[aldo_14]

Perhaps you should read http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/middle_east/2001/israel_and_the_palestinians/default.stm if you want information about - shockingly - the current crisis.

EDIT; I'm quite amused, really, because I've seen Muslims call the BBC Israeli-biased.  (see comments; I agree with 28, myself) Just goes to show it's doing it's job well; 2 entrenched sides rarely react well to having the other sides viewpoint exposed.

sub-EDIT; see http://www.bbcgovernors.co.uk/docs/reviews/panel_report_final.pdf page 22; an independent report that concluded there was no systemic bias in the BBC but there was an inadvertant pro-Israeli bias.

EDIT2; not to mention Hezbollah is killing nowhere near the amount of civillians that Israel is, which is why Israel killing civillians will be appearing more prominently; I mean, it's not like we value one civillian life in one country over another, is it?

[Fear]

On a side note, Fear, this may be the time to take a breather and just leave the thread alone. You don't have to blow a stack at kara or aldo just because they're arguing the opposite opinion and you don't like it.

I was just thinking about the same things toward them, i am angry i have proven why, im waiting kara to prove that he didnt replyed to me.

[Nuclear1]

Perhaps you should read http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/middle_east/2001/israel_and_the_palestinians/default.stm if you want information about - shockingly - the current crisis.

I see nowhere on that page or in any of its articles that this may have been an intelligence foul-up or that Hezbollah was indeed using that or any adjacent buildings as a launch point. Even the article reporting the investigation gave no arguments for this; only emotional images that suggest that Israel intended to murder 50+ civilians, including children, in cold blood.

EDIT2; not to mention Hezbollah is killing nowhere near the amount of civillians that Israel is, which is why Israel killing civillians will be appearing more prominently; I mean, it's not like we value one civillian life in one country over another, is it?

True, but exploding the fact that 50+ civilians died in an air raid while the survivors are utterly grief-stricken but not mentioning that several hundred residents of Haifa are being treated for shock and shrugging off Hezbollah rocket attacks into Israel shows some element of bias, no?

That we presumed it was an IAF strike that brought down the building and killed all those innocent Lebanese, and apologized for it. But we also haven't managed to reach any sort of final conclusion on what exactly brought down the building, so I refuse to lay blame on either side.

True. To use someone else's argument from earlier, the WTC towers stood for nearly an hour after being hit, and then they collapsed. For a Lebanese building to stand for nine hours after being bombed nearly as intensely the survivors described would make that building an absolute feat of engineering. Make of it what you will, but I think there's a little more going on than what's been reported.

[karajorma]

Wait a second there, i only read the headline(could be a problem though) but all it metioned in the links sand gave is the time-gap, while in your post you talked about filling the building with women and children,and collapsing it for "widespread international condemnation"  which was only mentioned in my post as something people have been wondering about here. Puff. oh so yea, you posted to me.

No I didn't. Who are you to claim you can read my mind?

Let me ask you this. Of what significance is the 7 hour gap if not for some sinister purpose? If Israel hit the building and then 7 hours later it collapsed because of unforseen structural damage that's still Israel's fault then isn't it? Israel is still responsible for those deaths under those circumstances right?

What's more, Israel is constantly finding other explainations for events that make them not responsible. It wasn't the shelling of a beach that caused casualties it was a landmine that just happened to go off at the same time. Fact is that I tend to take Israels attempts to blame other people with a huge pinch of salt. I expected Israel would be trying to find someone else to blame from the second I heard about this.

Futhermore I'll have you know that I started forulating my response immediately upon reading Sandwich's reply. Before you start mentioning that it is 3 posts after yours you might care to look and notice that it is 7 posts after his and I didn't not post between them. So why you're choosing to assert that I must have been speaking only to you is anybody's guess. Fact is that when Sandwich posted he said exactly what I suspected he'd say. That he was willing to believe it was all a set up. Why you're assuming that I don't know Sandwich well enough after the number of times we've discussed this matter to realise that he would be willing to believe it was true is beyond me too.

Fact is I am the alpha and omega of what goes on in my own head. Unless you have me hooked up to a brainscanner don't bother trying to tell me otherwise. It's insulting and obviously unprovable. You may have misunderstood me and thought I was replying to you but I have now corrected you as to what my intentions were on more than one occassion. Any further attempts to say I was talking only to you despite me explaining why this is not true will be taken by me as a direct implication that I am a liar.

It's not supposed to be a defense at all. It's a cry for equal standards to be applied to Israel and the rest of the world. And no, I'm not really expecting my cry to be answered. I just toss it out there so that hopefully, someone somewhere will start to wonder why indeed such a double-standard is applied when it comes to Israel.

Where is the international condemnation and media-wide uproar at the literally (I do not exaggerate) hundreds of rockets hitting northern Israel, hmm?

What makes you think that there isn't? Did I not call Hezbollah a bunch of wankers? Have I not insulted them several times on this thread? The fact is that Hezbollah are wankers and the world expects them to act like a bunch of wankers. So you don't get international condemnation for people acting exactly the way you'd expect. We treat Hezbollah like the criminals they are.

The reason you get international condemnation is because we expect Israel to act to a higher standard than a bunch of terrorists. You're a soverign nation not a bunch of terrorists with a stupid racist ideology. Are we being unfair by expecting you to act to the standard that requires? If you want fairness and balance then should we claim that Israel are wankers too and cease to be surprised at their general bad behaviour? Should we sanction you? Should we freeze your international accounts? Cause that's what we do to Hezbollah for their general wankeryness.

[aldo_14]

Perhaps you should read http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/middle_east/2001/israel_and_the_palestinians/default.stm if you want information about - shockingly - the current crisis.

I see nowhere on that page or in any of its articles that this may have been an intelligence foul-up or that Hezbollah was indeed using that or any adjacent buildings as a launch point. Even the article reporting the investigation gave no arguments for this; only emotional images that suggest that Israel intended to murder 50+ civilians, including children, in cold blood.

It does not report what is as yet groundless speculation (with as much evidence as claiming Israel deliberately targeted that building), no, but are you suggesting news-agencies should not show images of the true cost of this war?  And yet the article you link yourself - and I'd advise you to look at the dates - does mention exactly that 'missile base' type arguement.

EDIT2; not to mention Hezbollah is killing nowhere near the amount of civillians that Israel is, which is why Israel killing civillians will be appearing more prominently; I mean, it's not like we value one civillian life in one country over another, is it?

True, but exploding the fact that 50+ civilians died in an air raid while the survivors are utterly grief-stricken but not mentioning that several hundred residents of Haifa are being treated for shock and shrugging off Hezbollah rocket attacks into Israel shows some element of bias, no?

Exploding?!  50 people are dead, over 700 in total.  How many people do you think are being treated for shock in Beirut?  Let's get a sense of proportionality here.

(oh, and the bbc - particularly the main TV news - has given extensive coverage of the effects of Hezbollah rocket attacks, in particular upon Haifa; arguably more so than the direct effects of bombing in Beirut, as there has yet to be on-the-ground coverage of reporters running for cover from attacks as with Haifa)

That we presumed it was an IAF strike that brought down the building and killed all those innocent Lebanese, and apologized for it. But we also haven't managed to reach any sort of final conclusion on what exactly brought down the building, so I refuse to lay blame on either side.

True. To use someone else's argument from earlier, the WTC towers stood for nearly an hour after being hit, and then they collapsed. For a Lebanese building to stand for nine hours after being bombed nearly as intensely the survivors described would make that building an absolute feat of engineering. Make of it what you will, but I think there's a little more going on than what's been reported.

If it even stood for 9 hours.  Not to mention you're comparing apples with oranges to the most ridiculous degree.

I wonder, would we have this question if it was an Israeli building?

(I'm reminded of the Baghdad market blast,  actually, which some people tried to claim was down to an Iraqi rocket)

[Nuclear1]

The reason you get international condemnation is because we expect Israel to act to a higher standard than a bunch of terrorists. You're a soverign nation not a bunch of terrorists with a stupid racist ideology. Are we being unfair by expecting you to act to the standard that requires? If you want fairness and balance then should we claim that Israel are wankers too and cease to be surprised at their general bad behaviour? Should we sanction you? Should we freeze your international accounts? Cause that's what we do to Hezbollah for their general wankeryness.

Intelligence foul up != Israel sinking to the level of Hezbollah. The IAF claims that they had no prior knowledge of the civilians in the building, and I, for one, am willing to believe them. They also claim that Hezbollah was launching rockets from the same building occupied by 50+ civilians, and I believe them. Why the world is off on Israel for this incident is beyond me; they were targeting rocket launchers, and they got the rocket launchers, without prior knowledge of civilians inhabiting the buildings.

The fact is Hezbollah's wankeryness is getting Israel yelled at by the world. I don't believe Israel aimed to kill 50+ civilians in cold blood, but apparently the BBC and a lot of the rest of the world does.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah intentionally and with the full knowledge of civilian presence, fires rockets into crowded Israeli cities with the intent of creating panic and terror. The point I'm trying to make is that you can't claim that the IAF's bombing of the Qana building, which Israel had not known was inhabited by anything but Hezbollah rocket launchers, and the subsequent, accidental deaths of 50+ civilians justifies claiming that Israel is sinking to the same level as the terrorists that it's fighting. It makes no sense, and you know it.

And what do you say to the fact that the 50+ civilians hiding the building were nearly all women and children? Where were the men during this whole mess? Maybe Hezbollah knew that the building was going to collapse, and instead of evacuating all of the refugees to a different building, recruited all of the men and simply left the rest of them to die?

It does not report what is as yet groundless speculation (with as much evidence as claiming Israel deliberately targeted that building), no, but are you suggesting news-agencies should not show images of the true cost of this war?  And yet the article you link yourself - and I'd advise you to look at the dates - does mention exactly that 'missile base' type arguement.

Where? I'm not sure we're reading the same article here. I read nothing of any missile base argument anywhere in that article that I linked, nor anywhere on that page elsewhere.

[aldo_14]

Ah, citing an opinion piece on a blog as evidence of bias.  How FOX-ish.

(and this is a blog which, after a random perusal, actually praises something said by Robert Kilroy-Silk!)

[karajorma]

Intelligence foul up != Israel sinking to the level of Hezbollah.

Who said it was?

The point I was making is that as a nation Israel should be better behaved than they are. I don't have to (and in fact didn't) say that they are on the same level as Hezbollah. Hezbollah are worse. I've said it before on this thread and I'll say it again now.

However if Israel are not acting to the standards that we should expect from a nation then  they should expect widespread condemnation for it. They don't get let off the hook because they can point to someone worse.

The IAF claims that they had no prior knowledge of the civilians in the building, and I, for one, am willing to believe them. They also claim that Hezbollah was launching rockets from the same building occupied by 50+ civilians, and I believe them. Why the world is off on Israel for this incident is beyond me; they were targeting rocket launchers, and they got the rocket launchers, without prior knowledge of civilians inhabiting the buildings.

Because

1) The shouldn't be in Lebanon in the first place
2) It was their duty to know whether there were civilians in the building or not.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah intentionally and with the full knowledge of civilian presence, fires rockets into crowded Israeli cities with the intent of creating panic and terror. The point I'm trying to make is that you can't claim that the IAF's bombing of the Qana building, which Israel had not known was inhabited by anything but Hezbollah rocket launchers, and the subsequent, accidental deaths of 50+ civilians justifies claiming that Israel is sinking to the same level as the terrorists that it's fighting. It makes no sense, and you know it.

And if you re-read my post you'll notice I never did. I mearly said that they were acting like wankers and asked if we should stop being surprised and condemning them for it and simply treat them the way we treat other rogue nations?

And what do you say to the fact that the 50+ civilians hiding the building were nearly all women and children? Where were the men during this whole mess? Maybe Hezbollah knew that the building was going to collapse, and instead of evacuating all of the refugees to a different building, recruited all of the men and simply left the rest of them to die?

Surely you'll conceed the fact that it was shelled and didn't fall down might have inclined some to think that it was a good place to hide?

[Nuclear1]

Ah, citing an opinion piece on a blog as evidence of bias.  How FOX-ish.

(and this is a blog which, after a random perusal, actually praises something said by Robert Kilroy-Silk!)

You may be right, but can you prove that the BBC's coverage on this incident isn't biased? Even CNN reported the missile base argument, despite CNN being left-biased as well.

[aldo_14]

Ah, citing an opinion piece on a blog as evidence of bias.  How FOX-ish.

(and this is a blog which, after a random perusal, actually praises something said by Robert Kilroy-Silk!)

You may be right, but can you prove that the BBC's coverage on this incident isn't biased? Even CNN reported the missile base argument, despite CNN being left-biased as well.

Can you prove it is?  You're the one presuming guilt here, after all.

[Turambar]

"we all know that reality has a well known liberal bias"  -Stephen Colbert

[Sandwich]

@ Turumbar

What's the definition of a conservative?

Spoiler:

A liberal who's been mugged by reality.

Karajorma, Aldo, I have a question for you both... an honest question. Actually, it's more of a scenario, and you both are the Prime Minister(s) of Israel.

Roll the clock back a few weeks. Mortars and Kassam rockets have been bombarding Sederot for a while (the city where your Defense Minister lives, I might add). You've been responding by having the IDF target Hamas operatives throughout Gaza. One day, Gilad Shalit, an IDF soldier, is kidnapped. You've increased IDF operations in Gaza in the hope of retrieving him. Then the rockets start falling from Hezbollah positions in Lebanon, a cross-border attack is carried out by Hezbollah, and 2 more soldiers are kidnapped. The terms for the release of any of these kidnapped soldiers is the release of around one thousand Palestinians held in jails in Israel for various levels of involvement in terrorist activities.

In other words, you're somewhere around Wednesday, July 12th, 2006.

So... rockets are falling on the north, and Israel has yet to respond to this second front.

What would you do?

[karajorma]

I simply wouldn't have gotten myself into that situation in the first bloody place.

For a start you've already made the situation far worse than it had to be by forcing me to contemplate a situation where operations in Gaza were a given. It's a loaded question.

[aldo_14]

I would not have went into Gaza so early in the first place.  I believe that move essentially 'locked' Israel into this course of action.

Additionally, I would not have responded to the kidnapping by hitting civillian targets like airports, etc, due to the obvious strengthening to Hezbollah that occurs due to the inevitably high civillian casualties.

Of course, if you're asking me what I'd do as PM of Israel, then the differences would stretch back a hell of a lot further than the date of 12 July....

Unfortunately, the military response in Gaza forced Israel to respond militarily (I suspect Hamas and Hezbollah relished the chance to draw Israel into a self-defeating confrontation; whether or not they planned it long term or in the spur of the moment is more debatable and possibly irrelevant).

[Sandwich]

Well ok then, I didn't want to get too complicated here by going too far back, but sure. The "regular" status quo, then. Israel is on the regular continual alert, catching a few suicide bombers a week, every few months one slips through and goes boom. Hezbollah isn't even on the map as far as the news goes. Gaza hasn't been re-invaded, but the situation of the past year, since Israel left Gaza, stands true: Kassams are falling on Sderot. Anybody remember the Kassam that hit the kid's bed minutes after he left for school? Which caused the mayor to call for a general strike in the city, followed by a Kassam hitting an empty (due to the strike) classroom.

That's the situation you now face. Sderot, firmly in indisputed Israeli territory, is being bombarded from Gaza. Your country is under attack, and it is your responsibility to address the problem.

What do you do?

[karajorma]

Give back the West Bank. In fact I would have done that as the first act upon becoming president so that the majority of Palestinians would view me favourably.

At least that way I'd have the moral high ground. Might even get the rockets to stop falling. Would certainly get world opinion on my side.

[Rictor]

I know the question wasn't addressed to me, but I don't take issue with Israel htting military targets, whether in Gaza, the West Bank or Lebanon. But it seems to that, at least in Lebanon so far, civilain deaths have far outnumbered the hits on Hezbollah or their military equipment. Bombing infrastructure like bridges, roads, factories and so on is a) stupid and b) collective punishment, which last time I checked was illegal.

Is it possible that the Israeli military is incompetent enough to hit 5 civilian targets for every one military target it hits? I've read about the IAF bombing refugee columns which it had specifically ordered to evacuate. If the majority of the raids are against targets which make everyone suffer, that's not the same as "oops, we missed once or twice". You can bomb Hezbollah's rocket positions all day and you won't hear a peep from me, but it is the Lebanese civilians who are bearing the brunt of the attack. I don't know how or why the IAF and IDF pick their targets, but right now it seems that they're doing the equivalent of walking into a crowded room, spraying machine-gun fire in all directions, and then claiming that their actions are OK because they're were trying to hit one bad guy in the room out of 100 people and everyone else was an accident and therefore excusable. That's the way an outsider, which is most of the world, sees it.

[vyper]

If you thought it was winding down, you thought wrong:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/5233518.stm

The Israeli cabinet has agreed to widen the country's ground offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

The decision, made at a closed door session, received unanimous approval, according to a senior political source.

[Rictor]

Who else thinks that this isn't really about Hezbollah at all? It might be that the US told Israel to attack Lebanon, hoping to draw Iran into doing something stupid which could be construed as a provocation and unleash either the US or Israel to strike Iran's nuclear facilities?

What makes me think this is that, firstly, Israel's political and military decision-makers can't possibly be stupid enough to believe that they can actually destroy Hezbollah when they had two decades to do just that and failed. They have too much popular support and they aren't pushovers like the Palestinians. Secondly, this whole thing seems out of the blue. Haven't Hezbollah and Israel been having little tit-for-tats ever since Israel withdrew in 2000? Why this particular incident? Why should this specific action trigger an war?

If this is the case, the US is stupid for contemplating it and Israel is stupid for going along. If anything goes down in Iran, the US has 150,000 moving targets in a sea of pissed off Shia looking for martyrdom, and that's not counting the actual Iranian response. And Israel can't hope to hit Iran and get out unscathed. Iran may not have as modern a conventional military as Israel, but they are far, far from defenseless. I won't feel sorry for the States, since they have it coming, but I can't see how it's in Israel best interest to poke the hornet's nest.

[Nuclear1]

At least that way I'd have the moral high ground. Might even get the rockets to stop falling. Would certainly get world opinion on my side.

Yes, you'd have the moral high ground. No, you still wouldn't have the world opinion on your side; the world simply doesn't like Israel in the first place. Europe created it to keep the Jews out of Europe, which they had been attempting to do for hundreds of years. The Arabs sure don't like them either.

What makes you think that the bombings will stop if Israel gives back the West Bank? The Palestinians aren't just going to forgive and forget and be happy with the land they have, after all. The conflict goes much, much deeper than just the West Bank and Gaza; it's anti-Semitism. Arabs want Israel wiped off the map, period. No giving back land, just completely gone.

Can you prove it is?  You're the one presuming guilt here, after all.

Nowhere in that article or any other article on the current conflict does the BBC report that Israel claimed that the Qana bombing was based on reports that Hezbollah was launching rockets from that building. Every single article, as far as I've read, focus entirely on the viewpoint that Israel bombed a building and killed 54 civilians in cold blood. Every other news source (CNN, local Israeli news, FOX) report that the Israelis believed that Hezbollah was firing rockets from that building. Unless BBC TV said something along this line, then I'll have to assume that this is either very poor journalism or bias.