News has broken this morning that Israel bombed a building in Qana, Lebanon, in which several dozen women and children were seeking shelter. Early reports are that two dozen children were killed and at least 25 adults, mostly the children's mothers.
Some of the dead of Qana, killed by Israeli missiles
The attack prompted the Lebanese government to cancel a planned visit to Beirut by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said he would hold no negotiations before a ceasefire and officials said they had told Rice to stay away from Beirut until the fighting stopped. ...
Lebanese Red Cross officials in Beirut said rescuers had extracted 38 bodies from the devastated buildings, including 23 children, and seven wounded. At least 17 more bodies were feared to be still under the rubble, seven of them children.
It's not clear what the intended target was at the building. Nor are there any accusations that Israel destroyed the building knowing that the civilians were inside. Israel has said for many days, though, that the presence of civilians at a legitimate military target will not prevent attack.
Israel's Olmert government said after the attack that its air offensive will continue. In Beirut and large crowd gathered outside the UN mission building, chanting anti-Israel and anti-American slogans, then stormed inside to break windows and generally create havoc. A new poll, reported on cable news last night, before the attack, revealed that Hezbollah now enjoys suport of 85 percent of the Lebanese people.
Analysis:
Even if Hezbollah was storing rockets in the building and intentionally sacrificing the women and children as propaganda tools, expecting Israel to bomb the building, the repercussions from the video and images of the dead children and women will overwhelm any Israeli attempts to justify targeting the building.
So far, the Olmert government has stood fast. It sent a proxy spokesman, a former Israeli foreign minister whose name I didn't catch, to make the cable news rounds this morning. He reiterated the basic goals of the Olmert government in the war. An Israeli lieutenant colonel was quoted on FoxNews this morning as saying that Hezbollah intentionally created the tragedy in order to garner international condemnation of Israel, which, according to the Jerusalem Post, was promptly forthcoming.
Again, it appears to me that while Israel has strategic goals in the campaign, it does not have a well-developed strategic plan . For example, yesterday, Israeli ground forces withdrew from Bint Jbail, where they had battled Hezbollah for several days. IDF spokesmen said that the town had been mostly reduced to rubble and the Hezbollah was no longer a significant presence there. This may well be true and probably is, IMO.
But the manner in which the withdrawal was conducted handed Hezbollah a strategic leg up. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah immediately issued a statement claiming Hezbollah was defeated the IDF at Bint Jbail. If Israel had understood that Bint Jbail was strategically, not merely tactically significant, it would have taken steps to document its victory there to the world. With news media reps crawling all over the area, the IDF should have arranged a media tour of the town before withdrawing.
Israel's reluctance to commit significant numbers of ground combat units is puzzling. Having already expressed a willingness to fight for many more weeks, I wonder what is the point of continuing the frenetic pace of aerial bombing. Hezbollah is still able to launch 100 or so rockets per day into northern Israel. Since ending those launches is the number one near-term goal of Israel's military campaign, Israel's strategy and tactics cannot be said to be successful. The intermittent presence of aircraft over southern Lebanon cannot stop the rockets. Only boots on the ground can do that.
Israel seems not to be taking advantage of its great advantage of ground combat mobility over Hezbollah. One result is the tragedy at Qana. With a thoroughly mechanized, powerful set of ground formations, the IDF could be blocking Hezbollah strongholds from the rear, preventing their reinforcement or evacuation, and they can do this far more effectively than aircraft, and with much greater target discrimination. Other units could then engage Hezbollah in direct combat, forcing them to surrender or die.
"Prolonged indecision," said Douglas MacArthur, "is never a just aim or war." Yet it is exactly the situation Israel seems to be bringing about. With the mass deaths at Qana, time is running out for Israel to reach a decision on the ground. We have argued on my own site against accusations that Israel's campaign has been disproportionate, but more incidents like Qana will open Israel anew to such criticisms. And such accusations will be difficult to rebut.
Unless Israel very soon commits ground forces in number and speed to defeat Hezbollah in direct combat, it will undercut the moral case it made for mounting the campaign to begin with. More and more, its air bombardments will appear to be only brutality rather than purposeful strategy. That moment is already very close. Israel's cause is just, but it is very close to the line of unjustly fighting for it.
------
Breaking - just as I finished this post, former Prime Minuister Ehud Barak said on cable news that the Qana bombing will accelerate the world's calls for cease fire. He also said that it should cause Israel to conduct a more powerful ground campaign. He said that Israel wants other world powers "to impose UN Resolution 1559."
Crossposted at donaldsensing.com
Here is an account of an Israeli soldier of the first massacre:
Excerpts from the Israeli magazine "KOL HAER".
In an interview, five Israeli soldiers said that the Artillery commander had said to his soldiers "We are skilled marksmen... Anyhow, there are millions of Arabs... It's their problem. Whether Arabs become one more or less is just the same... We have accomplished our duty. The whole issue is not about more than a group of "Arabosheem" (a racist term hostile to Arabs used by the Israelis). We should have launched more shells to kill more Arabs.
Clearly, this post was meant to be sympathetic to those filthy, godless Arabs and a slam against Holy Israel (aka Jesus' landing strip). Obviously, Liberal Media Bias and Jew-Hate has infiltrated this blog. So sad.
Jesus has a landing strip? I didn't know he even owned an airplane.
This was to be expected. Hizbollah is ready to put the population next to their little army toys. The population seems okay with this too. Israel warned them. What part of "run away!" don't they understand?
I grieve for those people. I really do. Too angry to settle for peace, and too cowardly to fight in the open, they sacrifice their own in dark, dank apartment basements. Somehow I would expect martyrdom to be more exciting. Made the top of the fold, though, and all the networks are running it first. It wasn't for nothing.
This post by Jim Henley seems relevant.
"The sequence of events since July 12 was
1. Hezbollah kills six Israeli soldiers in the course of kidnapping two.
2. Hezbollah calls for negotiations on a prisoner exchange.
3. Israel bombs military and civilian targets throughout Lebanon.
4. Hezbollah launches massive, sustained rocket attacks on military and civilian targets in Israel.
For whatever reason, Israel decided to change the rules of the South Lebanon game, responding massively against all of Lebanon for an attack on a military target where in the past it would respond narrowly at Hezbollah specifically. Israel’s reasons have been speculated on widely by people more competent than me to ponder the issue; I won’t add to the volume here. I just want to point out a possible consequence of the Israeli response and America’s unstinting support for it that I haven’t seen highlighted elsewhere.
Israel has a legitimate interest in its own self-defense and a government of its own that’s perfectly capable of managing or mismanaging it as well as any democracy. The United States has an interest in Israel’s security for a number of good reasons, but interests that go well beyond Israel’s security too - it requires good relations with a number of nations hostile to Israel; and, it ought to go without saying, has a higher interest in US security. Specifically, it has interests in the smooth flow of oil and in preventing terrorist attacks on US interests abroad and at home.
Because of Israel’s actions and our support for it, we face two problems. First, just as American hawks keep pointing out that those Hezbollah rockets falling on Israel are “Made in Iran” or “Supplied by Syria,” everyone in the Arab Middle East and the wider Muslim world are keenly aware that the bombs falling on Lebanon are American bombs, rushed to Israel for the purpose of killing Lebanese. They know further that Israel isn’t even paying for these weapons, the American taxpayer is. So the practical, financial support for Israel’s massive rather than targeted retaliation is increased hatred of the US in the Muslim world. As Leonard Dickens put it a few weeks ago, when the average Muslim is hostile to the US, the Muslim two standard deviations away will try to attack it.
We compound the practical problem with rhetoric. Arab onlookers will naturally look for excuses to see justice on the side of the Arabs in the fight; that’s how human social psychology works. But US and Israeli rhetoric around the crisis adds a further twist: by calling attacks on military targets “terrorism,” and massively retaliating in the name of fighting terrorism, the US and Israel implicitly redefine the term as Muslim violence we don’t like. The natural reaction on the other side is something like In for a penny, in for a pound, then"
Linked from Old War Dogs >> Off-target Missile Strike Sparks Outrage
A couple of corrections to #2:
1. Ethnic Lebanese are not Arabs, though many Arabs live in Lebanon (and Israel).
2. "Instafaggot" is not funny, but it sure is revealing.
3. When Jesus comes back he's going to land in your back yard, and the first thing he's going to do is kick you right square in the ass.
I won't bother with #1, which is cut and pasted word for word from an Islamist website. So much for the intellectual credentials of Moral Equivalence.
The ends never have justified the means. Israel has degraded itself by rationalizing its atrocitys. And the question remains why do the leadership of Israel expect humanity fron their enemy's when they show none? Hezbollah and Hamas, how do they differ from the Irgun or Haganah? Until Israel shows a willingness to respect boundaries, or deal honestly there cannot be peace. Offering the Arabs of Palestine a pseudo state of 5 seperate cantons is nonsense. Israel should be held to the same standards as any country.
Excellent point, T.J.
In my opinion, terrorism is the use of stealth to attack civilian targets for the purpose of political change by terror.
Hizbollah kidnapping the soldiers was NOT terrorism. It was guerilla warfare. That doesn't mean Israel doesn't have the right to kick the heck out of Lebanon, just that words matter.
If 85% of Lebanon support Hizbollah and the attacks on Israel, then Lebanon needs to declare war on Israel.
Breaking news -- Fox is now running just-released IR video from the Israelis showing rockets being launched from a building that appears to be the one that was attacked today. The media war continues.
This microwar is over, its just gonna take some time for the niceties to be enacted and the dogs called off.
What we see here is not an accident, although it was certainly not intentional. It was an eventuality, a tragic, horrible eventuality.
This is the problem with Israel's strategy, something like this was going to happen sooner or later, if for no other reason than Hezbollah would try hard to make it happen. But Israel has no momentum in this war, and hence no ability to regret the incident but point to the end of the conflict being in sight.
Here is an analogy: for anyone that has ever had a younger sibling, imagine your little brother is a real troublemaker and he sneaks up and whacks you in the back of the head. Now one of three things can happen:
-you can ignore it (which will provoke a repeat performance no matter what your mom tells you)
you can turn and apply proportional force, fighting on the weaker brothers terms. This extends the conflict, requires you to escalate the violence, and eventually you will begin to hurt your weaker sibling at which point he will cry and your mom will demand an immediate end to the fighting no matter who started it. The younger kid wins a moral victory by surviving and going toe to toe.
-you can turn around and take the kid down hard. He will cry out immediately, but the fight will already be over, by the time mom gets there there is nothing to break up, and she's basically acknoweledges the little one was askin for it.
Israel has unfortunately gone down the second road, and the sad thing is they have done it so many times they should know better by now. The loss of these innocent civilians is a true tragedy- because the loss has no meaning. The did not die at the dawn of a peaceful change in the region, quite the opposite.
Mr. Sensing, of course it isn't clear what the intended target at the building in Qana was. It happened last night. Did you expect the Lebanese to report the reason? Did you expect Hezballah to acknowledge any loss of military assets? Or Israel to respond immediately?
The JPost has the Israeli answer, here And the Herald Sun has a report (that I can't link without using a tiny url) that indirectly supports not only their reasons for firing on civilian areas but, it seems to me, is indicative of their targeting accuracy.
While I concede that at least you offer alternatives which is better than many kibitzers that assert there is no strategic plan, you haven't convinced me that your plan of rushing in would be better in achieving Israel's strategic objectives, which I am pretty sure includes not having Syria and Iran enter the war. And with only two weeks passing, I don't even know that it isn't actually Israel's plan but just not as "frenetic" as you would like. But then again, maybe you know that Hezballah has run out of ground combat surprises above and beyond the 'even the trees and rocks are IEDs' prepared and the normal hard slog Israel would have to tromp through in any event.
Regarding Bint Jbail, you may need documentation of the victory to assauge your doubts but I don't. And that documentation is worthless propaganda to those who live and breathe by Hezballah 'victories', which includes about every damned newspaper in the world. Besides, allowing Hezballah room to claim victory allows for me to say, "Hezballah victory? I'll beleive it when I see 100's of Hezbies dancing in BJ's public square! So hurry on down now, ya hear." Here's hoping Israel is thinking the same thing.
Finally, your characterization that Qana is the result of Israel's failure to commit ground forces in large numbers. Clearly, that thought should be placed in the category of butterflies flapping their wings in the Amazon. Put the result in Qana squarely where it belongs -- Hezballah's use of their brothers and sisters of Lebanon as human sacrifices in their greater cause to destroy Israel for Allah. It's Muslim supremacy at its best.
By the way, MacArthur didn't think China would cross the Yalu, either, and he didn't prolong his indecision concerning that. Thank goodness, he wasn't the ultimate decider.
Don,
Not. Israel's enemies have cried wolf too long.
No one outside Japan cared about the babies boiled in Tokyo's rivers and streams during our first big fire-bombing raid in 1945.
When the only question is who dies, it is much better that somebody else does.
Israel won't commit ground forces unless it's a completely urgent matter of national survival.
It's military is not very good, most of the first generation leaders are gone and too much Labor peaceniks have diluted the qualities needed to win.
More importantly, Israel is a small country where every loss is felt keenly. The killing of 8 soldiers and abduction of two is equivalent to the loss of over 400 soldiers to Americans.
At the same time, Hezbollah is intent on completing Hitler's Final Solution and have said so many times. As has Iran again this weekend (making about 25 public statements to this effect).
Now Hezbollah has rockets filled with explosives that are crude; perhaps later they will be filled with VX or armed with nuclear warheads.
The short-range rockets are not precision guided; but enough cheap electronics and North Korean expertise exists to enable them to hit Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa etc.
The rockets are so short-range that they have no effective counter; they are not aloft long enough for any missile defense currently to shoot them down (unlike ballistic missiles which leave the atmosphere). Thus holding ground is meaningless; Bint Jbail or any other town matters not as long as Hezbollah exists and can and will fire rockets.
My guess is that Olmert etc. hopes that Iran and it's Hermann Goering legion Hezbollah (Party of God) will act before they are ready and nuke/VX only a single city; not all of them. A rope-a-dope strategy.
Allowing Israel to see where the attacks come from and respond in a nuclear way. Not because of concern for world opinion; by now everyone should know (as in Seattle) that every hand will be turned against Jews for their very existence. But rather IMHO because Israeli leadership simply does not know where the weapons are in order to destroy them.
I think this strategy is profoundly stupid, but the risk it responds to is very real: Hezbollah has the means to deliver unstoppable nuclear weapons and the desire to complete the Final Solution. All they lack is nukes from Iran married to a reliable warhead.
The original post is based on a fundamental flaw of fact: Israel does not have an advantage on the ground.
In fact, Israel has learned from its experiences in Gaza and the West Bank the thankless, losing game of fighting embedded terrorists among a civilian population - while the world breathes over your shoulder looking for murdered "innocents".
Israelis learned from Jenin - where their men were ambushed becuase they went door-to-door instead of leveling the area, and the international community STILL condemned them for an imaginary massacre.
On the day that 8 soldiers were killed in Bint Jebrail - many Israelis' first association was to Jenin. Several commentators asked if our men being sacrificed to Oslo-style political correctness, which is still present in the upper echelons of the IDF.
Yes, the US used some "low-impact" and "targeted" Israeli tactics in Iraq - but only after heavy aerial and artillery bombardment to "soften up" civilian areas and take out major targets. Only in "police actions" after areas were fully subdued.
That's what the Israelis are doing. Starting with zero intelligence information, faced with hidden combatants and arms caches, it is going to take a while to stop the rain of missiles. But there is no indication that a ground offensive in hilly and hostile terrain would in any way hasten that.
Israel is a small country - and it's left-leaning elite has spent the last few decades brainwashing us all into weakness and self-doubt. This country cannot take a sustained high rate of casualties.
Olmert is doing the right thing by holding off on the ground invasion, until Hezbollah has been at least partially incapacitated from the air and/or shoots most of its load.
If Hizbollah had used more human shields this war would be over already. If Hizbollah had forced the Israelis to kill 10,000 children to protect itself Hizbollah would be heros all over the world and it would be just.
So what Hizbollah needs to to is to round up a lot more children and install them at all their military sites. They are stupid for not having done this already.
That would stop Israel once and for all.
There is no tactic so dirty that it isn't justified when the object is killing Jews and driving them out of Israel.
That pretty much sumarise the sentiment here?
Donald,
Just because you don't understand the strategic plan doesn't mean there isn't one.
If you are baffled perhaps Israel's enemies are as well. I suppose it is not fair that Israel is keeping you in the dark. Take it up with the Israeli Defence Minister the next time you visit him.
I speculate what the plan might be here:
http://powerandcontrol.bl*gspot.com/2006/07/tactics-strategy-grand-strategy.html
In fact Donald I would say that if you can't see the plan, the Israelis are either one of the stupidest military's on earth or the plan is excellent.
I know which side I would bet on.
It is back: I got 666333 again. The odds are on the order of 10^23 or greater. Either that or I have special favor. LOL
M. Simon: LOL, you are not alone. I got a 666333, too.
Does anyone else find it strange that the victims in that bombing were almost all women and children? No menfolk among the dead and wounded.
I find myself wondering where their menfolk were, and what they were doing...
Monty
http://www.news.c*m.au/heraldsun/story/0,,19955774-5007220,00.html
Here are some photos that show why villages in Lebanon might be getting shelled.
Latest reports from Israel say the building collapsed around eight hours after it was hit.
Still too much fog of war. However, a question arises. Why would folks be shelterin in a building that was structurally damaged?
The officer said that the air force had been targeting the village for the past three days and on Saturday night struck ten different targets inside the village. He said the building hit Sunday was picked since intelligence indicated that Hizbullah guerillas were hiding inside, together with Katyusha rockets and launchers.
"We have been attacking in Qana for three days," the IAF officer said. "They have fired dozens of rockets from there over the past week at Kiryat Shmona, Afula and Ma'alot."
The officer added that the guerillas fire rockets and then flee into nearby buildings.
"We warned the residents that we would be attacking there," he said. "We work under the assumption that the villages are empty and that whoever is there is affiliated with Hizbullah."
From the Jerusalem Post.
Well, well, well, 666333 again 10^35 odds against.
Monty, they couldn't be with the wimmen folk at the time as they were busy out at the building entrance firing the rockets.
(What is this? Another 666333. And I have the screen shot, too.)
Great piece!
As I watched the UN Speeched this morning I was struck by the impotence of the UN.
Kofi gave a very frustrating speech.
The Lebanese Ambassador, in his rabid Anti-Israeli tirade spoke for all in the Middle East who wish nothing less than the destruction of Israel.
The Israeli Ambassador gave one of the most powerful speeches that body will ever hear as he explained what all people with half a brain know in their hearts about the worldwide conflict the West faces.
The Video of the Hezbollah missiles, on FOX, was devastating proof of terrorist perfidy, and the coverage of the people, some armed, attacking the UN compounds speaks volumes of peoples hatred against Israel, and America, and the ability of radicals to manipulate the poor, and gullible to such acts.
Nothing that comes out of the UN will work, or last.
Hezbollah might have done this in order to blame it on Israel.
If this is true, Donald Sensing might have been deceived by enemy propaganda.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=108758
"IDF May Not Have Caused Kana Deaths
20:50 Jul 30, '06 / 5 Av 5766
(IsraelNN.com) Senior IDF officers told reporters a short time ago that there is a contradiction in the timing of the bombing of the village of Kana and reports of the explosion that killed more than 50 civilians and set off world-wide condemnation of Israel. Air Force Commander Amir Eshel left open the possibility that Hizbullah terrorists blew up the building or that an unknown cause set off explosives which were stored in the structure.
He explained that recorded information shows that Israeli Air Force planes bombed the building between midnight and 1 a.m. and that the next attack at 7:30 a.m. was up to 500 yards away. He said reports of the killing of civilians came around 8 a.m. "It is not clear what happened" between 1 a.m. and 8 a.m., he said.
Brigadier General Ido Nehushtan pointed out that Hizbullah terrorists have fired more than 150 rockets from the village of Kana since the beginning of the war."
Well one mystery solved.
The turing test does not use a random number generator.
It picks numbers out of a table. Probably one out of less than 100.
http://abaleboosteh.bl*gspot.com/
Has some nice images of the IDF going to war.
Compare the images from this link:
http://abaleboosteh.bl*gspot.com/2006/07/images-of-war-images-of-saturday-29th.html
to the images from this one:
http://www.news.c*m.au/heraldsun/story/0,,19955774-5007220,00.html
"Spirit is someting no one destroys" Traffic
Whose spirit would you rather be with?
=====================================So it is looking like Qanna is a "work accident".
Well the hizzies would never store weapons near women and children. It would be wrong. As upholders of the highest morality such behavior would be indefensable. /sarcasm off
=====================================Well the world has hated Jews for 3,000 years or more. We are used to it. Bring it on. We will not take it lying down this time. If necessary we have Samson as an example.
Does the world really want to go there?
It has meaning. The meaning is that Islam believes in martyrs. Think of the Moro in the Philippines, the millions of Persian martyrs during the last Iran Iraq war, the small lightly armed trucks hurling themselves against American tanks during the invasion of Iraq, proud Arabic parents of their suicide bomber children. The dead in this latest incident are martyrs.
As they are willing to have their own civilians 'martyred' in order to attack the Israeli outpost of Western Civilization through the West's own sensibilities, so much more are they willing to slaughter Jews in large numbers.
Iran is building a bomb.
If Israel's defense could be stopped through the simple expedient of loading a building up with civilians and creating a target out of it which cannot be ignored, then Israeli citizens will eventually be annihilated in nuclear fire.
I have great sympathy for Mr. Sensing’s argument, which requires taking into account more than just this post. To my mind, that boils down to achieving the destruction of Hezballah and, simultaneously, outrunning the propaganda campaign. I also sympathize with TJ’s comment (#4), think it reinforces Mr. Sensing’s contentions but it also lays out again the information war component in more detail (and inherent in the excerpt, the problem, too.) Ibid, Daniel Markham’s (#8), and Mark Buehner’s good comments.
But I don’t see that Israel can successfully outrun any propaganda campaign. If it could, I would be much more vociferous in arguing that Israel put that as the top objective in a campaign of any sort. This post is a microcosm of that being a fruitless effort. Now let me back that up using TJ’s comment.
TJ’s excerpt of Henley indicates only the instigating attack on the Israeli military but not the indiscriminate rocket fire on civilians (and, yes, military) used as cover for the killing and kidnapping. This act took place after Hamas had done the same thing and whereby Israel responds with the same thing they did in Gaza. I am not sure what Henley means by “Israel bombs military and civilian targets throughout Lebanon” but Henley’s construction characterizes the Israeli’s actions as being the precipitous factor, emphasized by his concluding after the bullets that Israel has changed the rules.
Israel did not change the rules. The rules are the same – you engage in a clear act of war and you should expect war. Israel did just that, that is, responded with war. Hezballah can act stupid because they are Hezballah. As for feigning ‘I don’t know’s’, as Henley did, about the reasons, and implying that in war, highways and airports are civilian, regardless of their obvious military uses is pure and unadulterated sophistry or a major indicator of ignorance. So, too, is suggesting residential areas used by Hezaballah to fight or communicate and control the fighting from are civilian and, therefore, protected. Now I am not saying that any or all of those be targeted without considering the conditions, potentialities, specific activities at the time there and method of attack and on that I want to make that clear, but equally clear is that all of Lebanon is not ablaze or been made wasteland and death and destruction is not being wantonly perpetrated by Israel, despite Hezballah’s and their sycophantic enablers in Lebanon, the press and governments of the world to characterize it as such, including Jack Straw. And it is also clear from cases that have been more fully reported on, that where Israel attacked, there also was Hezballah. Note: M. Simon (#19) adds more support to that of the Herald Sun report I noted earlier, so, in time I think it will prove out again that Hezballah, the barbaric organization that hides behind god, that is has always been, in spite of the fact that all of it’s members are nice to their mommies when it suits.
I do wish Israel could mount an effective defense in the information war but even that is a fruitless task for even her defenders can easily go wobbly. I do see that Israel doesn’t want a wider war and so far has proceeded slowly enough that the intensification of their efforts hasn’t caused that. On that I think they can succeed though there will be some sacrifice in the objective of completely incapacitating Hezballah. I suspect that the longer the fighting goes on, the better will be the chance of success for a permanent international solution for peace on at least the Lebanon border. If that can happen, then Israel’s can claim an unambiguous victory.
Hmm, checking comments again after finishing this, does Mr. Holsinger’s comment (#22) hint that Hezballah will also be surprised by the change information age rules and that their tactics will be their own downfall in this war?
M. Simon,
You assume that the dead bodies shown by Hezbollah were Lebanese Shiites. Don't assume.
One side intentionally targets civilians. The other doesn't. One side started this war. The other didn't.
So why is it that so many people believe such claims by the side that started the war and intentionally targets civilians?
The Reverend Sensing in particular should be familiar with the Prince of Lies.
"1. Hezbollah kills six Israeli soldiers in the course of kidnapping two." And a barrage of rockets towards some border Israel cities.
-------------------------
Mr. Sensing opinion is confusing. A Land War also will increase the probabilities of civilian casualities . I fail to understand since "Israel's cause is just, but it is very close to the line of unjustly fighting for it."
For #24 M. Simon - Well the world has hated Jews for 3,000 years or more. We are used to it. Bring it on. We will not take it lying down this time. If necessary we have Samson as an example.
"Nobody likes us - everyone hates us" Hmmm - I was once told in school that if one person has a problem with you that it is their problem - if two people have a problem with you that it is not your problem - but if everyone has a problem with you then you should wonder about what you are doing wrong.
I personally don’t have anything against Israel or the Jews - but you gotta wonder why do all these people have problems with you? Are they all jealous of you? Is it your “Chosen People” status - that God does not like any of the rest of us? Is it your enthnocentic anti-gentile philosophy found in your holy books?
You like to say that there is no underlying motive - but that is an escapist fantasy. There must be an underlying motive - you just have to be willing to find it and accpet it and change it.
Maybe all that is needed is that you learn to play nicer and share with the other children in the schoolyard.
Sure sounds like it.
Little known story about this quote. It was actually included in the early drafts of this speech. How and why it was dropped I've no idea.....
According to the logic of that quote, the Holocaust was justified. But then, Jacko may not believe that it happened.
If it makes you feel any better, Jacko, in a previous life you were probably a Cossack, raping and looting your way through the Jewish villages of southern Russia. All the other peasants were doing it, so there must be a good reason for it, right?
Well ladies and gentlemen, Israel claims it didn't hit that building.
So what caused the damage? A hizzie work accident maybe? Why would the hizzies have a bunch of people in or on top of an ammo bunker?
I lived until 2002 in a small southern village near Mardshajund that is inhabited by a majority of Shias like me. After Israel left Lebanon, it did not take long for Hezbollah to have its say in other towns. Received as successful resistance fighters and armed to the teeth, they stored rockets in bunkers in our town as well. The social work of the Party of God consisted in building a school and a residence over these bunkers! A local sheikh explained to me laughing that the Jews would lose in any event because the rockets would either be fired at them or if they attacked the rockets depots, they would be condemned by world opinion on account of the dead civilians. These people do not care about the Lebanese population, they use them as shields, and, once dead, as propaganda. As long as they continue existing there, there will be no tranquility and peace.
Dr. Mounir Herzallah, Berlin-Wedding
Good on Don for getting the right spin on this tragedy.
(cross posted from a later thread, because it is relevant to the points I made above)
#27 Tom,
Quite right. The hizzies have been reported keeping Christians in their villages at gun point.
I suppose the idea is to kill two enemies with one stone.
#30 Jacko,
The Chosen People status is widely misunderstood. The Maker chose the Jews to be a moral light and to get more severe punishment if they weren't. Care to join the club?
Not to worry. Few do.
Well we are still here.
The Proud. The Few. The Jews.
Deal with it.
Anytime I see something like this, I remember the "Jenin Massacre" and wait for the other shoe to drop. And anytime the UN condemns something Irsael does, I'm pretty sure Istael didn't do it.