Middle-East

[haku]

Originally Posted by freddie

A good friend of mine from Israel pointed out this link to me. Amusing.

Except that Israel generally does not punch back, it "preemptively" punches because it thinks it might get punch someday. And in the rare cases where Israel does punch back, it gives 1000 punches for one received.

It's a myth that Israel is only retaliating in defense and never starts anything, the IDF and its predecessors Irgun and Lehi have started many attacks back in the days when they needed to conquer territories, now they're whining because the enemy is doing the same thing.
And when Israel expels Arabs from East Jerusalem, West Bank or Golan Heights to make room for Israeli colonists, to what exactly is it punching back there?

[Mary-sheccid]

god!.. that`s sad!.. i i wanted to have a bit of hope to give them, they have broken my heart, they deserve a better future.

[spyretto]

yeah Israel is only retaliating in defense indeed, it all depends on the level of the retaliation... Looking to completely destroy a country because two of their soldiers were humiliated by the enemy.
...
...
..
...yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

[haku]

Pictures of Lebanon after the Israeli tantrum, from this article.

[haku]

Amnesty International agrees that war crimes were committed by Israel in Lebanon, that the use of force was disproportionate, and that civilians were targeted deliberately.
The organization has released satellite pictures showing the massive destruction of entire civilian neighborhoods and villages, the results are similar to good old WWII carpet bombings and have nothing to do with precision targetting.

[Rachel]

^^^ Well, that's not a surprise at all.

Defending themselves, yeah riiiiiiiiight.

[freddie]

Israel had absolutely NOTHING to gain with targeting civilians. 'Nuff said.

[Rachel]

Then why do it?

It's all a case of old scores to settle.

[freddie]

They DIDN'T do it. It was - at worst - gross negligence.Which is not excusable but it's not on purpose either.

Killing civilians on purpose would totally mean shooting themselves in the foot. That's the only thing they have the upper moral hand over from the terrorists. A few killed civilians will bring them no additional satisfaction - all it'll do is turn their western allies against them. Doing that would be political suicide.

[haku]

Originally Posted by freddie

Israel had absolutely NOTHING to gain with targeting civilians.

Of course there was something to gain for Israel, massive bombings of civilian areas have been a war strategy since WWII, nothing really new here, the goal was the same as when the Allied flattened Dresde or Hiroshima, to terrify and demoralize the civilian population so it would pressure its leaders and army to surrender to the enemy.

The Israeli army is well trained and equiped with the latest hi-tech gear the US can provide them, so when the Israeli army destroys several square km in a particular civilian area, it's no mistake, this kind of mistakes could happen during WWII when bombs were not guided, but not today, those Israeli bombs went exactly where they were meant to go, on civilians and civilian infrastructures.

The reality is that Israel had absolutely nothing to lose in targeting civilians, neither Israel or the US recognize the International Criminal Court and their armies have total immunity from any war crimes they can commit.

[Khartoun2004]

Originally Posted by freddie

A good friend of mine from Israel pointed out this link to me. Amusing.

HAHA that is quite amusing. But so true, Israel definitely would have been destroyed by now if they didn't react to terrorist acts. I really don't understand people that do not seem to understand this very simple fact. If Israel didn't fight, there would be 5.75 million less Jews in the world and that is not acceptable in my book.

[haku]

Originally Posted by Khartoun2004

Israel definitely would have been destroyed by now if they didn't react to terrorist acts.

And if neighboring Arab countries had never fought back, we would have today a Greater Israel.

Israelis live on conquered lands, and conquest has a price, for the conquerors, and the conquered.

[freddie]

Originally Posted by haku

Of course there was something to gain for Israel, massive bombings of civilian areas have been a war strategy since WWII, nothing really new here, the goal was the same as when the Allied flattened Dresde or Hiroshima, to terrify and demoralize the civilian population so it would pressure its leaders and army to surrender to the enemy.

The Israeli army is well trained and equiped with the latest hi-tech gear the US can provide them, so when the Israeli army destroys several square km in a particular civilian area, it's no mistake, this kind of mistakes could happen during WWII when bombs were not guided, but not today, those Israeli bombs went exactly where they were meant to go, on civilians and civilian infrastructures.

The reality is that Israel had absolutely nothing to lose in targeting civilians, neither Israel or the US recognize the International Criminal Court and their armies have total immunity from any war crimes they can commit.

But of course they had something to lose. Every civilian target they bomb would make the arabs hate them more... every incident has hundreds of potential extremist group recruits who'll either kidnap more soldiers, blow themselves up in Tel Aviv or fire rockets into Israeli territory in the decades to come. Before the attacks began Israeli army threw leaflets on Lebanese territory warning civilians to either stay in their houses or move temporarily because an attack will ensue shortly. That doesn't look like a tactic of a country that'd "target civilians", does it? Then there's a small thing of israel actually targeting (or trying to target) specific military targets (of course there were mistakes made, since it's not exactly easy to target military structures when you don't even know exactly where they are), while Hezbollah made it clear they're shooting blindly. Hitting civilians was actually their desired purpose.

[PowerPuff Grrl]

Originally Posted by haku

And if neighboring Arab countries had never fought back, we would have today a Greater Israel.

Israelis live on conquered lands, and conquest has a price, for the conquerors, and the conquered.

That can go both ways you know. Greater Syria.

But there's only one country that is actively trying to fufill this, considering how much Syria influences Lebanese politics I think I know which country that may be.

[haku]

According to a poll in Egypt, Denmark is Egypt's 2nd worst enemy, right after Israel and before the UK and even the US.

[haku]

The world is no longer really interested in what is going on in Lebanon but the situation continues to be very tense, especially between Israel and UN forces.
Israeli planes keep making 'fake' attacks on German and French troups, to the point recently that French troups armed their missiles and almost fired at Israeli planes.
Israeli pilots are acting like that because they are used to Arab fighters not being able to respond to air attacks, but they should be more careful now, the missiles used by French troups are a bit more sophisticated than katyuasha rockets, they won't miss.
The whole situation is an accident waiting to happen.

BBC

[haku]

Pierre Gemayel has just been assassinated in Beirut.

[haku]

Pakistan inaugurates today Gwadar port.

Gwadar port is of critical strategic importance, it will become China's western gate for economic but also military matters. China will station in Gwadar a large military fleet (with nuclear capabilities) which will allow China to project its forces in the Middle-East and Africa.

The balance of global powers of the 21st century is slowly taking shape.

[haku]

Crisis combination in the Middle East

The US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has flown back to the Middle East in her latest attempt to broker peace in the region.

But with the conflict in Iraq now four years old, prospects of reaching agreements among the various factions in the Middle East appear remoter than ever.

You hear a lot of talk about war in the Middle East at the moment.

There was so much of it when I was in Beirut last month that it started me wondering. Was this what it felt like to be somewhere like Prague in about 1934?

Surrounded by people whose stomachs get tied in knots when they think about the future, caught up in events that they cannot do anything about with the sinking feeling that things may be bad but, by God, they can get much worse.

Before we get too carried away here, let us remember that the Middle East always has something bad going on, so crisis is normal.

So normal, in fact, that human beings are quite good at getting on with their lives despite it.

But I started wondering about Prague or Warsaw or Budapest in 1934 or 1936 because a lot of the people I had been meeting recently across the Middle East think that what is different now is the combination of crises that are raging, bubbling steadily or slowly smouldering.

Mutual fear

Most Israelis I have talked to believe they will have to go to war again with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia movement that fought them to a standstill last summer.

They are worried that Arabs might lose their fear of the Israeli army if they do not.

And Hezbollah is backed by Iran, which many Israelis believe would like to eliminate their country.

In Israel, the former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, has been explicit about it.

He looks at the bombastic anti-Israeli rhetoric of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and says it is now 1938 and Iran is Germany.

That strikes a deep chord in Israel but Arabs I have spoken to are just as concerned about the future, though for different reasons.

Here are a few snapshots from the last month or so.

The Iran question

While I was in Beirut, I spoke to senior people from all the main sectarian groups - Shias, Sunnis, Druze and Christian - and they all shared concerns about what they saw as Israel's aggressive plans.

But they also talked a lot about the risks of another civil war inside Lebanon.

It is now accepted wisdom there that street disturbances in February took the country to within hours of all-out sectarian conflict.

In his elegant appartment overlooking the Mediterranean in Beirut, a well-known politician told me that he thought the outlook across the Middle East was as bad as it had been in his lifetime.

He was also worried about, what he believed, was Iran's desire to get nuclear weapons and how America's methods of trying to stop them could make matters worse.

Iran's nuclear plans, which Tehran says are an entirely peaceful and lawful attempt to generate electricity, alarm conservative Arab leaders.

In Saudi Arabia, a prince - a brother of the king - told me that he had heard an Arab leader saying that once Iran had a bomb, then everyone in the Arab nation should get one too.

He also said he knew how that leader would get the bomb but he would not give names or details.

And then there are the forces of religious conservatism which many secular Middle Easterners see as a cause of conflict.

Impact of Iraq

In Damascus a Western ambassador talked about how members of the secular elite in Syria were blithely assuming that they would not be affected.

"I go to parties here", he said, "and they tell me that Syria is secular and staying that way. Sometimes I think there is a 'fin de siecle' feeling about it all as if it is the end of something."

In Bahrain, a journalist who works for the country's only independent newspaper, told me how she wished the future was secular and feared that it was not.

She was wearing clothes that would have looked good in the fashionable corners of London or Paris but in Bahrain she saw others retreating into their own religious identities and turning their backs on people who were different.

Much of the fear of the future comes from the impact of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

It has set off a series of shock waves that will rumble around the region for a generation at least.

Two of them are already urgent: the exodus of Iraqi refugees, which is the biggest movement of people in the Middle East since the Palestinian refugee crisis after Israel was established in 1948, and the sectarian war in Iraq which is increasing tension in Shia and Sunni communities from Lebanon to Pakistan.

This survey is very unscientific and I have not got room to go into the fears that Iranians have about the intentions of the US and its friends or Palestinian problems, or any of the other crises that are on the horizon or here already.

I hope the future is not as dark for the Middle East as it was in Europe in the 1930s, but for most of the 20th Century, conflict in Europe poisoned the rest of the world.

Seven years into this new century, the Middle East is showing every sign of doing the same.

Jeremy Bowen
BBC

[freddie]

Hehe. Nice analysis. However Europe in the 1930s was much more powerful and influential to the rest of the world than the Middle East is now (weren't it for the oil the whole region would be a pretty insignificant, actually).

I also think conditions will stabilize a bit once the mighty persian Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is ousted from power. Right now the Iran problem is much more dangerous on a global scale than secterian violence in Iraq.