[Dan Halberstein]

I think I have a lot to catch up on.

Daniel,
Your reply (as edited of course!) reminds me what we all should be keeping in mind as the goal... peace for the people who bring none of this on. Yes, 100% yes, and I hope the best for your wife's relatives as well. I do have to defend "Hezbollahpalooza" against "Israelpalooza," however, on the grounds of stronger parodic parallelism.

I get your take about "ordering" people to evacuate when the transportation system is crippled. But Israel has been issuing such "orders" since prior to the actions that damaged the roads and bridges. All in all: is it better or less good to make clear to civilian populations -- at a cost to your own military objectives -- exactly which areas will be hit hardest? One side will call it more humane conduct of war, the other will call it terrorism (because a refugee lives in fear -- disregarding the distinction of living at all versus dying.)

A final note: you may well be right that Israel's course of action may not be the best to strengthen actors other than Hezbollah. The question of what these actors have been doing since Israel's withdrawl, when a disarming of all militias and an end to cross-border attacks were part and parcel of the withdrawl agreement, is conveniently ignored in this analysis. It is the responsibility of Lebanon, with or without a Syrian-installed government, to honor the territorial sovereignty of Israel, if indeed they even tacitly accept that sovereignty. Of course, they do not, and in disregarding Israel's right to exist and acting on that disregard, they invite responses such as we see unfolding now.

Do I think they are the best possible responses? No, but I will certainly watch carefully for the results. Do I think Israel has the right to respond as it has? Absolutely.

Dick,
Thanks for the support... as I hope comes through in the above, I cannot think of the civilians killed in any war or conflict as "throwaways." Whether or not sympathy is expected or is forthcoming from "victim" status, when I'm horrified by, or better, when I work to prevent the pain of the "other," I'm a better human for it (I think.) But you cannot do that at the expense of the self, as Hillel famously noted... I think Israel's currently in such a position, in the macrocosm.

Mark,
It seems to have touched a nerve that I've noted the existence of relatives in Haifa. I'll give you a simple answer, assuming the questions to be in earnest. I have one friend of a friend, a Sunni, who does not like Hezbollah, and does not like Israel. I know a couple of Americans who lived as ex-pats in what the female of the couple called [her]"beloved Lebanon" for several years, before bugging out just after 9/11. I know that her attitude is that Israel is a terrible, terrible country, for bullying Lebanon. She seems to have no such sentiments toward any of the score or so of factions which tore the country apart for two decades, nor for Syria. I know no Lebanese in country at present. I do know that other Arab nations (not Lebanon, not Syria,) have condemned both the Hezbollah/Hamas provocations and the Israeli reaction. I have also seen the figures of killed and wounded in Lebanon as a result of the Hezbollah actions and Israeli response, and like you I have seen the pictures of that nation's devastation.

Again, it is a very bad thing. Not as bad as what the U.S. and Britain are doing to the much larger, much more populous country of Iraq. But still, a very bad thing. The questions that are coming up are:

1) Since this is a Very Bad Thing, how can Israel claim the right to engage in it? Answer: Israel is behaving worse than any country on the face of the earth, except all the other countries on the face of the earth. By comparison with what the British or Americans would do posed with parallel circumstances (and need we even mention Russia?), this Very Bad Thing is limited in both scale and tactics. Every other country would have the right to pursue these international criminals across borders, and to impose their will by force, when the host nation of these thugs very plainly says in international forums that it can not be responsible for international agreements regarding part of its territory. So you may take the position that Israel is particularly heinous for its involvement, but only in a vacuum. Measured against the standards we, among other countries uphold, Israel is acting according to her rights as a sovereign state.

2) You may ask whether Israel is doing the wisest thing, or the most right thing. I support this discussion... though I recognize it as a bit of a sideline pursuit. We're refining the "ideal" Israel, while the real Israel acts as she (currently) wants. Given her vulnerability to warlike actions during the "peaces" with adjacent populations, I have started to wonder whether unilateral withdrawl is not the key to the entire mess. And concommitant to unilateral withdrawl, Israel may be attempting to set the cost of engagement so high that a deterrent effect takes hold. Hey, it worked with Egypt and Jordan.

But again, I do not have the requisite Lebanese relatives to make this analysis. I have been active in pro-peace Jewish groups, but American, not Israeli. Mr. Haar's relatives might be your best bet for a Lebanese perspective on the benefits of Hezbollah operating on your nation's home soil.

Quincy,
It is likely that the classical Zionist argument - that Israel has a right to exist and defend her sovereignty - will be recycled quite frequently in the course of this discussion. It's an easy classical trap to fall into, when a country's neighbors are employing classical genocidal rhetoric, and periodically attempt to bring such rhetoric to real-world fruition -- without the means to succeed. This last bit (lack of means to succeed,) means they must settle for terrorism. Zionists, I hear, are a stubborn and stiff-necked people, and do not think of Terrorism as an acceptable "compromise."

If it is tiring to hear people talk about self-defense, don't discuss with them -- or their advocates -- how they feel about having rockets lobbed at them and their citizens kidnapped.

Regarding the dispossession of the Palestinians, I am not sure exactly how this is supposed to be remedied, when they cannot stop the urge to lose a military engagement even when the other side has unilaterally disengaged. Do you question Palestinian motivation as well?

This is meant more as a friendly broadside than a cranky diatribe -- I agree with you in the broad outlines. A Palestinian state living in peace with Israel would utterly defuse the hawks on all sides. The difficulty is, there seems to be no presence of any consequence in Palestine with the desire or the authority to begin building such a state, and no desire within Israel to just "trust" the Palestinians with the development of such leadership.

So, the "final status" is another can of worms... one which will look far diffferent in a month or two than it's looked in the last five years.


Dick (again),
Okay, one side note here... the "Palestein" typo tickled me, because I once wrote a comedy sketch in which Israelis and PA officials are meeting in Washington. At the end, the Israeli consents that the Palesitinians should have a state, under one condition: "You have to pronounce it Pale-STEEN." Well, the actors tried and tried, but the audience never laughed... I still wondered if they just thought it was objectionable, or they just plain didn't get it.

In any event... I do have sympathy for civilians caught in any conflict, just like Quincy. But if we take that baseline sympathy into account, and note that we are all good people who do not delight in the destruction of innocents or their property, we are left with what?

The same questions: What can Israel do, what should Israel do, and what does Israel have the right to do, under the circumstances?

Israel can do much worse things to her adversaries, if she wishes. Israel should not do those things, and possibly, in a vacuum, should not pursue the course she's on now. Israel has the right to do the things she is currently doing, by any sane international standard.

I'll wrap it up with 3 more thoughts (and still be behind on this thread.)

The first: Regarding the "cancerous" use of the word "Terrorist:" I agree. We need definitions. When the civilian populace is intentionally targeted, we are certainly dealing with terrorism. This corresponds to the ongoing rocket attacks by Hezbollah and Hamas. When soldiers are kidnapped and held hostage with the ultimate implied "bargaining position" being that they will be killed in cold blood, though that is another species of barbarism dealt with in international instruments, it is hard to say whether it is "Terrorism" per se. When a sovereign state, in the internationally recognized "hot pursuit" of individuals who committed crimes against its citizens, takes military action in a place where the national government (Lebanon's) abdicates responsibility and therefore sovereignty, it is quite emphatically not terrorism.

2) "But what would happen if the powerless Lebanese government had actually unleashed air attacks across Israel the last time Israel's troops crossed into Lebanon?" I only know what happened when the Egyptian air force bombed Israeli cities prior to the existence of an Israeli air force: Egypt lost that war, and Israel built an air force. I do know that Egypt has stopped trying to bomb Israel's cities.

Does Lebanon view the current state of affairs as an "act of war?" They should. Should Lebanon have signed a treaty of peace with Israel in 1948, or subsequent to 1948? Oh yes. Because then Israel actually has a responsibility to avoid war with Lebanon. Lebanon behaves as if the state of war exists, and it's on. No paperwork. Does anybody here think that Syria could not have strengthened the Lebanese government's hand against Hezbollah, since they are the local warlord, either directly (to 2005,) or via proxy? Syria wanted Hezbollah carrying on the war. Israel responds, and bears the blame.

3) For those who know the history, the elephant in the middle of the room...and maybe cryptic as hell to many others:

Are we just looking at the still-rotting corpse of the "Sick Old Man of Europe"? Britain and France needed to carve up the Ottomans as soon as it became apparent that a few dinosaur burial grounds were going to be the key to the twentieth century. Is the insistence that Israel's existence is the continuation and heart of European meddling in the Mideast, in fact a communal delusion in the Arab world? I humbly submit, for lack of a better formulation, that if Israel did not exist, the so-called "Arab Street" would have to invent it.

For a few here, (3) is supposed to be food for thought. It doesn't much enter into the day by day, week by week, conflict by conflict breakdown of the middle east, but may be of some interest as a hystorical hypothetical.

Thanks very much to those hardy souls who persevered through this lengthy diatribe... this is what happens when one is only an occasional visitor to the 'sphere.

Shalom, Salaam, and peace to all, including the principals in this ugly conflict (in the middle east, not on this board)... true peace to all parties, not just the absence of full-scale hostilities, "when every man beneath his vine and his fig tree shall live in peace and unafraid."

Dan

[Alan Sullivan]

"I find the idea of choosing sides ... utterly repulsive."

Mark, you can't get off the hook so easily. Refusal to choose is also a choice, and it empowers evil.

Alan

[Gail White]

A general comment:

Israel today has the same problem it has had ever since the Jews asked the prophet Samuel to give them a king. When a people becomes "a nation like the nations", it must expect to be treated as a political entity and not as a sacred entity whose acts are beyond moral criticism.

A poet friend once told me that she left the synagogue when the issue of Israel began to override everything else. Her comment was, "God doesn't do real estate."

[Dan Halberstein]

Originally posted by Gail White:
A general comment:

Israel today has the same problem it has had ever since the Jews asked the prophet Samuel to give them a king. When a people becomes "a nation like the nations", it must expect to be treated as a political entity and not as a sacred entity whose acts are beyond moral criticism.

A poet friend once told me that she left the synagogue when the issue of Israel began to override everything else. Her comment was, "God doesn't do real estate."

Very well-put, Gail. And an obvious logical concommitant is, Israel must be expected to be considered by her actions, as are other nations, and Israel must be expected to consider, first and foremost, the wellbeing of Israelis, just as America considers first the wellbeing of Americans, and Britain considers first the wellbeing of Britons.

However, Israel attempts to consider the wellbeing of populations "represented" by her adversaries in every conflict.

Now then, for the detractors here:

Please explain to me where an American or a Briton has the right to criticize the Israeli response to real and sustained provocations within Israel, for which credit was claimed specifically by the individuals against which Israel is currently retaliating. Someone explain that, and in the process tell me how it was better for Britain and America to launch a 3-year excursion in Iraq for no reason that did not break down under examination. Someone explain how the 300 Lebanese who have died are more important than the tens of thousands of Iraqis, or had less right to live.

Is the answer that you, personally, are against the Iraq war as well?

Then please, please enlighten me as to why every other country on the face of the Earth has the rights I enumerated in previous posts, for example, the right to pursue a group in "hot pursuit" if they are using territory outside the sovereign control of a nation, from which to wage terrorist attacks. Why is that principal okay within the "rules of war" and "just war theory" -- until we reach the Israeli case?

I know I can get persistent on this subject, but the double standard has always struck me as ludicrous, and born of political faddism if not (oh no! The "a" word!) Antisemitism.

Why must Israel be judged other than how other nations must be judged?

Dan

[Ethan Anderson]

Never mind.

[This message has been edited by Ethan Anderson (edited July 23, 2006).]

[diprinzio]

For Ethan (of course, you're right):

http://youtube.com/results?search=jon+stewart+on+the+brink&search_typ e=search_videos&search=Search


Hope this lightens things up for you. The funniest part is at the end.

You know, sometimes, when it's quiet, you can hear the pump screaming.

Best,
Greg

[Robert J. Clawson]

Originally posted by Quincy Lehr:

"I don't really see a short-term solution here, but my sympathies are with the civilians being bombed (both Israeli and Lebanese) and those still, for all intents and purposes, suffering under an occupying power (the Palestinians)."

I'll not only second that, Quincy, I would add to it the civilians in Iraq. We DO bomb there. They may be killing each other, but the May, June civilian death total of Iraqi civilians (6,000) is not all because of "sectarian strife," but also from our now "necessary" bombing.

There's a terrible flood of innocent blood on our hands in the Middle East. Not what I'd call "Christian."

Shameless O'Clawson

[Robert J. Clawson]

"Refusal to choose is also a choice, and it empowers evil."

And we don't want to empower evil, because we all know how evil is evil.

I'm so tired of the use of "evil." Why don't we just call an asshole and asshole?

Utterly Shameless O'Clawson

[Mark Granier]

Dan, you keep harping on about how terrible the rest of the world is. I don't see anyone disputing this, so it seems a rather pointless comparison. OF COURSE Israel isn't the worst aggressor. The US invasion of Iraq is far more aggressive (AND promulgated on glaringly obvious lies). Or there are China's horrific repressions in Tibet. Again, and for the record, I don't think Israelis need to live up to anyone's silly ideal of some saintly promised land, and I do understand that they are under threat much of the time. This I can sympathise with. Were Israelis getting as relentlessly pummeled as the Lebanese I would be AS appalled on their behalf also, no more, no less. But as Fisk has said, if such a thing were happening we would probably be witnessing World War Three, or something very close to in anyway.

BTW Dan, I salute you for your work in pro-peace Jewish groups. That's likely far more than I've ever done.

[Daniel Haar]

Dan,

Thanks for the well-wishes for my wife's family. I think it is important to remember that there are many humans, unfortunate and innocent, who are hurt on both sides of any war. Yes, let's hope for a speedy and lasting peace!

- Daniel