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

And yet, somehow, accurate.

It's how I understand your response - no intend to be insulting at all.

Here's another difference between Israel and Lebanon:

Granted the dead cannot be brought back to life in this world, other than that, the damage which has been done in Israel will be repaired inside of a month.

I'd be curious as to what, if anything, the lunatics in Syria and Iran who have put the lebs and hezbullies up to this **** have planned to help them repair the damage their wonderful policy has caused.

I have not said anything at all about the agreement other than if they're going to do one, they better be prepared to enforce it. I don't know how you can conclude that I'm against it from that. But apology accepted.

I think unenforced 'ultimatums' and 'agreements' are not only worthless, but they definitely cause the bad guys to lose respect for any such resolutions or initiatives.

It it sort of odd, Bush with Iraq caused a civil war between Shias and Sunnis and now Olmert unites them world over. Maybe this has something to do with Bush being more willing to sign resolutions.

Militants merge with mainstream

yeah ok perhaps they should give up on zionist racist colonialism. Perhaps I agree Israel is a failed state. Its clear Israel is not going to survive in the long run. Why not recognise that? It cannot be sustained by visiting death and destruction on Israel's neighbours.

Nobody, including Israel, is wishing death and destruction on Israel's neighbors. Nothing of the sort has even been suggested until you did just now. Plenty of us think Israel's neighbors should be neighborly and leave Israel alone. Israel has proved in spades that when left in peace, it is a peaceful nation who does not impose on its neighbors.

Please tell me you're not one like F4F who says Israel has no right to exist.

Steve, Israel can trump any hand the arabs can show at the moment because it's got nuclear bombs.
These bombs will be used before Israel is overrun, make no mistake about that, if the military route is chosen.

I wish for a two state solution to the Palestine/Israel problem. I also wish Israel did too.

Indeed. But after many years watching this conflict, I've come to the conclusion that Israel is bascially in the wrong. Being in the wrong with nuclear weapons does not make a right, although I can understand why some people say so.

Well I'm working from memory here, but didn't Israel agree to a two-state solution? And it was Arafat who scuttled that deal? It was Britain who asked the UN to take over the "Palestine problem" and it was the UN who established the State of Israel and pressured Britain to give up control of the territory.

So now wouldn't you think it is the UN's responsibility to establish a Palestinian state? I think Israel would be 100% in favor of that provided it doesn't have to give up half it's tiny little land area to do it.



The blue and red areas mark the Jewish and Arab areas of Palestine in 1923. Israel has already relinquished the Arab (west bank) area back to the Palestinians. But Arafat and the current Palestinian leadership refuse/refused to acknowledge Israel's right to exist either. If the Palestinians would do their own thing and leave Israel alone, I am reasonably certain they would get no grief from Israel.

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More maps

There is no possibility of a "two state solution". That's bullshit.

There is no way to make a "state" out of gaza and whatever parts of the west bank Israel does not need for its own legitimae defense, and no reasonable person could ask Israelis to accept the "palestinians" as neighbors for much longer at this point.

There is one solution and one only to this mess at this point and somebody needs to figure it out: the slammite world has to be forced to find a place to put the "palestinians", and that place needs to be very far from Israel.

"Palestinians" have destroyed one arab country (Lebanon) and have been thrown out of at least two (Jordan and Egypt) amid much carnage before they succeeded at ruining those countries. They are basically feral people, a$$holes who specialize in self pity, terrorism, and mayhem and basically nothing else, and nobody really wants them, yet the slammite world is so vast that it does contain places where they could be put without danger to others.

You could be right, Gunga, but then who would have thought that the Saudis would be angrily condemning Hezbollah either? There's always hope.

To those who say Hezbollah is armed with pea shooters going against Israel's modern military, there is this put out by AP today:

Hezbollah equipped like the `Syrian or Iranian army'
Israel's enemy is no ragtag militia

Anti-tank missiles proving deadlySOURCE

I think the Lebanese would do themselves as well as Israel a huge failure if they secretly reported to Israel the locations in Lebanon of Hezbollah troops and ordnance. It would help the Lebanese more quickly rid themselves of Hezbollah without fear Hezbollah would retaliate against them. It would help the Israeli military more accurately time and target Hezbollah so as to cause fewer Lebanese civilian casualties.

Hezbollah must be exterminated for the sake of both Lebanese and Israeli civilians.

In Israel, Questions About the Conflict
Public Support, Once Nearly Unanimous, Begins to Fray as Toll Rises

By Molly Moore and Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 5, 2006; A12



JERUSALEM, Aug. 4 -- With much of Israel's northern population huddling in underground shelters and Hezbollah proving more resilient than Israeli leaders had publicly predicted, Israel's news media, intellectual elite and public are starting to question the judgment of the country's political and military leadership.

After an extraordinary national surge of unanimity during the first days of the conflict, public support is starting to fray, with some of the nation's most influential voices criticizing political leaders and Israel Defense Forces generals for military strategies they say have failed to protect Israeli citizens.

They blame Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz for trying to lull citizens into a false sense of security, fault generals for relying too heavily on air power to destroy Hezbollah rocket launchers, and worry that Israeli troops may not have been prepared to defeat a force far tougher than Palestinian fighters.

"The public should demand of the political echelon: Stop or reduce the Katyusha rocket fire," the popular daily newspaper Ma'ariv wrote Friday. "Do what you should have done two weeks ago. . . . Bang on the table in front of the white-faced IDF officers, and demand more proposals; think and think again. . . . The time for patience has passed. You have an army, use it, or go for a cease-fire."

The behind-the-scenes disagreements between the generals and the politicians, and among competing branches of the military, are becoming part of the public debate.

This weekend, Olmert's top security advisers are scheduled to debate whether Israeli forces should be sent deeper into Lebanon, beyond the approximately two-mile strip they are now battling to clear of Hezbollah fighters. Olmert reportedly has been reluctant to expand the military operations, while military officers are said to be chafing under his restrictions. According to military officials, field commanders are pressing Olmert, Peretz and other key ministers to approve an expansion of their offensive to include all land up to the Litani River, which roughly parallels the Israel-Lebanon border and ranges 15 miles north of it in some places. The goal would be to push Hezbollah fighters who are firing rockets farther away from Israel.

"Wherever we are present, you do not see rockets fired," Brig. Gen. Guy Tzur, commander of the Steel Division, which includes armor and infantry units operating on the eastern half of Israel's border with Lebanon, said in an interview Friday at his headquarters in the northern town of Philon. "But we're getting to the edge of where the government permits us. We're not present everywhere we have to be present in order to stop more of the attacks. If we can go farther, the Israeli citizens will feel a difference."

Much of the Israeli news media and many analysts are skeptical, however .

"The strikes on the home front are becoming worse as the IDF sends more and more brigades into Lebanon," wrote Amos Harel in the daily newspaper Haaretz. "Launchings from areas in which the army is operating have been reduced by half, but Hezbollah combatants simply relocate to the next range of hills and fire from there."

But Brig. Gen. Tzur said intelligence shows that the vast majority of Hezbollah rockets have a range of 12 to 15 miles. If Israel can stop rocket launches south of the Litani River, the radical Shiite Muslim militia would be forced to use longer-range munitions, which take longer to launch, are easier to detect and destroy, and have been depleted already by Israeli bombardment.

Israel's top security officials already authorized one large expansion of the ground campaign in a four-hour meeting last week.

"I hope the new decision is to let us get to the Litani. Then we will need two weeks to finish things," Tzur said. "Believe me, after that the situation will be different. If we have the permission, we will achieve the goals. It's very easy, we know how to do it."

Many Israelis say they no longer trust that kind of bravado.

"Their thinking of the war is anachronistic," said Yaron Ezrahi, one of Israel's most prominent political analysts. "They set certain kinds of goals which are unachievable like crushing and stopping missiles."

Ezrahi said he thinks the hail of Hezbollah rockets into Israel has demonstrated to the rest of the world the dangers Israel faces in the region -- particularly the risks of letting Iran, one of Hezbollah's benefactors, proceed with its nuclear programs.

Rather than push deeper into southern Lebanon, where Israel ended an unpopular occupation of a self-declared security zone six years ago, Ezrahi said, "we can have a lot to gain by stopping now and moving to convert what we have done to political assets."

Public sentiment, which had overwhelmingly supported the war two weeks ago, is also beginning to waver. Even leftist groups supportive of peace moves with the Palestinians backed the anti-Hezbollah offensive in its first days, but several dovish groups have now called their first peace rally in Tel Aviv on Saturday to demand a stop to the war.

"I fought the same battles against the same enemy in the same places 16 years ago," said Ido Ahronson, 36, a Jerusalem computer technician who served in Israel's previous conflict in Lebanon. "We didn't accomplish anything then, and I don't see how we can accomplish that much now. How would you feel if George Bush decided to send you back into Vietnam? We are fighting an enemy that uses civilians as protection, knows the terrain well and is brainwashed to believe they are fighting for Islam."

The Israeli public and news media are also growing disenchanted with what some analysts see as efforts by Olmert and Peretz -- both facing their first major crisis on the job -- to use overly optimistic rhetoric.

In a speech Tuesday, Olmert said of Hezbollah's capability to fire rockets at Israel: "Twenty-one days later, that threat is not what it was."

The next day, Hezbollah pummeled Israel with 230 rockets -- the most of any day of the conflict.

In a public opinion survey published Friday by Ma'ariv, 55 percent of respondents said they thought Israel was winning the war, and only 3.5 percent said Hezbollah was winning. But nearly 38 percent said "no one" was winning.

"Look at what is going on in Haifa," said Shaul Malka, 28, a Jerusalem taxi driver. "Haifa is a huge busy city, and now it is a ghost town. People are scared to leave the bomb shelters and walk on the streets. So how can they say we are winning?"

IDF arrests Hamas parliament speaker
By ASSOCIATED PRESS


Palestinian officials said IDF forces arrested the speaker of the Palestinian parliament at his house early Sunday.

The officials - the director of the speaker's office and security officers - said about 20 Israeli army vehicles surrounded the house of parliament speaker Abdel Aziz Duaik, a member of Hamas, and took him into custody.

The army said that as a Hamas leader, he was a target for arrest.

Duaik was the most senior Hamas official arrested by the IDF since forces in the West Bank rounded up dozens of Hamas officials on June 29, including eight Cabinet ministers. One was released earlier this week.

Since then, IDF forces have twice surrounded Duaik's house but failed to arrest him.

In a statement, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas called the arrest "another crime of piracy by the [Israeli] occupation against the elected representatives of our people" and called for international parliamentary action to win release for him and the other arrested officials.

Nasrallah starting to squeal like a pig[/color]

http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD123306




The guy sits there accusing Americans of refusing to want to set up a reasonable ceasefire, exactly as if the Israelis had started all this ****.

http://www.squeallikeapig.com/
This is the same sorry porker who was telling the Arab leaders to kiss his greasy fat ass a week ago.

HRW: Hizbullah committing war crimes


Hizbullah must immediately stop firing rockets into civilian areas in Israel, Human Rights Watch said Saturday.

"Lobbing rockets blindly into civilian areas is without doubt a war crime," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Nothing can justify this assault on the most fundamental standards for sparing civilians the hazards of war."

"Most of the attacks appear to have been directed at civilian areas and have hit pedestrians, hospitals, schools, homes and businesses," the humanitarian organization's website stated.

Since July 12, when Hizbullah captured two IDF soldiers and killed eight, Human Rights Watch researchers have been documenting the war's impact on civilians in Israel and Lebanon, interviewing the witnesses and survivors of attacks, as well as doctors, emergency workers, police, military and government officials.

"Hizbullah must stop using the excuse of Israeli misconduct to justify its own," said Roth.

The organization's Web site recognized that northern Israel had come to a virtual standstill because of Hizbullah's rockets, which were "exacting an enormous human and economic toll."

"Under international humanitarian law - also known as the laws of war - parties to an armed conflict must not make the civilian population the object of attack, or fire indiscriminately into civilian areas. Nor can they launch attacks that they know will cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects that exceeds the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. Such attacks constitute war crimes," the site explained.

"Several medical and educational institutes have sustained damage from Katyusha attacks." Human Rights Watch researchers visited hospitals in Nahariya and Safed after they were hit.

At Nahariya Hospital, rockets had been landing near the hospital since July 12, a hospital spokesperson said. "There are no military bases around here; nothing military at all," he said. "I believe they know perfectly well they are firing at a hospital."

"In the absence of troops or military assets inside, hospitals must never be attacked," Human Rights Watch said. "Deliberately attacking them is a war crime."