Defining terrorism - MI?

[Skybird]

Terrorism? What's That?
The U.N. has a deeply dangerous definitional problem.

By Claudia Rosett


Among the many reasons to beware the United Nations as a vehicle for peace in Israel, Lebanon, or any other part of the globe now threatened by Islamic terrorists, there is one item so obvious that in the current debate over “ceasefires” and Security Council resolutions it has almost entirely escaped notice. Quite simply, while terrorism may be the defining security threat of our time, the U.N. has failed — literally — to define it.

If that sounds like a minor semantic lapse, far removed from the bloody conflict in Israel and Lebanon, it is anything but. The free world faces a war in which victory — if one may be allowed such a blunt word these days — starts with understanding the real nature and tactics of our enemies. So, with top U.N. officials calling for instant peace that would effectively equate “both sides” in the war launched out of Lebanon last month by Hezbollah against Israel, I e-mailed the U.N. Secretary-General’s office recently to ask: Does the U.N. consider Hezbollah a terrorist group?

Back from one of Kofi Annan’s spokesmen came the answer: “The designation of ‘terrorist’ would require a definition of what terrorism entails.”

Let us note that in the case of Hezbollah, the group has entailed enough atrocities to have earned it the nickname, “the A-Team of Terrorism,” even before Hezbollah on July 12 launched its killing-kidnapping-and- rocket-firing assault on Israel. Hezbollah’s prior record entails well over two decades of kidnappings, hijackings, suicide bombings, massacres, and collateral carnage worldwide, in countries including Lebanon, Israel, Spain, Denmark, Germany, France, and Argentina. Created by the totalitarian ayatollahs of Iran just after their 1979 Islamic revolution; trained and bankrolled by Iran; supported by Syria; seasoned in extortion and smuggling operations reaching as far as South America, Canada, and the U.S.; open to alliances with other terrorist groups; peddling terrorist propaganda internationally on its Al-Manar TV station; dedicated to the destruction of Israel and seeking ultimately to supplant the workings of free societies with its Iran-spawned creed and practice of terror… Hezbollah among its butcheries to date has murdered more Americans than any other terrorist group except al Qaeda.

But because the United Nations has not defined “terrorism,” the U.N. does not regard Hezbollah as a terrorist group.

The U.N. does, of course, have a stack of “counter-terrorism” resolutions, and bestrides a dozen or so “international counter-terrorism conventions.” But without a clear definition of what terrorism entails, U.N. member states — including the liveliest terror sponsors — pay no penalty for interpreting these measures in any warped way they might choose, or effectively ignoring them altogether. The result is that even the U.N. resolutions passed a few years ago sanctioning a highly abbreviated list of a few hundred Taliban and al Qaeda affiliates worldwide have been at best erratically enforced. Back in late 2003, a group of terrorism experts employed by the U.N. to monitor member-states’ compliance with these sanctions became bold enough to report publicly and in detail some of the gross delinquencies of specific nations. The U.N. dissolved the group of experts, and replaced it with one more easily muffled.

A former member of the now-defunct, outspoken U.N. counterterrorism-monitoring group, Victor Comras, explained to me in a phone interview last week that achieving a serious international definition of terrorism is a “huge issue.” Once an objective criterion for terrorism exists, said Comras, “At least you have the foundation for asking that concrete actions be taken.”

Without that definition, as Comras wrote (http://counterterror.typepad.com/the_counterterrorism_blog/2006/03/un_continues_to.html) this past March, “countries remain free to define for themselves which groups are terrorists and which are ‘freedom fighters.’” Comras observed that “Saudi Arabia uses this distinction, for example, to get away with funding Hamas, while Iran and Syria use it to provide funds and support to Hezbollah.” Beyond that, he noted, “Many other countries have also used it to avoid taking steps to freeze funds or take other civil or criminal action against those individuals or groups which they support.”

The U.N. failure on this score is no accident. It is a direct result of what the U.N. is, and how it works — a collective, saddled with procedures that tend to favor despots over democrats. In the matter of coming up with a global definition of terrorism, the job falls to the General Assembly’s legal committee — the so-called Sixth Committee— which includes all 192 member states, and operates in practice by consensus. In that setting, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) — whose 57 members include such terror-linked states as Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran — has for years insisted that any definition of terrorism exempt the OIC’s pet terrorists. These the OIC would prefer to define — notes Comras — as “engaged in so-called ‘struggles against colonial domination and foreign occupation.’”

At the same time, the OIC and assorted “unaligned” states have been demanding that regular armed forces of sovereign states, already subject to other international rules of engagement, be subject to U.N. rules concerning terrorism. That would clear the way to officially invert reality to the extent that by U.N. lights, Islamic terrorists would qualify as liberators, and democratic states trying to defend themselves could be treated as terrorists.

Wisely, the U.S. and some of our allies have refused to sign on to this Big Brother universe (though on some issues, such as the affable view of Palestinian terrorism, and chronic condemnations of democratic Israel, the U.N. seems to dwell there already). Under pressure from the U.S. last year, Kofi Annan departed from U.N. habit long enough to propose a genuine definition of terrorism — only to have it shot down by the U.N. committee-consensus process. And there the matter sits. While terrorism looms ever larger as an Islamic-fascist tactic and threat to the free world — which the U.N. was originally meant to protect — the task of defining terrorism remains bottled up in the U.N. legal committee.

This gridlock goes far to explain why Annan, apparently forgetting his reform pitch of last year, has been calling with the regularity of a cuckoo clock for an immediate “ceasefire” in the current conflict. In doing so, he ignores the desperately lopsided setup of any deal in which Israel would be constrained by U.N. words on paper while the terrorists — by definition, if only the U.N. had one — can be reliably stopped only at gunpoint. That asymmetry is pretty much the arrangement that incubated this war in the first place. Israel complied with U.N. rules and withdrew six years ago from Lebanon. Hezbollah violated the rules, expanding its protection rackets and stockpiling illicit weapons under the terror-neutral gaze of U.N. “peacekeepers,” until it was ready to strike.

The gap in the U.N. lexicon also helps explain why, when Annan’s deputy-secretary-general Mark Malloch Brown sat down for an interview last week with the Financial Times, he felt free to deliver the Orwellian line: “It is not helpful to couch this war in the language of international terrorism.”

Wallowing instead in the jargon of peace in our time, Malloch Brown went on to suggest that for Israel’s attackers, Hezbollah, there must concessions, and eventually “a settlement which addresses the political issues of their cause as well as the military ones.” These bland words mask the terrorist nitty-gritty that Hezbollah’s “cause” includes the takeover of Lebanon and the extinction of Israel. Musing that Hezbollah does have its wayward aspects, and in its rocket assaults on Israel “is making no effort to hit military targets; it’s just a broadside against civilian targets,” Malloch Brown arrived at the I’m-O.K.-You’re-O.K. conclusion that “It’s all very challenging.”

And as the Bush administration has increasingly turned to the United Nations in this crisis, the U.N. fog has been seeping into America’s political discourse. Instead of talking about killing, capturing, and defeating the terrorists of Hezbollah, or moving immediately to hold to account Hezbollah’s backers in Baathist Damascus and nuclear-bomb-building Teheran, our own political leaders are now maneuvering via the U.N. for a “cessation of hostilities.”

This has produced a peculiar delicacy of phrase even from President Bush. The U.S. government, with good reason, includes Hezbollah in its list of “Foreign Terrorist Organizations.” But in a press conference Monday, Bush skirted this category, instead labeling Hezbollah “a political party with a militia that is armed by foreign nations.” Sorry, but Hezbollah is not at core a political party. It is an Iranian-Syrian-backed terrorist militia with a Lebanese political front.

There is a deeply dangerous reluctance in the democratic world to face up to the extent of the war already declared and being waged against us — manifest in terrorist attacks on New York, Madrid, London, Bali, Bombay, and beyond, and especially against Israel, which is fighting right now on the front lines. These terrorists, and their sponsors, watch and learn from each other. In the battles ahead, if the U.S. takes its cues from a U.N. unable even to define terrorism, let alone defy it, the result will be that terrorists — protected by their patrons at the U.N. itself — will continue in graphic and ruinous terms to define it for us.

http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MWQyNWM2MDA2Mjk1ZWRhOTU1M2MzYzc1NTE2ODQ4YzQ=

[scandium]

Let us note that in the case of Hezbollah, the group has entailed enough atrocities to have earned it the nickname, “the A-Team of Terrorism,” even before Hezbollah on July 12 launched its killing-kidnapping-and- rocket-firing assault on Israel. Hezbollah’s prior record entails well over two decades of kidnappings, hijackings, suicide bombings, massacres, and collateral carnage worldwide, in countries including Lebanon, Israel, Spain, Denmark, Germany, France, and Argentina. Created by the totalitarian ayatollahs of Iran just after their 1979 Islamic revolution; trained and bankrolled by Iran; supported by Syria; seasoned in extortion and smuggling operations reaching as far as South America, Canada, and the U.S.; open to alliances with other terrorist groups; peddling terrorist propaganda internationally on its Al-Manar TV station; dedicated to the destruction of Israel and seeking ultimately to supplant the workings of free societies with its Iran-spawned creed and practice of terror… Hezbollah among its butcheries to date has murdered more Americans than any other terrorist group except al Qaeda.
That, like the entire article, is a very nice one dimensional view of things. Here's a bit from "Terror in the name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill", by Jessica Stern, to add a little more perspective:

Avigdor Eskin, like Yoel Lerner, is a follower of the teachings of Rabbi Kahane. Kahane's teachings remain a strong influence on Jewish extremists long after a Muslim extremist assassinated the rabbi in New York City in 1990. To followers of Kahane, redemption is inevitable, now that God has helped create the modern state of Israel. But it is up to the Jews to reestablish a theocracy, and to remove any obstacles that stand in the way, including the Arabs.

..

Kach and Kahane Chai were declared terrorist organizations in 1994 by the Israeli cabinet. The banning of the two groups followed one of the most well-known incidents of Jewish extremism, namely the massacre of twenty-nine Muslims in Hebron by Dr. Baruch Goldstein on February 25, 1994. Goldstein, a thirty-seven-year-old doctor and father of seven at the time of the shooting, was a prominent member of Kach. The group had issued statements supporting Goldstein's attack.

Both Kach and Kahane Chai organize protests against the Israeli government and harass and threaten Palestinians in Hebron and the West Bank. Groups affiliated with them have threatened to attack Arabs, Palestinians, and Israeli government officials. They claimed responsibility for several attacks of West Bank Palestinians in which four persons were killed and two were wounded in 1993. In April 2002, the current leader of Kach, Baruch Marzel, was arrested by Israeli police in connection with a plot to leave a trailer laden with two barrels of gasoline and two gas balloons outside a Palestinian girls' school in East Jerusalem. The West settlements of Tapuah and Kiryat Arba are strongholds of the Kahnist movement. According to the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, both organizations receive support from American and European sympathizers.

I ask Erzion to explain his feeling of urgency about rebuilding the Temple. "If you seek the kernel of meaning in the Temple," he says, "it is akin to the meeting of love between the Jewish people and God, or the attraction between men and women. The Jewish people are the female aspect, and they are missing their other, an other which can only be recovered when the Temple is rebuilt. The view of God is symbolized by the man, and the Jewish people as a woman.

"It is something so wonderful you can hardly imagine it. None of us has ever seen or touched anything like it. It is not just the stones it's built of. That's just the framework, like the peel of an orange. The Temple is the collective spirit of the people." Erzion is clever, like Lerner. But he is also poetic. Listening to him, I start to feel the loss of this mystical place. I feel the longing. For the Temple, and for this sensual union between God and man that he describes. Fundamentalism is always about longing, I remind myself, often for something that never existed.

In 1984, Israeli authorities uncovered a plot by Yehuda Erzion and coconspirators to destroy the Dome of the Rock, which the group called "the abomination." The group, an offshoot of Gush Emunim, was known as the Jewish Underground, or Makhteret. Until that point, the Gush Emunim settlers had eschewed violence, despite their messianic and fundamentalist outlook. Beginning in the 1980s, in the wake of the Camp David peace accords, the group began to despair of achieving its goals peacefully. Some members of the group, among them Erzion, turned increasingly violent, prepared, in the end, to risk a world war in pursuit of religious redemption for the Jewish people.

..

Gillon believes that the radical right continues to pose a grave threat to Israeli national security, perhaps even more than Hamas. "Here in Israel we don't like to say this very loudly, bur the radical-right Jewish groups have a lot in common with Hamas," he told me. Hamas and the radical-right groups have twin objectives: one religious, the other political, Gillon explains. Both use selective readings of history and of religious texts to justify violence over territory.

[Onkel Neal]

The U.N. failure on this score is no accident. It is a direct result of what the U.N. is, and how it works — a collective, saddled with procedures that tend to favor despots over democrats. That sums up the UN for me.



I ask Erzion to explain his feeling of urgency about rebuilding the Temple. "If you seek the kernel of meaning in the Temple," he says, "it is akin to the meeting of love between the Jewish people and God, or the attraction between men and women. The Jewish people are the female aspect, and they are missing their other, an other which can only be recovered when the Temple is rebuilt. The view of God is symbolized by the man, and the Jewish people as a woman.


Those guys are just insane. :huh:

[Yahoshua]

He sounds like a Kabbalist.....(Mysticism and stuff like that, similar to Charismatic Christianity).

[STEED]

The U.N. failure on this score is no accident. It is a direct result of what the U.N. is, and how it works — a collective, saddled with procedures that tend to favor despots over democrats. That sums up the UN for me.

I agree.

The U.N. as far as I am concern can not be trusted one bit.

[Iceman]

Quote from Scandium...

"That, like the entire article, is a very nice one dimensional view of things. Here's a bit from "Terror in the name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill", by Jessica Stern, to add a little more perspective:"

What part of what you quoted from Skybirds post was one dimensional???

Was it the part ...

"even before Hezbollah on July 12 launched its killing-kidnapping-and- rocket-firing assault on Israel. Hezbollah’s prior record entails well over two decades of kidnappings, hijackings, suicide bombings, massacres, and collateral carnage worldwide, in countries including Lebanon, Israel, Spain, Denmark, Germany, France, and Argentina....."

Or is it the part....

"Created by the totalitarian ayatollahs of Iran just after their 1979 Islamic revolution; trained and bankrolled by Iran; supported by Syria; seasoned in extortion and smuggling operations reaching as far as South America, Canada, and the U.S.; open to alliances with other terrorist groups; peddling terrorist propaganda internationally on its Al-Manar TV station; dedicated to the destruction of Israel and seeking ultimately to supplant the workings of free societies with its Iran-spawned creed and practice of terror… Hezbollah among its butcheries to date has murdered more Americans than any other terrorist group except al Qaeda...."


Is any of this in debate?..and if so what part?

A spade is a spade quit trying to change things into hearts which aren't and can't be.It gets down to the nity grity dirty little truth....and you can't get around it Scandium....Many many of these groups are just sick evil,murderous, peace Hating people and always will be until they die and for truly peace loving countries to ignore it will only result in they're own demise.What other dimnension is there except right and wrong except ones interpretation of it...you either like killing babies and innocent people or you don't.Action and deed is what is proof of ones intentions and the proof stares me in the face every night when I watch the news or see what happens around me everyday.For you to even suggest that there is some "One Sided" part of the truth you are correct, there is only one side of the truth and you don't seem to be on it.

Got to pick a side dude you can't sit on the fence on this one.

[scandium]

Is any of this in debate?..and if so what part?

A spade is a spade quit trying to change things into hearts which aren't and can't be.It gets down to the nity grity dirty little truth....and you can't get around it Scandium....Many many of these groups are just sick evil,murderous, peace Hating people and always will be until they die and for truly peace loving countries to ignore it will only result in they're own demise.What other dimnension is there except right and wrong except ones interpretation of it...you either like killing babies and innocent people or you don't.Action and deed is what is proof of ones intentions and the proof stares me in the face every night when I watch the news or see what happens around me everyday.For you to even suggest that there is some "One Sided" part of the truth you are correct, there is only one side of the truth and you don't seem to be on it.

Got to pick a side dude you can't sit on the fence on this one.
Indeed.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html

David Ben-Gurion told Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Jewish Congress:If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country . . . We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?
Since then, Israeli leaders have repeatedly sought to deny the Palestinians’ national ambitions. When she was prime minister, Golda Meir famously remarked that ‘there is no such thing as a Palestinian.’ Pressure from extremist violence and Palestinian population growth has forced subsequent Israeli leaders to disengage from the Gaza Strip and consider other territorial compromises, but not even Yitzhak Rabin was willing to offer the Palestinians a viable state...

Israel’s backers also portray it as a country that has sought peace at every turn and shown great restraint even when provoked. The Arabs, by contrast, are said to have acted with great wickedness. Yet on the ground, Israel’s record is not distinguishable from that of its opponents. Ben-Gurion acknowledged that the early Zionists were far from benevolent towards the Palestinian Arabs, who resisted their encroachments – which is hardly surprising, given that the Zionists were trying to create their own state on Arab land. In the same way, the creation of Israel in 1947-48 involved acts of ethnic cleansing, including executions, massacres and rapes by Jews, and Israel’s subsequent conduct has often been brutal, belying any claim to moral superiority. Between 1949 and 1956, for example, Israeli security forces killed between 2700 and 5000 Arab infiltrators, the overwhelming majority of them unarmed. The IDF murdered hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of war in both the 1956 and 1967 wars, while in 1967, it expelled between 100,000 and 260,000 Palestinians from the newly conquered West Bank, and drove 80,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights.

During the first intifada, the IDF distributed truncheons to its troops and encouraged them to break the bones of Palestinian protesters. The Swedish branch of Save the Children estimated that ‘23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the intifada.’ Nearly a third of them were aged ten or under. The response to the second intifada has been even more violent, leading Ha’aretz to declare that ‘the IDF . . . is turning into a killing machine whose efficiency is awe-inspiring, yet shocking.’ The IDF fired one million bullets in the first days of the uprising. Since then, for every Israeli lost, Israel has killed 3.4 Palestinians, the majority of whom have been innocent bystanders; the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children killed is even higher (5.7:1). It is also worth bearing in mind that the Zionists relied on terrorist bombs to drive the British from Palestine, and that Yitzhak Shamir, once a terrorist and later prime minister, declared that ‘neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat.’

The Palestinian resort to terrorism is wrong but it isn’t surprising. The Palestinians believe they have no other way to force Israeli concessions. As Ehud Barak once admitted, had he been born a Palestinian, he ‘would have joined a terrorist organisation’.
That is the side you would have me take? And to what end? I reject, completely, all forms of terrorism including the institutionalized state run terrorism that defines Israel's existance and has always defined it from the moment of its conception. If that is the bandwagon you want to jump on, then by all means do so, but it only makes you complicit in their crimes.

[waste gate]

I reject, completely, all forms of terrorism including the institutionalized state run terrorism that defines Israel's existance and has always defined it from the moment of its conception. If that is the bandwagon you want to jump on, then by all means do so, but it only makes you complicit in their crimes.

Then you say explicitly that you reject the actions of hezbalah, hamas, al queida, and all other 'terrorist organizations' whether state sponsored or not?

[Drebbel]

The U.N. failure on this score is no accident. It is a direct result of what the U.N. is, and how it works — a collective, saddled with procedures that tend to favor despots over democrats. That sums up the UN for me.

Is it the U.N. or is it mankind ?

[Iceman]

You have picked your side Scandium, to try to dance around the facts you can't do no matter how you try. It cracks me up.

Either make the tree good and the fruit good or else ur firewood...if you continue to try to be lukewarm then you'll be placed on a side without a choice by others.

Take a Stand, don't choose not to stand.Yet to me your choice is Crystal Clear...you choose a side that is murderous and evil...so be it.Your a good dancer though I'll give ya that.

[Yahoshua]

"Burn pits for classified documents are NOT revel fires. Therefore it is wrong to dance naked around them." -The Skippy List

[Iceman]

"Burn pits for classified documents are NOT revel fires. Therefore it is wrong to dance naked around them." -The Skippy List

Doh? Ya lost me .. :)

[Yahoshua]

"Your a good dancer though I'll give ya that."

118. Burn pits for classified material are not revel fires - therefore it is wrong to dance naked around them.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=96263

[Iceman]

"Your a good dancer though I'll give ya that."

118. Burn pits for classified material are not revel fires - therefore it is wrong to dance naked around them.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=96263 LMAO:rotfl: :damn:

[scandium]

I reject, completely, all forms of terrorism including the institutionalized state run terrorism that defines Israel's existance and has always defined it from the moment of its conception. If that is the bandwagon you want to jump on, then by all means do so, but it only makes you complicit in their crimes.
Then you say explicitly that you reject the actions of hezbalah, hamas, al queida, and all other 'terrorist organizations' whether state sponsored or not?
Of course. Violence begets violence, terror begets terror. Its the oldest story in the world.

If you beat your kids then there's a far higher than average probability that they will grow up to beat there kids as well.

In Israel this cyle has been playing out for over half a century. Both sides - the Israelis and the Palestinians - are brought up in a climate of fear, violence, oppression (it is one of the few remaining countries in the world, and perhaps the only "democracy", to still practice South African style Apartheid), and terror where each learns that the other is to be feared, to be hated, and that their's is the side that is right and is righteous. And then we see the results play out every day. Shootings, stabbings, bombings, houses bulldozed, people detained indefinitely and without charges. And on it goes.

I am generalizing somewhat, there are many exceptions on both sides, but unfortunately its the extremists on both sides who have been running the show for the last 50 years.

And what is even more frightening is that this cancer has seeped into U.S. policy to the point that you can no longer separate U.S. foreign policy from Israeli policy, even though, looked at objectively, the two countries have little in common and very different interests.

The War on Terror, the War in Iraq, both are products of an extremist neo-conservative ideology that is so sick as to believe that the policies that have been proven failures in Israel can be successful in Washington: thus the failed Israeli method of fighting terrorist cells with the armed forces has seen the US become as bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq as Israel has been in Lebanon (for 16 years and now they are again repeating the same failled mistakes under new leadership), in Gazza, and in the West Bank; Guantano Bay and Abu Ghraib, both abominations when contrasted with the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, are carbon copies of the Israeli approach to captured POWs and detained Palestinians; the PATRIOT Act, another abomination, is another carbon copy of the measures adopted by Israeli internal security apparatus. The USA is being remade in the image of Israel as American politicians sellout their country and its sovereignty to a narrow special interest group that has, in its lobbying efforts and funding, and unprecedented grip over a country founded on very different principles that is many times its size, far older, and has battled and beaten many of its own demons (slavery, women's suffrage, the civil rights movement, the defeat in Vietnam, the Cold War).

And meanwhile, as it is eroded and sold out on that front, the Saudis, Japanese, and Chinese happily dine on the leavings as they buy up more and more US debt to finance US proxy wars on Israel's behalf. Is this really in the U.S.'s best interest? I'm not qualified to judge, being Canadian, but I'd encourage some of the American patriots on this board to ask themselves honestly who the winners and losers are and if they're situation now, and their standing in the world, compared to 20 years ago following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the defeat of Communism in the USSR, has improved in the way it should have following the defeat of America's arch enemy.

And now my own country too has fallen victim to this same theft of our sovereignty as our current PM increasingly brings what has always been a balanced foreign policy in line with that of the US and its Israeli handlers.

Apologies if this comes off as a tirade. However after a lifetime of having smoke blown up my @ss I've finally begun to see through the fog and certain things have begun to crystalize. And I do not like what I see, or what inevitably lies over the horizon.

[scandium]

You have picked your side Scandium, to try to dance around the facts you can't do no matter how you try. It cracks me up.

Either make the tree good and the fruit good or else ur firewood...if you continue to try to be lukewarm then you'll be placed on a side without a choice by others.

Take a Stand, don't choose not to stand.Yet to me your choice is Crystal Clear...you choose a side that is murderous and evil...so be it.Your a good dancer though I'll give ya that.

You're right. I choose Canada. If you, as with so many of your other countrymen, want to continue to mortgage your nation's security and its future on Israel, with all that entails, then I suspect dark days lie ahead of you - and us as well if we continue to follow you down this same road.

Because as when they bombed the USS Liberty, bombed the UN Outposts, and bombed 7 other Canadians and several hundred innocent Lebanese (in this conflict alone), all the while trapping 25,000 of your own countryman there and subjecting them to the same terror and danger they subjected the rest of the country to, I can guarantee you - and their actions should make this clear - they don't give a damn about you. You are cannon fodder in their upcoming proxy wars with Iran, and Syria (and God help you and us both if escalates beyond that) and a $6 billion dollar/year source of aid (including both direct and indirect) to finance their 4th largest military in the world and a bullseye to their victims who will continue, as they have the past, to hold you accountable for your complicity.

That is reality, and I know you might hate the message but don't shoot the messenger for telling it to you as it is.

[Onkel Neal]

That is reality, and I know you might hate the message but don't shoot the messenger for telling it to you as it is.

As you think it is. For a minute there you were sounding like Mike Hense.

[Onkel Neal]

The U.N. failure on this score is no accident. It is a direct result of what the U.N. is, and how it works — a collective, saddled with procedures that tend to favor despots over democrats. That sums up the UN for me.

Is it the U.N. or is it mankind ?

The UN.

[waste gate]

Thank you for your reply scandium.

Although you initially agree that all terrorism is to be rejected, you tear into this screed about economic deficets and how Canada is being drawn into Isreal's war on the world. Non of which are the question.

My question was one of those yes/no questions you hear so much about. Try not to cloud the question with hyperbole.

If you cannot answer the question without the intellectual integrety in which it was asked, then you have lost this argument.

[scandium]

That is reality, and I know you might hate the message but don't shoot the messenger for telling it to you as it is.
As you think it is. For a minute there you were sounding like Mike Hense.
No, and that is an unfair comparison and you know it. Without commenting on Mike's views or his posting habits it should be abundantly clear by now that I back up my assertions and make an effort to prove my claims. You may disagree with what I say, but they are not mere rants and I am not alone in this perception of events there (which is not even a "perception", it is an under-reported reality that more and more people are finally waking up to) or in the conclusions that I have asserted.

Most, if not all of what I've written in this thread, you can find in whole or in part from other sources. For instance Gideon Levy, Israeli journalist for Haaretz and former spokesman for Shimon Peres:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/738739.html

Operation Peace for the IDF

Every neighborhood has one, a loudmouth bully who shouldn't be provoked into anger. He's insulted? He'll pull out a knife. Spat in the face? He'll draw a gun. Hit? He'll pull out a machine gun. Not that the bully's not right - someone did harm him. But the reaction, what a reaction! It's not that he's not feared, but nobody really appreciates him. The real appreciation is for the strong who don't immediately use their strength. Regrettably, the Israel Defense Forces once again looks like the neighborhood bully. A soldier was abducted in Gaza? All of Gaza will pay. Eight soldiers are killed and two abducted to Lebanon? All of Lebanon will pay. One and only one language is spoken by Israel, the language of force.

..

The war we declared on Lebanon has already exacted from us, and of course from Lebanon, too, a heavy price. Did anyone give any thought to the question whether it should be paid?

Everyone knows how this war begins, but does anyone know how it ends? Heavy casualties in the Israeli rear? A war with Syria? A general war? Is it all worth it? Look what a new rookie government can do in such a short time.

Behind the operations in Lebanon and Gaza is the same foolish idea about pressure on the population leading to political changes that Israel wants. In the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict, that concept has only led us from one disaster to the next. We "cleansed" southern Lebanon of Palestinians in 1982, and what did we get? Hezbollahstan instead of Fatahland. Hamas won't fall because Gaza is in the dark, and not even because we bombed the Palestinian Foreign Ministry building at the weekend - another nonsensical move; Hezbollah won't be smashed because the international airport in Beirut has been put out of commission.

Israel once again is not distinguishing between a justified war against Hezbollah and an unjust and unwise war against the Lebanese nation. The camouflage concealing the war's real goals was ripped off by this defense minister, who says what he means: "Nasrallah is going to get it so bad that he will never forget the name Amir Peretz," he bragged, like a typical bully. Now at least we know that Israel went to war so that the name Amir Peretz is never forgotten. It's the war for the perpetuation of the name Peretz and the blurring of Dan Halutz's failures. And to hell with the cost.
And from Henry Siegman, former President of the American Jewish Congress and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1821621,00.html

In Lebanon as in Gaza, it is not Israel's right to protect its civilian population from terrorist aggression that is at issue. It is the way Israel goes about exercising that right.

Despite bitter lessons from the past, Israel's political and military leaders remain addicted to the notion that, whatever they have a right to do, they have a right to overdo, to the point where they lose what international support they had when they began their retaliatory measures.

Israel's response to the terrorist assault in Gaza and the outrageous and unprovoked Hizbollah assault across its northern border in Lebanon, far from providing protection to its citizens, may well further undermine their security by destabilising the wider region.

On the surface, the situations in Gaza and in Lebanon may seem similar, but there are important differences. No matter how one judges the rights and wrongs of the recent Hamas assaults and Israeli reprisals, in Gaza the fundamental casus belli is Israel's occupation that has now lasted for nearly 40 years. Israel's leaders continue to suffer from the delusion they can defeat violent Palestinian resistance to that occupation without offering the Palestinians a credible, non-violent political path to statehood, promised in various international agreements.

Following the precedent set by Ariel Sharon with his unilateral disengagement from Gaza, his successor as Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, believes that if Israel dodges the bullet of a bilateral peace negotiation with the Palestinians - something it has successfully done so far by claiming 'there is no Palestinian partner for peace' - it will be able to create unilaterally a rump Palestinian state that will leave in Israeli hands large chunks of Palestinian territory and make a mockery of Palestinian national aspirations.

Despite the massive imbalance of forces, the Palestinians will never abide such an outcome.
And lastly, for tonight, from John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science at Chicago and Stephen Walt, Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html

For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state...

[T]the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical...

It is the only recipient that does not have to account for how the aid is spent, which makes it virtually impossible to prevent the money from being used for purposes the US opposes, such as building settlements on the West Bank. Moreover, the US has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons systems, and given it access to such top-drawer weaponry as Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets. Finally, the US gives Israel access to intelligence it denies to its Nato allies and has turned a blind eye to Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons...

Washington also provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support. Since 1982, the US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members.

..

Beginning in the 1990s, and even more after 9/11, US support has been justified by the claim that both states are threatened by terrorist groups originating in the Arab and Muslim world, and by ‘rogue states’ that back these groups and seek weapons of mass destruction. This is taken to mean not only that Washington should give Israel a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians and not press it to make concessions until all Palestinian terrorists are imprisoned or dead, but that the US should go after countries like Iran and Syria. Israel is thus seen as a crucial ally in the war on terror, because its enemies are America’s enemies. In fact, Israel is a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states.

‘Terrorism’ is not a single adversary, but a tactic employed by a wide array of political groups. The terrorist organisations that threaten Israel do not threaten the United States, except when it intervenes against them (as in Lebanon in 1982). Moreover, Palestinian terrorism is not random violence directed against Israel or ‘the West’; it is largely a response to Israel’s prolonged campaign to colonise the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

[waste gate]

Thank you for your reply scandium.

Although you initially agree that all terrorism is to be rejected, you tear into this screed about economic deficets and how Canada is being drawn into Isreal's war on the world. Non of which are the question.

My question was one of those yes/no questions you hear so much about. Try not to cloud the question with hyperbole.

If you cannot answer the question without the intellectual integrety in which it was asked, then you have lost this argument.

[scandium]

Thank you for your reply scandium.

Although you initially agree that all terrorism is to be rejected, you tear into this screed about economic deficets and how Canada is being drawn into Isreal's war on the world. Non of which are the question.

My question was one of those yes/no questions you hear so much about. Try not to cloud the question with hyperbole.

If you cannot answer the question without the intellectual integrety in which it was asked, then you have lost this argument.

Everything I have posted on this, here and in other threads, is based on documented facts as reported by respected international journalists, scholars, human right's advocates, foreign policy experts, former ambassadors, and on and on and I've linked and quoted the articles, and elsewhere linked to the interviews.

Typically, it is met with a 1 or 2 line blanket dismissal or a counterpost citing fringe sites like Little Green Footballs, Powerline, World Net Daily, etc.

Yet I persist because your friends are those who stick by you in times of crisis and attempt to intervene when, through innocent ignorance that most of our hemisphere is under the spell of, that ignorance threatens not only your own future but everyone else's as well.

Although even my patience has its limits, and on this issue I've stated my case and provided the links for you to follow up on. What you do with them is your choice.

[waste gate]

And yet you still cannot answer the question. All the 'facts' you say you document via the internet can be contradicted by 'facts' that others contribute via the internet.

Let me ask the question again:
Will you say explicitly that you reject the actions of hezbalah, hamas, al queida, and all other 'terrorist organizations' whether state sponsored or not?

Yes or no question. No internet just you.

[scandium]

And yet you still cannot answer the question. All the 'facts' you say you document via the internet can be contradicted by 'facts' that others contribute via the internet.

Let me ask the question again:
Will you say explicitly that you reject the actions of hezbalah, hamas, al queida, and all other 'terrorist organizations' whether state sponsored or not?

Yes or no question. No internet just you.

I already answered that several posts ago. The answer was yes.

[waste gate]

I already answered that several posts ago. The answer was yes.

Then you believe in a war on terror? Another yes/no question.

[scandium]

I already answered that several posts ago. The answer was yes.
Then you believe in a war on terror? Another yes/no question.

"A war on terror"? Why stop there? Why not also a War on Drugs or a War on Poverty? Oh wait... that's been tried, though minus the reigning down of bombs on innocent populations (my bad - "collateral damage").

I've already answered that question. If you're looking to have a yes/no game of 20 questions then go find somebody else to play with.

[waste gate]

There ya go bringing other issues into the mix again. The sign of a man without conviction. Or who has something to hide.

[Onkel Neal]

And yet you still cannot answer the question. All the 'facts' you say you document via the internet can be contradicted by 'facts' that others contribute via the internet.

Let me ask the question again:
Will you say explicitly that you reject the actions of hezbalah, hamas, al queida, and all other 'terrorist organizations' whether state sponsored or not?

Yes or no question. No internet just you.

Well said:yep:

[August]

Quote from Scandium...

"That, like the entire article, is a very nice one dimensional view of things. Here's a bit from "Terror in the name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill", by Jessica Stern, to add a little more perspective:"

What part of what you quoted from Skybirds post was one dimensional???

Was it the part ...

"even before Hezbollah on July 12 launched its killing-kidnapping-and- rocket-firing assault on Israel. Hezbollah’s prior record entails well over two decades of kidnappings, hijackings, suicide bombings, massacres, and collateral carnage worldwide, in countries including Lebanon, Israel, Spain, Denmark, Germany, France, and Argentina....."

Or is it the part....

"Created by the totalitarian ayatollahs of Iran just after their 1979 Islamic revolution; trained and bankrolled by Iran; supported by Syria; seasoned in extortion and smuggling operations reaching as far as South America, Canada, and the U.S.; open to alliances with other terrorist groups; peddling terrorist propaganda internationally on its Al-Manar TV station; dedicated to the destruction of Israel and seeking ultimately to supplant the workings of free societies with its Iran-spawned creed and practice of terror… Hezbollah among its butcheries to date has murdered more Americans than any other terrorist group except al Qaeda...."


Is any of this in debate?..and if so what part?

A spade is a spade quit trying to change things into hearts which aren't and can't be.It gets down to the nity grity dirty little truth....and you can't get around it Scandium....Many many of these groups are just sick evil,murderous, peace Hating people and always will be until they die and for truly peace loving countries to ignore it will only result in they're own demise.What other dimnension is there except right and wrong except ones interpretation of it...you either like killing babies and innocent people or you don't.Action and deed is what is proof of ones intentions and the proof stares me in the face every night when I watch the news or see what happens around me everyday.For you to even suggest that there is some "One Sided" part of the truth you are correct, there is only one side of the truth and you don't seem to be on it.

Got to pick a side dude you can't sit on the fence on this one.

I was going to make a lengthy reply to Scandiums nazi-Isreali comparison rant in the other thread but this pretty much says it all.

[scandium]

I was going to make a lengthy reply to Scandiums nazi-Isreali comparison rant in the other thread but this pretty much says it all.

Then you still haven't looked at any of photage I provided, and if you're not willing to do that then its just as well you spared me the waste of time.

[August]

I was going to make a lengthy reply to Scandiums nazi-Isreali comparison rant in the other thread but this pretty much says it all.
Then you still haven't looked at any of photage I provided, and if you're not willing to do that then its just as well you spared me the waste of time.

I did look at the footage, it doesn't change my mind about them or you.

[scandium]

Oren Ben-Dor: Who are the real terrorists in the Middle East?

What exactly is being defended? Is it the citizens of Israel or the nature of the Israeli state?

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article1197235.ece


As its citizens are being killed, Israel is, yet again, inflicting death and destruction on Lebanon. It tries to portray this horror as necessary for its self-defence. Indeed, the casual observer might regard the rocket attacks on Israeli cities such as Haifa and my own home town, Nahariya, as justifying this claim.

While states should defend their citizens, states which fail this duty should be questioned and, if necessary, reconfigured. Israel is a state which, instead of defending its citizens, puts all of them, Jews as well as non-Jews, in danger.
What exactly is being defended by the violence in Gaza and Lebanon? Is it the citizens of Israel or the nature of the Israeli state? I suggest the latter. Israel's statehood is based on an unjust ideology which causes indignity and suffering for those who are classified as non-Jewish by either a religious or ethnic test. To hide this primordial immorality, Israel fosters an image of victimhood. Provoking violence, consciously or unconsciously, against which one must defend oneself is a key feature of the victim-mentality. By perpetuating such a tragic cycle, Israel is a terrorist state like no other.

Many who wish to hide the immorality of the Israeli state do so by restricting attention to the horrors of the post-1967 occupation and talking about a two-state solution, since endorsing a Palestinian state implicitly endorses the ideology behind a Jewish one.

The very creation of Israel required an act of terror. In 1948, most of the non-Jewish indigenous people were ethnically cleansed from the part of Palestine which became Israel. This action was carefully planned. Without it, no state with a Jewish majority and character would have been possible. Since 1948, the "Israeli Arabs", those Palestinians who avoided expulsion, have suffered continuous discrimination. Indeed, many have been internally displaced, ostensibly for "security reasons", but really to acquire their lands for Jews.

Surely Holocaust memory and Jewish longing for Eretz Israel would not be sufficient to justify ethnic cleansing and ethnocracy? To avoid the destabilisation that would result from ethical inquiry, the Israeli state must hide the core problem, by nourishing a victim mentality among Israeli Jews.

To sustain that mentality and to preserve an impression of victimhood among outsiders, Israel must breed conditions for violence. Whenever prospects of violence against it subside, Israel must do its utmost to regenerate them: the myth that it is a peace-seeking victim which has "no partner for peace" is a key panel in the screen with which Israel hides its primordial and continuing immorality.

Israel's successful campaign to silence criticism of its initial and continuing dispossession of the indigenous Palestinians leaves the latter no option but to resort to violent resistance. In the wake of electing Hamas - the only party which, in the eyes of Palestinians, has not yet given up their cause - the Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank were subjected to an Israeli campaign of starvation, humiliation and violence.

The insincere "withdrawal" from Gaza, and the subsequent blockade, ensured a chronicle of violence which, so far, includes Palestinian firing of Kasem rockets, the capture of an Israeli soldier and the Israeli near re-occupation of Gaza. What we witness is more hatred, more violence from Palestinians, more humiliation and collective punishments from Israelis - all useful reinforcement for the Israeli victim mentality and for the sacred cow status of Israeli statehood.

The truth is that there never could have been a partition of Palestine by ethically acceptable means. Israel was created through terror and it needs terror to cover-up its core immorality. Whenever there is a glimmer of stability, the state orders a targeted assassination, such as that in Sidon which preceded the current Lebanon crisis, knowing well that this brings not security but more violence. Israel's unilateralism and the cycle of violence nourish one another.

Amidst the violence and despite the conventional discourse which hides the root of this violence, actuality calls upon us to think. The more we silence its voice, the more violently actuality is sure to speak.

In Hebrew, the word elem (a stunned silence resulting from oppression or shock) is etymologically linked to the word almut (violence). Silence about the immoral core of Israeli statehood makes us all complicit in breeding the terrorism that threatens a catastrophe which could tear the world apart.

[scandium]

I was going to make a lengthy reply to Scandiums nazi-Isreali comparison rant in the other thread but this pretty much says it all.
Then you still haven't looked at any of photage I provided, and if you're not willing to do that then its just as well you spared me the waste of time.
I did look at the footage, it doesn't change my mind about them or you.
What parts of it did you take issue with? How do you reconcile the realities depicted with the Israeli propaganda techniques, as exposed by the 1h20m documentary, with the very same talking points you parrot here?

Did you find them strikingly similar and come away with the feeling that you're being used as a tool by well monied, vested interests that you have no say in, do not benefit from, and could even one day become the victim of (the reality of blowback)?

That, at least, was my feeling afterward, having spent so much of my life so brainwashed by such slick PR and selective depiction, really outright distortion, of a state who's actions are so disproportionately influential on the world scene, and even in my remote neck of the woods and yours as well.

But I've been fooled once, now I know better. Never again.

[August]

But I've been fooled once, now I know better. Never again.

Whatever.

[scandium]

Iceman, as the forum's most vocal Christian, I'm curious to know what your response is to this letter from the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem (or any other practicing Christians here, I myself have too long been agnostic for religious appeals to have any effect on me):

http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/articles/41/50/acns4170.cfm

Bishop Riah, the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, on the current crisis in the Middle East

Dear Friends,

For the past forty years we have been largely alone on this desert fighting a predator that not only has robbed us of all but a small piece of our historic homeland, but threatens the traditions and holy sites of Christianity. We are tired, weary, sick, and wounded. We need your help.

We have seen and we have been the recipients of the generosity of our American and British friends. We cherish the support of everyone throughout the world who stands with us in solidarity. Daily, I hear from many of them who express outrage at the arrogant and aggressive positions of President Bush, Secretary Rice, Senator Clinton, and Prime Minister Blair. I am saddened to realise just how much the deserved prestige of the United States and Britain has declined as a result of politicians who seem to devalue human life and suffering. And, I am disturbed that the Zionist Christian community is damaging America’s image as never before.

Little more than a week ago, we were focused on the plight of the Palestinian people. In Gaza, four and five generations have been victims of Israeli racism, hate crimes, terror, violence, and murder. Garbage and sewage have created a likely outbreak of cholera as Israeli strategies create the collapse of infrastructures. There is no milk. Drinking water, food, and medicine are in serious short supply. Innocents are being killed and dying from lack of available emergency care. Children are paying the ultimate price. Even for those whose lives are spared, many of them are traumatised and will not grow to live useful lives. Commerce between the West Bank and Gaza has been halted and humanitarian aid barely trickles into some of the neediest in the world.

Movement of residents of the West Bank is difficult or impossible as “security measures” are heightened to break the backs of the Palestinian people and cut them off from their place of work, schools, hospitals, and families. It is family and community that has sustained these people during these hopeless times. For some, it is all that they had, but that too has been taken away with the continued building of the wall and check points. The strategy of ethnic cleansing on the part of the State of Israel continues.

This week, war broke out on the Lebanon-Israeli border (near Banyas where Jesus gave St. Peter the keys to heaven and earth). The Israeli government’s disproportionate reaction to provocation was consistent with their opportunistic responses in which they destroy their perceived enemy.

In her recent article, “The Insane Brutality of the State of Israel,” American, Kathleen Christison, a former CIA analyst says, “The state lashes out in a crazed effort, lacking any sense of proportion, to reassure itself of its strength.” She continues, “A society that can brush off as unimportant an army officer’s brutal murder of a thirteen year old girl on the claim that she threatened soldiers at a military post (one of nearly seven hundred Palestinian children murdered by Israelis since the Intifada began) is not a society with a conscience.” The “situation” as it has come to be called, has deteriorated into a war without boundaries or limitations. It is a war with deadly potential beyond the imaginations of most civilized people.

As I write to you, I am preparing to leave with other bishops for Nablus with medical and other emergency supplies for five hundred families, and a pledge for one thousand families more.

On Saturday we will attempt to enter Gaza with medical aid for doctors and nurses in our hospital there who struggle to serve the injured, the sick, and the dying.

My plan is that I will be able to go to Lebanon next week - where we are presently without a resident priest - to bury the dead, and comfort the victims of war. Perhaps as others have you will ask, “What can I do?” Certainly we encourage and appreciate your prayers. That is important, but it is not enough. If you find that you can no longer look away, take up your cross. It takes courage as we were promised.

Write every elected official you know. Write to your news media. Speak to your congregation, friends, and colleagues about injustice and the threat of global war. If Syria, Iran, the United States, Great Britain, China and others enter into this war - the consequence is incalculable. Participate in rallies and forums. Find ways that you and your churches can participate in humanitarian relief efforts for the region. Contact us and let us know if you stand with us. I urge you not to be like a disciple watching from afar.

2 Corinthians 6.11
“ We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians, our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return - I speak as to children - open wide your hearts also.”

In, with, and through Christ,

The Rt. Rev. Riah H. Abu El-Assal
Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem
On second thought, having been baptized and confirmed in my own religion, and being sympathetic to the Bishop's plight, I will have to set aside my differences with own Church for now and contact the Bishop to let him know that I stand with him, and will not be like a disciple watching from afar.

[Skybird]

Another case of "somebody's" "self-defense" or "resistance":

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4778575.stm
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060810/ap_on_re_eu/britain_terror_plot
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1841140,00.html

[scandium]

Another case of "somebody's" "self-defense" or "resistance":

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4778575.stm
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060810/ap_on_re_eu/britain_terror_plot
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1841140,00.html

Actually that is none of the above. It is terrorism and likely "blowback". Thankfully the plot was foiled before it could be carried out.

[Iceman]

Iceman, as the forum's most vocal Christian, I'm curious to know what your response is to this letter from the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem (or any other practicing Christians here, I myself have too long been agnostic for religious appeals to have any effect on me):

http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/articles/41/50/acns4170.cfm

Bishop Riah, the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, on the current crisis in the Middle East

Dear Friends,

For the past forty years we have been largely alone on this desert fighting a predator that not only has robbed us of all but a small piece of our historic homeland, but threatens the traditions and holy sites of Christianity. We are tired, weary, sick, and wounded. We need your help.

We have seen and we have been the recipients of the generosity of our American and British friends. We cherish the support of everyone throughout the world who stands with us in solidarity. Daily, I hear from many of them who express outrage at the arrogant and aggressive positions of President Bush, Secretary Rice, Senator Clinton, and Prime Minister Blair. I am saddened to realise just how much the deserved prestige of the United States and Britain has declined as a result of politicians who seem to devalue human life and suffering. And, I am disturbed that the Zionist Christian community is damaging America’s image as never before.

Little more than a week ago, we were focused on the plight of the Palestinian people. In Gaza, four and five generations have been victims of Israeli racism, hate crimes, terror, violence, and murder. Garbage and sewage have created a likely outbreak of cholera as Israeli strategies create the collapse of infrastructures. There is no milk. Drinking water, food, and medicine are in serious short supply. Innocents are being killed and dying from lack of available emergency care. Children are paying the ultimate price. Even for those whose lives are spared, many of them are traumatised and will not grow to live useful lives. Commerce between the West Bank and Gaza has been halted and humanitarian aid barely trickles into some of the neediest in the world.

Movement of residents of the West Bank is difficult or impossible as “security measures” are heightened to break the backs of the Palestinian people and cut them off from their place of work, schools, hospitals, and families. It is family and community that has sustained these people during these hopeless times. For some, it is all that they had, but that too has been taken away with the continued building of the wall and check points. The strategy of ethnic cleansing on the part of the State of Israel continues.

This week, war broke out on the Lebanon-Israeli border (near Banyas where Jesus gave St. Peter the keys to heaven and earth). The Israeli government’s disproportionate reaction to provocation was consistent with their opportunistic responses in which they destroy their perceived enemy.

In her recent article, “The Insane Brutality of the State of Israel,” American, Kathleen Christison, a former CIA analyst says, “The state lashes out in a crazed effort, lacking any sense of proportion, to reassure itself of its strength.” She continues, “A society that can brush off as unimportant an army officer’s brutal murder of a thirteen year old girl on the claim that she threatened soldiers at a military post (one of nearly seven hundred Palestinian children murdered by Israelis since the Intifada began) is not a society with a conscience.” The “situation” as it has come to be called, has deteriorated into a war without boundaries or limitations. It is a war with deadly potential beyond the imaginations of most civilized people.

As I write to you, I am preparing to leave with other bishops for Nablus with medical and other emergency supplies for five hundred families, and a pledge for one thousand families more.

On Saturday we will attempt to enter Gaza with medical aid for doctors and nurses in our hospital there who struggle to serve the injured, the sick, and the dying.

My plan is that I will be able to go to Lebanon next week - where we are presently without a resident priest - to bury the dead, and comfort the victims of war. Perhaps as others have you will ask, “What can I do?” Certainly we encourage and appreciate your prayers. That is important, but it is not enough. If you find that you can no longer look away, take up your cross. It takes courage as we were promised.

Write every elected official you know. Write to your news media. Speak to your congregation, friends, and colleagues about injustice and the threat of global war. If Syria, Iran, the United States, Great Britain, China and others enter into this war - the consequence is incalculable. Participate in rallies and forums. Find ways that you and your churches can participate in humanitarian relief efforts for the region. Contact us and let us know if you stand with us. I urge you not to be like a disciple watching from afar.

2 Corinthians 6.11
“ We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians, our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return - I speak as to children - open wide your hearts also.”

In, with, and through Christ,

The Rt. Rev. Riah H. Abu El-Assal
Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem
On second thought, having been baptized and confirmed in my own religion, and being sympathetic to the Bishop's plight, I will have to set aside my differences with own Church for now and contact the Bishop to let him know that I stand with him, and will not be like a disciple watching from afar.

LOL.... hehe...ok

Christians are taught by the bible that Isreal has blinders on until the time of the End of Days when they're eyes will be re-opened.They believe salvation...and what is Salvation...salvation from the Wrath of God Himself ...Christians believe that slavation comes from only one source and that is because of the obedience of Jesus unto Death.That through his blood and body being broken was the atonment or " New Testament" with man has a way back to God..a way back to the garden...in time.Israel or Jewish people believe in Salvation thru the law....we won't get into that but to your question of what I think about this persons letter.I think anyone who knows scripture would never never side against Israel because it well known by most Christians that Israel is God's chosen land...and the Jews are his people even if they are tempoarily blinded He has not turned his back on them and never will.They're eyes are closed until the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached throughout all the world then God will turn back to Israel.

It is wriiten Heaven is God's Throne ,and Earth is his footstool, and Isreal is the jewel of his eye.He made Israel a peculiar thing it is written and indeed..it is.To side against Israel is to side against God simply and countless Christians here know this and will support them to the end.

This person makes the comment "Ethnic Cleansing"...I don't think that is the case at all, it is war...It is also written scandium that Christ came not to send peace on the Earth but a sword...to set a man at varaince with his neighbor and a mans enimes shall be in his own home.So I know you cannot grasp what I am trying to get at but it is this...those of the flesh concern themselves with things of the flesh and those of the spirit with matters of the spirit....the spiritul and carnal are enemity with each other.


The whole crux of the matter and problem with the world is this...No one man or government can rule so many different peoples without kaos erutping...this is where the Cristian belief is that the anti-christ will attempt this here shortly but what is almost ...almost funny to me is that the nature of evil itself is Kaos and not control...hence there is no unity with evil...anyways this is why God will send the son soon as it is written again....

unless the days be shortened no flesh should be saved.

Jesus bought humans with his own blood and body and we belong to his fold now...the good shepard will return soon to separate the sheep from the goats.

Do I condone killing or death...no...again it is written Death shall be swallowed up in victory...Death is the one thing that should never have been...there is no Death....there is eternity and what we do here each person individualy is what we will be charged with.I believe in the ten commandments and the golden rule and what Christ preached...Love...love sums up ALL laws...love works no ill one who believes in Christ and lives the law of Love then ur doing all you can at the moment...

Now again you ask me...or point to this situation in Israel or even Iraq for that matter....who has the greater love...Osama or Bush....Israel or Hezbolla...? you decide Iran with a leader who says he will wipe Israel off the map...Did Bush ever say he'd wipe Iran off the map? I don't know maybe but not in public and that's for him to deal with.I can only go by the fruits....I see muslim people blowing themselves up by the hundreds and lining up for more...so you tell me Scandium.

[scandium]

LOL.... hehe...ok

Christians are taught by the bible that Isreal has blinders on until the time of the End of Days when they're eyes will be re-opened.They believe salvation...and what is Salvation...salvation from the Wrath of God Himself ...Christians believe that slavation comes from only one source and that is because of the obedience of Jesus unto Death.That through his blood and body being broken was the atonment or " New Testament" with man has a way back to God..a way back to the garden...in time.Israel or Jewish people believe in Salvation thru the law....we won't get into that but to your question of what I think about this persons letter.I think anyone who knows scripture would never never side against Israel because it well known by most Christians that Israel is God's chosen land...and the Jews are his people even if they are tempoarily blinded He has not turned his back on them and never will.They're eyes are closed until the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached throughout all the world then God will turn back to Israel.

It is wriiten Heaven is God's Throne ,and Earth is his footstool, and Isreal is the jewel of his eye.He made Israel a peculiar thing it is written and indeed..it is.To side against Israel is to side against God simply and countless Christians here know this and will support them to the end.

This person makes the comment "Ethnic Cleansing"...I don't think that is the case at all, it is war...It is also written scandium that Christ came not to send peace on the Earth but a sword...to set a man at varaince with his neighbor and a mans enimes shall be in his own home.So I know you cannot grasp what I am trying to get at but it is this...those of the flesh concern themselves with things of the flesh and those of the spirit with matters of the spirit....the spiritul and carnal are enemity with each other.


The whole crux of the matter and problem with the world is this...No one man or government can rule so many different peoples without kaos erutping...this is where the Cristian belief is that the anti-christ will attempt this here shortly but what is almost ...almost funny to me is that the nature of evil itself is Kaos and not control...hence there is no unity with evil...anyways this is why God will send the son soon as it is written again....

unless the days be shortened no flesh should be saved.

Jesus bought humans with his own blood and body and we belong to his fold now...the good shepard will return soon to separate the sheep from the goats.

Do I condone killing or death...no...again it is written Death shall be swallowed up in victory...Death is the one thing that should never have been...there is no Death....there is eternity and what we do here each person individualy is what we will be charged with.I believe in the ten commandments and the golden rule and what Christ preached...Love...love sums up ALL laws...love works no ill one who believes in Christ and lives the law of Love then ur doing all you can at the moment...

Now again you ask me...or point to this situation in Israel or even Iraq for that matter....who has the greater love...Osama or Bush....Israel or Hezbolla...? you decide Iran with a leader who says he will wipe Israel off the map...Did Bush ever say he'd wipe Iran off the map? I don't know maybe but not in public and that's for him to deal with.I can only go by the fruits....I see muslim people blowing themselves up by the hundreds and lining up for more...so you tell me Scandium.
Thanks for the response Ice, though I can't agree with everything you've written, I respect the fact that you at least read the letter and took some time to write a detailed reply to my post.

As to where I stand - I often wonder if perhaps I'd be more at home in the Unitarian Church whose religious philosophy seems more in line with my personal philosophy ;)

I am not a pacifist, but as I've said before, I believe that violence - war - should always be the last choice, one to be used only when all other alternatives have been exhausted or when there are no other alternatives possible; and then the force used should be proportional to the threat posed.

I do not condone any form of terrorism. In the present conflict in Lebanon, I see terror being waged by both sides - Hezbollah and Israel - with innocent Israels and Lebanese alike paying the price.

I have been especially ruthless in my posts toward Israel though, not because I in anyway condone the actions of Hezbollah, but because Israel claims the moral high ground in the conflict, has the far superior military force and the full backing of the world's only superpower on its side, yet for every civilian Hezbollah has killed Israel kills 30 in return and displaces a 100,000 more as refugees. To me this is institutionalized state run terror of a scale that makes Hezbollah, Hamas, and Al Qaeda put together look like amateurs.

So who do I side with? None of them, all of them are or have committed atrocities that to me are totally repugnant. Choosing sides in this moral sewer of a "war" is to me impossible.

[Skybird]

From the German (beware the language!) newspaper Die Welt - a perfect explanation why Hisbollah must be rated as a terror organisation - and actually fulfills all of the EU commision's criterions for that:

http://www.welt.de/data/2006/08/10/991951.html

the author argues that exclusively tactical and diplomatic apprehension prevents Western leaders to follow their own terror criterions. Different to the UN, the EU has a list of criterions to define terror. It's just that they ignore them, and the definition of what terror is in international law'S understanding as well.

All that has not prvented hezbollah to murder more than 1000 people in Israel and throughout Europe.

[scandium]

Hmm... what would you call this Skybird?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2277717,00.html

AS ISRAEL wages war against Hezbollah “terrorists” in Lebanon, Britain has protested about the celebration by right-wing Israelis of a Jewish “act of terrorism” against British rule 60 years ago this week.

The rightwingers, including Binyamin Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister, are commemorating the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of British rule, that killed 92 people and helped to drive the British from Palestine.

They have erected a plaque outside the restored building, and are holding a two-day seminar with speeches and a tour of the hotel by one of the Jewish resistance fighters involved in the attack.

Simon McDonald, the British Ambassador in Tel Aviv, and John Jenkins, the Consul-General in Jerusalem, have written to the municipality, stating: “We do not think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss of many lives, to be commemorated.”

In particular they demanded the removal of the plaque that pays tribute to the Irgun, the Jewish resistance branch headed by Menachem Begin, the future Prime Minister, which carried out the attack on July 22, 1946.

The plaque presents as fact the Irgun’s claim that people died because the British ignored warning calls. “For reasons known only to the British, the hotel was not evacuated,” it states.

Mr McDonald and Dr Jenkins denied that the British had been warned, adding that even if they had “this does not absolve those who planted the bomb from responsibility for the deaths”. On Monday city officials agreed to remove the language deemed offensive from the blue sign hanging on the hotel’s gates, though that had not been done shortly before it was unveiled last night.

The controversy over the plaque and the two-day celebration of the bombing, sponsored by Irgun veterans and the right-wing Menachem Begin Heritage Centre, goes to the heart of the debate over the use of political violence in the Middle East. Yesterday Mr Netanyahu argued in a speech celebrating the attack that the Irgun were governed by morals, unlike fighters from groups such as Hamas.

“It’s very important to make the distinction between terror groups and freedom fighters, and between terror action and legitimate military action,” he said. “Imagine that Hamas or Hezbollah would call the military headquarters in Tel Aviv and say, ‘We have placed a bomb and we are asking you to evacuate the area’.”

But the view of the attack was very different in 1946 when The Times branded the Irgun “terrorists in disguise”. Decades later, Irgun veterans are unrepentant. Sarah Agassi, 80, remembers spying in the King David Hotel.

She and a fellow agent posed as a couple. They danced tangos and waltzes, sipped whisky and wine while they cased out the hotel.

On the day her brother and his fellow fighters posed as Arabs delivering milk and brought seven milk churns, each containing 50kg of explosives, into the building. Ms Agassi waited across the street until her brother rushed out. She said that she then made the warning call to the British command in the hotel.

Sitting in the luxurious hotel lobby, she expressed no regret. “We fought for our independence. We thought it was the right way . . . If I had to fight for Israel, I swear even now I would do anything.”
It seems to me, from reading this article, that the only difference between an Arab terrorist and a Jewish one is that if you're a Jewish terrorist then in Israel they'll elect you Prime Minister . :dead:

I suppose somethings never change. And a nice touch on their part disguising themselves as Arabs. And celebrating the act of deliberately killing British citizens with a 2 day celebration - complete with a plaque to commemorate the slaughter - while at the same time levelling Lebanon for their capture of two IDF soldiers, and killing hundreds of "human shields" in the process, is another real touch of class.

http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m230/jeckyll7/more20missiles20with20love_men1.jpg

http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m230/jeckyll7/more20missiles20with20love_men2.jpg

http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m230/jeckyll7/more20missiles20with20love_men5.jpg

http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m230/jeckyll7/more20missiles20with20love_men20dan.jpg

Nice use of the civies/shields in the black hats & white shirts too, though I thought only Hezbollah did that (even though its been proven that Israel has been lying about that too).

[Iceman]

I hear ya Scandium...and I respect everyones pov's even the Muslims believe it or not.I just see a differnt war going on, one fought for the souls of men not for lands.

I am a fisher of men... or a fishermen lol :)

The simplest command I think I ever heard from the Bible is this...

Fear God and keep His commandements for this is the whole duty of man....along with be fruitful and multiply :) .