The Middle East part 2

[Garcia 0]

Yes you people are so good on critisizing Israel's actions and making them sound like murderes.

And you are more than good at claiming that IDF was doing the right thing when killing civilians and you are more than good at claiming that everyone who shoots at IDF is a terrorist, no matter what the circumstances are like.

Quote[/b] ]soldiers being killed {of course it's ok because "they were on phalastinian land"}

If Israeli soldiers are getting killed in Lebanon/Palestine, can you really claim that it's wrong? If so, why don't you let some armed palestinians/lebanese people wander your streets?

Quote[/b] ]I'm not happy about civillian casualtis but I will not condem my country for trying to fight terrorist.

Has it ever crossed your mind that people condemn Israel for killing civilians, not for "fighting terrorism"? People condemn Israel because they seem to kill more civilians than terrorists.

[deanosbeano 0]

Geneva conventions, oh my, bringing out out the heavy artillery, huh?

Has Israel signed the Geneva conventions?

kind of

source

[Nemesis6 0]

Kind of?? I'm willing to bet they haven't. And I'll also bet that the reason they're targetting civilian infrastructure is...

Drum roll please...

HizbAllah!

[Garcia 0]

Not kind of, they have, though they use their own symbols for medics/ambulances etc I guess...

Quote[/b] ]Kind of?? I'm willing to bet they haven't. And I'll also bet that the reason they're targetting civilian infrastructure is...

Drum roll please...

HizbAllah!

Well, bad luck, you just lost your bet...

Quote[/b] ]Mr KAHANY, Delegate of Israel to the European Office of the United Nations and to the International Committee of the Red Cross, made the following declaration:

"In accordance with instructions received from my Government, I shall sign the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War without any reservation. But in the case of each of the other three Conventions, our signature will be given with reservations the purport of which is as follows:

(1) Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field.

"Subject to the reservation that, while respecting the inviolability of the distinctive signs and emblems of the Convention, Israel will use the Red Shield of David as the emblem and distinctive sign of the medical services of her armed forces."

(2) Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea.

"Subject to the reservation that, while respecting the inviolability of the distinctive signs and emblems of the Convention, Israel will use the Red Shield of David on the flags, armlets and on all equipment (including hospital ships), employed in the medical service."

(3) Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.

"Subject to the reservation that, while respecting the inviolability of the distinctive signs and emblems provided for in Article 38 of the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field of August 12, 1949, Israel will use the Red Shield of David as the emblem and distinctive sign provided for in this Convention."

I can't find any reservation saying: Subject to the reservation that we can target another countrys infrastructure, may we find it fit., or anything close to it...

[Nemesis6 0]

"I shall sign" doesn't mean it's signed by Israel.

[Garcia 0]

"I shall sign" doesn't mean it's signed by Israel.

...

Quote[/b] ]Mr KAHANY, Delegate of Israel to the European Office of the United Nations and to the International Committee of the Red Cross, made the following declaration:

"In accordance with instructions received from my Government, I shall sign the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War without any reservation. But in the case of each of the other three Conventions, our signature will be given with reservations the purport of which is as follows:

Now, do you really think a delagate from Israel, with instructions from the Israeli goverment signed the geneva convention as a private person, and not as a represant of the nation Israel? I doubt it's possible for a private person to sign the geneva convention, and I doubt a person would sign the geneva convention for someone, but with instructions from someone else...

[GoOB 0]

"I shall sign" doesn't mean it's signed by Israel.

Dude... Israel signed it in 1949.

http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/WebSign?ReadForm&id=375&ps=P

[Daniel 0]

Quote[/b] ]"I shall sign" doesn't mean it's signed by Israel.

So you're condoning the fact that while they may not have signed the convention, they are still going against it?

[Nemesis6 0]

Ah, right. I looked briefly on google. Guess my google-fu isn't as strong as it used to be. So what does this mean for Israel? Tell me how Israel violates it.

[deanosbeano 0]

Quote[/b] ]srael -- which signed the conventions on 8 December 1949 and ratified them on 6 July 1951

good job i am not a gambler.

i am sure you will find they omitted some parts in 2001 ,but that wasnt the question was it ?

Quote[/b] ]Ah, right. I looked briefly on google. Guess my google-fu isn't as strong as it used to be. So what does this mean for Israel? Tell me how Israel violates it.

NO you tell Me ,how when you thought israel had not signed it,What did you think it meant for israel ?

as in what did you mean by this ?

Quote[/b] ]Geneva conventions, oh my, bringing out out the heavy artillery, huh?

Has Israel signed the Geneva conventions?

[Garcia 0]

Ah, right. I looked briefly on google. Guess my google-fu isn't as strong as it used to be. So what does this mean for Israel? Tell me how Israel violates it.

Quote[/b] ]The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross accused Israel on Tuesday of violating the Geneva Conventions by preventing aid convoys from getting into areas targeted by Israeli airstrikes.

Apparently that way.

[mp_phonix 0]

Don't know who told you Nemesis, but Israel did sign it. [i think in 48 or 49]  

hmm . . .Reporters & Recue crews are able to get to the scene but Aid is not ? hmm .anybody smells a conspiracy ?

[booradley60 0]

Doesn't the aid have to travel farther?

[Daniel 0]

Don't know who told you Nemesis, but Israel did sign it. [i think in 48 or 49]  

hmm . . .Reporters & Recue crews are able to get to the scene but Aid is not ? hmm  .anybody smells a conspiracy ?  

They can't get to the scene. I saw it on the BBC today, they are viewing the shelling and the convoy from afar. They can't move anywhere now either, so it's made accurate reporting of the bombings impossible.

[Garcia 0]

Just look back one page for the full article, posted by stealth...

and mp_phonix, ever thought that, possibly, the organization bringing the aid spends their money on...umm...aid, while news agencies spend their money on good vehicles for their reporters, because they earn money for being where things happen?

And to be honest, you lack quite much evidence to claim this might be a conspiracy...

[CsonkaPityu 0]

I don't wanna rejoin the fray of this neat thread, but mp_phoenix, i would assume that moving a single camera crew and reporter and the equipment around is much easier then several tons of food rations and medicine.

[Bernadotte 0]

Doesn't anybody here have the balls to say straight out that they think that Lebanese civilians are more valuable than Israeli?

Thankfully, most of us here are intelligent enough not to hold such views.

I know people will start whining and make up excuses why the evil Israeli civilians deserve to be killed (blah blah blah stolen land blah blah zionazis blah blah chosen people) and the poor helpless Lebanese don't.

Really?

Which of us feels that Israeli civilians deserve to be killed?

And who else, besides yourself, feels that "poor helpless Lebanese" deserve to be killed?

[Stealth3 0]

You guys ignored the second article that quotes an IDF general saying they will target civilian infrastructure.

And that doesnt mean houses as you guys are saying lol.

[Daniel 0]

Nah, actually, I think you'll find Nemesis6 answered it quite nicely with

Quote[/b] ]And I'll also bet that the reason they're targetting civilian infrastructure is...

Drum roll please...

HizbAllah!

Gonna give it a second read through now.

[GoOB 0]

War Crimes: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations include, but not be limited to ... wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity

Just thought this felt relevant... So, how is destroying Lebanese (or Palestinian) homes and infrastructure a millitary necessity? Would anyone care to explain that for me?

[Stealth3 0]

I believe Nemesis answered that.

Quote[/b] ]And I'll also bet that the reason they're targetting civilian infrastructure is...

Drum roll please...

HizbAllah!

[scary 0]

Yes you people are so good on critisizing Israel's actions and making them sound like murderes. Yes of course you will condem Israeli actions, after all  your house isn't blowen to pices by Katyusha rockets,

Seeing as you are managing to post on here, I think it safe to assume that your house hasn't been blown to pieces by Katyusha rockets, you have a reliable electricity supply, a reliable internet connection, clean running water, plentiful food, working sewerage and access to medical services - it must be very stressful for you. Which of those would be the case if you lived in southern Lebanon or any part of the Palestinian territories? Which nationality is in the most danger?

As a strong wind is more powerful than a Katyusha could you provide some statistics of how many houses have actually been blown to pieces by them?

Quote[/b] ]you are not afraid to board buses in the center of the country, you don't hear every-day about sucide bomber being interecpted,

I bet you don't hear about it every day either.

Quote[/b] ]terrorist that were planning to do a mass shooting being arrested {what you call "Kidnhapping"}soldiers being killed {of course it's ok because "they were on phalastinian land"},

They are in someone else's country totally to the detriment of the residents of that country. Why shouldn't the residents of that country try to kill them?

Let's go with your own statistic: 20,000 Israeli soldiers killed in the history of the country. 20,000 is nothing, get over it, stop feeling sorry for yourselves. Soldiers die, it's part of the job, if you're not willing to take that risk then don't be one. If you want to be a warrior develop some warrior spirit and accept the fact that it may kill you.

Quote[/b] ]Qassam rockets are not falling in your city & security guards are not present in every public place {schools,malls,bus stations -> just visit the "Ben Guriyon" international in Tel-Aviv.

The majority of the world's population is in more immediate danger than you. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

Quote[/b] ]The only thing that is missing is tanks and attack helicopters}. Military Jeeps with mounted MG's don't drive into your neiberhood when theres a murder by gunshots {exactly what happend 2 weeks ago in mine -> army jeep with MG & armed to the teeth soldiers arrived with the police}

So you're saying that has never happened in, for example, Northern Ireland then?

Quote[/b] ]I'm not happy about civillian casualtis but I will not condem my country for trying to fight terrorist. Civillians are being killed and it is unfortunate but strangly you expect my country to stop the Air-Strikes & Ground operation becuase they are "Occupaing" and "Killing civillians". Of course you don't give a shit that a million people are sitting in shelters just because some loonetics with rockets that were allowed to run freely in their country are bombing them.

What about the million people in Lebanon without a shelter to sit in?

Can we finally get the timeline of events resolved?

Hezballah threatened to kidnap Israeli soldiers unless prisoners were released, maps of minefields were provided, etc.

Israel ignored them.

Hezballah kidnapped Israeli soldiers and said it would not release them until its demands were met.

Israel bombed and shelled Lebanon.

Hezballah threatened rocket attacks unless Israel stopped their attacks.

Israel bombed some more.

Hezballah started rocket attacks.

Israel bombed some more.

Hezballah threatened attacks further into Israel if Israel continued attacking Beirut.

Israel has continued attacking Beirut.

I wonder what is coming next.

Now, could you show any point in that timeline where Israel was trying to stop terrorism? Could you even point to an event that actually constituted terrorism?

Israel is not bombing to stop rocket attacks. There were no rocket attacks, nor any threat of them when Israel started bombing.

[Stealth3 0]

By JONATHAN COOK

Counterpunch

August 7, 2006

If there were any remaining illusions about the purpose of Israel's war against Lebanon, the draft United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a "cessation of major hostilities" published at the weekend should finally dispel them. This entirely one-sided document was drafted, the Hebrew-language media have reported, with close Israeli involvement. The top adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, talked through the resolution with the US and French teams, while the Israeli Foreign Ministry had its man alongside John Bolton [yet another of Israel's men, Eds ] at the UN building in New York.



The only thing preventing Israeli officials from jumping up and down with glee, according Aluf Benn of the daily Haaretz newspaper, was the fear that "demonstrated Israeli enthusiasm for the draft could influence support among Security Council members, who could demand a change in wording that may adversely affect Israel." So no celebration parties till the resolution is passed.



Instead, in a ploy familiar from previous negotiating processes, Israel submitted to the US a list of requests for amendments to the resolution. When Israel agrees to forgo these amendments, it will, of course, be able to take credit for its flexibility and desire to compromise; Lebanon and Hizbullah, on the other hand, will be cast as villains, rejecting international peace-making efforts.



The reason for Israel's barely concealed pleasure is that Hizbullah now faces an international diplomatic and public relations assault in place of the unsuccessful Israeli military one. Israel, and the United States, are trying to set a series of traps for Hizbullah -- and Lebanon too -- that will justify Israel's reoccupation of south Lebanon, the further ethnic cleansing of the country, and a widening of the war to include Iran, and possibly Syria.



The clues have not been hard to decode. The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, characterized the aim of the resolution as clarifying who is acting in good faith. "We're going to know who really did want to stop the violence and who didn't," she said. Or, in other words, we are going to be able to blame Hizbullah for the hostilities because we have offered them terms of surrender we know they will never agree to.



The main sticking point for Hizbullah is to be found in the resolution's requirement that it must stop fighting and begin a process of disarmament at a time when Israeli forces are still occupying Lebanese territory and when there may be a lengthy, if not interminable, wait for their replacement by international peacekeepers. Not only that, but the resolution allows Israel to continue its military operations for defensive purposes: Hizbullah only has to look to Gaza or the West Bank to see what Israel is likely to consider falling under the rubric of "defensive".



Hizbullah has been stockpiling weapons since Israel's withdrawal in May 2000 precisely to create a "balance of deterrence", to make Israel more cautious about sating its appetite for occupying its neighbors' lands, particularly when the neighbor is a small country like Lebanon without a proper army and divided into many sectarian groups, some of which, for a price, may be willing to collaborate with Israel.



This time, however, as Israeli troops struggle back towards the Litani River and their initial goal of creating a "buffer zone" similar to the one they held on to for nearly two decades, the Lebanese are rallying behind Hizbullah, convinced that the Shiite militia is their only protection against Western machinations for a "new Middle East".



Israel and Washington, however, may hope that, given time, they can break that national solidarity by provoking a civil war in Lebanon to deplete local energies, similar to Israel's attempts at engineering feuds between Hamas and Fatah in the occupied Palestinian territories. Certainly, it is difficult to make sense otherwise of Israel's bombing for the first time of Christian neighborhoods in Beirut and what looks like the intended ethnic cleansing of Sunni Muslims from Sidon, which was leafletted by Israeli war planes at the weekend.



On the US-Israeli view, a nation of refugees living in an open-air prison cut off from the outside world and deprived of food and aid -- a more ambitious version of the Gaza model -- may eventually be persuaded to take their wrath out on their Shiite defenders.



Hizbullah understands that the proposal to bring in a force of international peacekeepers is another trap. Either the foreign troops will never arrive, because on these Israeli-imposed terms there can be no ceasefire, or, if they do arrive, they will quickly become a proxy occupation army. Israel will have its new South Lebanon Army, supplied direct this time from the UN and subsidised by the West. If Hizbullah fights, it will be killing foreign peacekeepers not Israeli soldiers.



But Israel knows the international force is almost certainly a non-starter, which seems to be the main reason it has now, belatedly, become so enthusiastic for it. Senior Israeli government officials were saying as much in the Hebrew media on Sunday.



Israel's Justice Minister, the increasingly hawkish Haim Ramon, summed up the view from Tel Aviv: "Even if it is passed, it is doubtful that Hezbollah will honor the resolution and halt its fire. Therefore we have to continue fighting, continue hitting anyone we can hit in Hezbollah, and I assume that as long as that goes on, Israel's standing, diplomatically and militarily, will improve."



Israel hopes it will be able to keep hitting Hizbullah harder -- at less cost to its troops and civilians, and with improved diplomatic standing -- because in the next phase, after the resolution is passed, the Shiite militia will find that one arm has been tied, figuratively speaking, behind its back.



Not only will Washington and Israel blame Hizbullah for refusing to agree to the ceasefire but they will seek to use any retaliation against Israeli "defensive" aggression -- including, presumably, further invasion -- as a pretext for widening the war and dragging in the real target of their belligerence: Iran.



This subterfuge was voiced at the weekend by Israel's ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, who told the BBC that if Hizbullah fired at Tel Aviv -- which it has threatened to do if Israel continues attacking Beirut -- this would be tantamount to an "act of war" that could only have been ordered by Iran. In other words, at some point soon Israel may stop blaming Hizbullah and turn its fire -- defensively, of course -- on Iran.



This linkage is being carefully prepared by Olmert. On Monday, according to the Hebrew press, he told some 50 government spokespeople what message to deliver to the foreign media: "Our enemy is not Hezbollah, but Iran, which employs Hezbollah as its agent." According to Haaretz, he urged the spokespeople "not to be ashamed to express emotion and appeal to feelings".



So in the coming days, in the wake of this US-Israeli concoction of an impossible peace, we are going to be hearing a lot more nonsense from Israel and the White House about Iran's role in supposedly initiating and expanding this war, its desire to "wipe Israel off the map" and the nuclear weapons it is developing so that it can achieve its aim.



The capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 will be decoupled from Hizbullah's domestic objectives. No one will talk of those soldiers as bargaining chips in the prisoner swap Hizbullah has been demanding; or as an attempt by Hizbullah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, to deflect US-inspired political pressure on him to disarm his militia and leave Lebanon defenceless to Israel's long-planned invasion; or as a populist show of solidarity by Hizbullah with the oppressed Palestinians of Gaza.



Those real causes of hostilities will be ignored as more, mostly Lebanese, civilians die, and Israel and the US expand the theatre of war. Instead we will hear much of the rockets that are still landing in northern Israel and how they have been supplied by Iran. The fact that Hizbullah attacks followed rather than precipitated Israel's massive bombardment of Lebanon will be forgotten. Rockets fired by Hizbullah to stop Israeli aggression against Lebanon will be retold as an Iranian-inspired war to destroy the Jewish state. The nuclear-armed Goliath of Israel will, once again, be transformed into a plucky little David. Or at least such is the Israeli and U.S. scenario.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the author of the forthcoming "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State" published by Pluto Press, and available in the United States from the University of Michigan Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

[-ZG-BUZZARD 0]

And have you ever thought that it might be how you see it that's wrong?

You know, I have. Then I see a thigh holed like a swiss cheese with metal shrapnel or a dead Israeli hanging out of a bus. Literally, his hands hanging out of it. And another just sitting with his head leaned back, his face totally charred. Then I slowly drift out of lollypops-and-puppies-we-can-all-be-friends-with-the-jihadi-maniacs-land and start realizing that I am on the right side. Both politically and morally.

I bet the same chain of thoughts would have turned ordinary germans which didn't give a damn about politics into fervent nazis as they witnessed what happened in Dresden and so many other cities back in WW2...

[GoOB 0]

I believe Nemesis answered that.

Quote[/b] ]And I'll also bet that the reason they're targetting civilian infrastructure is...

Drum roll please...

HizbAllah!

It hasn't stopped Hizbollah, has it? So in what way was it necessary?