ISRAEL - IRAN - SYRIA - HAMAS - HEZBOLLAH - WWWIII?

OK! According to definition (2b) you are right.

But this whole discussion started from your criticism of a question. You claimed that this question asked by Advocate was racist: "How come the news media love Palestinians?" I disagreed that Palestinians were a race (in the biological sense) and the debate was on!

Okay, that's settled, then....

So,unless you are lefthanded,then you qualify as being racist also,using your definition.

The reason I say that is because left handed people ARE a minority of the people on earth,and yet almost everything is made for right handed people.
So,unless everything made is made for both left handed AND right handed people,then those that are left handed are discriminated against.

So,using YOUR WORDS...
Then the world is racist against left handed people, because left handed people are a minority.

Old Europe is evidence that the terms bigot and moron are not mutually exclusive.

Fatah Al-Islam terrorists
Nasrallah's Threats to the Lebanese Army: What will Aoun do?
By Joseph Hitti

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Tehran issued its orders yesterday to its proxies in Baghdad and Beirut. Muqtada Al-Sadr in Baghdad declared war on the American occupation and called on his Sunni brethren of Al-Qaeda to join forces with him to fight the US occupation. In Beirut, at exactly the same time, Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah issued identical warnings to the Lebanese army not to enter the fortified camp where Sunni Al-Qaeda-affiliated Fatah Al-Islam terrorists are holed up. Nasrallah also wants an "investigation" into why the Lebanese army was receiving weapons shipment from the Americans.

This is an ominous threat. Hezbollah's stupid venture last summer against Israel cost the Lebanese dearly and cost Hezbollah a lot of support among the Lebanese. With another similar venture against Israel now impossible for fear of another round of Israeli bombardments and with a sea of international and Lebanese troops patrolling the Lebanese south, Hezbollah has no option but to turn away from liberating Palestine in south Lebanon and focus on toppling the Lebanese government, with the help of its ally, the Free Patriotic Movement of Michel Aoun. But after six months in the streets, they have failed at achieving that goal. Now the Nahr Al-Bared events have given Nasrallah a new chance to salvage his fast disappearing raison d'etre and to recover some relevance. As he waited for Tehran to tell him what to do, he gave only lukewarm support to the Lebanese army.

Nasrallah finally received his marching orders from Iran yesterday, like Muqtada Al-Sadr in Baghdad, and these orders coincide with Tehran's ratcheting up its anti-US escalation by imprisoning Iranian-Americans visiting their country of origin. Lest there be any skeptics who still don't believe that Hezbollah is 100% acting as an agent for Tehran, this is what Nasrallah's deputy Naim Qassem said a few days ago (Al-Kawthar TV, April 16, 2007 [Translated by MEMRI TV]):

Hizbullah, when it comes to matters of jurisprudence pertaining to its general direction, as well as to its Jihad direction, based itself on the decisions of the Jurisprudent [i.e. the Iranian Mullahs]. It is the Jurisprudent who permits, and it is the Jurisprudent who forbids. When the resistance of Hizbullah was launched in 1982, it was based on the jurisprudent position and decision of Imam Khomeini, who deemed fighting Israel to be an obligation, and therefore, we adhered to this opinion. […] Therefore, we covered our Jihad position with regard to fighting Israel with the decision of the Jurisprudent. With regard to all the other details - whenever we need jurisprudent clarifications regarding what is permitted and what is forbidden on the Jihad front, we ask, receive general answers, and implement them. Even with regard to martyrdom operations - a person cannot kill himself unless he has jurisprudent permission. Since, as a Shura council, we have the authority to make decisions on martyrdom operations, and then there are operative channels to carry this out... Let's assume that some Lebanese citizen gets it into his head to carry out a martyrdom operation without consulting anybody - it is not certain that he is carrying out his duty according to religious law. He might be committing a sin, because despite the sanctity attributed to an act of such a high level, it requires permission, it requires operative channels, and it requires someone who can evaluate whether this is good or not, because lives are at stake. Even with regard to the firing of missiles on Israeli citizens, […] even that required general permission based on Islamic law. As for Hizbullah, it receives general permission from the Jurisprudent.

It was ironic to hear Hezbollah's strongman Nasrallah asking his audience yesterday: "Are you willing to fight the wars of others inside Lebanon?", accusing the Lebanese army and government of fighting the anti-terror war on behalf of the Americans, while he himself has in fact been fighting the wars of Syria and Iran with Lebanese blood and on Lebanese soil for 25 years.

As we noted yesterday in our daily news analysis [http://www.neal-us.org/news/neal25.5.07news.htm]:

"The silence of Hezbollah over the Nahr Al-Bared events […] indicates the conflict and division within the pro-Iranian terrorist organization that these events are causing. On one hand, Hezbollah has to appear supportive of Lebanese sovereignty and institutions in the eyes of the Lebanese people (about whom Hezbollah could care less but on which it is counting to seize power), but most importantly for Hezbollah's ideological foundations it cannot appear to support a strong Lebanese army taking on a group like Fatah Al-Islam because:

1. Like Hezbollah, Fatah Al-Islam is a fundamentalist Islamic organization challenging Lebanese sovereignty
2. Like Hezbollah, Fatah Al-Islam is an ally of Syria armed and funded by it (with Iran as the paymaster)
3. Like Hezbollah, Fatah Al-Islam is supposed to be liberating Palestine. How can Hezbollah which wants to liberate Palestine in spite of the Palestinian themselves, support a crackdown by the Lebanese government on Palestinian movements?
4. Paradoxically, Hezbollah and its allies of Gen. Michel Aoun's FPM, have raised the threat of Sunni Islamic fundamentalism as more dangerous to Lebanon than Hezbollah's Iranian Shiite brand of fundamentalism, as a way to justify not disarming Hezbollah as mandated by the Lebanese constitution, several UN resolutions, and the Taef Accord of 1989."
The ominous threat implicit in this newly stated position by Nasrallah is that he might - in an act of collective suicide - take on the Lebanese army. It is the only military power that stands in his way to seize control of the country and turn it into the Islamic Republic of Lebanon. Last summer, he said the Lebanese army is "incapable of defending Lebanon". He has been issuing warnings to the UNIFIL forces in the south. Any semblance of victory by the Lebanese army against the challenge posed by Fatah Al-Islam is a bad omen for Nasrallah's free-running mini-empire inside the country because he can no longer say that the Army is "incapable", which means he may have to declare bankruptcy and go home. In addition, and from the Israeli perspective, Nasrallah is a dead man walking. Add to this an increased international isolation of Syria and Iran, and Nasrallah's future look quite bleak.

Now the other cracks developing in the Lebanese picture have to with General Aoun who has been Hezbollah's foremost ally in the "opposition". Not only has Aoun now diverged significantly from Nasrallah on the issue of the International Tribunal, but Aoun's roots and popularity are 100% invested in the Lebanese army which he led in the 1980s. Therefore Nasrallah's threats against the army are discordant with Aoun's apparent unwavering support to the army.

Last week and before the Nahr Al-Bared battle, we wrote an opinion in which we called on Aoun to declare his divorce from Hezbollah because there had been too many cracks in the love affair between him and Nasrallah, and the wedding barrel's thin layer of honey has all but disappeared, leaving beneath it several feet of the other stuff that often is the substance of such alliances. Now the warning and threats to the army are, in principle, untenable for Aoun and should speed up the divorce we called for. The Lebanese army is the only multi-confessional institution that holds the country together. When Hezbollah's warning to the army not to enter the Nahr Al-Bared camp is juxtaposed with the government's determination to "finally get the job done: the terrorists will either surrender or die", the stakes are very high indeed and General Aoun's popularity is likely to vanish if he continues to stand behind Nasrallah against the army. It is time for tough decisions. Indeed, this might be the fig leaf that Aoun has been waiting for to extricate himself honorably from his sticky alliance with Hezbollah.

Joseph Hitti
Boston, Massachusetts

Edit [Moderator]: Link removed

I don't think that the mostly pedantic and misleading criticisms of old europe's points offered on the preceeding pages accomplished anything, except perhaps to confuse the matter. The selfish, narrow-minded intolerance of the Zionist regime in Israel is evident for all to see. One can call it racism, tribalism, or merely Zionism -- the reality is the same: injustice, loss of freedom & property, and hardship for those not of the favored group.

Given your repeated and condescending references to the "Pals" and their many inferred subhuman traits, I find it quite amazing that you could call anyone else a bigot.

georgeob, Good points made, and I agree.

George, your hatred of Israel and the Israelis is palpable. Moreover, your last statement is completely false.

Israel is the most open society in the ME, and it treats its minorities (Pals (an abbreviation), Christians, gays, et al.) better than, perhaps, any other country on earth.

However, in your eyes, as well as those of CI, it is just awful how Israel defends itself. Gee, can you imagine the horror of Israel retaliating for the hundreds of rockets delivered by Hamas. Who would do such a thing?

Advocate: George, your hatred of Israel and the Israelis is palpable. Moreover, your last statement is completely false.

Okay, Advocate, show statement by statement where you think georgeob has a hatred for Israel and the Isralis, and second, please show how his opinions are false - by showing his statement against your challenge for each supported with "evidence." Thank you.

Israel treats its minorities better than any other country on Earth? Even better than those countries that give minorities equal rights?

See, Advocate, I think the problem is that you approach every discussion about the State of Israel with exactly that attitude: Israel is the best country in the world!

Usually this kind of attitude makes people blind for any kind of criticism. Sure, there are many people who have some preconceived notions towards Israel on the other side: that Israel is the worst country in the world, that it has no right to exist, that it should be "wiped off the map."

None of that is useful in a honest discussion. It renders people unable to distinguish between racist or tribalist or supremacist propaganda and justified criticism. And it ultimately is detrimental to the very society you purportedly support: after all, if your country is already the best in the world, what reasons would you have to improve anything? Right?

So, there are many people here who criticise Israel. But not all of them want the destruction of Israel, and it would be a first step for you to acknowledge that. Because some of those people who criticise actually make some good point. And some of these people criticise the current policy Israel is pursuing because they see exactly that policy rather than external forces as the biggest danger for the future of Israel.

Israel occupies a land area that is smaller than the state of NJ. It is about, I think, 2 % of the ME, and has a population of 6.4 M, compared to about a billion in the ME, almost all Muslim. Notwithstanding this, Arabs can't stand to live with Israel, and want to kill it.

Israel is an oasis in a wasteland, and is the only democracy in the area. Its Pals prosper and have equal rights, despite the lies being told here. Yes, Israel keeps them out of the military; wow, what persecution this is!

Israel has checkpoints in the WB because there are unremitting attacks on Jewish civilians, in and out of Israel proper. There is no valid reason that Jews cannot live in the WB and Gaza; after all, Arabs may live in Israel.

Advocate: Notwithstanding this, Arabs can't stand to live with Israel, and want to kill it.


Until you can see that your statement is ridiculous to the extreme, there's no hope for you to see both sides of this issue.

Since they are targeted, the many civilian victims of Hamas are not collateral damage. Israel, in contrast, targets Hamas fighters and officials.

You have an uncanny aptitude for missing the point.

The ironic truth is I haven't offered any criticisms of "how Israel defends itself". My criticisms have focused on how Israel is an anachronism in the modern world - an economically advanced but politically and socially regressive tribal/theocratic state which defines itself explicitly in those terms. I have also criticized the foolish, self-defeating, unjust, and cruel treatment it has imposed on the inhabitants of the West Bank and other occupied territories since 1967.

Israel has also exploited Palestinian resistance as an excuse for land grabs and ethnic cleansing under the guise of self defense. All of these actions have perpetuated both the conflict and the continued suffering of people on both sides of the divide. They have been sustained in this foolish and risky enterprise by the unquestioning support of American governments, which in turn has been sustained by the entirely proper political support of Jewish Americans and the often very improper actions of the organized Israeli/American lobbying groups.

I believe Israel has got itself into a bad corner from which it can not easily escape. The political foundation for the previously unquestioning U.S. support of whatever action Israel chooses to take is crumbling in the face of now obviously contradictory U.S. national interests and a long delayed (and sometimes suppressed) national debate on the subject. The prospects for a peaceful accomodation with the Palestinians and the neighboring states are now worse than they were forty years ago.

I selected this, perhaps the most egregious distortion from a post filled with it.

The checkpoints within the West Bank control the movements and social/economic activity of the Palestinians, and protect Israeli settlements there. The Jews who live in the West Bank are citizens of Israel and are treated as though they are residents of Israel itself. Conversely, the Palestinian iunhabitants of the region have no political rights whatever. They are treated as neither residents nor citizens of Israel. Evidently in the eyes of Israel, its territory follows the footprints of its settlers, wherever they are. Moreover Israel believes it is morally empowered to treat its extraterritorial citizens as residents of Israel, while ignoring the existence and political rights of the people whose lands they seize and who live among them.

The suffering the Pals is due to their own actions and inaction. Further, other Arab countries, such as Lebanon, have kept Pals confined to teeming ghettoes, allowing them only most menial work.

Israel has, and continues, to be open to work out a fair agreement with the Pals. The Pals, however, answer with more bombs and rockets.

The Pals even strap explosives onto children. How does Israel deal with that kind of group in an effective manner.

Once again you ignore and evade clearly stated issues, retreating behind the now well-worn collection of cant and cliches.

Advocate: I think it evident to every rational observer that Israel is the most open society in the Middle East, and it treats its minorities (Palestinians, Christians, gays, et al.) better than any other country in the Middle East.

The obvious solution to this, at least obvious to me anyways, is to allow Israeli settlements in the West Bank, but tell them they will be under Palestinian jurisdiction if they choose to live there. They will pay taxes and utilities and what not to the Palestinian government and receive whatever they need from Palestinian sources.

Jews get to live in WB, Palestine receives the benefits of a population.

If the jews in the settlements don't like it, they can move back to Israel proper.