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Breaking News: Isreal and Lebanon at War? (pg. 51)
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| Groundhog Boy |
| quote: | Originally posted by Wicked Neo
(dunno if anyone has this but when i click the link provided, its to make a new post quoting dennis, way to go purple :p ) |
None of us got that but you. We all get the "Sorry, this thread is closed" page, then the redirect to page 1. |
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| Psy-T |
| quote: | Originally posted by Yoepus
Great, now you are going to be like the Israeli/Western media and report back the exact coordinates the Hezbullah rockets reached so they can hone in their skills?
Do you really think that they hit the rail depot twice by accident?!
Kills me, how the media reports the direct hits of Hezbullah, like "Great job! This is exactly where it landed and it was in a good spot! Shot some more right here!"
:( |
as far as i know my home address isn't listed anywhere on the internet, in other words "here" means next to nothing for the people doing the aiming. |
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| KrazyDJs |
| quote: | Originally posted by Psy-T
as far as i know my home address isn't listed anywhere on the internet, in other words "here" means next to nothing for the people doing the aiming. |
I think he meant the location "haifa, israel" in your profile. anyways I doubt they read TA anyway, but yeah, all the TV channels around here had a HUGE -up at the first couple of days about the locations of the bombings, and even showing live-time bombings. they avoided doing it in the last couple of days though, after the IDF asked them to stop giving details and pictures of the locations. |
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| cluBBer |
| quote: | Originally posted by metalgearsolid
Jews don't care if they are civilians or Hezabollah they shoot all. |
 
As a result of bombing by NASRALA ,2 arab kids were killed while playing outside of their house in NAZARET,Israel.After
Their biger brother says:" my brothers died like shahids, they will go to heaven"
metalgearsolid OFF |
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| skot_e |
Body count is 327 : 29, tho a BBC report said Lebonese officials have recieved 91 bodies.
And one Israeli minister is talking Axis of Evil. How about we just start calling everyone we don't like part of that axis then.
How does Israel justify the bombing of appartment buildings away from the border? Even if hizbollah members are inside what about the other civilians. Send in the groundtroops, and knock on the door. The only reason not to do that is because of the risk of casualties, but if Israel wants to continue fighting this battle, then that is a risk she should take. |
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| tathi |
| quote: | Originally posted by LazFX
Nice vid, but to bad any future big projects will be tainted due to his racist and hate filled posts here, in other words; If he had a future in film making beyond here on TA, only Al jezera will hire his racists self. :( tsk tsk tsk, what a frigging waste of skills. |
Believe it or not Cyrus spent the two months filming the vid in Ibiza with his Canadian Jewish friend... vehemently Anti Zionist yes - Racist / Anti-semitic no. |
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| tathi |
| quote: | Originally posted by skot_e
Body count is 327 : 29, tho a BBC report said Lebonese officials have recieved 91 bodies.
And one Israeli minister is talking Axis of Evil. How about we just start calling everyone we don't like part of that axis then.
How does Israel justify the bombing of appartment buildings away from the border? Even if hizbollah members are inside what about the other civilians. Send in the groundtroops, and knock on the door. The only reason not to do that is because of the risk of casualties, but if Israel wants to continue fighting this battle, then that is a risk she should take. |
It's called "defense", the best way to minimise casualties is to inflict more on the enemy be they civilians or otherwise. |
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| Q5echo |
| quote: | Originally posted by skot_e
Send in the groundtroops, and knock on the door. The only reason not to do that is because of the risk of casualties, but if Israel wants to continue fighting this battle, then that is a risk she should take. |
to a point i agree. Israel should man up and commit ground troops. however, i also believe this is not only a psychological campaign demonstrating their overwhelming force, but also they really don't want to have to occupy Lebanon again for any length of time. it's an image thing. i could be wrong. |
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| skot_e |
| I agree there guys but I think the more they continue, the stronger the Lebonese will feel like they are being targeted, and then the more of them will uprise, similar to what is happening in Iraq where while most were happy to see Saddam go, the American image is turning people against them being there (Abu Grahib, the murders/rape etc) |
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| LazFX |
| quote: | Originally posted by skot_e
I agree there guys but I think the more they continue, the stronger the Lebonese will feel like they are being targeted, and then the more of them will uprise, similar to what is happening in Iraq where while most were happy to see Saddam go, the American image is turning people against them being there (Abu Grahib, the murders/rape etc) |
+1 |
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| Epicurus |
Moral hazard, I've replied to your post in the Lebanon thread, simply because I don't want NeoPhono's thread to be hijacked any further.
| quote: | Originally posted by Moral Hazard
Perhaps Israel's response toward Lebanon would not be so extensive if the Lebanese government were to take proactive measures to control/surpress Hezbolla rather then simply throwing up their hands and saying "we can't control them". That said, I do believe that Israel has taken hold of this as an opportunity to weaken Lebanon as a whole and send a message to it's neighbours (I may have done the same if I were in control of the Israeli military). |
I promised myself not to post anymore about the Lebanese situation because of time constraints (not to mention the fact that topics about the Middle East tend to degenerate into childish flaming on this forum), but posts such as yours simply need to be addressed. You're not the first person, nor the last I'm sure, to bring up the issue of the Lebanese government's lack of "proactive measures" with regards to Hizballah, so perhaps this issue needs to be nipped at the bud (once again).
Let me first say that I don't blame you for taking that stance. Hizballah operates from Lebanese territory, thus technically, it is the Lebanese government's responsability to reign them in. However, and as I mentioned previously in the Lebanon thread, they are literally and figuratively, completely powerless to do anything about this.
Why you ask? Well, three major reasons:
1-) Hizballah, because it is funded by Iran and Syria, both militarily and financially, is a much more powerful military entity than the Lebanese army. We don't have much of an army to speak of to be quite honest. So without the threat of force to back up calls to disarm by the Lebanese government (and believe me, they've tried many, many times using a variety of different methods), Hizballah knows they are in a position of strength.
2-) Furthermore, and to make matters much worse, our army is a reflection of the confessional composition of Lebanese society. In other words, the army contains Lebanese soldiers that are Shia, Sunni, Christian (and their many sects) and Druze. In fact, over 60% of our army is Shia (though some will argue that this figure is even higher). So even if our military was strong enough to take on Hizballah, they would most definitely splinter along sectarian lines if forced to fight their Lebanese brethren. In other words, the Shia elements within the army would never fight their Hizballah Shia brethren. And yes, there is a precedent for this, as that exact scenario occured during the very beginnings of the Lebanese civil war in 1975, when the Lebanese army disintegrated into nothingness, as every Lebanese soldier joined their respective sectarian militia.
3-) And finally, to add the final nail in the coffin, even if our military was strong enough and was devoid of that Shia element that would most definitely refuse to fight Hizballah, Lebanon's people are notorious for toeing the sectarian line. Because 40% of Lebanon is Shia, any attack on Hizballah by the Lebanese government would most definitely plunge the entire country into yet another civil war, which would not only be disastrous for Lebanon, but for the entire region as well, including Israel (as confirmed by the Lebanese "civil" war that ended in 1990).
To be quite honest, how to deal with Hizballah has been an open question In Lebanon since resolution 1559 came out in 2004. Due to the extremely delicate nature of this situation because of civil war wounds that the Lebanese are loath to re-open, coupled with the 3 aforementioned reasons I gave you, the situation was clearly never resolved. Some say that the international community, particularly the US, which backs this current government, did not do enough to tackle this issue. Though they may have a point, had the US done more, I'm sure we would have heard cries of the Great Satan interfering in national affairs, followed by opportunists capitalizing on the situation and perhaps taking down the government. So personally, I don't know how much I blame the US for this one, although I do think that an international multilateral initiative to disarm Hizballah could have perhaps succeeded. But I guess it's too late for that now.
This finally brings us to Israel's response to an admittedly unresolved problem. Was Hizballah a threat to Israel's northern border? Yes. Were they launching rockets across the border? Yes. Did they kidnap the soldiers? Yes. Did Israel have a right to finally retaliate? Believe it or not, and I say this as a Lebanese, they did. However, and this is key, the anger and fury over Israel's actions are not because they retaliated, but because of the excessive measures used during this retaliation. Most non-Shia Lebanese would not be too disappointed if Israel took out Hizballah. They are furious, however, because Israel is taking out parts of Lebanon that have nothing to do with Hizballah. I speak of course of the massive damage done to Lebanon's infrastructure and the complete disregard for civilian lives. Israel's pretext for bombing bridges, roads, the airport (etc) is to avoid the kidnapped soldiers from being transferred to Syria and Iran. As I elaborated here, this is bullocks:
| quote: | | As for the destruction of civilian infrastructure, that is part of the collective punishment policy that Israel adheres to, and is their way of "sending the message". I don't believe in the slightest the official "reason" given by the Israeli government, that of ensuring that the soldiers are not transported out of Lebanon. It makes no difference whether the soldiers are inside of Lebanon or not, because either way, they won't recover them. They won't find them inside of Lebanon or outside of Lebanon. If they couldn't retrieve the kidnapped soldier from Gaza, which is a fraction of land compared to Lebanon, do they seriously envision retrieving the kidnapped soldiers from Lebanon, assuming they're still there? Of course not. And to think that Hizballah will cower under pressure and simply hand the soldiers over because of the shelling is a pipe dream, and they know it. This is clearly a pretext by Israel to once again, "send the message" loud and clear, although if they keep this up, their strategy will surely backfire. |
In other words, the anger and fury at Israel's actions is directed not at the principle of retaliation, but at Israel's policies of collective punishment. Bombing the roads, bridges, airport (etc) have nothing to do with recovering the soldiers. It's simply a pretext to engage in their barbaric actions of collective punishment to "send the message". They've already blamed the Lebanese government for not reigning Hizballah in (though of course they know that they are powerless to do anything about it), which gives them the pretext to do so. This, of course, is nothing new from Israel, as this type of behaviour has been observed many times in the past, which simply adds credibility to those espousing similar stances as mine. In a nutshell, the ones that are paying (literally and figuratively) for this are not Hizballah, but the Lebanese government and the Lebanese people.
Furthermore, and as I also stated previously, I don't believe that the IDF is purposefully targetting civilians, in the sense that the IDF is not seeking out civilians and killing them. However, and they have a history of this as well, they are showing a complete and callous disregard for civilian lives. I'm currently compiling a list of Lebanese civilian casualties in this conflict, and I can tell you from my preliminary analysis that although some casualties are a result of "caught in the cross-fire" circumstances, and other casualties are a result of "collateral damage" (i.e. they died because the IDF was targetting Hizballah strongholds and they happened to be nearby, or in the same building (etc)), many are simply inexcusable. One may attribute these to "-ups", which do indeed happen in any military operation, but these -ups are piling on rather quickly. Just to give you a flavour of what I'm talking about, here's a couple of examples (amongst many more):
- A bus filled with women and children fleeing the bombing in the South. They were on the costal road that leads to Tyre, and nowhere near any Hizballah targets. It's just a road along the coast. There's nothing else there. I would know since I've travelled the road many times before. (click here).
- 30 Lebanese soldiers have died. Though they are soldiers, they are innocent in this case simply because there was a stand-down order given by the Lebanese government to the army to not engage in any fighting whatsoever, thus making them neutral observers. Israel has acknowledged their neutral status observer multiple times already, yet direct hits on Lebanese army bases such as this have occured far too frequently.
- Though Israel has warned civilians beforehand that they were going to attack certain areas with Hizballah activity, they have not, in certain cases, given them enough time to leave (2 hours), and in cases where they have, the civilians have been unable to escape the bombings because Israel had already destroyed the roads leading out of their villages (in the South) and the main highways (not to mention shelling the latter continuously), leaving them stranded there and fully exposed to Israeli fire (click here).
Not to mention the seemingly inefficient Israeli strikes to cripple Hizballah. Certain areas in the South and in Beirut now look like Groud Zero times 10 (no offense to any Americans out there) because Israel was bombing Hizballah locations, yet Hizballah seems to be still firing missiles at Israel and have incurred minimal casualties, compared to 300 civilian casualties (not to mention the hundreds of wounded). I find that rather distressing, don't you?
I could go on but I hope you get the point. |
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| Moral Hazard |
^^^^ I agree, Israel's response has not been focused to the threat they faced or attack (if you will) they suffered. This is what I was elluding to by stating Israel has taken this as an opportunity to attck Lebanon as a whole. Personally, I think it is an unacceptable action on the part of Israel, however, given their foreign policy and their security concerns I do understand why they have taken the route they have (note, this is not to say I approve it, I don't, but I do understand it).
With regard to Lebanon's inability to control Hizballah. While I understand there are very real reasons for Lebanon to be impotent in the situation that does not excuse their impotency. If a faction of one state threatens another then either the host state must do something about it or if unwilling or incapable they must expect the threatened state will respond. Since Hizballah is part of the government in Lebanon this argument becomes even stronger as Hizballah does have a measure of legitimacy in Lebanon (at least from foreign eyes).
While this would certainly never fly in Lebanon, the best solution for the state as a whole would be to consider seeking outside assistance in dealing with Hizballah.... maybe even Israel's:eek: |
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