Allow me to be the suggest that as a matter of security, and of principle it is absolutely imperative that we dump Israel. That rectifatory land-grab known as the Israeli “state” is a liability in every sense of the word. Sure, some claim that it’s nice to have a political ally in the middle east, but I know that many of the other governments would be more amenable to the US if we’d stop giving Israel a carte blanche, to do as she pleases. Israel is a gangrenous limb that needs to be amputated from all aspects of American foreign policy. It would be time to start treating her as a rogue nation if we weren’t so responsible for what she’s become.
“Amir Peretz, defence minister, said his forces would no longer allow Hizbollah guerrillas to occupy positions along the southern Lebanese border, in remarks that implied the re-creation of the “buffer-zone” that Israel occupied until it’s withdrawal from Lebanon six years ago.(via FT.com)”
Take your lumps, Israel. When you send your boys into combat (and I’d wager they were operating somewhere they probably shouldn’t have been, but I might be mistaken), you need to expect this sort of outcome. Soldiers die. Soldiers are taken prisoner. To turn around and use it as an excuse to indiscriminately bomb a civilian airport, and the surrounding neighborhoods, well, that’s pretty much what I’d call terrorism. I’m sick of euphemisms.
I have a feeling, that if Israel didn’t believe they had the unquestioned power of the United States military behind it, she would be much less likely to engage herself in hostilities. After all, she seems more than willing and able to fight her own battles. And we need to let her do this – it is neither our place, nor our responsibility to police the world, to right past wrongs from a hundred years ago or more. Besides, if anyone needs to be done right, it’s the Palestinians, whose rights were unanimously ignored at Versailles, when the Western allied powers basically drew a bunch of arbitrary lines on the globe and said to the Jews, “Here, you like the desert? How about this nice piece of ocean-front property?”
“What we are saying is that the prisoners in our hands will not return to Israel except through indirect negotiations and the exchange of prisoners,” …The two soldiers were safe, [Nasrallah] added, and being held in a “far corner of Lebanon…If they are thinking about military operations to recover them they are dreaming.”
Good for you, Lebanon. It’s only all too unfortunate that you’re the perennial scapegoat of Israeli aggression. I used to understand whatever measures we might want to take to assist them in protecting their sovereignty, but even that, I think is questionable these days. You cannot go to war with a nation when your enemies are individual, radical ideologues. When a fringe group of militant Palestinians with Lebanese passports strike out against you, the only rational response, is of course, to rain fire upon apartment buildings in Beirut. Charming.
Finally someone else calls out Israel for what it is an illegitmate bully of a government. Like I said in my blog, 13th largest military on earth for an area the size of New Jersey and for being the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) they sure perform alot of offensive operations. Freedom to Palestine and Lebanon!