Israel/Gaza

yosi wrote:

B, I get that you want to believe that Israel is just out to massacre Palestinian babies, but I'm curious to know how it is that you can explain that Israel is conducting its military affairs vis a vis the Palestinians in the utterly callous and indescriminate manner you describe and yet is at the same time managing to be so precise in its attacks that it is able to maintain an unheard of, best in the world, civilian to combatant casualty ratio of 1 to 30?

It maintains the above ratio by listing practically every murdered Palestinian of fighting age, or otherwise, as a combatant. I.e, It lists children, and policemen as combatants, as it did during the Gaza massacre of 2008-2009.

http://edition.presstv.ir/detail.fa/89577.html
The Israeli IDF has updated its casualty figures for the war on the Gaza Strip and suggests that only 309 Palestinians killed were innocent civilians, the Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported on Wednesday.

The IDF claims that the number comes from the 1,249 Palestinian fatalities it identified from the 1,370 it acknowledges as dead.

The figures presented by Israel are flatly contradicted by those presented in the latest UN human rights report issued on March 17.

According to the conservative report, 1,434 Palestinians lost their lives in the war on the blockaded Gaza Strip, 235 of whom were combatants.

The UN puts the number of civilian fatalities at 960, including 288 children and 121 women.

The report, while dismissing the legality of the Israeli war on the Palestinian territory, concedes that the grave war crimes committed in Gaza necessitate accountability and criminal prosecution.

Israeli war crimes include the use of deadly white phosphorus shells in densely populated civilian areas. While Tel Aviv initially denied using the controversial weapon, mounting evidence later forced officials to admit having employed the shells

yosi wrote:

I'm not trying to justify anything. The saying "two wrongs don't make a right" implies that there are two wrongs to begin with.

Michael Neumann - The Case Against Israel
'...Israel, and the Zionist movement that created it, has consistently been in the wrong in it's conflict with the Palestinians. The Zionist movement took their land, that is, it deprived them of sovereignty over that land. The Palestinians had done nothing to provoke this usurpation. Sovereignty was the right of the Palestinians, of the inhabitants of Palestine, not of the settlers who came with the express purpose of establishing an ethnic state that could reasonably be seen as a mortal threat to the Palestinians and as a grievous assault on their rights. Given this threat, the Palestinians were right to make no concessions of sovereignty to the Zionists and, given that the Zionists would not abandon their project, there was no room for compromise. However, a real opportunity for peace arose with the Israeli conquest of the Occupied territories in 1967, when the Palestinians made concessions they did not, as a matter of right, have to make. This opportunity was decisively abandoned by the Israelis, not so much by the occupation itself as by an extremist settler movement and the policies that supported, nurtured, and sustained it.
The settler movement constituted a new mortal threat to the Palestinians, worse than the previous one. The Palestinians were entitled - indeed rationally compelled - to resist this threat, and they were justified in supposing that violent resistance was required. Moreover, nothing in the character of that resistance supports the claims that the Palestinians are consumed by anything more than the entirely normal hatred that is born of warfare and that generally dissipates with peace. The claim that Palestinians are permanently bent on destroying Israel and consumed by inextinguishable hatred now shows itself to be baseless. The Palestinians' desperate attempts to defend themselves against catastrophic dispossession are no evidence whatever for that claim. What you say and feel when someone has trapped you and is progressively making your life intolerable is no evidence for how you will act when that person relents and departs.
What makes the Israeli position particularly indefensible is it's utter gratuitousness. There is no conceivable reason for Israel to promote the settlements that have been the cause of so much misery. The settler movement is built on psuedo-Biblical foolishness, bad history, greed, and - worse - a sort of racist messianism that deserves no tolerance, consideration, or respect. Israel could have not only peace but vastly increased security tomorrow if it chooses: It has all the options and the Palestinians none. The fussing about negotiations, trust, and hatred are nothing but self-deceiving excuses for more bloodshed.'

yosi wrote:

Regarding the IDF's precision targeting...according to UN estimates the average ratio for militaries around the world of civilian to combatant casualties is 3 to 1. That is to say 3 civilians killed for every 1 combatant killed. In Iraq and Kosovo the estimates are that the ratio was 4 to 1. It is assumed that the ratios in Serbia and Chechnya were much higher. The ratio for the IDF's operations in Gaza in 2003 was 1 to 1, far better than the global average. Since 2003 the IDF's civilian to combatant ratio has gotten even better - the current ratio is 1 to 30, meaning that for every civilian killed in Israeli airforce attacks in Gaza 30 combatants are killed. Leaving aside questions of politics, I think it is reasonable, in light of the sheer statistics, to at least acknowledge that the Israeli military is expending a great deal of effort to avoid civilian casualties, and is now much better at doing so than pretty much every other military on earth.

Out of curiosity Yosi, I've been reading a lot of comments and articles over the past few days relating to Israel's latest assault upon the Palestinians, and I've noticed that this civilian-combatant ratio topic has been at the forefront of many of these same comments and articles.
This is a serious question: Do Israel's supporters, it's internet army - the Hasbara - receive briefings from Israel's multi-million dollar propaganda division instructing them what to focus on and discuss in online forums, article comments sections, and social networking sites?
It's just that whenever another one of Israels attacks upon it's neighbours occurs, I always notice a pattern in the way Israel's supporters attempt to defend and justify Israeli aggression, and a tendency for the same bullshit excuses and justifications to surface.
So is there some sort of manual, or briefing that goes into circulation amongst Israel's internet army? If so, can you do me a favour and forward me a copy, as I'd really like to see it?



In the meantime, and on the subject of Israel's alleged expenditure of a 'great deal of effort to avoid civilian casualties', can you please reply to my previous post detailing Israel's blanketing of civilian areas of South Lebanon with cluster munitions in 2006? Maybe the following will help you with your answer?

http://www.cggl.org/scripts/document.asp?id=46269

Fatal Strikes: Israel’s Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon

Human Rights Watch issued today a new 50-page report analyzing almost two dozen cases of Israeli air and artillery attacks on civilian homes and vehicles in Lebanon. The main conclusions are (i) that Israeli forces have systematically failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians in their military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon and (ii) the pattern of attacks in more than 20 cases investigated by Human Rights Watch researchers in Lebanon indicates that the failures cannot be dismissed as mere accidents and cannot be blamed on wrongful Hezbollah practices. The report goes on to conclude that some of these attacks constitute war crimes.

To read the full report, “Fatal Strikes: Israel’s Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon,” please visit: http://hrw.org/reports/2006/lebanon0806

Summary

This report documents serious violations of international humanitarian law (the laws of war) by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Lebanon between July 12 and July 27, 2006, as well as the July 30 attack in Qana. During this period, the IDF killed an estimated 400 people, the vast majority of them civilians, and that number climbed to over 500 by the time this report went to print. The Israeli government claims it is taking all possible measures to minimize civilian harm, but the cases documented here reveal a systematic failure by the IDF to distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Since the start of the conflict, Israeli forces have consistently launched artillery and air attacks with limited or dubious military gain but excessive civilian cost. In dozens of attacks, Israeli forces struck an area with no apparent military target. In some cases, the timing and intensity of the attack, the absence of a military target, as well as return strikes on rescuers, suggest that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians. The Israeli government claims that it targets only Hezbollah, and that fighters from the group are using civilians as human shields, thereby placing them at risk. Human Rights Watch found no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack. Hezbollah occasionally did store weapons in or near civilian homes and fighters placed rocket launchers within populated areas or near U.N. observers, which are serious violations of the laws of war because they violate the duty to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties. However, those cases do not justify the IDF’s extensive use of indiscriminate force which has cost so many civilian lives. In none of the cases of civilian deaths documented in this report is there evidence to suggest that Hezbollah forces or weapons were in or near the area that the IDF targeted during or just prior to the attack.

By consistently failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians, Israel has violated one of the most fundamental tenets of the laws of war: the duty to carry out attacks on only military targets. The pattern of attacks during the Israeli offensive in Lebanon suggests that the failures cannot be explained or dismissed as mere accidents; the extent of the pattern and the seriousness of the consequences indicate the commission of war crimes.

This report is based on extensive on-the-ground research in Lebanon. Since the start of hostilities, Human Rights Watch has interviewed victims and witnesses of attacks in oneon- one settings, conducted on-site inspections (when security allowed), and collected information from hospitals, humanitarian groups, and government agencies. Human Rights Watch also conducted research in Israel, inspecting the IDF’s use of weapons and discussing the conduct of forces with IDF officials. The research was extensive, but given the ongoing war and the scope of the bombings, Human Rights Watch does not claim that the findings are comprehensive; further investigation is required to document the war’s complete impact on civilians and to assess the full scope of the IDF’s compliance with and disregard for international humanitarian law.

While not the focus of this report, Human Rights Watch has separately and simultaneously documented violations of international humanitarian law by Hezbollah, including a pattern of attacks that amount to war crimes. Between July 12, when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight, and July 27, the group launched a reported 1,300 rockets into predominantly civilian areas in Israel, killing 18 civilians and wounding more than 300. Without guidance systems for accurate targeting, the rockets are inherently indiscriminate when directed toward civilian areas, especially cities, and thus are serious violations of the requirement of international humanitarian law that attackers distinguish at all times between combatants and civilians. Some of these rockets, Human Rights Watch found, are packed with thousands of metal ball-bearings, which spray more than 100 meters from the blast and compound the harm to civilians.

This report analyzes a selection of Israeli air and artillery attacks that together claimed at least 153 civilian lives, or over a third of the reported Lebanese deaths in the conflict’s first two weeks. Of the 153 civilian deaths documented in this report by name, sixtythree of the victims were children under the age of eighteen, and thirty-seven of them were under ten. Israeli air strikes also killed many dual nationals who were vacationing in Lebanon when the fighting began, including Brazilian, Canadian, German, Kuwaiti, and U.S. citizens. The full death toll is certainly higher because medical and recovery teams have been unable to retrieve many bodies due to ongoing fighting and the dire security situation in south Lebanon.

The report breaks civilian deaths into two categories: attacks on civilian homes and attacks on civilian vehicles. In both categories, victims and witnesses interviewed independently and repeatedly said that neither Hezbollah fighters nor Hezbollah weapons were present in the area during or just before the Israeli attack took place. While some individuals, out of fear or sympathy, may have been unwilling to speak about Hezbollah’s military activity, others were quite open about it. In totality, the consistency, detail, and credibility of testimony from a broad array of witnesses who did not speak to each other leave no doubt about the validity of the patterns described in this report. In many cases, witness testimony was corroborated by reports from international journalists and aid workers. During site visits conducted in Qana, Srifa, and Tyre, Human Rights Watch saw no evidence that there had been Hezbollah military activity around the areas targeted by the IDF during or just prior to the attack: no spent ammunition, abandoned weapons or military equipment, trenches, or dead or wounded fighters. Moreover, even if Hezbollah had been in a populated area at the time of an attack, Israel would still be legally obliged to take all feasible precautions to avoid or minimize civilian casualties resulting from its targeting of military objects or personnel. In the cases documented in this report, however, the IDF consistently tolerated a high level of civilian casualties for questionable military gain.

In one case, an Israeli air strike on July 13 destroyed the home of a cleric known to have sympathy for Hezbollah but who was not known to have taken any active part in hostilities. Even if the IDF considered him a legitimate target (and Human Rights Watch has no evidence that he was), the strike killed him, his wife, their ten children, and the family’s Sri Lankan maid.

On July 16, an Israeli airplane fired a rocket into a civilian home in the village of Aitaroun, killing eleven members of the al-Akhrass family, among them seven Canadian- Lebanese dual nationals who were vacationing in the village when the war began. Human Rights Watch independently interviewed three villagers who vigorously denied that the family had any connection to Hezbollah. Among the victims were children aged one, three, five, and seven.

Others civilians came under attack in their cars as they attempted to flee the fighting in the South. This report alone documents twenty-seven civilian deaths that resulted from such attacks. The number is surely higher, but at the time the report went to press, ongoing Israeli attacks on the roads made it impossible to retrieve all the bodies. Starting around July 15, the IDF issued warnings to residents of southern villages to leave, followed by a general warning for all civilians south of the Litani River, which mostly runs about 25 kilometers north of the Israel-Lebanon border, to evacuate immediately. Tens of thousands of Lebanese fled their homes to the city of Tyre (itself south of the Litani and thus within the zone Israel ordered evacuated) or further north to Beirut, many waving white flags. As they left, Israeli forces fired on dozens of vehicles with warplanes and artillery.

Two Israeli air strikes are known to have hit humanitarian aid vehicles. On July 18 the IDF hit a convoy of the Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates, destroying a vehicle with medicines, vegetable oil, sugar and rice, and killing the driver. On July 23, Israeli forces hit two clearly marked Red Cross ambulances in the village of Qana. As of August 1, tens of thousands of civilians remained in villages south of the Litani River, despite the warnings to leave. Some chose to stay, but the vast majority, Human Rights Watch found, was unable to flee due to destroyed roads, a lack of gasoline, high taxi fares, sick relatives, or ongoing Israeli attacks. Many of the civilians who remained were elderly, sick, or poor.

Israel has justified its attacks on roads by citing the need to clear the transport routes of Hezbollah fighters moving arms. Again, none of the evidence gathered by Human Rights Watch, independent media sources, or Israeli official statements indicate that any of the attacks on vehicles documented in this report resulted in Hezbollah casualties or the destruction of weapons. Rather, the attacks killed and wounded civilians who were fleeing their homes, as the IDF had advised them to do.

In addition to strikes from airplanes, helicopters, and traditional artillery, Israel has used artillery-fired cluster munitions against populated areas, causing civilian casualties. One such attack on the village of Blida on July 19 killed a sixty-year-old woman and wounded at least twelve civilians, including seven children. The wide dispersal pattern of cluster munitions and the high dud rate (ranging from 2 to 14 percent, depending on the type of cluster munition) make the weapons exceedingly dangerous for civilians and, when used in populated areas, a violation of international humanitarian law.

Statements from Israeli government officials and military leaders suggest that, at the very least, the IDF has blurred the distinction between civilian and combatant, and is willing to strike at targets it considers even vaguely connected to the latter. At worst, it considers all people in the area of hostilities open to attack.

On July 17, for example, after IDF strikes on Beirut, the commander of the Israeli Air Force, Eliezer Shkedi, said, “in the center of Beirut there is an area which only terrorists enter into.”1 The next day, the IDF deputy chief of staff, Moshe Kaplinski, when talking about the IDF’s destruction of Beirut’s Dahia neighborhood, said, “the hits were devastating, and this area, which was a Hezbollah symbol, became deserted rubble.”2 On July 27, Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon said that the Israeli air force should flatten villages before ground troops move in to prevent casualties among Israeli soldiers fighting Hezbollah. Israel had given civilians ample time to leave southern Lebanon, he claimed, and therefore anyone remaining should be considered a supporter of Hezbollah. “All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah,” he said.

International humanitarian law requires effective advance warnings to the civilian population prior to an attack, when conditions permit. But those warnings do not way relieve Israel from its obligation at all times to distinguish between combatants and civilians and to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians from harm. In other words, issuing warnings in no way entitles the Israeli military to treat those civilians who remain in southern Lebanon as combatants who are fair game for attack.

In addition to recommendations to the Israeli government and Hezbollah that they respect international humanitarian law, Human Rights Watch calls on the U.S. government immediately to suspend transfer of all arms that have been documented or credibly alleged to have been used in violation of international humanitarian law in Lebanon, as well as funding or support for such materiel, pending an end to the violations. Human Rights Watch calls upon the Iranian and Syrian governments to do the same with regards to military assistance to Hezbollah.

This report does not address Israeli attacks on Lebanon’s infrastructure or Beirut’s southern suburbs, which is the subject of ongoing Human Rights Watch research. It also does not address Hezbollah’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israel, which have been reported on and denounced separately and continues to be the subject of ongoing Human Rights Watch investigations. In addition, Human Rights Watch continues to investigate allegations that Hezbollah is shielding its military personnel and materiel by locating them in civilian homes or areas, and it is deeply concerned by Hezbollah’s placement of certain troops and materiel near civilians, which endangers them and violates the duty to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties. Human Rights Watch uses the occasion of this report to reiterate Hezbollah’s legal duty never to deliberately use civilians to shield military objects and never to needlessly endanger civilians by conducting military operations, maintaining troops, or storing weapons in their vicinity.

The armed conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is governed by international treaties, as well as the rules of customary international humanitarian law. Article 3 Common to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 sets forth minimum standards for all parties to a conflict between a state party such as Israel and a non-state party such as Hezbollah. Israel has also asserted that it considers itself to be responding to the actions of the sovereign state of Lebanon, not just to those of Hezbollah. Any hostilities between Israeli forces and the forces of Lebanon would fall within the full Geneva Conventions to which both Lebanon and Israel are parties. In either case, the rules governing bombing, shelling, and rocket attacks are effectively the same.

Methodology

This report is based primarily on investigations by Human Rights Watch researchers, who have been in Beirut since the onset of the conflict and traveled for two days to Lebanon’s South. The team focused on interviewing witnesses and survivors of Israeli strikes inside Lebanon, gathering detailed testimony from these individuals, and carefully corroborating and cross-checking their accounts with international aid workers, international and local journalists, medical professionals, local officials, as well as information from the IDF.

Security conditions did not permit on-site visits to many of the villages or other sites where civilian casualties are documented in this report, but in all cases Human Rights Watch located eyewitnesses to attacks. All cases for which Human Rights Watch could not find eyewitnesses, survivors, or other credible sources of information have been excluded from this report. A parallel team of Human Rights Watch researchers operated during this same period in northern Israel investigating and reporting on Hezbollah’s attacks on civilians in Israel. That team also contributed to Human Rights Watch’s understanding of IDF operations in Lebanon through on-site observations and conversations with IDF spokespersons.

In a small minority of cases, Human Rights Watch researchers in Lebanon could locate witnesses only in Hezbollah-controlled camps for displaced persons in Beirut. Hezbollah controls an estimated seventy of the 120 schools currently housing the displaced. On such occasions, Hezbollah officials often insisted that Human Rights Watch researchers not ask questions about the location of Hezbollah militants because such information, wherever Hezbollah might be located, was of military value. These conditions limited Human Rights Watch’s ability to make a legal determination regarding whether the target in question was legitimate. In such cases, researchers sought additional witnesses outside of Hezbollah’s control to investigate the location of Hezbollah militants in the area at the time of the attack. If such witnesses could not be found, Human Rights Watch dropped the case.

As noted, in the cases documented in this report, witnesses consistently told Human Rights Watch that neither Hezbollah fighters nor other legitimate military targets were in the area that the IDF attacked. However, Human Rights Watch did document cases in which the IDF hit legitimate military targets, and, with limited exceptions, witnesses were generally willing to discuss the presence and activity of Hezbollah. At the sites visited by Human Rights Watch—Qana, Srifa, Tyre, and the southern suburbs of Beirut—on-site investigations did not identify any signs of military activity in the area attacked, such as trenches, destroyed rocket launchers, other military equipment, or dead or wounded fighters. International and local journalists, rescue workers, and international observers also did not produce evidence to contradict the statements of witnesses interviewed for this report.

The researchers also monitored information from public sources about the attacks, including Israeli government statements. Although Human Rights Watch’s research has been extensive, it is, as noted, not comprehensive. Further inquiry is required, particularly as access to the affected villages in South Lebanon improves, and to the extent that Israel ultimately decides to make its commanders and soldiers involved in the operation available for interviews.

Yep, the U.S is just as responsible for perpetuating this conflict as Israel:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -us-policy

Stop pretending the US is an uninvolved, helpless party in the Israeli assault on Gaza

The Obama administration's unstinting financial, military and diplomatic support for Israel is a key enabling force in the conflict


Glenn Greenwald
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 17 November 2012


A central premise of US media coverage of the Israeli attack on Gaza - beyond the claim that Israel is justifiably "defending itself" - is that this is some endless conflict between two foreign entitles, and Americans can simply sit by helplessly and lament the tragedy of it all. The reality is precisely the opposite: Israeli aggression is possible only because of direct, affirmative, unstinting US diplomatic, financial and military support for Israel and everything it does. This self-flattering depiction of the US as uninvolved, neutral party is the worst media fiction since TV news personalities covered the Arab Spring by pretending that the US is and long has been on the side of the heroic democratic protesters, rather than the key force that spent decades propping up the tyrannies they were fighting.

Literally each day since the latest attacks began, the Obama administration has expressed its unqualified support for Israel's behavior. Just two days before the latest Israeli air attacks began, Obama told Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas "that his administration opposes a Palestinian bid for non-state membership of the UN". Both the US Senate and House have already passed resolutions unequivocally supporting Israel, thus earning the ultimate DC reward: the head-pat from Aipac, which "praised the extraordinary show of support by the Senate for Israel's struggle against terrorist attacks on its citizens". More bipartisan Congressional cheerleading is certain to come as the attacks continue, no matter how much more brutal they become.

In reflexive defense of Israel, the US government thus once against put itself squarely at odds with key nations such as Turkey (whose prime minister accused Israel of being motivated by elections and demanded that Israel be "held to account" for mounting civilians deaths), Egypt (which denounced Israeli attacks as "aggression against humanity"), and Tunisia (which called on the world to "stop the blatant aggression" of Israel).

By rather stark contrast, Obama continues to defend Israel's free hand in Gaza, causing commentators like Jeffrey Goldberg to gloat, not inaccurately: "Barack Obama hasn't turned against Israel. This is a big surprise to everyone who has not paid attention for the last four years" (indeed, there are few more compelling signs of how dumb and misleading US elections are than the fact that the only criticism of Obama on Israel heard over the last year in the two-party debate was the grievance that Obama evinces insufficient fealty - rather than excessive fealty - to the Israeli government). That the Netanyahu government knows that any attempt to condemn Israel at the UN would be instantly blocked by the US is a major factor enabling them to continue however they wish. And, of course, the bombs, planes and tanks they are using are subsidized, in substantial part, by the US taxpayer.

If one wants to defend US support for Israel on the merits - on the ground that this escalating Israeli aggression against a helpless population is just and warranted - then one should do so. As I wrote on Thursday, it's very difficult to see how those who have cheered for Obama's foreign policy could do anything but cheer for Israeli militarism, as they are grounded in the same premises.

But pretending that the US - and the Obama administration - bear no responsibility for what is taking place is sheer self-delusion, total fiction. It has long been the case that the central enabling fact in Israeli lawlessness and aggression is blind US support, and that continues, more than ever, to be the case under the presidency of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

The US is not some neutral, uninvolved party. Whatever side of this conflict you want to defend - or if you're one of those people who love to announce that you just wish the whole thing would go away - it's still necessary to take responsibility for the key role played by the American government and this administration in enabling everything that is taking place.

Media coverage

Due to extensive travel the past few days, I've been subjected to far more television news coverage than is probably healthy, and it's just been staggering to see how tilted US media discourse is: Israeli officials and pro-Israel "experts" are endlessly paraded across the screen while Palestinian voices are exceedingly rare; the fact of the 45-year-old brutal occupation and ongoing Israeli dominion over Gaza is barely mentioned; meanwhile, every primitive rocket that falls harmlessly near Israeli soil is trumpeted with screaming headlines while the carnage and terror in Gaza is mentioned, if at all, as an afterthought. Two cartoons perfectly summarize this coverage: here and here.

On a related note, the Nation's Jeremy Scahill was interviewed on Tuesday night after a Sundance Institute panel on political documentaries which I moderated. Scahill, who is working on a documentary entitled "Dirty Wars" about the US violence in Yemen and other parts of the Muslim world, spoke for 12 minutes to We Are Change about Obama's terrorism and foreign policies; I highly recommend it:

UPDATE

According to Haaretz, Israel's Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, said this about Israel's attacks on Gaza: "The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages." Let me know if any of the US Sunday talk shows mention that tomorrow during their discussions of this "operation".

JC29856 wrote:

Israel has had to "protect itself" from every neighboring country (Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Eqypt) not to mention Tunisia and Iraq.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wa ... ing_Israel

Israel attacked Egypt in 1967, not the other way around.
As for protecting itself against Palestine or Lebanon, when was that?

Finkelstein - 'Khowing Too Much'

[The 1967 War]

P.167: Nasser announced that the Straits of Tiran would be closed to Israeli vessels and foreign vessels carrying "strategic" cargo to the Israeli port city of Eilat [....] In reality just five percent of Israel's trade passed through Eilat; the only significant commodity possibly affected by a blockade was oil, which could have been rerouted to the ports of Haifa or Ashdod, and anyhow Israel held in reserve an ample supply if oil carrying it over for many months to come.
[Michael] Oren [Israeli Ambassador to the U.S & Israeli historian] reports in profuse detail on the "frightful" news that Egypt had mined the Straits and otherwise forcibly implemented the blockade, only to note in passing that "the waterway remained mine-free." In fact Israel already knew right as Nasser declared the blockade that he would allow ships escorted by the U.S to go through, and after a few days vessels using the Straits passed freely without even being searched: Nasser had quietly lifted the blockade.

Notes: Gluska, 'Israeli Military' p.137, 155. Rabin was privy to "top secret" information that "the Egyptians had already decided that ships under American escort would not be stopped," while Eban speculated that Nasser "has not decided to disrupt shipping," but rather "decided to be in a position where he can brandish this sword" at his whim.
Oren also contends that in 1957 Israel had won "international recognition of it's right to act in self-defence if the Straits were ever blockaded," and that the U.S "pledged" to "regard any Egyptian attempt to revive the Tiran blockade as an act of war to which Israel could respond in self-defence" ('Six Days' PP.81, 12). Although Israel did obtain from the U.S and other maritime states support for it's right of "free and innocent" passage in the Straits, Washington still stipulated that "any recurrence of hostilities or any violation by any party" be referred back to the United Nations. U.S officials and legal scholars as well as U.N secretaries-general Hammarskjold and U Thant all conceded it was a "complicated" jurisdictional dispute.


P.168: Reaching Cairo right after the blockade was announced, U Thant [U.N Secretary General] elicited a "very significant" (his words) assent from Nasser to a new diplomatic initiative: the appointment of a special U.N representative to mediate the crises, and a two-week moratorium on all provocations in the Straits [of Tiran]. Israel rejected both of U Thant's proposals.

Even 'Middle East Record', a semi-official Israeli compilation, observed after the June war that 'a number of facts seem to indicate Abdel Nasser's belief in the possibility of terminating...the conflict through diplomacy." It pointed in particular to the Egyptian President's "suggestion" that the International Court of Justice arbitrate the Strait's dispute, his purposeful "vagueness" on the blockades enforcement, and his "willingness" to revive EIMAC [Egyptian-Israeli Mixed Armistice Commission]. "Up to the outbreak of the war," [Zeev] Maoz [Israeli strategic analyst] concludes, "Nasser was interested in finding a ladder to climb down from the tall tree he found himself on."

Nasser agreed to send his vice-President to Washington to explore a diplomatic settlement. Just two days before the Egyptian's scheduled arrival, however, Israel attacked.

P. 170: 'U.S appraisals of Nasser's Intentions on eve of 1967 war'

Major General Meir Amit, head of the Mossad, told senior American officials on 1st June that "there were no differences between the U.S and the Israeli's on the military intelligence picture or it's interpretation". "The Egyptian build-up in Sinai lacked a clear offensive plan," Israeli scholar Avraham Sela reports, "and Nasser's defensive instructions explicitly assumed an Israeli first-strike."

25th May - CIA Appraisal: 'In our view, UAR [Egyptian] military dispositions in Sinai are defensive in character...The steps taken thus far by [other] Arab armies do not prove that the Arabs intend an all-out attack on Israel....In sum, we believe these are merely gestures in the interests of the fiction of Arab unity, but have little military utility in a conflict with Israel.'

26th May - General Earle Wheeler, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff: 'The UAR's dispositions are defensive and do not look as if they are preparatory to an invasiob of Israel...'There was no indication that the Egyptians would attack. If the UAR moved, it would give up it's defensive positions in the Sinai for little advantage.'

26th May - CIA's Board of National Estimates: 'Clearly Nasser has won the first round. It is possible that [Nasser] may seek a military show-down with Israel, designed to settle the whole problem once and for all. This seems to us highly unlikely...The most likely course seems to be for Nasser to hold to his present winnings as long as he can, and in as full measure as he can.'

JC29856 wrote:

Israel has had to "protect itself" from every neighboring country (Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Eqypt) not to mention Tunisia and Iraq.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wa ... ing_Israel

take a deep breath, inhale......exhale.... and notice the "quotations"

i realize a topic as serious as this should not involve sarcasm but its my defense mechanism to those that suffer from naivety, to put it kindly

President O-bomb-a the nobel peace winning president says "israel has every right to defend itself from missile attacks"


fiscal cliffnotes:
As the single largest expense of the 2010 foreign aid budget, President Obama approved $2.775 billion in military aid to Israel, the first payment in a decade-long commitment that will reach at least $30 billion.

Last year, Israel’s military budget amounted to $13.3 billion, so the US funding is a significant portion of their overall expenditure. The US formerly provided both military and civilian aid, but it has since been folded entirely into military aid, at Israel’s request.

The money is not a blank check, however. The US requires that Israel spend at least 75% of the money given in military aid with US military contractors, effectively using the foreign aid budget to subsidize domestic weapon-makers.

In addition to military aid, the US also provides $3.148 billion in loan guarantees to Israel, part of a Treasury Department program aimed at keep Israel’s debt manageable. Ironically, though the US budget is spiraling out of control and America’s own debt continues to rise, there was no serious debate of reducing aid to Israel.

The budget also pledges $500 million in American aid to the Fatah Party’s Palestinian Authority. This aid is contingent on certain requirements, including that the group recognize Israel. This funding is distinct from any funding the CIA may give the Palestinian Authority’s security forces, which would be secret.

kenny olav wrote:

I imagine that if I were born an Israeli, I would fight for my country too.

The IDF aren't fighting for their country. The Occupied territories don't constitute Israel's country.