tidbits of maybe unknown stuff....

The first Israeli strike in Gaza hit an electricity plant causing about one million people to be in total darkness. It has been reported that the plant was insured by US Government foreign risk insurance and will now cost the US government about $25 million to repair. Bridges and roads in the south of Gaza were also hit in order to prevent the possible movement of kidnappers and Corporal Shilat out of Gaza- at least that was the reason given by the army. The US has appealed to Israel not to damage infrastructure in Gaza, but Jerusalem doesn't seem to be listening.

As early as 1919 there were signs of the fighting between Muslim Arabs and Jews that was bound to ensue if the madcap scheme to plunk the Jews into the middle of people hostile to them was carried out. The leaders of the most strident opposition group, the Jaffa Muslim Organization, issued this statement: "We will push the Zionists into the sea or they will push us into the desert." [Quoted in Righteous Victims by Benny Morris (Knopf, 1999)]. With blind determination to avoid the predictable, on July 24, 1922, the League of Nations issued a Palestine Mandate approving the Jewish homeland promised in the Balfour Declaration, modifying the Declaration with clauses recognizing the rights of non-Jews in the region identified as Palestine.


Once persecuted European Jews and pogrom victims in Russia began their exodus to the area of Palestine where Israel was taking shape, Arabs began rioting and fighting what they construed as unacceptable incursions into their land. The violence was so alarming to the British government which controlled the region that its political leaders issued its 1939 "White Paper" drastically limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine. The end result was that millions of European Jews were trapped in Nazi-occupied Europe.


Why the Jews Were Trapped


The reason why the Jews were trapped in countries occupied by the Nazis was that they were refused admission elsewhere. Acting on orders from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, ironically depicted as "friend of the Jews," the U.S. Government turned away thousands of Jews on ships which had carried them to American shores. Nor would the governments of other nations accept them. They were forced either to return to the countries where they were to be imprisoned and slaughtered or to sail on to Israel. Jewish leaders kept begging the government of the U.S. to allow immigration. Had their pleadings been heeded, a far greater number of Jews than those who eventually settled in Israel would have become citizens of the U.S., and the picture in the Near East might be different than it is now.


Creation of an Israeli State


On November 29, 1947, ignoring the certainty of the forthcoming violence that was bound to occur, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. As was to be expected, leaders of Arab countries refused to cooperate. What was then the Arab League of Nations, consisting of 22 countries, in effect declared "war on the Jews," determined to "drive them into the sea." A small, vastly outnumbered army of Jews, displaying the first signs of their brilliant military skills and innovative technology, soundly thrashed the troops from 22 Arab nations that encompassed a combined population of several hundred million.


On May 15, 1948, the State of Israel was formally established. While the heads of Arab countries refused to recognize Israel's existence, neither were they of the mind to try any more wars against Jews. The fanatical leaders of Muslim organizations and Islamist sects, however, were of a different mindset. "Death to the Jews" became their motto, and it was clear immediately that they would never accept co-existence with Jews in the region that ceased to be Palestine because it was carved by the British who had controlled it into separate states.


The Creation of Islamic Fanatics


While the madness of plunking Jews into the middle of hostile Arabs was taking its inevitable course, oppression of people in oil sheikdoms, and U.S. recognition of and cooperation with the brutal regimes of the Near East, were causing more and more people in that part of the world to turn to religion for succor and, indeed, what seemed to them to be their only hope to escape wretched poverty. U.S. political leaders, and Americans in general concerned mostly with how cheap the gasoline for their cars would be, blindly refused to recognize the buildup of a new force in the world based on quasi-religious fanaticism.


The end result of decades of horrendous mistakes is now exploding in the Near East and other parts of the world where millions of human beings believe that Islam in one form or another should rule the world, that anyone who does not believe in whatever Islamic clerics preach is an "infidel", and that Americans and Jews wherever they may be are the enemy and deserve to be conquered if not destroyed.


Just as the non-German world failed to heed the threat of Hitler and the Nazis to wipe out the Jews and to create a Nazi-run empire, so has the non-Arab Muslim world failed to take seriously the public announcements of leaders and followers of Islamic quasi-religious organizations that they intend to destroy Jews and Americans and to create an Islamic theocracy across the globe. Instead of crushing the genocidal maniacs before they can acquire the technology and weaponry to achieve their goal - eventually through biological and nuclear weapons if they are allowed to advance that far - the rest of the world has allowed them to grow, unchecked, into a force of armed hatred.


Long before the attack on the World Trade Center, plans of Islamic fanatics to attack areas of the U.S. were known. It has been known for years that Hezbollah, this Islamic militia that wiped out a U.S. Marine contingent and that has wreaked other kinds of havoc, was acquiring the means to rain missiles on Israel. Nothing was done to stop them.


Thus, the Monster created by a series of madcap mistakes has been allowed to grow and gain strength. It should be evident to anyone who has any sense at all that this Monster will allow peace to be arranged neither between the occupants of Israel and the occupants of other Near East countries nor between the Israelis and the people living in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Any time it appears that some kind of peace negotiations are advancing, the Monster will engender an incident to disrupt it, whether by genocidal bombings preposterously called "suicide bombings" or by kidnappings or by whatever kind of method may be necessary.


This is the lesson of the war now in progress. Those who have eyes but remain blind, because they refuse to see, now blame "the Jews" for the violence that has erupted in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. But the Jews did not create the Monster. We Americans and our British allies created it. Now it is too late to feel sorry for the oppressed people of the Near East who have become willing followers of the Monster. Now it is too late to try to reason with the Monster, to make peace with it. The Monster is attempting to develop biological and nuclear weapons that it will use for genocidal attacks on whole populations just as readily as its alleged "martyrs" will turn themselves into bombs to kill and maim. Consequently, as terrible as the prospect may seem, unless there is some sort of miraculous turn of events, destruction of the Monster appears to be the only way to secure peace in the Near East. And if the present relatively limited war there is not stopped, it could lead to a conflagration that would make World War II appear to have been a minor military excursion by comparison.

Val,

What is the source of that article?

Val, I looked at the link and here is a comment from one of the readers:


The United States of Israel


Israel is very concerned about Hezbollah getting rockets from Iran but nobody asks where a country the size of New Jersey gets their tanks, planes, artillery, and over 700 atomic bombs from. The answer is that they buy them from the United States with the billions of dollars they get from the United States. Like Haliburton who gets billion dollar no-bid contracts from the United States, they can afford to spend the money because it comes from the United States taxpayer anyway. The AARP or American Association of Retired People have a big lobby in Washington, but AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee lobby is bigger. Where does the money come from to spend buying Congressmen? The answer is that the congressmen have just passed an appropriation bill giving Israel 3 billion dollars. They have received 140 billion over the past fifty years.

Over 89% of American Jews vote Democratic. The vast majority of American Jews opposed the Iraq war, (more were against it than in the general population) and American Jews have been enormously important in securing civil liberties for all Americans. But the ruling party in Israel is the Likud and they use their positions to support Likud policies in the American government. All this can happen because there is a vacuum in U.S. political discourse., A handful of special interests in the United States virtually dictate congressional policy on some issues. With regard to the Arab Israeli conflict, The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and a few allies have succeeded in imposing complete censorship on both houses of Congress. No Senator or Representative dares make a speech on the floor of his or her institution critical of Israeli policy."

The blanket of censorship covers the American media also. Even some of the most progressive Jews are afraid to speak their true thoughts on the Israeli expansionist policies in the Middle East. They are even afraid of their own friends and family as the Likud policies dominate every synagogue. After the total destruction of Iraq carried out by the neo-cons by lying to the American people about "weapons of mass destruction" They are now destroying Lebanon, and would have the United States make war with Iran.

Why? because Iran wants to build an atomic reactor. Who wouldn't want an atom bomb when a sworn enemy has hundreds of them? Israel is a warlike nationalistic state run by Zionists. No other country has attacked the United States since Pearl Harbor except when Israel attacked the USS Liberty in international waters. No congressional investigation of this vicious assault has been held. It has been kept out of the press and the media but the veterans of the USS Liberty are on the web. Google over to their site and check it out.

The greatest and most powerful country in the world is hostage to the Zionists. The end of the Cold War left the arms industry hanging but Israel is giving them an excuse to keep making more nuclear submarines. Israel is providing them with their life's blood . . . WAR.

Here is another comment:

Oh, history!

I am wondering what Jewish pogroms did the author find in the Communist Russia of 1920s and 30s. The Communist govt was fiercely internationalist and antisemitism as well as Zionism were prohibited. Now, the idea that European Jews somehow were trapped because they were not allowed to go to Palestine is bizarre to say the least. European Jews were either predominanlty secular or under the Communist ruling and as such never even considered Palestine. It is reflected in numerous books of those times.By the way, the idea that 'people have to emigrate somewhere from the place they were born' is an insult to the human rights.
The tragedy of the European Jews is the tragedy of betrayal when citizens, other ones betrayed their own brothers due to cowardice and malice. In fact, those who died from Germans are first just people and only after that Jews. That's how they identified themselves and that is how we all identify ourselves. Honestly, maybe we should stop using all that ethnic stuff and instead look into politics, driving forces and money? That pertains also to the description by the author of the Zionist ideology. Zionism is politics. It has nothing to do with God. It has also nothing to do with Jews, paradoxically as it seems. It has everything to do with money, power, malice and greed.
Why won't we see that?

You really got to pick and choose from that site, its one sided and very slanted....I only picked what appeared to be historical...alot of it is crap.....

Val did you know that Israel becoming a state was prophesied in the Bible over two thousand years ago and was accurate to the very day. And also Ezekiel chapters 36,37,38 and 39 talk about whats happening over there right now and what will happen in the near future with the Arab states and a country from the North, which the prophets claim will be Russia.

I also don't doubt that there is a few people involved with the Zion movement who are in it for the money, but how anyone can say that it has nothing to do with God totally baffles me. It has everything to do with God. Zion is a hill in Jerusalem on which the Royal Palce of David and the Temple were built and until that Temple is rebuilt there can be no second coming of Christ. The people of Israel know this and that's what most of this war is about.

I think that some of the people who write some of that stuff really need to look more into their Bible for their answers.

Yea its a heck of a thing, Uh? we gotta blow each other up to become whole again...:confused:

Comments-Editorials
 

"Zion is a hill in Jerusalem on which the Royal Palce of David and the Temple were built and until that Temple is rebuilt there can be no second coming of Christ."

The Jews of Christ's day, as well as today were looking for an earthly kingdom and not one of heaven. Christ was himself crucified for talking against the temple in which he stated that it would be destroyed (which, of course it was in 70ad) The temple was "rebuilt" in Himself. The seperation or tearing of the temple curtain at Christ's death in the Holy of Holies within the temple, signified God's immediate access to us through His Son.

Also, interesting to note-Pontious Pilate's displaying of "The King of the Jews" placcard over Christ's crucifixtion was a slap in the face-a dig, if you will, to the Pharisee leadership whom, of course, did not wish to buy into Christ's messiahness so as to threaten their powerbase and very existence. Pilate himself converted to Christianity following his tenure as the Roamn perfect or governor in the Roman service.

I will step down from the pulpit now to comment on some other issues read herein:

As I continue to read about how there should be no action against Hezbollah because of the costs to innocent civillian life-mainly in Lebanon, I am frankly dismayed at the lack of backbone displayed. Granted, no one wishes to see innocent loss of life but sometimes-this is a necessary sacrifice to provide securities at a later point and less bloodshed. Big countries have to make big decisions that ultimately benefit the whole of a nation.

I too have lost loved ones in this war on terror but it is simply foolish to maintain a mindset that if the US were to completely drag up from the Middle East and become isolationists with no military presence or democratic allies in the region, we as a nation would be better off. Quite the contrary! Western civilization as a whole is hated throughout the Middle East because of it's dominance in every aspect of culture, business, and lifesyles (some of which-I personally understand and agree with though not on a fundamentalist extreme level) permeate the globe. Leaving radical extremists to their own devices, undeterred will bring about untold bloodshed the likes the US has never seen mingled with consequences that the world would not want and that the US would be expected to eventually bail everyone out with eventually anyhow.

If we cut aid to Israel, then what? Hezbollah through Syria and Iran demand that Saudi Arabia not export the 20% of oil that is earmarked for the US markets because we are the 'Great Satan.' Where does it end? You cannot, nor should we seek to negotiate with these types of extremist zealots. I am amazed when I see and hear people talk about how we should just walk away from people that are more than willing to strap bombs to themselves, spouses, and even children to kill us. Are you nuts??? Do you really believe yourself that this would be the better alternative.

I thank the Good Lord that WWII happened over 50 years ago lest we as a nation of spineless citizens determine that through a Gallop pole conducted by the NY Times that we should not proceed with Operation Overlord as the D-Day invasion would cost far too many lives.

Yes, war sucks but history has shown that pacifism causes far more in the form of human tragedy and suffering. Israel does not conform to the U.N. or international community when it comes to eradicating terrorists. I have no problem with that. Lest we forget that this is the same group responsible for the Maine barrack bombings in Beirut in 1982. I personally hope that Syria and Iran are next.

I dont think anyone is advocating cutting and running, and your right on many levels......I think we all know what role the United States and their allies are going to have to engage in, it doesn't make it any more palatable.

val

war is never palatable. i spent 27 years of my life practicing every day so we wouldn't have to fight in another one. it's called deterence. being strong so no one would ever attack us.

thanks to a generation of fondas, asners and cindy shi%cans, karters and klintons the forces that be saw their opening and explored it to the max on 9/11. actually they tried in '93 also but didn't have their ducks in a row.

for the most part the world hates our guts. and as martha says "thats a good thing", they are jealous of our success in finance and government and the freedom of our people. they can not deal with a free society, they have no idea how it's done. why they are led by one man dictatorships and receive their law by some holy? guy that is in charge of propaganda. oh yes, they hate our guts but they envy us, saying why can't our country be like that?

they also hate the ties that made their governments rich. do you think it was a camel jockey who designed the first bit and drilled for oil there? you can bet your sweet backside it wasn't.

fabs you asked about the russian jews. well most of their decendants are the ones who screwed up vals neighborhood. i arrive at that conclusion by deciphering one word she used. chabad. that is an eastern european hebrew word for a church/synagoge, comunity center. those were the jews forced out of greece many years ago. they were forced into the ukraine. remember when i asked you if your father had ever spoken of the ukrainian university in rome? i would suspect that if val done some searching she would find many russian names amongst the folks in that neighborhood and the church conclave.

one thing that jews produce in prolific amounts is lawyers. it's like diarrhea, it runs in their jeans. one thing that lawyers learn is how to utilize past successes, in law speak it is called precedence. now remember to keep that word in your memory bank. we will use it again later. thank you kiddies. we all watch the lawyer shows on tv and should remember many quotes by lawyers where they say "in the case of shlabotnik vs o'reily blah, blah, blah.

well val my lady, that is exactly how they were able to build and have that chabad in that neighborhood. they learned very well the successes used by the minorities to nuzzle their way in to places they were formerly not allowed to go. hundreds of jews in the aclu din't hurt matters any either. ACLU= All Commies Love Us.

back to the question of israel. the us and england when ceding the land taht was taken from the arabs thought that the land was originally, forget the word JEWISH for a moment, israelite, should be given to the jews for a homeland. because it was their land before they were run out of it. they were there first, PRECEDENCE. yes they also shared that land with non jews.

fabs determination about the jewish leaning towards democrats is absolutely correct. the jews as a hole are socialistic and tend to team and form together. by socialistic i do not mean communistic, which the democratic party has become in my lifetime. the last democratic president i voted for was JFK. does that tell you anything? lbj was a dictator with an alligator mouth and a humming bird a$$, nixon wasn't much better, and karter was a total piece of toilet paper and i could do a 20 page disertation on klinton. when klinton turned the other cheek, and i don't mean monica's, in '93, that was an open invitation to the muslims to do what ever they want to whoever they want. what a pa he was. no we didn't have any wars while he was potus but look at the trail of destruction he left behind.

to me the democratic party has no morals, no heart, no soul and no conscience. now thats the party, i'm not talking individuals here.

back to the good stuff. the twins win. beat the sox.

Billy,

Damn good post. Thanks for all the info with the exception of precedence. I already knew about precedence.

Now that was funny Billy, dont care who you are...


Tell us some more:p

fabs

i knew that you were cognizant of that fact but other folks don't know. thats why i included it.

by the views of this topic i can tell more people are reading it than val, you and me.

also thank you for the compliment. like i've told val, i didn't spend three years in the seventh grade for nothing. :eek:

pretty lady

now i could read into that and and say, " you say you don't care who i are or could you mean what i are".

i can tell you what i are in a hurry. i'm a straight, roman catholic, conservative gun owner. need more?

i'm a father of 5, with 6 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren.

i can write on any topic, some may be personal experience while some may be from research work. my only default in this area is i don't tend to differentiate strongly enough between the two.

by the way, journalism was one of my favorite subjects in high school. i can always give you the who, what, when, wheres, and whys.

and after a house full of youngin's ya get to be a pretty good story teller also.

It is said that time heals all wounds, but it's doubtful that applies in Mideast politics. When I first started to work in Saudi Arabia it didn't take long for me to be branded a "Crusader." It matters not that they've been over for almost a thousand years, or that we didn't even exist as a people then. The only things here were small bands of Indians and Mexicans, both primitive societies, but nontheless I was still a crusader. I guess to their minds that's as valid today as then. My first trip to a Riyadh bookstore to buy an atlas produced books where every map of Israel had been blackened out (by hand). I sort of understood why all the pictures of scanty clad women waving from the decks of boats had been blackened out by the same method. You're not to make an opinion of what is good or bad. Some local Imam will make it for you. Our problems with the Islamic world today extend far beyong Israel. For most of the 2,000 years since Christ
died, the Islamics have been calling the shots on the world scene. Our western type societies are johnny come latelys. The
Muslims in the middle east are again flexing their muscles, and I frankly don't believe it matters who the scapegoat is. The US will do as nicely as Israel. The "evil satan" will raise hackles just as much as the "zionists" today. I see no way of living with these people short of an all out war. It's said the two major problems we face are religion and politics. Here we have, not one, but both. Well, that's my take on it for better or worse. Best wishes.

Cal - Montreal

Israel and the Arabs
 

As I have stated a couple of times in the past...the Arabs as a group of people, who are lead by a Theocracy and tribalism also do not want anyone in the world who is not born muslim to convert...They want the rest of the peoples in the world dead and the world to be run as it was a thousand years ago. Those people were smart and if not for the fact there was so much tribalistic hatred and distrust would still be running the world as it was before the Crusades. They knew the world was round and had libraries of up to a million books at a time when a large library in Europe would include as many as a dozen or so books no one could read. Also remember that the Jews are, like the Arabs, a society you are born into. You can practice the Jewish religion but you really aren't a jew unless born one. This being said I feel that backing the Jewish state in the middle east has cost us much monetarily as well as the hatred and distrust of over a billion arabs. I personally feel that if the arabs ever decide to put their differences aside and fight together, that the jews will start a nuclear war that will envelope the entire world. That would be their last defense. There is, in effect no discernable difference between the jews and the arabs(both semetic people) other than the fact of religion. And a lot of the reason for the strife going on now is to take the heat off the Iranians for a while as they continue to develop their atomic arsenal

Thank you for your input, man that means the world to me...I gotta tell ya I am grappling every day with the religion aspect of this war...all I am getting is that it was prophesied, and this is what is was suppose to be, now as a Christian I was taught that man was given "choice" only man could determine what and how he was suppose to enter into heaven...I wasnt taught that the Jews were suppose to bring us into the Apocalypse wasnt taught that the religion of Jews and Muslims were to bring us to our downful. I was taught that we had ten commandments...we were suppose to abide by those ten commandments and we were pretty much suppose to be alright. I wasn't taught that the Jews were going to rain down hell on earth because of 2 soldiers at a checkpoint. What does that mean to all the other soldiers that have died ? Something isnt right here...something doesnt feel good, and if you wanna know the truth..I dont totally trust the Israel's and why they have done what they have done...something just doesnt feel right here...

and while I am at it, I have worked my entire life to raise my grandchildren, which are not here yet, play with my bird-dogs, and even breed a few, paid my taxes, stood up for the underdog, and in the prime of life going after the bad guys to children...hid my money, paid my taxes, worked my butt off, literally planned my entire future, and your telling me its, God's will? Well I got news for you? God told me to be a good person and help my fellow man every step of my life, but some of you are telling me...oh no...this was propesised and your %hit out of luck...I dont think so...I am sick and tired of doing the right thing...and all of a sudden, my world comes to an end because someone wrote it hundreds of years ago....well if you wanna believe in that GOD go for it, I am not ready to accept it.....and between you and me, God has greater things in store for me than this...

In summary, our Nephite apocalypse does not teach us to calculate the day and hour of the end and await its coming on hilltops. It does not require us to fatalistically ignore duty or science. Rather, it restores high moral vision when meaning loses its sight. And its enduring element is to pour hope and courage into the midst of despair.

The dictators and Imams have used Isreal and the "West" as an excuse for all there problems as a way to keep control of the population and keep their power and position. It is always easier to teach hate than reason, because hate is only about emotion and not thought. If you control the media and it is propagandizing hate of the "West" constantly then hate is what a population will believe and act on. If you add the twist of religous leaders teaching hate to it then it really becomes
complicated to find a non-violent solution to the problem.

You cannot appease ingrained blind hatred of the Jewish people or the West. When Bush set out to democratize Iraq and Afghanistan he threatened the power and control of every dictator and religous leader in the middle east. They then declared Holy War on us as whole not just Isreal. If we stand around with our political parties fighting each other over power and not committed to solidarity, then we will have more acts of terrorism in our country.

From the git go, I supported Israel's right to strike back. Now I am even more firmly of the opinion that they need to really take names, and kick butt. Iran should get a bit of it too now.

Source: Foreign Policy in Focus (8-8-06)

[Conn Hallinan is a foreign policy analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org) and a lecturer in journalism at the University of California, Santa Cruz.]

History is the story we tell ourselves in the present about the past. But how we punctuate the story—where we put the periods, the commas, and the ellipses—depends not on everything that happened, but on who is telling the story, where we stand in the narrative, and what outcome we want.

As Rebecca Goldstein notes in her study of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, there are “powerful tendencies in each of us toward developing a view of the truth that favors the circumstances into which we happen to have been born.”

Israel and Hezbollah both have stories to tell based on their particular circumstances....

There is at least one historical example that suggests a way to short circuit the narrative loop.

The Lore of the Irish

For just under 837 years, the English and the Irish have warred against one another. Terrible things have been done in those long centuries, and the Irish tell endless stories about them. They know when it began: On Aug. 23, 1170, Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke—“Strongbow” to the Irish—waded ashore with 200 Norman knights and 1,000 men-at-arms near Waterford on Ireland's southeast coast. He took the town in five days, then marched north and smashed an Irish army near Dublin.

Thus began the longest war in European history. For more than 40 generations the Irish seethed at the occupation, rising up time and again to fling themselves in bloody rage at armies they could not hope to defeat.

The Irish call it “the long sorrow,” and they can recite it with the precision of a rosary: “Red” Hugh O'Neill's war against Elizabeth I; The First Land War; the Great Rising of ‘98; the Tithe War; Catholic Emancipation; the Fenian revolt; the Second Land War; the Easter Rebellion.

The stories, poems, and songs that the Irish wrote about these events taught each generation about courage and resistance, but also about hatred, tribalism, and a certain kind of suicidal madness the poet William Butler Yeats called “an excess of love.”....

What are the stories Hezbollah will tell about Bint Jbail, which the most powerful army in the Middle East was unable to secure after almost a week of savage fighting? As the English did to Dublin in 1916, the Israelis flattened the place with artillery and bombs, but that will not extinguish the narrative that Hezbollah held out against the mighty Golani Brigade.

What are the stories the Israelis will tell about life in the shelters? Will they conjure up the spirit of Masada, the Jewish people's equivalent of the Easter Rebellion, albeit one that ended a good deal more tragically? Will they tell themselves that once again tiny Israel is beset by enemies on all sides?

Both of these narratives will end up with a lot of people dead and homeless, economies derailed, and infrastructures shattered. They may even lead to the unthinkable: a regional war. They will pump up a tribalism that says, “We are special, we are better, we are owed this, and the wrongs we do to others are canceled out by the wrongs others have done to us.”

The Good Friday Agreement

History does not mark all roads, and all analogies are fraught with danger. Like the Oracle of Delphi, Clio the muse of history predicts what we want her to predict. But the recent history of Ireland is worth some study.

Starting in 1992, the principal antagonists in Northern Ireland began to talk with one another, in large part because majorities in both communities were fed up with the sectarian violence. It was not easy, but the talks led to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which has kept the peace for the most part between warring Catholics and Protestants. It was a process the United States helped along, unlike the role the United States is playing in the current Middle East crisis.

To reach an agreement, the parties had to get past a series of myths.

The first myth is that force will get people to do what you want them to do. It never did, it never will. If Qassams and Katyushas have not caused the Israelis to throw in the towel, why would Israel think that bombs and artillery would force Hezbollah or Hamas to give up? To suggest that Arabs will react any differently to violence than the Jews or the Irish is simply racist.

Rather than terrorizing the Lebanese and the Palestinians, the current war has united both communities. The collective punishment that Israel is inflicting on Gaza and Lebanon simply produces collective rage at both Israel and the United States. A poll by the Beirut Center for Research found that 89% of Lebanese do not consider the United States an “honest broker,” and 87% support Hezbollah's “retaliatory rocket attacks.”

Even al-Qaida, which normally refers to Shiites as “dogs” and “a thorn in the throat of Islam,” has called for aiding the resistance in Lebanon. Indeed, Israel has managed to drive Shiite Hezbollah into an alliance with Sunni Hamas.

The second myth is that you can design someone else's country. You cannot tell the Lebanese what their internal politics should be, nor can you tell the Palestinians that they can have a nation but only if it is riddled with Jewish settlements and surrounded by a wall. Such a Palestinian state is not a country but an open-air prison, much like Gaza is today.

All the settlements will have to go, the borders returned to the 1967 Green Line, and Jerusalem will have to be shared. The occupation is illegal, immoral, and clearly not in Israel's interest, despite being of its making. Instead of listening to David Ben-Gurion, who urged Israel to withdraw from the lands conquered in 1967, Tel Aviv established the settlements and kept East Jerusalem.

In return, the Palestinians will have to abandon the right of return and accept a deal that compensates them for the lands they lost in 1948. Regardless of the injustice behind the original expulsions, asking Israel to dismantle itself unilaterally is a non-starter. Israel is a country, if for no other reason than the Holocaust made it so.

But Israel cannot continue to hide behind the argument that it won't negotiate with “terrorists.” If England could talk to Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army, Israel can to talk to Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel recently held a two-day seminar on the 60 th anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel by the Jewish resistance. The blast killed 92 people. One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter.

Some in the Middle East will resist such a settlement, just as some hardliners in the Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland reject the Good Friday Agreement. But in Northern Ireland those forces have been increasingly marginalized. For all its fragility, the pact is generally holding.

Despite eight centuries of occupation, and 24 years of civil war, Irish on both sides are downplaying their respective nationalist narratives and finding common ground.

The world does not need more tribal allegiances and stories that tell us it is all right to blow up pizza parlors or flatten towns in Southern Lebanon. It needs solutions anchored in the real world and a moral order that sees no difference between a dead Jewish child and a dead Arab child. The living weep for them equally, and no pain is greater or less because of the weight of history.

val

this is from a few years ago. i thought it applicable.

"we, the jews, do not rejoice in victories. we rejoice when a new kind of cotton is grown or strawberries bloom in israel."

another one?

"we have always said, that in our war with the arabs, we have a secret weapon. we have no where else to go and we have no alternative."

these words were spoken by golda meir. if you don't know about golda, she was born in kiev russia and emigrated to the u.s. with her parents and was raised in milwaukee wisconsin. she was a school teacher here in the states and moved to israel in her late years.

not a pretty lady, her beauty was in her heart and her mind.

Billy and Val,

I couldn't agree more with Conn Hallinin. That is my viewpoint on this entire thing. Both sides have done things that are wrong, and I do not blame the Arabs for hating the US. They have grown up hating the US for things that were done before my lifetime.

At the end of all this, what ever happened to Iran's nuclear program. That was all over the news until this Hezzbollah stuff happened. Did we forget about it? Was this action by Hezzbollah done just to make us look the other way at Iran's nuclear program? I hope not, but who knows.

The Iran nuclear development and enrichment program has certainly not gone away...probably was even accelerated over the past month but that doesn't make as good of news as the visuages of bloodied bodies and colorful explosions in Lebanon, does it?

Just as in the past, should (read WHEN) the US and Israel feel that the nuclear threat has reached a point of no return, you will see the Israel airforce (bought and paid for with US tax dollars) take out said reactors.

As we've all recently seen demonstrated, Israel doesn't seem to give a rat's poop about the 'International Community's' opinion of them when they feel compelled to act.

Bombing Iran might be a little more risky than bombing Lebanon.

Time will tell but I personally believe that should diplomatic incentives/embargos fail with slowing Iran's quest for nuclear arms development, we will most certainly see Israel bomb Iran's nuclear development facilities. It's not "If' it's a matter of "When." With Iran and Syria's continued funding of Hezbollah, why...it wouldn't surprise me one iota to see a few other "non-nuclear" type facilities targeted as well. Kinda-sorta like that little thing in Libya some time back. As memory recalls a few "stray" bombs fell in areas that surprised some.

Remember, we have Iran's new radical raghead leader calling for Israel to be 'wiped off the face of the world.'

There's no way Israel or the US will be sitting back and watching Iran's continued uranium enrichment development program unfold without action. Israel, as in the past, will be the vessel utilized in the Middle East to sustain joint US and Israel policy.

iran, north korea, the plo, the hezbollah better be glad i'm not pres/king/ruler/commander in chief ...

i'd have the sky darkened 24 hrs a day dropping 500 pounders, gas air bombs, tactical nukes, napalm or whatever it takes, on them until there was nothing left. no negotiating, only total surrender or total destruction.

israel should have kept going!

:mad:

Rest Easy guys, the EuroEunuchs have arrived
 

The French and the Italians, two of the world's most feared armies are arriving in Lebanon to help the UNIFIL force bring peace to the country.

Note that Kofi says that they will NOT be disarming hezbollah, and that without an OK from the hezbollah controlled Lebanese government, they won't be on the Syrian boarder to stop the resupply of Hezbollah.

What they WILL be doing, is aiming their weapons in the direction of Israel. Remember that according to Kofi and the gang over at the UN, its the Izzy's that are the bad guys here.

I wonder where the USA will stand if Italy and France are fighting Israel? That situation would really have me worried.

WHY

Neither country would do diddly squat. the french already surrendered to the leabonese without firing a shot.

the un has already said they will not disarm hezbollah and the roads are open from syria into lebanon for the resupply to hezbollah and hamas. and the frogs will sit idly by and pick their noses like they usually do.

the middle east can be thankful right now that the old israeli cabinet is not in charge or lebanon would not be fit for a parking lot now. they would have flattened it.

i do tend to sympathize with the lebonese to an extent. but they brought on a lot of their own problems by electing weak politicians and providing a safe harbor for hezbollah. they can be thankful that israels foreign minister zipi livni is in power right at the present and if she doesn't get her s#!t in one sock she isn't going to to be around much longer. she is no golda meir.

and speaking of golda she once told the world, when speaking of the israeli military successes, "we israelis have a secret weapon, we have nowhere else to go and have no alternative".

one other thing about golda, did you know she was educated in the usa and was a school teacher in milwaukee before she moved to israel? she was an immigrant from the ukraine in russia and came to america with her parents.

history 101 for the evening. thank you students for listening.

shalom.

I'm sorry, but I have a long memory and I hold a grudge. Israel can go back to the Stone Age along with the rest of the Terrorists from the Middle Eastern Asia countries, as far as I'm concerned!

If one of my "buddies" started throwing rocks at my son's bike while he was riding down the street, busting-up the bike and putting my son in the hospital, I wouldn't care what that buddy's "reasons" were, I'd better not see that "buddy" ever again.

Then, if that same "buddy" stole items from my home, then claimed it was my fault because I didn't lock-up my house well enough,... Well, you get the picture.

On June 8, 1967, Israel launched multiple attacks on the U.S.S. Liberty while it was in international waters, resulting in the 34 K.I.A.s and 173 W.I.A.s of U.S. Sailors. Richard Helms, Director of the CIA in 1967, stated (paraphrased) that there was no way Israel didn't and couldn't know that it was a U.S. Naval vessel. ( http://www.ussliberty.org/report/report.htm )

In the early 2000s, it came to light that an intelligence cell of the Israel government had been stealing U.S. Government secrets. Their response to the accusation: (again, paraphrased) Well, it's not stealing if the information we took had been mishandled prior to us taking it... ( http://www.amconmag.com/2005_06_20/feature.html )

If a government's military knowly and willingly takes American lives, that government's country should be an enemy until *many* years of butt-kissing and gift-giving have gone by (as Germany and Japan have done). (Strikes one, two, and three...) Then, if that same country steals secrets from the U.S. after amends are made for the previous action, all bets should be off, all alliances should be cut. (The batter just spit on the umpire and is being ejected from the game!)

Okay, sure, 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend'. But what happens when the 'enemy of my enemy' acts like an enemy?