslim organization. Both organizations have the same underlying common interest - The replacement of Israel with a Muslim regime. So about what can we negotiate ?
If we negotiate on the release of soldiers as we did in the past it will not end the cycle of violence. In six months time they will kidnap citizens and demand the release of terrorists with blood on their hands. This has no end. The end comes when they realize that kidnapping does not bring them benefits.

Even if Israel can negotiates about ceasefire agreement and we agree that Hezbullah will not fire rockets in northern Israel then they will smuggle these weapons into Gaza and fire rockets into southern Israel.
Hamas's existance as does Hezbullah's depends on the conflict without the conflict they have no raison d'etre.

I speak to you not out of speculation. I have met and spoke with Arabs and Muslims alike on this issue. An Iranian who studies his MSc in Nuclear Chemistry (!) in my university in the States told me regarding the peace intiative (Madrid conference at the time) that that is not the solution. The only solution is that the Jews leave the middle east. It was simple. Leave or die.
Similar statements were heard from an Egyptian computer science professor who said it in a gentler manner.
That is the driving force of most of the Islamic organizations/countries/groups.

Israel's 6 years of retraint with Hezbullah gave Hezbullah a feeling of confidence in the conflict with Israel. Now Israel is setting up new ground rules. These rules MUST include a defanged Hezbullah, a responsible leadership in Lebanon and the neutralization of Syria and Iran in Lebanese affairs.

It seems to me more than anything Oslo and the years immediately after proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Fatah was not the party to negotiate with, not because they were faithless as you suggest Judah, but that in the long run all they were was an umbrella group and so decentralized that they were incapable of controlling their various factions. Which is of course what they kept saying and that the Israeli government kept ignoring. I would suggest that it is this very decenteralization that led to its failure as a government and the election of Hamas.

Originally posted by grover
It seems to me more than anything Oslo and the years immediately after proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Fatah was not the party to negotiate with, not because they were faithless as you suggest Judah, but that in the long run all they were was an umbrella group and so decentralized that they were incapable of controlling their various factions. Which is of course what they kept saying and that the Israeli government kept ignoring. I would suggest that it is this very decenteralization that led to its failure as a government and the election of Hamas.

Yassir Arafat used that as an excuse to implement his phased plan of the destruction of Israel which he specified in his book. Whenever Yassir Arafat wanted something he got it done. When Benjamin Netanyahu was PM he was able to 'tame' Yassir and if you go into the history book you will see that he calmed the situation down until Barak took office and the Camp David negotiations failed.
Yassir always cried and complained about his inabiilty to reign in the terrorists because he did not want to. The moment Netanyahu identified how to make him want to stop the terror the terror stopped. The IDF uncovered documents in which Yassir paid extra salaries to Palestinian police who were involved in terrorist organizations. The reason OSLO failed was because the Israeli leadership was corrupt and/or stupid (Rabin, Peres, etc) and because the Palestinian leadership had no true desire for peace.

Thank you, JudahMaccabbi I am glad you enjoy the debates we have.

Setting up a reward system failed with the Palestinians miserably. This can be debated to death but under OSLO they received what they never had self-determination under Palestinian rule. They took advantage of OSLO to stike at Israel wherever possible.

The problem with this though, JudahMaccabbi is that the rewards were not based on their behaviour. Furthermore, Israel never stopped attacked the Gaza Strip. In fact, Israel still during the period where the Palestinian People were attempting to sort out their Government and determine their future Israel did not hold back. If anything has shown us in Britain how we had to deal with the Irish republican Army, it was not to do this quick knee-jerk reaction. On the surface, it looks wise to strike back and kill those who kill your own but we learned it caused more problems.

So what did we do? We allowed them to establish a Government. We then set down a plan which had to be followed, there were a few cases where fringe parts of the Irish Republican Army did attack the United Kingdom but we didn’t snap back and now? Things are so much better than ever before and this is what they nee to do in Israel. It isn’t easy to sit back while you’re under attack and your own people are being harmed, but nobody has shown where the policy of attack and counter-attack has worked. Israel is no safer today than it was 20 years ago. So why can people support this policy? It has given no actual help to them.

I speak to you not out of speculation. I have met and spoke with Arabs and Muslims alike on this issue.

…and I live in a Muslim Community in Britain. I’ve only ever met one person here that calls for the destruction of Israel, all of them ask for what I have said. Everyone I have met sees the problem of Israel constantly killing civilians and then masking it as going after terrorists. This is what many Muslims I have met find the most insulting thing, is how the Israeli Government can constantly bomb the Gaza Strip and then claim they have given up the land. Kill innocent people and call them collateral damage.

Take for example, the Iraq war. When an American Soldier is killed most people feel sorry for the family? Right? Then take September the 11th and the same thing happens. The United State’s is attacked, they see civilians being killed by outsiders and then they join the army. It very much is the same mentality for them. The examples with terrorists are clear, the I.R.A. if you are British is a great example of it. The more people we put in prison, arrested, shot, the more people joined them and they used to call for the destruction of Britain and Northern Ireland. It’s changed now because we stopped our policy of aggression and it took us hundreds of years to realise this.

If Israel isn’t careful, the cycle will continue for them for hundreds more years.

i have said it once and i will say it again for any form of negiotion to work it has to be done from a level playing field, not one side doing all the demanding....that is the whole damned problem both Israel and Palestine demand, demand and demand so loud that htey cannot hear the other side. Judah you are a prime example of what I say, the idea of another way of looking at it, from the Palestinian viewpoint (not what you think their viwepoint is but the actual one of the average person) is simply incomprehensible to you.

Has it ever occured to you that Yassir Arafat night have been telling, if not the whole truth, a truth when he said that he didn't control the militants?

Odium,

The problem with this though, JudahMaccabbi is that the rewards were not based on their behaviour. Furthermore, Israel never stopped attacked the Gaza Strip. In fact, Israel still during the period where the Palestinian People were attempting to sort out their Government and determine their future Israel did not hold back. If anything has shown us in Britain how we had to deal with the Irish republican Army, it was not to do this quick knee-jerk reaction. On the surface, it looks wise to strike back and kill those who kill your own but we learned it caused more problems.

This is outright wrong. In the onset of OSLO and the withdraw from Gaza and Jericho the Palestinians set-up their government and did not do anything to stop terrorism. Israel went through the proper procedure of official requests for investigations, extraditions all according to the accords. The Palestinians gave lame excuses. In one case the Palestinians claimed that a certain militant went into hiding and cannot be found. An Israeli reported called the militants house and interviewed him there. Israel only started reacting when they saw that they had no choice. Terrorist attacks were at an all time high. Car thefts were at an all time high with Palestinian officials driving luxury stolen cars. Tapuach Junction became a huge 'lot' opf stolen cars. Israel was helpless against the terror and the theft.
According to OSLO Israel had the right to enter Palestinian lands during hot pursuit of terrorists. The Palestinian police did not allow this and turned their guns on Israeli soldiers.
It was quite obvious that the Palestinians had no intention on keeping their side of the bargin.
It improved slightly under Netanyahu and then exploded under Barak.

That is the thing that bothers me most. Arab propaganda distorts facts and the projection of European thinking in the middle east conflict just DOES NOT WORK.

It was argued that OSLO would have worked in Norway perfectly but in the middle east it fails because it is not an agreement with Norwegens.

You just don't get it do you.... there are those of us who see through ALL of the propaganda, Israeli and Palestinian and piece together what we believe to be happening from divers sources. Could we be wrong? Of course, so could you.

Odium,

…and I live in a Muslim Community in Britain. I’ve only ever met one person here that calls for the destruction of Israel, all of them ask for what I have said. Everyone I have met sees the problem of Israel constantly killing civilians and then masking it as going after terrorists. This is what many Muslims I have met find the most insulting thing, is how the Israeli Government can constantly bomb the Gaza Strip and then claim they have given up the land. Kill innocent people and call them collateral damage.

That explains your sympathy for the Arabs. You hear their side of the story without balancing it. I have witnessed Palestinians claiming that Israel kills and arrests civilians when they are actually combatants. I have seen this through cross referencing names of killed with multiple Palestinian websites. Some websites labelled the Palestinian as an innocent civilian others claimed they were affiliated with one of the terrorist organizations and where involved in various activities.

There is a famous series of pictures of a Palestinian being captured, handcuffed, stripped and shot to death that was circulated in the Arab propaganda sphere, I have shown on this forum that the pictures were knowingly taken out of context by the Palestinians. The arrested individual was mahmud salah from the al-aqtza brigades, had abomb vest on him and tried to detonate it while being handled by a sapper. He was shot in the attempt to detonate the belt. The Palestinian human rights watch evern listed him as a suicide bomber on his way to an attack.

JudahMaccabbi, it is interesting that you raise the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements as a way to disprove my point.

As I pointed out, it should be a longitudinal thing. The problem with the Oslo Accord is the fact, neither side wanted it to work. If you look at the vote in Israel this is great example: The right wing groups all voted against it and many of them were instrumental in making sure the accord never worked out. Take for example the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, many similar things happen in the Gaza Strip over and over. However, it is rare they become big public news.

Furthermore, Israel allowed the Accord to fail. It should have been set up in such a fashion the Palestinians got rewarded for not taking action against Israel. However, it never was set up in such a manor. The prisoners should have never been released till after a sustained period of peace. However, Israel should have known certain groups of extremists would try and destabilize it. This is no different to what the Real Irish Republican Army did. However, instead of the British Government reacting we allowed it to happen and allowed the Irish Government to deal with it.

This is where the difference in what I am saying is occurring. It can not be expected to happen on one night, because a piece of paper is signed. It takes time but as long as Israel keep on bombing it won’t. It is easy to blame the Oslo Accord as failing on the Palestinian people, but to do so is to not look at the facts of it.

The best way to do it is to look at the Shamgar Commission. If it is expected for the Palestinian Authority to be able to stop terrorist attacks prior to them happening. Then why is it not the same for Israel? If it is the same for both, the Israeli Government have to accept that a few attacks will happen and the Palestinian Authority can not stop them. So they have to allow the Palestinian Authority to prosecute them but they never have. It isn’t a quick fix, they won’t change over night but things do change.

Odium,
That was exactly my thoughts.
The Israeli leadership under the Israeli Left was so gung-ho to prove that they can pass OSLO A and B according to the timelines that they messed up the whole process. You are right. Peace takes its time and the Israeli Left did everything to hold on to their seats at the expense of the peace process and its own civilian population and pushed it forward faster than they should have. It was Netanyahu who held up the process until the Palestinians were more or less tamed.

The right did not want the agreements because they saw the flaws in it and they new that the Left in power would turn it into a nigtmare.

It wasn't the Israeli right that made the OSLO accords fail but the stupidity of the Israeli left and the underlying desire to destroy Israel on the Palestinian side.

Regardless the Palestinians renegged on the accords on many issues and even engaged openly in terrorist activities.

Regarding the cave of Patriarch massacre. It was shocking for the whole Israeli nation although some though that it was well deserved in light of all the terrorist attacks Israel suffered. Anyhow this was the excuse Hamas needed to start its Jihad.

Israel has aborted many terrorist attacks planned by Israeli extremists - your statement that Israel has not is wrong. I also know that they crack down on Israeli extremists by placing them in administrative deterntions for 6 months without trial (under similar procedures administered to Palestinians).

Odium, That paper was signed 13 years ago and it went to the crapper. Hamas is in government and their line is Israel must be destroyed. Hamas declared war on Israel with the daily missile attacks. There is not much here to negotiate about.

GOLD Meir once said "We will have peace with the Arabs when the Arabs learn to love their children more than they hate us".

"Hezbollah forces haven't killed any Israeli civilians for more than a decade. Indeed, a 2002 Congressional Research Service report noted, in its analysis of Hezbollah, that “no major terrorist attacks have been attributed to it since 1994.

REPLY: This is true and factual. However, recent events show that for the past decade they've been re-arming.

Thank you zappa you just proved my point.

REPLY: HA HA HA....... no, you proved your own point.

The American Revolution ended at the PARIS PEACE TREATY.

REPLY: Sure there was a treaty, after Britain got their butts kicked. The treaty was just the formal documentation of the end of the war, and America's independence.

it is quite intelligent and very informed but I have no hope that zappa or any of his buddies could even possibly understand it.

REPLY: Beware those who place themselves upon their own pedestal, then admire the result. That you would quote anything from "common dreams" tell me all I need to know about your "diverse sources".

Yessir Yourafart was wholly owned and operated by Hamas. He had to cow-tow to them or he would have been replaced by someone else. PThe Camp David accords would have given palstine 95% of everything they wanted, yet Yourafart turned it down cold, because they didn't get 100% of what they demanded. Unfortunately, the Palestinian people were never even told the details of the offer, and so couldn't voice their opinions of it.
Had they been, the current situation might not exist, and Hamas wouldn't be in charge.

Grover and Odium.... seriously.... how do you propose Israeli negotiations with people whose only goal is to see you dead? What form would it take? What could you possibly say or offer? This would have to be done with Iran, Lebanon and Palestine.

In all reality the American Revolution pretty much ended in a draw...The British couldn't win, but nor could the colonists. Cornwallis surrendered because he was cut off from his supply line not because he was defeated.

Arafat owned by Hamas

Really zappa you missed your calling as a comedian