Israel and Lebanon

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by NitroNutter

US hasnt anything to do with Iran oil for a long time, doubt they would give a bag of monkeys nuts wether iran keeps oil flowing or not, in fact they would probably prefer them to turn it off.

You should be more concerned if Iran, Libya and Syria and Korea become involved, either with supply or actual action, a big war out there will have undoubted consequesnces world wide in terms of war and local terrorism is bound to accelerate.

I disagree, mainly because there is only so much oil that can be produced at anyone time and if one of the worlds big suppliers, switches it of even for a short period it will have repocussions for us all, for a start the price would sky rocket, stock markets would crash ect, in short it would probably achieve more than a war imo.

[Ramrod]

Originally Posted by bjorkiii

I think its deplorable the way Israel totally over reacts, bombing innocent people they seem to give the impression 1 israeli life is worth a 100 arab lives

They seem to have bent over backwards in the past to exchange hostages and look where it has go them......imo, terrorists see negotiation as a weakness...link

Originally Posted by Macca371

For those who condemn Israel's response, would you expect Britain to do nothing if France were firing rockets across the channel into UK cities? Israel has a right to protect it's people. The Lebanese government is either unwilling and/or unable (due to it's weakness) to stop these hezbullah rockets, so Israel has to take steps itself. I do think that Israel oversteps the line too often, like when it bombed the power station in Rafah after the kidnap of Gilad Shalit, and it should be much much more careful in its targets to avoid civilan casualties. But in both cases in Gaza and Lebanon, the situation was initiated by the kidnaps. You can't expect the Israelis to do nothing, plus there have been qassams fired into Israel for ages by hezbullah. Israel wants peace. If it's interests lay in oil then surely it wouldn't have given the Sinai peninsula back to Egypt in the 1980s because there were oil reserves there. But no, Israel gave the land back to Egypt when it signed a peace treaty. I hate the way that Israel is made out to be a war mongering nation by lots of people, when all the Israelis want is peace.

I guess Israel was justified a few years ago wqhen they drove tanks into buildings in an effort to move on the innocent palistinians.
I suppose none of this is israels fault?
I suppose Israel has done nothing to anger the other arab nations.....besides wage war on them and steal land and have an occupying force.

No Israel is completely without fault here, and the sooner it gets its **** kicked into submission the sooner we might get peace in the middle east.

[TheDaddy]

How can anyone justify this:
Whereas Palestinian suicide attacks targeting Israeli civilians have garnered much media attention, Israel's quantitatively worse record of killing non-combatants is less well known. According to the most recent figures of the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the OccupiedTerritories (B'Tselem), 3,386 Palestinians have been killed since September 2000, of whom 1,008 were identified as combatants, as opposed to 992 Israelis killed, of whom 309 were combatants. This means that three times more Palestinians than Israelis have been killed and up to three times more Palestinian civilians than Israeli civilians. Israel's defenders maintain that there's a difference between targeting civilians and inadvertently killing them. B'Tselem disputes this: "when so many civilians have been killed and wounded, the lack of intent makes no difference”. Israel remains responsible." Furthermore, Amnesty International reports that "many" Palestinians have not been accidentally killed but "deliberately targeted," while the award-winning New York Times journalist Chris Hedges reports that Israeli soldiers "entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport."

"From 1967," Amnesty reports, "the Israeli security services have routinely tortured Palestinian political suspects in the OccupiedTerritories." B'Tselem found that eighty-five percent of Palestinians interrogated by Israeli security services were subjected to "methods constituting torture," while already a decade ago Human Rights Watch estimated that "the number of Palestinians tortured or severely ill-treated" was "in the tens of thousands - a number that becomes especially significant when it is remembered that the universe of adult and adolescent male Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is under three-quarters of one million." In 1987 Israel became "the only country in the world to have effectively legalized torture" (Amnesty). Although the Israeli Supreme Court seemed to ban torture in a 1999 decision, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel reported in 2003 that Israeli security forces continued to apply torture in a "methodical and routine" fashion. A 2001 B'Tselem study documented that Israeli security forces often applied "severe torture" to "Palestinian minors."

"Israel has implemented a policy of mass demolition of Palestinian houses in the OccupiedTerritories," B'Tselem reports, and since September 2000 "has destroyed some 4,170 Palestinian homes." Until just recently Israel routinely resorted to house demolitions as a form of collective punishment. According to Middle East Watch, apart from Israel, the only other country in the world that used such a draconian punishment was Iraq under Saddam Hussein. In addition, Israel has demolished thousands of "illegal" homes that Palestinians built because of Israel's refusal to provide building permits. The motive behind destroying these homes, according to Amnesty, has been to maximize the area available for Jewish settlers: "Palestinians are targeted for no other reason than they are Palestinians." Finally, Israel has destroyed hundred of homes on security pretexts, yet a Human Rights Watch report on Gaza found that "the pattern of destruction…strongly suggests that Israeli forces demolished homes wholesale, regardless of whether they posed a specific threat." Amnesty likewise found that "Israel's extensive destruction of homes and properties throughout the West Bank and Gaza…is not justified by military necessity," and that "Some of these acts of destruction amount to grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention and are war crimes."

Apart from the sheer magnitude of its human rights violations, the uniqueness of Israeli policies merits notice. "Israel has created in the OccupiedTerritories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality," B'Tselem has concluded. "This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes from the past, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa."

[blackthorn]

Originally Posted by dd2k

2 ships sounds more like an extraction mission rather than show of force. if that was the aim they'd prep more ships

Officially theres the 2 ships. The ones the uk want you to know about. They havent told you about the 2 submarines and the 2 type 42`s that have been sent.

[Derek S]

I'm don't normally pay any attention to George Galloway but I found this interview to be surprisingly full of common sense and even though he does verge towards self-promotion a few times it paints him in a fairly good light.

Originally Posted by George Galloway

GALLOWAY: I'm not at all surprised. I'm dismally reconciled to the gigantic double standard that lies at the heart of Western policy towards the Middle East and the Muslim world. I have long become inured to the double standard that allows Israel to have hundreds of nuclear weapons and refuse to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, yet be rewarded by the West, whilst Iran has no nuclear weapons, has joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty and is, according to Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker, facing a devastating war.

I am dismally aware of the extent to which the blood of Palestinians is not worth anything like the blood of Israelis, still less the blood of Westerners. A good case in point was on the BBC's Question Time when every single member of the panel knew the name of the Israeli occupation soldier 'kidnapped' by the resistance, and they felt they had to pay endless sympathies to his family.

I found myself screaming at the television: "Can any of you name a single Palestinian victim, just say in the last 12 days, when 24 Palestinians, mostly women and children were killed by Israel in bomb, shell and rocket attacks?" No one knows the names of these victims, no one describes the Palestinian leaders who were kidnapped and languish in Israeli dungeons. All were seized in exactly the same way as this Israeli solder was seized. This is a double standard that does not occur to most people, but is endlessly burrowing away in my mind.

[Damien]

Idiotic point from Galloway. The kidnapped solider was important to the event kicking off.

Ask them to name the israelies who have died in the last few days and they may have more of a problem. Although I do see what he means.

Galloway just hates israel. Any chance he gets to attack them and US and UK foriegn policys. He thinks he is always right and anyone who disagrees with him is a killer and has blood on their hands. He is a arrogant prat. For someone who has a poltical party called respect he seem to enjoy siding with countrys without a free vote.

[Derek S]

Originally Posted by Damien

Idiotic point from Galloway. The kidnapped solider was important to the event kicking off.

Well this was the incident that seemingly provoked the initial attack/kidnapping.

Originally Posted by Damien

He is a arrogant prat.

Have to agree with that.

Originally Posted by Damien

For someone who has a poltical party called respect he seem to enjoy siding with countrys without a free vote.

Errr. Wasn't there just an election for a Palestinian authority a few months back that Hamas won?

[SMG]

Galloway`s a wan*er of the highest order. An ar*e licker who`s had his head up & kissed so many ar*es his lips are brown.

[Fibonacci poem]

Originally Posted by Bengie

There is no oil but the Israelites have cultivated a practically uninhabitable piece of land and grow their own crops. The countries around them are either too thick or too lazy to do the same so they are jelous of Israel and so keep attacking them.

That place where they grow the crops you are referring to is presumably the West Bank which was formerly 10% of Jordan (the most fertile part of Jordan) annexed by Israel in the 1967 push. Israel is effectively "above the law" as any action by the united nations (based in New York and still owed Millions of unpaid revenue by this same host) pecieved to be against Israels intesrest is vetod by the USA making the UN effectively a moot point. Justice for all I say in Ja Ja language

[Paddy1]

Originally Posted by SMG

Galloway`s a wan*er of the highest order. An ar*e licker who`s had his head up & kissed so many ar*es his lips are brown.

But is he right?

[etccarmageddon]

Originally Posted by TheDaddy

I disagree, mainly because there is only so much oil that can be produced at anyone time and if one of the worlds big suppliers, switches it of even for a short period it will have repocussions for us all, for a start the price would sky rocket, stock markets would crash ect, in short it would probably achieve more than a war imo.

that's right - the world oil market can be destabilised very easily.

[injuneer]

Originally Posted by Macca371

The whole situation is very frightening to me. Israel have nuclear weapons (although unofficially), and I think the US will always send troops in to help. Iran will probably get involved too and has a large army. I can see a pan-Arab alliance forming against Israel and the US. It could all get very nasty indeed.

Israel would not need any help from US troops they already have a very well equipped, high tech, defensive and offensive capability. Mostly supplied by the West. All the Lebanese & Palestinians have are a few rockets, probably a lot of AK47's but not much else. No contest. A hammer to crack a nut.

[foreverwar]

Originally Posted by Fibonacci poem

That place where they grow the crops you are referring to is presumably the West Bank which was formerly 10% of Jordan (the most fertile part of Jordan) annexed by Israel in the 1967 push.

mmm - that would be the 6 day war in 1967 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_A...li_War#_note-0

"In June 1967, Egypt, Syria and Jordan massed their troops on Israel's borders in preparation for an all-out attack. "
"Nasser proclaimed: "The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel ... to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation. This act will astound the world. Today they will know that the Arabs are arranged for battle, the critical hour has arrived. We have reached the stage of serious action and not of more declarations."

[lauzjp]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolavconsole/u...wm_5187630.stm

bush and bliar at the g8