ukpatriot

No, I'm not comparing the resistance on the Continent to Israel today; that was obvious. And actually, Israelis were on a cross-border raid when captured etc, NOT hizbollah or lebanese forces.

So? Palestinians who resist Israeli colonisation and aggression against their people are terrorists are they while other Resistance movements were not? Double standards here from you...

You noticeably avoid the issue of the forced expulsion of palestinians from their land in 1947. I suggest that your view regarding the various wars is that of 'to the victor the spoils and let the devil take the hindmost'... right?

Much to do with Jimmy Carter, a decent US president. Bush is so pro-Israel he would be unable to broker an honest peace settlement... which would involve israel withdrawing all its forces, and all its settlers, permanently behind the pre-1967 borders.

It wasn't actually 5%... and even if it was, why should israel retain any land which is not its own? To humiliate the Arabs? There are of course other issues, such as compensating those Palestinians who have been forced in their millions off their land often at gunpoint for 60 years, the right of return to their land, and more...


Oh that's all right then, 'only' 10%. Phew, I thought you were talking about another land grab!

The wall runs deep into the West Bank and splits people from their land and work. Living with it will entail unacceptable inconvenience and hardship for the Palestinians affected.

And taken in the refugees who were forcibly expelled from their land in ethnic cleansing incidents, said nothing and let Israel continue with impunity... what a good idea... not.

No. Lebanon is the virtually defenceless victim of Israeli aggression, which is totally disproportionate to the capture of a few Israeli servicemen in Lebanon. Civiliszed nations don't bomb a country and its people into the Dark Ages because of something like that.

Grow up.

Did you? Once again it was an apology for Israeli racism and aggression, a very selective look at Middle Eastern history, together with some silly insults. In other words, typical of what we expect from people like you. You never replied to some key points either, one of which I repeat below.

This is David Ben-Gurion on Menachim Begin, of the Irgun terrorist outfit.

'Begin undeniably belongs to the Hitlerian type. He is a racist, ready to destroy all the Arabs in his dream of unification of Israel, prepared to resort to any means to realize this sacred goal.'

Doesn't sound like a condemnation to me. Looks as if he is praising him.

So much for Israeli kid gloves when dealing with Arabs!

Tony Bennett

Most of the day, the BBC on its website ran as its No.1 news story that another Israeli raid had killed 40 people in a Lebanese village. This was based on an assertion by the Lebanese Prime Minister and recycled as pure fact.

The Lebanese Prime Minister has now admitted the truth.

Reduce that figure of 40 by 39 and you get *one* dead. Quite a difference!

The BBC did not give anything like equal prominence to this hugely different verison. In other words, they highlighted falsehood and virtually buried the bad news when it came - i.e. the disappointing truth!

Yes, the finest broadcasting service in the world, the BBC.

================================================== ==================

BBCi website - Monday, 7 August 2006, 18:12 GMT 19:12 UK

Lebanon PM revises air raid toll

Lebanon's prime minister has said only one person was killed in an Israeli air strike that earlier he said had killed more than 40 civilians.

"They thought that the whole building smashed on the heads of 40 people," Fouad Siniora told reporters in Beirut. "Thank God that they have been saved."

REST OF ARTICLE SNIPPED

Percentage

Throw a sex (6) & start again,of course! :wink:

ukpatriot

More specious propaganda? Likud must be very proud of you.

The BBC attributed the claim to the Lebanese PM, just as it credits Israeli claims to people on that side. So your point is what exactly?

You don't like it but israel has killed thousands on thousands.

Your silence regarding the quotation re. Begin from Ben-Gurion is deafening.

Just the same as the claims about recycling dead bodies. Which is pretty callous and sick.

Tony Bennett

Extracts from an article in today's 'Independent':

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In Haifa too, there is no peace as the rockets fall [The 'Independent' has just noticed! - K.H.]

By Donald Macintyre in Haifa - Published: 08 August 2006

The anxiety etched on her handsome face, the gold crucifix unmissable around her neck, Janet Balan explained that she had not ventured out since the war started nearly four weeks ago until she felt compelled to do so for the funeral of her good friends and neighbours, Hana Hamam, 62, and Labiba Mazawi, 67.

It was little more than 300 metres from the St Elias's Church in the poor, Christian/Muslim Arab neighbourhood of Wadi Nisnas to the little garden in front of Mr Hamam's house, in which he and Mrs Mazawi had been killed by shrapnel from the 220mm Hizbollah rocket that demolished the house next door on Sunday night. But the journey I made with Mrs Balan, 52, her 83-year-old mother, Adiba, and two other women of the neighbourhood was twice interrupted by the sirens. There are no public shelters here - a source of frequent complaints by Israeli Arab community leaders.

So when the first siren sounded the women looked around, anxious for somewhere to take shelter. We alighted on a roofless space between two walls, hoping that if Hizbollah's lightning did strike twice in the same area, the rocket would not descend vertically.

The second time the sirens sounded, about five minutes later, we took shelter in the basement of what appeared to be a gambling den, a poker table laid out in the ground-floor room. Despite the fact that this was probably the best security the women had enjoyed since the war started, they soon registered their disapproval. "This place smells," one of them said.

Karem Houri, 25, who joined us under cover, shouted "Hallas [Enough]" above the siren before declaring to the company: "As a Christian Arab citizen of Israel I am ready to join the Israeli Army take care of Iran, Syria and even Lebanon."

As Mrs Balan surveyed the shrapnel dents in the wall of Mr Hamam's garden, where his son and four grandchildren had run into the house when they heard the sirens, Mrs Balan said sadly of the old couple: "They didn't have time." Then she alluded proudly to Haifa's reputation for peaceful co-existence. "I have a lot of customers - Jewish, Christian, Muslim - and they all want peace. If it was left to the little people like us there would be peace."

Clippo

MikeUK wrote:-
Haven’t had such a good laugh for ages! You’re assuming again & adding 2+2=5. But of course this is also one of the oldest debating tricks around. When you can’t find solid evidence to counter another’s argument, you make vague non-verifiable smears (as you did also with Wikipedia earlier).

No, I am not biased in any way to the extent you are implying. I have said earlier that in this latest flare up I lean towards the Israelis for the reasons given. In earlier times, and still am I have been utterly against the Israeli settlements in occupied territories and so on.

Your previous support on this thread for UKpatriot’s crazed anti-Israeli invective put’s your own supposed impartiality much under question. As does the following :-

MikeUK wrote:-
&
Getting a bit confused are we?? Also, a report in yesterday's Telegraph suggests Cameron is backtracking a bit on his disproportionate claims – seem now it’s only occasionally disproportionate. Probably next week it’ll be ‘I’ve been in discussions with Lord Kalms & we agree that the Israeli action is a measured response to the threat of Hezbollah’. Choose your supporting arguments carefully MikeUk.

who also wrote:-

There’s nothing on UKIP’s site about this, (or I couldn’t find it just now). I presume they said this at one of the recent leadership hustings. Is that all they said on this topic? You wouldn’t be being economical with the truth here would you….. ??

Both sides in this debate can argue ‘til they’re blue in the face about ‘history’ of the conflict but no serious observer would argue that the anti- Israeli/US campaign is now being orchestrated by Iran. Accepting that the Israelis are no angels occasionally in these wars, I worry that many of us in the West, particularly, are being seduced by Arab propaganda & are taking our eye off the real ball in the middle east.

ukpatriot

Clippo's description of postings which set out examples of Israeli anti-Arab violence and hatred as 'crazed anti-Israeli invective' make it quite clear that Clippo is far from being the moderate he/she tries to appear.

One thing is noticeable amongst all the pro-Israeli posts, which is the lack of a call for Israel to withdraw to the pre-1967 borders and remove all the settlements in the West Bank. That in itself says a lot about the sympathies of the posters themselves.

There was then a series of incidents posted across from Wkikpedia, which showed clearly that Israel/Irgun/Haganah etc were responsible for 80% of the massacres in the early days of Israel, which the poster claimed demonstrated something entirely different.

We then see the BBC, the Guardian and the Independent criticised for their coverage of the situation in the Middle East... for reasons I can only guess at, and which have a lot to do with the coverage being objective and not unrelentingly pro-Israel, which is what you get in the Telegraph or mail, which have become Tel Aviv's mouthpieces in Britain and present a very one-sided view of events.

It's the namecalling and snide remarks from the pro-Israel lobby which tell the final tale, however, which is that in a civilised world their case is unsupportable and so they have resorted to the tactics of the junior school playground. Perhaps they should open their minds, study more widely and acquire critical faculties, which might prevent them automatically believing everything the Telegraph/Mail etc say and knee-jerkingly dismissing evidence which is critical of Israel and the hardline racist Zionists.

Aardvark

Experts trying to map out what the international response to the disaster should be have been hampered by the dearth of information available.

Although satellite images have shown how fast the slick is spreading, aerial photographs are even more important. Only the Israeli air force has taken such pictures.

Requests to hand them over have been ignored, UN sources say,
in contravention of Israel's international obligations as a signatory to the convention that governs ecological affairs in the Mediterranean.



This in reference to the 70 mile long oil slick caused by Israel's detruction of an oil refinery. Luckily for Israel the slick is only damaging the Lebanese/Syrian coast at the moment, but since the Israelis will not allow anybody through their blockade of the Lebanon it is going to split up and take out the beaches of southern Turkey and Cyprus during the tourist season. The beaches could take over a year to clean up. The breeding turtles are doomed in any event.

This major ecological disaster is disproportionate. The destruction of the oil refinery damages all Lebanese regardless of race or religion. It was not owned by Hizbollah, but, for Lebanon to survive after the wanton destruction by the Israelis, this means that US oil interests will benefit when it comes to resupplying the Lebanese economy. The refinery was a regional rival to Israeli production and its destruction boosts Israel's economic strength.

I suggest that the destruction of Lebanon's oil refinery was an economic attack on all Lebanese and is nothing to do with the killing and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers on Lebanese territory that started this whole war off.

Israel hates the Lebanon. The Israelis claim to be the region's only democracy, but the Lebanese government was freely and fairly elected by universal suffrage. The Lebanese economy was strong - the fact of the tens of thousands of westerners living there freely and the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, Bangla Deshis etc working there suggests a healthy regional economy. Lebanese banks etc were taking business from Israel.

If we start from the assumption that the Israelis ambushed by Hezbollah were on Lebanese soil, having crossed the border illegally, then we see a deliberate and cynical provocation by Israel to start a war. Israel knew that Hizbollah would respond to an incursion/invasion in the same way that Israel would have reacted to Hizbollah patrols crossing their border. (Gleiwitz?)

Israel then started the rocket firing and bombing in response to Hizbollah's defence of their positions. Hizbollah did not fire the first rockets, but responded in kind when its positions came under fire.

Look at Israel's targets on day one - the international airport, the oil refinery, border crossings with Syria, motorways, bridges, infrastructure etc. This was not a knee jerk reaction. The correct bombs and rockets had to be available and stockpiled in sufficient numbers (you need quite specific bombs for runway denial and bridge busting). This was a planned economic war with clear economic objectives. The early announcement that Israel would bomb Lebanon back 20 years is true; it's all part of the plan to ensure that the world does not get used to Arab democracies.

The election was free and fair, if a little rough at the edges given the nature of the candidates. Lebanon has had one year of democracy. Even the most politically naive (Bush/Olmert) would know that until all the institutions were running properly, which takes time, the disarmament of Hizbollah was not likely to happen instantly. Israel was not prepared to attack when Syria was in control; now Syria is gone and the fledgling Lebanese democracy is trying to stand on its own feet Israel has decided to destroy the country.

Israel has planned an all out war against the Lebanon for some considerable time. The 'response' is not disproportionate, it is a war crime[/quote]

Tony Bennett

REPLIES TO 'UKPATRIOT':

The BBC attributed the claim to the Lebanese PM, just as it credits Israeli claims to people on that side. So your point is what exactly?

REPLY:

1. The BBC and other media reported the claims of 40 dead as fact

2. The Lebanese PM was not only wrong, but wrong by a factor of 4,000%. Don't trust *any* information put out by the Lebanese/Hezbollah side

3. The BBC correction of the truth was tucked away, the false story of '40 dead' was No. 1 item on the website the whole day. Do you not see the way the BBC rushes into headlines with wild, grossly exaggertated claims of '40 deaths' - because it suits their news agenda - and then relegates the correction - *the truth* - to the equivalent of a small column inch on page 94?

4. Deesn't all of this tell you something?

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You don't like it but Israel has killed thousands on thousands

REPLY: Typical exaggeration from the anti-Israeli side. The Lebanese say 1,000, not 'thousands on thousands'. The majority of these 1,000 will be Hezbollah fighters and civilians deliberately put into harm's way by Hezbollah in blatant violation of the Geneva Convention i.e. international law

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Your silence regarding the quotation re. Begin from Ben-Gurion is deafening.

REPLY: Given what else there is to comment on, I hardly thought it worth commenting on one man's opinion of another. It was probably an exaggeration, no doubt Menachem Begin was a determined terrorist in his time, he proved to be a wise statesman; I guess if we can rehabilitate Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, and if Eamon de Valera can become Premier of Eire, we can allow Begin to be the elected ruler of Israel

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Just the same as the claims about recycling dead bodies. Which is pretty callous and sick.

REPLY: Exactly! That is what Saddam Hussian is *known* to have done in Iraq. To do that is sick. To report it, as I have doen, is reporting

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P.S. Talking of 'deafening silences'...

a) I take it you accept that Hezbollah are terrorists, not freedom fighters

b) who is to blame for the failure of U.N. resolution 1559? You can pick from: The Lebanon, Hezbollah, Iran, UNIFIL or the U.N. - or any combination you like. But it would be hard for you to blame Israel for that!

c) do you condemn Hezbollah for using civilians as human shields? A simple 'yes' or 'no' will suffice

chikrodah

Of course, the Israelis know nothing about using "human shields":

Human Rights Watch 2002

Amnesty International 2005

B'tselem (Israeli Human Rights Group) 2006

:roll: