Why Israel Fights
Rue D'Awakening
Posts: 143
WHY ISRAEL FIGHTS.
Drawing the Line
by Yossi Klein Halevi
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 07.26.06
Three times in the last century, the Jewish people has found itself on the front line against totalitarian ideologies with aspirations to rule the world, and which defined the Jewish people as its primary obstacle in fulfilling that goal. For Nazism, the Jew was not only the source of racial impurity but inventor of conscience, crippling humanity's survival instincts in an amoral world. For Soviet communism, the Jew was the source of capitalism, and Zionism the front line of imperialism. And now, for fundamentalist Islam, the Jew is the satanic enemy, and the Jewish state an abomination against God that must be destroyed.
Though Israeli officials are calling the conflict with Hezbollah and Hamas an "operation," it is, in fact, a war. Ultimately, the war will transcend its Iranian proxies and engage Iran itself. One crucial result must be the destruction of Iran's nuclear capability, which would provide the religious genocidalists with the ability to turn theology into practice. Imagine Israel confronting a Hezbollah backed by a nuclear Iran. Would we be able to defend our northern border knowing that an attack on Hezbollah could provoke an Iranian nuclear attack against Tel Aviv? That prospect is not inconceivable: Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad believes that the Muslim messianic age is about to be inaugurated by the destruction of Israel. Certainly Israel has the capacity to deliver an overwhelming second strike. But the balance of terror that worked during the cold war against the Soviet Union may fail against an enemy that welcomes death as a prelude to eternal life. A nuclear Iran could be the ultimate suicide bomber.
The war of the missiles in Lebanon and in Gaza is actually the second stage of the war that began six years ago. Erroneously, self-defeatingly, Israelis accepted the Palestinian terminology, and called the wave of Islamist suicide bombings that started in September 2000 "the second intifada." Unlike the intifada of the late 1980s, however, which united Palestinian Christians and Muslims against the occupation, the war that began in 2000 has been led by Islamists, after Israel tried to end the occupation. Not coincidentally, there have been no Christian suicide bombers. The Palestinian cause had shifted from national struggle to jihad.
Nevertheless, some insist on distinguishing between Hezbollah and Hamas. While Hezbollah is an operational extension of the Shia Iranian revolution, Hamas, they argue, represents the national aspirations of the Palestinian people. In fact, Hamas represents the undoing of Palestinian national aspirations. For Hamas, a Palestinian state is merely a means to an end: the resurrection of the medieval Caliphate and the transformation of the Middle East into a single Islamist state. The rise of Hamas, then, has completed the process, which began with the suicide bombings, of Islamizing the conflict. The so-called second intifada has destroyed the achievement of the first intifada, which convinced a majority of Israelis that former Prime Minister Golda Meir had been wrong to insist there was no Palestinian people and that a distinct Palestinian identity had indeed emerged. In rejecting mere nationalism, Hamas is returning the Palestinians to their pre-national consciousness, when Palestinians were part of an amorphous Arab or Muslim identity. The first casualty of the jihad, then, has been a viable Palestinian national identity, and, with it, the possibility of a viable Palestinian state.
What unites Shia Hezbollah and Sunni Hamas is the theology of genocide. Both organizations preach that the Holocaust never happened, even as they actively plan the next one. According to the Hamas Covenant, every ill in the world, from the French Revolution to the two world wars, was provoked by the Jews. For its part, Hezbollah's Al Manar TV station spread the story that the Mossad was behind September 11 and warned 4,000 Jews who worked in the Twin Towers to stay home that day--a calumny that was accepted, according to polls, by majorities throughout the Muslim world.
The grievance of the Islamists isn't only that they were conquered and occupied but that they have failed, so far, to conquer and occupy. Like Hezbollah, Hamas won't "moderate" with the responsibility of power. To believe otherwise is to underestimate the power of religion. For Hamas is not a political movement but a faith. And for Hamas to abandon its goal of Israel's destruction is to commit heresy against the core of that faith. Religious change, even among fundamentalists, is surely possible; but it is a process measured not in months but in decades, or centuries.
In targeting Lebanon and Gaza, Israel is sending a simultaneous message: It is time for the Arab world to take responsibility for its actions. What Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora share is a helplessness--to some extent self-inflicted--against the terrorists in their midst. In large measure, the Oslo process failed because the international community allowed Palestinians to continue to act as victims, rather than as responsible peace partners prepared to exploit the extraordinary circumstances they enjoyed for creating a state. Those circumstances included virtually unlimited international political and financial support, and the willingness of a majority of Israelis--induced, in part, by a justifiable guilty conscience--to consider previously unthinkable scenarios, like ceding part of Jerusalem to Yasir Arafat. Imagine what the Tibetans or the Kurds could have done with that level of political goodwill and foreign aid. Indeed, billions of dollars in international aid have gone to the Palestinian Authority. Perhaps the greatest defeat the Palestinians inflicted on themselves was to lose the patience of at least part of the international community and, most of all, the Israeli guilty conscience.
Yet many continue to indulge Palestinian rejectionism. Astonishingly, Israel still needs to prove that it offered a credible and contiguous Palestinian state at Camp David in July 2000, and not, as Palestinian leaders put it, a series of "Bantustans." What doubt remained from Camp David should have been dispelled five months later when Israel accepted President Clinton's proposals--ceding almost the entirety of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and three-quarters of the Old City of Jerusalem. The Palestinian counter-offer was suicide bombings.
The tendency of much of the international community to excuse every Palestinian failure has helped convince Palestinians that victimization--even when it is self-willed--affords immunity from responsibility. Many foreign journalists with whom I've spoken in recent weeks accept the Palestinian argument that the rocket attacks from the 1967 Gaza border into sovereign Israel are legitimate, or at least understandable, given that Israel continues to occupy the West Bank. Yet that argument ignores the historic Palestinian failure to exploit the Gaza withdrawal, which created the first sovereign Palestinian territory. Had the Palestinians shown the most minimal effort at statebuilding--for example, applying foreign aid to rehabilitate refugee camps--the Israeli public would have supported a return to the negotiating table. Instead, the Palestinian national movement proved again that it is more keen on subverting the Jewish state than on creating a Palestinian state. And so one more opportunity for a negotiated end to the conflict was lost.
In conversations I've had over the years with Palestinians, invariably my interlocutor would offer a version of the following: You and I, we are little people. The "big ones" are only interested in themselves. They don't care if we suffer. I used to find that sentiment moving, an attempt by Palestinians to create a common humanity with Israelis. But now I see it as an expression of self-induced helplessness, precisely why the Palestinians and the Lebanese have allowed our common tragedy to reach this point.
Israel's attack on Lebanon, holding it responsible for what occurs in its territory, is not a violation of Lebanese sovereignty but an affirmation of it. And in targeting the democratically elected Hamas government, Israel is telling the Palestinians that there is a price to pay for empowering the theology of genocide. If the only alternative to a corrupt Fatah that Palestinian society can generate is a non-corrupt Hamas, then Palestine will become a pariah. Israel's policy, then, is to stop patronizing the Lebanese and the Palestinians and relate to them as adults responsible for their fate.
Some in the Arab world are beginning to understand this. In an article published in the Kuwaiti newspaper Arab Times, the editor-in-chief, Ahmed Al Jarallah, wrote:
This war was inevitable as the Lebanese government couldn't bring Hezbollah within its authority and make it work for the interests of Lebanon. Similarly leader of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas has been unable to rein in the Hamas movement. Unfortunately we must admit that in such a war the only way to get rid of 'these irregular phenomena' is what Israel is doing. The operations of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon are in the interest of the people of Arab countries and the international community.
The war, then, is not only inciting Islamists, but may, potentially, embolden moderates. The extraordinary Saudi--along with Egyptian and Jordanian--condemnation of Hezbollah marks the first time in any of Israel's wars that a significant chunk of the Arab world has publicly blamed Arab aggression for starting hostilities. This could create an opening for a tacit Israeli alliance with moderate Arabs against the Islamist, and particularly Iranian, threat. Just as we need to be resolute against the pathologies of the Middle East, so we need to be open to its changes. The responsibility of the people of Israel is not only to be on the front line against terror but to be on the front line for reconciliation. Not only to help stop evil, but to help empower the good.
So far, Israel enjoys three crucial strategic advantages in this war: unequivocal American support, a divided Arab world, and, most crucial of all, a united Israeli people. Arguably not since the 1973 Yom Kippur War has Israel been as determined in war as it is today. Though some restlessness has begun--an antiwar rally in Tel Aviv drew 2,500 people--most of the left supports the invasion. Indeed, Peace Now and other Zionist left-wing groups stayed away from the Tel Aviv rally. One reason for the absence of serious left-wing opposition is the fact that Amir Peretz, our most dovish mainstream politician, happens to be running the war as defense minister. Peretz's ideological credentials are compensation for his lack of military ones: Just as Ariel Sharon helped insure broad support for withdrawal from Gaza, so Peretz is insuring broad support for the reinvasion of Gaza and Lebanon.
Most of the left understands that this is a war, in part, for the viability of the concept of territorial withdrawal. For years the left assured the Israeli public that, in the event of withdrawal, Israel would resist any subsequent aggression with determination, unity, and international legitimacy. In Lebanon and Gaza, then, two fronts from which Israel has already withdrawn to the green line (Israel also withdrew to the green line on the Egyptian border in 1982), that premise is now being tested. If the left defects from the war effort, triggering international pressure, then the Israeli public will rightly despair of future withdrawals.
Most of all, this is a war for the viability of Israeli deterrence. After Israel unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon in May 2000, Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah described the Jewish state as a "spider web": Just as a spider web seems solid from a distance but disintegrates when swiped, so Israel will collapse under the pressure of Arab resolve. The "spider web" speech, as it came to be known, is very much in the mind of Israelis today as we belatedly try to restore our lost deterrence, without which the Jewish state will not survive long in the Middle East.
Israel tried to avoid this war, to the point of endangering its most basic credibility. For months we allowed Palestinian groups to shell Israeli towns on the Gaza border with virtual immunity. And for six years we turned away as Iran supplied Hezbollah with thousands of long-range rockets and built a vast infrastructure literally meters across our border. When three Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah in October 2000, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak didn't massively retaliate, preferring to negotiate a prisoner exchange. Among some Israeli journalists, Nasrallah was considered a "responsible" leader, capable of insuring quiet in the north, rather than biding his time and awaiting instructions from Iran to act.
The Jewish people is once again being forced to act as a brake against evil. This is not a repetition of the first Lebanon war, but a return to our consensus wars of survival--not a Vietnam moment but a World War II moment. That is why Israel fights, and why it will win.
Drawing the Line
by Yossi Klein Halevi
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 07.26.06
Three times in the last century, the Jewish people has found itself on the front line against totalitarian ideologies with aspirations to rule the world, and which defined the Jewish people as its primary obstacle in fulfilling that goal. For Nazism, the Jew was not only the source of racial impurity but inventor of conscience, crippling humanity's survival instincts in an amoral world. For Soviet communism, the Jew was the source of capitalism, and Zionism the front line of imperialism. And now, for fundamentalist Islam, the Jew is the satanic enemy, and the Jewish state an abomination against God that must be destroyed.
Though Israeli officials are calling the conflict with Hezbollah and Hamas an "operation," it is, in fact, a war. Ultimately, the war will transcend its Iranian proxies and engage Iran itself. One crucial result must be the destruction of Iran's nuclear capability, which would provide the religious genocidalists with the ability to turn theology into practice. Imagine Israel confronting a Hezbollah backed by a nuclear Iran. Would we be able to defend our northern border knowing that an attack on Hezbollah could provoke an Iranian nuclear attack against Tel Aviv? That prospect is not inconceivable: Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad believes that the Muslim messianic age is about to be inaugurated by the destruction of Israel. Certainly Israel has the capacity to deliver an overwhelming second strike. But the balance of terror that worked during the cold war against the Soviet Union may fail against an enemy that welcomes death as a prelude to eternal life. A nuclear Iran could be the ultimate suicide bomber.
The war of the missiles in Lebanon and in Gaza is actually the second stage of the war that began six years ago. Erroneously, self-defeatingly, Israelis accepted the Palestinian terminology, and called the wave of Islamist suicide bombings that started in September 2000 "the second intifada." Unlike the intifada of the late 1980s, however, which united Palestinian Christians and Muslims against the occupation, the war that began in 2000 has been led by Islamists, after Israel tried to end the occupation. Not coincidentally, there have been no Christian suicide bombers. The Palestinian cause had shifted from national struggle to jihad.
Nevertheless, some insist on distinguishing between Hezbollah and Hamas. While Hezbollah is an operational extension of the Shia Iranian revolution, Hamas, they argue, represents the national aspirations of the Palestinian people. In fact, Hamas represents the undoing of Palestinian national aspirations. For Hamas, a Palestinian state is merely a means to an end: the resurrection of the medieval Caliphate and the transformation of the Middle East into a single Islamist state. The rise of Hamas, then, has completed the process, which began with the suicide bombings, of Islamizing the conflict. The so-called second intifada has destroyed the achievement of the first intifada, which convinced a majority of Israelis that former Prime Minister Golda Meir had been wrong to insist there was no Palestinian people and that a distinct Palestinian identity had indeed emerged. In rejecting mere nationalism, Hamas is returning the Palestinians to their pre-national consciousness, when Palestinians were part of an amorphous Arab or Muslim identity. The first casualty of the jihad, then, has been a viable Palestinian national identity, and, with it, the possibility of a viable Palestinian state.
What unites Shia Hezbollah and Sunni Hamas is the theology of genocide. Both organizations preach that the Holocaust never happened, even as they actively plan the next one. According to the Hamas Covenant, every ill in the world, from the French Revolution to the two world wars, was provoked by the Jews. For its part, Hezbollah's Al Manar TV station spread the story that the Mossad was behind September 11 and warned 4,000 Jews who worked in the Twin Towers to stay home that day--a calumny that was accepted, according to polls, by majorities throughout the Muslim world.
The grievance of the Islamists isn't only that they were conquered and occupied but that they have failed, so far, to conquer and occupy. Like Hezbollah, Hamas won't "moderate" with the responsibility of power. To believe otherwise is to underestimate the power of religion. For Hamas is not a political movement but a faith. And for Hamas to abandon its goal of Israel's destruction is to commit heresy against the core of that faith. Religious change, even among fundamentalists, is surely possible; but it is a process measured not in months but in decades, or centuries.
In targeting Lebanon and Gaza, Israel is sending a simultaneous message: It is time for the Arab world to take responsibility for its actions. What Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora share is a helplessness--to some extent self-inflicted--against the terrorists in their midst. In large measure, the Oslo process failed because the international community allowed Palestinians to continue to act as victims, rather than as responsible peace partners prepared to exploit the extraordinary circumstances they enjoyed for creating a state. Those circumstances included virtually unlimited international political and financial support, and the willingness of a majority of Israelis--induced, in part, by a justifiable guilty conscience--to consider previously unthinkable scenarios, like ceding part of Jerusalem to Yasir Arafat. Imagine what the Tibetans or the Kurds could have done with that level of political goodwill and foreign aid. Indeed, billions of dollars in international aid have gone to the Palestinian Authority. Perhaps the greatest defeat the Palestinians inflicted on themselves was to lose the patience of at least part of the international community and, most of all, the Israeli guilty conscience.
Yet many continue to indulge Palestinian rejectionism. Astonishingly, Israel still needs to prove that it offered a credible and contiguous Palestinian state at Camp David in July 2000, and not, as Palestinian leaders put it, a series of "Bantustans." What doubt remained from Camp David should have been dispelled five months later when Israel accepted President Clinton's proposals--ceding almost the entirety of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and three-quarters of the Old City of Jerusalem. The Palestinian counter-offer was suicide bombings.
The tendency of much of the international community to excuse every Palestinian failure has helped convince Palestinians that victimization--even when it is self-willed--affords immunity from responsibility. Many foreign journalists with whom I've spoken in recent weeks accept the Palestinian argument that the rocket attacks from the 1967 Gaza border into sovereign Israel are legitimate, or at least understandable, given that Israel continues to occupy the West Bank. Yet that argument ignores the historic Palestinian failure to exploit the Gaza withdrawal, which created the first sovereign Palestinian territory. Had the Palestinians shown the most minimal effort at statebuilding--for example, applying foreign aid to rehabilitate refugee camps--the Israeli public would have supported a return to the negotiating table. Instead, the Palestinian national movement proved again that it is more keen on subverting the Jewish state than on creating a Palestinian state. And so one more opportunity for a negotiated end to the conflict was lost.
In conversations I've had over the years with Palestinians, invariably my interlocutor would offer a version of the following: You and I, we are little people. The "big ones" are only interested in themselves. They don't care if we suffer. I used to find that sentiment moving, an attempt by Palestinians to create a common humanity with Israelis. But now I see it as an expression of self-induced helplessness, precisely why the Palestinians and the Lebanese have allowed our common tragedy to reach this point.
Israel's attack on Lebanon, holding it responsible for what occurs in its territory, is not a violation of Lebanese sovereignty but an affirmation of it. And in targeting the democratically elected Hamas government, Israel is telling the Palestinians that there is a price to pay for empowering the theology of genocide. If the only alternative to a corrupt Fatah that Palestinian society can generate is a non-corrupt Hamas, then Palestine will become a pariah. Israel's policy, then, is to stop patronizing the Lebanese and the Palestinians and relate to them as adults responsible for their fate.
Some in the Arab world are beginning to understand this. In an article published in the Kuwaiti newspaper Arab Times, the editor-in-chief, Ahmed Al Jarallah, wrote:
This war was inevitable as the Lebanese government couldn't bring Hezbollah within its authority and make it work for the interests of Lebanon. Similarly leader of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas has been unable to rein in the Hamas movement. Unfortunately we must admit that in such a war the only way to get rid of 'these irregular phenomena' is what Israel is doing. The operations of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon are in the interest of the people of Arab countries and the international community.
The war, then, is not only inciting Islamists, but may, potentially, embolden moderates. The extraordinary Saudi--along with Egyptian and Jordanian--condemnation of Hezbollah marks the first time in any of Israel's wars that a significant chunk of the Arab world has publicly blamed Arab aggression for starting hostilities. This could create an opening for a tacit Israeli alliance with moderate Arabs against the Islamist, and particularly Iranian, threat. Just as we need to be resolute against the pathologies of the Middle East, so we need to be open to its changes. The responsibility of the people of Israel is not only to be on the front line against terror but to be on the front line for reconciliation. Not only to help stop evil, but to help empower the good.
So far, Israel enjoys three crucial strategic advantages in this war: unequivocal American support, a divided Arab world, and, most crucial of all, a united Israeli people. Arguably not since the 1973 Yom Kippur War has Israel been as determined in war as it is today. Though some restlessness has begun--an antiwar rally in Tel Aviv drew 2,500 people--most of the left supports the invasion. Indeed, Peace Now and other Zionist left-wing groups stayed away from the Tel Aviv rally. One reason for the absence of serious left-wing opposition is the fact that Amir Peretz, our most dovish mainstream politician, happens to be running the war as defense minister. Peretz's ideological credentials are compensation for his lack of military ones: Just as Ariel Sharon helped insure broad support for withdrawal from Gaza, so Peretz is insuring broad support for the reinvasion of Gaza and Lebanon.
Most of the left understands that this is a war, in part, for the viability of the concept of territorial withdrawal. For years the left assured the Israeli public that, in the event of withdrawal, Israel would resist any subsequent aggression with determination, unity, and international legitimacy. In Lebanon and Gaza, then, two fronts from which Israel has already withdrawn to the green line (Israel also withdrew to the green line on the Egyptian border in 1982), that premise is now being tested. If the left defects from the war effort, triggering international pressure, then the Israeli public will rightly despair of future withdrawals.
Most of all, this is a war for the viability of Israeli deterrence. After Israel unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon in May 2000, Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah described the Jewish state as a "spider web": Just as a spider web seems solid from a distance but disintegrates when swiped, so Israel will collapse under the pressure of Arab resolve. The "spider web" speech, as it came to be known, is very much in the mind of Israelis today as we belatedly try to restore our lost deterrence, without which the Jewish state will not survive long in the Middle East.
Israel tried to avoid this war, to the point of endangering its most basic credibility. For months we allowed Palestinian groups to shell Israeli towns on the Gaza border with virtual immunity. And for six years we turned away as Iran supplied Hezbollah with thousands of long-range rockets and built a vast infrastructure literally meters across our border. When three Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah in October 2000, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak didn't massively retaliate, preferring to negotiate a prisoner exchange. Among some Israeli journalists, Nasrallah was considered a "responsible" leader, capable of insuring quiet in the north, rather than biding his time and awaiting instructions from Iran to act.
The Jewish people is once again being forced to act as a brake against evil. This is not a repetition of the first Lebanon war, but a return to our consensus wars of survival--not a Vietnam moment but a World War II moment. That is why Israel fights, and why it will win.
Anti Zionism is not Anti Semitism
Most antizionists are antisemites
Most antizionists are antisemites
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Comments
Holocaust and WW2 are not reasons to oppress and kill a race of people who populated the lands long before the state of Israel existed.
Three times in the last century? There is a reason for that, and the reason is that until the last century, there were virtually no jews in the land known today as israel!!!
Less than 50,000 lived there in 1890. 7 Million now.
So because the white peoples of the west, including Russia, Germany, the UK and the USA have constantly fought against the jews on their territories, have driven them off and murdered them and oppressed them, blamed them for al the Wests shortcomings (and before you yanks say hang on we didn't do anything to the Jews, look at the elections fought in the 1930s where FDR's opponents ran on anti-war isolationist policies, "the jewish war." Wilkie called it.) now the palestinians, who HAVE ALWAYS LIVED THERE, mostly at peace with the small tribes of jews that lived there for thousands of years, have to suffer for the oppression wrought on the jews by other nations?
Give me a break. What a piece of shit article that is. Really uniformed, and anti-palestinian in the extreme.
Sick, sick stuff.
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Viva Zapatista!
-jews have had an uninterrupted presence in israel for thousands of years, no matter what the size of the population was at any given time.
-israel was not largely populated by arabs until after the arab invasion in the 7th century.
-palestinians were never a distinct nationality until they started claiming to be so in response to jewish nationalism. if you look at statements by arab leaders as recent as the 1950's they consider the word 'palestine' a zionist invention.
-the arab population of palestine before 1948 was comprised of large clans, like anywhere else in the arab middle east before the artificial states were created by brittain and france.
-there is proof in both "from time immemorial" (the author's name escapes me now) and "righteous victims" by benny morris that the arab population in palestine grew faster than its birth-rate in the early 20th century because of arab immigration to palestine in response to the economic opportunities created by the growing jewish community there.
-arab and muslim opposition to the legitimate right of jews to have sovereignty stems in large part from ethnocentric aspirations of ethnic and religious supremacy in the middle east.
Most antizionists are antisemites
Funny how what works for the goose, is very rarely good for the gander, when it comes to some people around here.
www.myspace.com/jensvad
However, Israel should stop occupation, retire within the pre-'67 boarder, and stop the human rights abuses.
www.amnesty.org.uk
what is a reasonable response to israel holding 100's of lebanese prisoners without charge for years? ... just like the IDF will never abandon a soldier - why is it that others cannot do the same?
you are painfully naive if you think hezbollah did what it did on july 12th simply to free more prisoners. july 12th was supposed to be the day that iran responded to the EU's incentive offer on its nuclear (weapons) program. hezbollah is merely an instrument of iranian foreign policy.
the israeli response is not simply to recover the missing soldiers. the israeli response is to nip the hezbollah problem in the bud. israel doesn't need to be squeezed by iranian proxies like it already is when iran has nuclear weapons.
Most antizionists are antisemites
and you are not answering the question ... it has nothing to do with motive - but it has everything to do with justnesss ...
again - why can israel hold all these prisoners without charge??
Haha you're the naive on my friend.
The hezbollah problem? Ok. why, what, how and where did 'the hezbollah problem' originate?
and to what privieleged information are you aware that states Iran has nuclear weapons?
And if they did, how many times has Iran attacked Israel, in history?
I see the Israelis are, for the most part, like their American counterparts, scared litle sheep over terror.
Laughable, if innocent people werent dying to fuel this fear mongering.
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Viva Zapatista!
hezbollah has held israelis without charge. and unlike israel, hezbollah does not let family members or the red cross visit the captives. hezbollah has also killed people in captivity.
you wouldn't know justness if it bit you on the ass.
Most antizionists are antisemites
yeah, now why do you think israel might be a little paranoid of a group/ entire region that wants them eliminated? Both sides are killing and Israel has made it clear they want HEZBOLLAH taken care of. Hezbollah and other terrorist groups has made it clear they want Israelis taken care of. You seem to think that hezbollah is just hanging out at the Ritz and is being attacked for no reason at all.
i know where the hezbollah problem originated from. let's see if you can remember how the hezbollah problem was supposed to have been resolved by lebanon and the UN after israel withdrew from lebanon, thus canceling out hezbollahs entire supposed reason for being. (unless their reason for being is in reality what you refuse to acknowledge).
Iran has attacked israel through its proxies, hezbollah, hamas, islamic jihad, and the palestinian authority. look up the karine a.
iran was also behind the terrorist bombings in buenos aires in 1992 and 1994, the latter of an argeninian jewish community center, the largest terror attack in argentina's history. last year an argentinian judge indicted IRANIAN diplomats for the attack.
also pay a litle bit of attention to what iranian leaders have been saying ever since the islamic revolution, not just since ahmadinejad was elected.
"israelis are scared sheep over terror" he said, from under his rock in quiet england.
Most antizionists are antisemites
how many israelis are held by hezbollah without charge?
and the phrasing in your response speaks volumes about your idea of justness ...