[Politics] Who was the IDF aiming at ?

[August]

Originally Posted by Kazuaki Shimazaki II

No, I'm remembering Israel invading and occupying Lebanon and thus creating the Hezbollah.

But why did Israel invade Lebanon in 1982?

It was for the very same reason they invade it today, and that was to stop attacks from being mounted out of southern Lebanon against northern Israel. Except that they didn't call it Hezbollah back then. It was the PLO who moved in and took over the southern half of Lebanon after their defeat in the Jordanian Civil war and who had played the major role in starting the Lebanese civil war.

Read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Lebanon_War

Some people here like to make out that the Israelis are the aggressors but history tells us differently.

[U-104]

Originally Posted by August

But why did Israel invade Lebanon in 1982?

It was for the very same reason they invade it today, and that was to stop attacks from being mounted out of southern Lebanon against northern Israel. Except that they didn't call it Hezbollah back then. It was the PLO who moved in and took over the southern half of Lebanon after their defeat in the Jordanian Civil war and who had played the major role in starting the Lebanese civil war.

Read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Lebanon_War

Some people here like to make out that the Israelis are the aggressors but history tells us differently.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by August

It was for the very same reason they invade it today, and that was to stop attacks from being mounted out of southern Lebanon against northern Israel. Except that they didn't call it Hezbollah back then. It was the PLO who moved in and took over the southern half of Lebanon after their defeat in the Jordanian Civil war and who had played the major role in starting the Lebanese civil war.

Read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Lebanon_War

Some people here like to make out that the Israelis are the aggressors but history tells us differently.

1) Nice try, but you now brought in the PLO, which means the Palestinians, which go back to 1947 and the partitioning plan.
2) They might have been trying to kill the PLO, but in the process they undeniably trampled on the Lebanese, which created the Hezbollah.

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

<Edit> Indians had no city or state. They simply lived off the land. You must go south and visit the Aztecs or Mayans to use that logic. Besides, Indians did get some very valuable land and they make a bankroll off of it as we speak.

1) Actually, at least some Native Americans (such as the Iroquois) had a form of government, and all of them would at least have a government within the vilage. Also it is very arbitrary to demand a particularllevel of advancement to decide they were worthy of keeping the land.
2) Even though the Natives were quite well compensated, one can argue even such a compensation is inadequate for loss of their nation and land. Second, and at least as important, this second point was entirely missing for the Palestinians.

<Edit>

The Palestinians never had a state before, so they should feel pretty good that they got something now - for free!

And the Jews didn't have a state for N-thousand years. What they had was a product of conquest and was soon conquered. Their claim isn't really that much stronger, especially when compared the "present" (in 1947 or so) situation of the Palestinians actually outnumbering the Jews in the region.

That is what happens in war. If the Heznollah were so concerned about it, they would get those families out of there. Instead you have a group willing to use innocence as a shield while they fire at Israel. Hezbollah must be wiped out so they cannot do these atrocities to future generations.

While not eager to overly defend the Hezbollahs:
1) You are now expecting the enemy to be self-sacrificing - I'd call that a tall demand for any enemy.
2) Do not confuse who killed those people. It was Israel. Sure, maybe the Hezbollahs were pretty despicable, but it was still Israel who made a certain final prioritization, a prioritization which led to their deaths.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by August

It was for the very same reason they invade it today,

But so far they do not invade it - that is exactly the giant and still growing problem I have with this war. They send tens of thousands of reservists to the North, but they do not go in in force. More and more I get the impression that I massively overestimated the intelligence of the Israeli planners. I took it for granted that the aerial bombardment would be followed by massive cleaning by ground forces. And it seems this will not take place. Which in a reverse conclusions leads me to the thought that they started this operation with very, very bad preparation. the political fallout will eat them up alive - because I think they will not deliver the severe blow to Hezbollah for which a massive and enduring ground intervention would be the precondition. you cannot take out a guerilla-style fighting enemy from the air alone. you can disrupt his supply lines to some degree, but you need to cvonfront him on the ground, from all directions, leaving him no free space to move. What they are doing now is only a huge waste of ammunition, it they leave it to that.

[Yahoshua]

Granted, Israel conquered the land and settled there. The land was not called Palestine at that time, and the original inhabitants are gone. The land was partitioned in 1946 with the Arabs given the Trans-Jordan and the Jews given "Palestine." Jordan IS the modern Palestinian state.

I don't deny that the media presented is obviously pro-Israel, but if you sincerely doubt that the facts presented to you are the the truth, please find for me the Palestinian language, culture, society, kingdom, boundaries, and names of their leaders before the year 1967.

And I find it fair and balanced to say that Mohammedans have been on the offensive since the inception and formation of Islam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Islam

This site is about the "origin" of the word Palestine.

http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~peters/mythology.html

And a recent history:

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http://www.masada2000.org/historical.html

http://www.imninalu.net/myths-pals.htm

And just as a last minute addition, the absolute neutrality of the U.N.:

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Last minute addition Part two, Human Shields used by Hizbullah:

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And by Hamas:



The black/white reporting from both sides:

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[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

But so far they do not invade it - that is exactly the giant and still growing problem I have with this war. They send tens of thousands of reservists to the North, but they do not go in in force. More and more I get the impression that I massively overestimated the intelligence of the Israeli planners. I took it for granted that the aerial bombardment would be followed by massive cleaning by ground forces. And it seems this will not take place. Which in a reverse conclusions leads me to the thought that they started this operation with very, very bad preparation. the political fallout will eat them up alive - because I think they will not deliver the severe blow to Hezbollah for which a massive and enduring ground intervention would be the precondition. you cannot take out a guerilla-style fighting enemy from the air alone. you can disrupt his supply lines to some degree, but you need to cvonfront him on the ground, from all directions, leaving him no free space to move. What they are doing now is only a huge waste of ammunition, it they leave it to that.

Skybird I think you're being unrealistic in the level of effort the Israelis can sustain. Maybe they can do more than they're doing in Lebanon but they still have to guard their other borders and they have to keep their economy going, so at some point their military committments become a trade off with keeping the rest of the country afloat.

[August]

Originally Posted by Kazuaki Shimazaki II

1) Nice try, but you now brought in the PLO, which means the Palestinians, which go back to 1947 and the partitioning plan.
2) They might have been trying to kill the PLO, but in the process they undeniably trampled on the Lebanese, which created the Hezbollah.

Interesting tactic don't you think? Lebanon does nothing to stop PLO fighters from making border incursions to kill Israeli civilians. It does not stop the PLO from using Lebanese territory to make artillery attacks on northern Israeli towns and cities. When the Israelis respond, all civilian deaths caught in the crossfire become their fault.

While not eager to overly defend the Hezbollahs:
1) You are now expecting the enemy to be self-sacrificing - I'd call that a tall demand for any enemy.
2) Do not confuse who killed those people. It was Israel. Sure, maybe the Hezbollahs were pretty despicable, but it was still Israel who made a certain final prioritization, a prioritization which led to their deaths.

Maybe, but Hezbollah forced the present situation on Israel, unless of course you think there was another way to stop attacks against its people being mounted from southern Lebanon.

If there is i'd be glad to hear it, because as it stands i see no other option.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by August

Skybird I think you're being unrealistic in the level of effort the Israelis can sustain. Maybe they can do more than they're doing in Lebanon but they still have to guard their other borders and they have to keep their economy going, so at some point their military commitments become a trade off with keeping the rest of the country afloat.

Just in case you are right (and I think they could sustain a far bigger offensive than what they are just mobilising now) - then this would mean that the air war has been a both terrible and very stupid mistake. It means hundreds of thousands dislocated and moving, huge destruction done - and all that to gift Hezbollah a monumental propaganda victory - for zero, rien, nada compensation. It means a massive political fallout, and the waste of life and human suffering.

I only supported the air campaign while assuming that they also go in on the ground, and in massive force, the area we are talking about, if considering a buffer zone 20 km deep up to the Litani, is of the size like Baghdad plus it's outer suburbs (I checked that yesterday on maps, the comparison is rough, but all in all it fits.) I still think that the Israelis could afford a force size that could control such an area to that degree that any guerrilla in it hardly could find a place to squeeze into, not to mention to walk around. What it is about is not fighting on the ground, but have so many eyes on the ground that no target could escape to be detected for air and artillery strikes. And FAR BETTER target identification. Dropping a 1000 pounder onto a parked bike is not clever. Right now, I think they are more and more killing stones - but these with overkill capacity.

If they do not start on the ground, and pronto, then this will enter the history books as the biggest military folly of Israel ever, and I mention it alongside military mistakes like Iraq 2003. maybe born out of despair, but nevertheless a folly.

Look at that terrain in google earth - and then tell me you could cause a guerrilla even just headache there, without massive, overwhelming presence on the ground. It reminds me of the harsh terrain in Eastern Turkey, or the mountains in Algeria. Absolutely impossible to win there without ground presence en masse. if the option of a ground operation was no option from the beginning and will not be turned into reality, their leaders should step down for having started all this. Especially the Israelis I would have expected not to act so stupid, military-wise.

Fight or don't. but when you decide to do, put all heart that you have into it, at all costs, and then some more. True for martial arts. True for sword fighting. True for waging war. Do, or don't. 110%, or 0%. No in between.

[Yahoshua]

I second skybird and August on these points:

To a point it does become a trade-off in where the expense of military equipment vs the tourism trade meets unfavorable conditions for continuing aggression. In order to end the war as fast as possible, large amouints of ground troops will be required. Depending on how much the nation is willing to sacrifice to take care of the problem.

And in my opinion, half a illion landmines would make for a secure border but leaves open the remaining problem or rockets.

If there is no strong Lebanese army, then Hizbullah will develop better rockets and move farther and farther into lebanon while still launching the rockets while the situation becomes more and more difficult for Israel to respond effectively with ground troops whereas a war waged solely from the air would require huge amounts of expended fuel, equipment, time, and ammunition for little or no impact on the grand scale.

Just found this video on the Palestinians......lovely neighbors dont you think?

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[Skybird]

From the Jerusalem Post:

Analysis: The later the better for an int'l force

David Horovitz, THE JERUSALEM POST Jul. 30, 2006

Even today, 23 years later, the attack remains the deadliest on Americans overseas since World War II.
On the morning of October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber - smiling, according to one survivor, and widely believed to have been dispatched by Hizbullah - smashed his yellow Mercedes truck through the barbed wire fence of the US Marines compound near Beirut International Airport and detonated some 5,400 kilograms of explosives in the lobby of the four-story headquarters building.
When the last body had finally been extricated from the rubble days later, the toll of the dead was 220 Marines, 18 US Navy personnel and three US soldiers.
Just seconds after the first blast, a similar bombing was carried out at the barracks of the Sixth French Paratroop Infantry Regiment. In this case, the bomber drove into the underground parking garage and blew up the building, killing 58 paratroopers.
The twin Beirut bombings essentially spelled the end of the last attempt to maintain a multinational force in Lebanon. Now, with US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair endorsing the idea, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is back in Jerusalem trying to begin the process of setting up another such force.
The likelihood is that, unlike last time, the US will not be playing a central role in staffing such a mission. Its military is fully stretched in Iraq and Afghanistan. "As far as boots on the ground, that doesn't seem to be in the cards," said John R. Bolton, the US ambassador to the United Nations, over the weekend.
Instead, the talk is of 10-20,000 troops led by France and/or Turkey, with possible contingents from Germany, Italy, India, Brazil and Pakistan. But with European troops bound to be targeted by Hizbullah and its allies, some commentators are suggesting that any European role should be backed up with forces from the Arab world - from Morocco, Algeria, Egypt and/or Jordan.
However composed, the concern for Israel is that the force simply will not survive in the vicious territory where it will deploy. And, ironically given the international pressure for its establishment, the strong sense in Israel is that the sooner it takes shape and the Israeli-Hizbullah fighting ends, the poorer the force's chances of having a constructive impact and a viable future.
Anxious to minimize Lebanese civilian casualties, concerned not to find itself reoccupying Lebanon, determined to limit its ground force fatalities, yet increasingly aware of the limitations of its air power, the IDF is, nonetheless, daily weakening the potent guerrilla infrastructure Hizbullah has painstakingly constructed over the past six years. Its commanders chorus, day after intense, taxing day rooting out a thoroughly entrenched guerrilla force, that it still has much more left to do. If a ceasefire comes sooner rather than later, purported "good news" for international diplomacy would likely turn out to be very bad news indeed for the international troops left to grapple with a defiant, even victorious Hizbullah.
The current international force in the area, UNIFIL, patently posed no obstacle whatsoever to Hizbullah's accruing of power. Even a genuinely robust international force, with a genuinely robust mandate, would be immensely vulnerable to anything but a Hizbullah overwhelmingly degraded by the ongoing attentions of the IDF.
For Israel, however, the concerns are still more acute. Whenever the fighting ends, it will be the task of the international force to assist the Lebanese army, a goodly part of it pro-Hizbullah, in bringing its sovereign force all the way down south, at the expense of Hizbullah. It will be the task of the international force to assist the Lebanese army in destroying what remains of Hizbullah's missile capacity. And it will be the task of the international force to deploy at key border positions and take the other necessary steps to prevent the rehabilitation of Hizbullah via military supplies from Iran and Syria.
This adds up to an extraordinarily complex mission. The precedents are grim indeed. And the sooner the international force is tasked with its mission and despatched, effectively taking over from the IDF, the more remote its prospects of success.

[Yahoshua]

Interesting post.

HOLY ****


WTH IS WWITH MY AVATAR!!???? GET RID OF IT, GET RID OF IT!!!!

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Yahoshua

Interesting post.

HOLY ****


WTH IS WWITH MY AVATAR!!???? GET RID OF IT, GET RID OF IT!!!!

Neal will let you get rid of it 2 ways - Either post a lot, or give him money. Your choice. Either way, makes his board better!

-S

[Onkel Neal]

What do you mean, avatar? That's surveillance footage from the party you were at last night

[Yahoshua]

I told you there was something strange about that girl..........but nooooo. You had to encourage me to offer her a drink.....so I did.

(I still blame you for it).