[freddie]

Originally Posted by haku

First of all, Israel regularly assassinates Arab leaders outside its borders, and Israel has conducted many air strikes on neighboring countries (for no other reasons than that infamous 'preemptive action' concept which basically allows Israel to kill anyone and destroy anything it wants because it *might* someday be a threat).
So what's the rule here? Israel can strike at will on Arabs outside its borders, but Arabs can't strike back on Israeli soil? Please.

Those "Arab leaders" are usually leaders of terrorist groups which Israel hunts down for national security reasons. Things they take action against ARE a threat when they do it. Hezbollah has absolutely no "national security reasons" to kidnap those soldiers. All they wanted to do (and succeded in doing) is gain notoriety from it.

Originally Posted by haku

Second, from an Arab point of view, Israel is occupying Arab lands, therefore the Israeli army is an occupying force and a legitimate target. Resistance fighters capturing occupying soldiers is within what's acceptable during a war, retaliating on civilians to 'punish' that attack on soldiers is *not*, during WWII the German army was also regularly retaliating on French civilians each time the French resistance attacked German soldiers, it was a war crime then, it is a war crime now.

Arab point of view doesn't matter when it comes to borders recognized by the UN and the international community. They can claim someone took their land all they want, but at the end of the day they're still breeching sovereignty of another country - which is a valid reason for attack - and Hezbollah militants knew that damn well. They stired things up and then retreat back to civilian facilities, so there'll be massive collateral damage in case Israel strikes. THAT is what's killing those innocent civilians.

I still think Israelis are silly for letting themselves get provoked by it to react in such a manner. It'll only fuel the fire for future conflicts as extremists get stronger and stronger during this conflict (and any conflict for that matter). But I don't think for a minute not them or the US had destroying Lebanon on their agenda any time soon. If anything Lebanon was a success story in the Middle East. A blue-print of how a moderate Arab country should operate - despite all the divisions between Arabs and other religious groups in the country. Unfortunately they're being taken hostage by Hezbollah militias (which is partly their fault for letting it in the first place).

Originally Posted by PowerPuff Grrl

Why do we keep saying "Arab?" Which Arabs are we talking about here?

Religious extremists want nothing more than a quasi united front against a common zionist enemy. For as long as they have something to fight from the outside they won't actually deal with matters of their own ethnic and cultural divisions - that comes later when there's no one around to get in conflicts with. Every militia group in the middle east uses the same rhetoric - it's the attack on the whole muslim world... ALL muslims - not just Arabs - should fight a religious war against the forces from the outside trying to destroy Islam blahblahblah... I know it's all bullshit but for the time being they'll feed this all-muslim propaganda for as long as it's convenient.