Quote:Original post by Iftah
ahh its good to be home.
Is everything intact? Did the food in the refrigerator spoil?
Quote:Original post by Iftah
LessBread,
Hizballah like clockwork has attacked Israeli outposts and border patrol every 2-4 months. Sniping and mortars and somtimes rockets+kidnapping attempts were repeated starting back a few months after Israel withdrew. Israel did not respond by force to the first Hizballah attacks, so don't say so fast "military first".
Um, follow the link in my last response to Dmytry. Israel did indeed respond with force to the attacks described there - air attacks and artillery fire.
Quote:Original post by Iftah
The Beirut bombing was only of a Hizballah owned buildings, in regular days the buildings are surrounded by fence and guarded with Hizballah guards so that no one will enter. Under the buildings massive bunkers held who knows what, but it wasn't civilians. The Hizballah "civilian" buildings that had their families living there were not bombed (for example near the hospital that was raided, I forgot the name of the place). Whatever deaths in Beirut are Hizballah men. They may not be all Hizballah warriors, but the bombings there are not random or evil but neccessity and result of having your army base of operations inside a city.
How do you know about the massive bunkers under those buildings if the guards don't let anyone in? And while maybe on that occaision civilian buildings weren't bombed, there were far too many reports and pictures of demolished apartment buildings during the course of the conflict to believe that civilian buildings were never bombed. Article 52.-General protection of civilian objects 3. In case of doubt whether an object which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective contribution to military action, it shall be presumed not to be so used. [1].
Quote:Original post by Iftah
Note that outside some explosion noise and occasional power out, the Beirut life continued as normal, which is not the case in any northen Israeli town. The ambulance bombing was obviously mistaken to be some rocket transfer van, surly you don't believe ambulance would be targeted on purpose.
Continued as normal? I don't think so. That's kind of a glib thing to say actually. I went over the ambulance attacks quite a lot already. As I said back then, once or twice, even three times, I can believe it was an accident, but not 10 times.
Quote:Original post by IftahQuote:
As I wrote previously, they should be proud that they survived the air attacks and they held off the ground assault. If you want me to go on, they should also be proud that their indiscriminant rocket attacks killed more soldiers than civilians - which is something that the Israelis can't say about their supposedly accurate bombs. Israel has ignored the international community before, it it wanted to continue with it's ground offensive, it would have. You're obviously missing part of the picture.
wrong wrong wrong (is there any truthful senstence there?)
Hizballah did not win by military force or by Israeli civilian pressure (as it hoped), it won the world PR and its the world pressure that made Israel stop, same way as world pressure made Israel stop in 1967, 1973, and almost every military operation Israel has ever stopped. Hizballah pretty much begged for ceasefire from day 2 of the war and Israel wanted to postpone it as much as possible, any passing day was better for Israel. Read carefuly the link you posted "[3]" and you will see its the world pressure that made the difference. Interesting enough there was no world pressure on USA in Afganistan which had many air bombings as well, why didn't USA attempt to solve its problems with AlQueda with diplomatic means?
If world pressure mattered, the July 12 abduction would have unfolded along the lines of the May 28 cross border exchanges. "The answers they got didn't satisfy them. They were told that world public opinion wouldn't tolerate it," he [Yannay] says. That doesn't prove anything. That's what Yannay says he was told, but that doesn't mean that he was told the truth. Afghanistan was different because of 9/11. As for negotiating with Al Qaeda, Bush gave bin Laden what he wanted, US pulls out of Saudi Arabia, so there was no need for diplomatic means. It's also been reported that Bush turned down the Taliban's offer to hand over bin Laden: How Bush Was Offered Bin Laden and Blew It. It seems that having a bad guy on the loose is more politically useful than not.
Quote:Original post by Iftah
One Hizballah rocket had a (un)lucky shot that landed in the middle of soldiers group killing 12 (and they were not in an army base but in open ground near civilian city), the rest of the soldiers causlties died in close combat (except on the boat). I don't believe you are still protecting the firing of rockets, thats the same as protecting 9/11. I guess BinLaden should be proud. By the way, as I said the petrochemical industry near Haifa is more dangerous than firing into civilian neighborhoods, as for example one factory may contain 100 tons of amonia and tens of thousands would die from the fumes if it was hit.
What I'm saying is simply that the rockets were not all targetted at civilians. As for OBL, he accomplished what he set out to do and he probably is proud of it. I agree that hitting a petrochemical facility could well have produced far far greater casualties. If that had happened, Israel would have won the PR war.
Quote:Original post by Iftah
Perhaps you want Israel to respond in the same way it is attacked? Do you want Israel to sponser/ignore an organization that would shoot rockets into Lebanese cities and kidnap Lebanese soldiers/civilians?
I said early on that I wanted Israel to respond in the limited way it did back in May. Your reverse formulation of the situation isn't correct as it assumes that the Lebanese government sponsored Hezbollah. It seems to me that the reverse would be to sponsor an organization Lebanon that fired rockets into Syria. At any rate, Israel has sponsored a militia in Lebanon before, the South Lebanon Army. Israel has also supported the Kurds against Iran as well. And Israel has also kidnapped Lebanese civilians, remember Nasrallah the grocer and his family?
Quote:Original post by Iftah
The way I see it Israel has these choices:
1. diplomatic attempt = ignoring Hizballah's occasional sniping / kidnapping / rockets, Lebanon and the world sighs, cycle repeating 4 months later with more force to Hizballah.
2. weak military response against Hizballah outposts = same as above
3. strong military response = (slow) grinding of Hizballah infrastructure and men, Lebanese civilians hurt and Lebanese infrastructure hurt. The world and Lebanon finally sees Hizballah as a problem and things change.
It seems to me that with this last episode #3 back fired. Instead of seeing Hezbollah as the problem, the world is seeing Israel as the problem.
Quote:Original post by Iftah
If the Lebanese/UN would do their part of the resolution (forcing embargo, making buffer zone, disarming) there would be no need for the Commando raid (which was to stop Hizballah rearming). The keyword here is "need" - we do not favour any military operations we do not need for safety, hence the self defense.
It's always claimed to be self-defense.
