Aljazeera.Net – Hezbollah declares war on Israel
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the chief of Hezbollah group, has pledged open war on Israel after it bombed his Beirut home on Friday in a dramatic expansion of the latest Israeli assault.
“You wanted an open war. You will get an open war,” Nasrallah said in a telephone message broadcast live on Hezbollah television after the attack.
Here read this article from over 2 years ago if you think this sort of thing is hard to predict.
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Oh boy, and it starts.
Obviously the BBC have been covering this ad nauseum, but I think they’re too scared to say “and, by the way, the sh*t could really hit the fan this time”. If Israel turn their attentions to Syria (known supporters of Hezbollah) we could have 10 countries scrapping with each other in a week’s time… altogether a nasty business 🙁
suggestion, GET out of the way…
Get them ALL fighting and we can clean up AFTERWARD.
PS, send more bullets, ammo, Rockets, missles, EVERYTHING to both sides, PLEASE.
Right, ECA! What we want to do, in order to make things better for humanity, is to cause a humanitarian disaster, and then clean things up, which is our strong point, as everyone, tout le monde, knows.
Too late, we already have done that. Israel and the US has pushed Palestine to accept democracy. So they held elections. Only Israel and the US didn’t like the results. So both continued their harassment policies against Palestine with predictable results. Aggressively, they have kidnapped Palestinians and bombed civilian targets all the while claiming they are only defending themselves. I’m just waiting for someone to defend Israel on this one.
And so many Americans wonder why the image of the US is so tarnished around the world.
I wonder if, now, the Bush administration wishes it hadn’t neglected Palestine. Even if so, it will never admit it.
What a tragedy.
>>PS, send more bullets, ammo, Rockets, missles, EVERYTHING to both sides, PLEASE.
Our best of friends are stuck in Beruit right now. Good, peaceful, hardworking Arab people.
It’s sickening that you could be so cruel as to want them, and many others like them, dead.
Hezbollah is just a branch of Iranian armed forces. At this point it’s hard to determine how far they’ll go with this. An IDF officer when asked once about adherence to the, Eye for an eye”, rule dismissed it. He stated a one eyed man was very capable killing you.
Obviously you don’t.
I guess I shouldn’t expect RT or ECA or any of the Amerikan Ignorati to know anything more than the media and politicians they rely upon to tell them about the real world.
Sigh.
I just wonder what the point of the Israeli operations is. you cannot free kidnapped soldiers by bombing airports or blockading ports and guerilla armies are too slippery to be broken up by this kind of attack. not to mention the fact that this attack will not damage the base of Hezbollah’s support – Iran and Syria.
the Lebanese government (democratically elected, BTW) does not have the capability of expelling Hezbollah or compelling them to turn over the soldiers. since we are supposed to be supporting democracies like Lebanon and since the Israeli offensive won’t actually make them any safer, I think the US should press for a cease fire. we could then aid Lebanon in building up sufficient security forces to shove Hezbollah out, kind of like the way Jordan expelled the PLO back in the day.
we could have 10 countries scrapping with each other in a week’s time… altogether a nasty business
I wonder if, now, the Bush administration wishes it hadn’t neglected Palestine.
And I wonder how many of the wackos who are hoping for the “End of Days” are seeing this as a sign…
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=6080
Hezbollah declaring war reminds me of a quote from my favorite author, Trevanian, where a character commenting on the French says “They are like the amorous ant crawling up the cow’s leg, assuring her that he will be gentle.”
like Pete Clemenza said to Michael:
“This thing’s gotta happen every five years or so…every ten years–helps to get rid of the bad blood.”
This time the Arabs asked for it – let the Isrealis finish it and the Arabs.
ECA –
That’s right, Israel and Hizbullah are morally equivalent.
Got any more brilliant thoughts for us today, ECA?
Mr. H. Fusion –
Maybe the fact that Hamas has vowed the total destruction of the state of Israel, and intentionally (and almost exclusively) targets civilians, might, just might be a reason why Israel (and the USA) don’t care for them very much?
below is, I think, an intelligent op-ed piece on the crisis, which does not involve the usual 60-year “He hit me first!” pointless discussion of Arab-Israeli issues. Hopefully, the US will get engaged and can use the crisis to burn Syria’s fingers for meddling in Lebanon and stirring instability in the region.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/14/opinion/edyoung.php
Ah, the “cycle of violence” myth. What BS.
One thing is for certain. You’ll now be able to laugh out loud and point at people with gas-guzzling SUV’s. Until now you’ve only been allowed a snicker. Imagine $200 for a tank of gas that lasts less than a week.
18. you are right, the cycle is a myth – if only Israel had not brought down all this violence on its own head by its unjustified occupation of Palestinian lands and unforgivable oppression of the Palestinian people.
or is that not what you meant …?
the question is not who started it and who killed the most of the other side but are we going to move forward or stay where we are at, mired in bloodshed that leaves neither side secure.
19. Indeed. Unfortunately, you also have to wince for the people in wheelchairs who need vans with hydrolic lifts. those run neck-and-neck with the monster SUVs in the gas-guzzling derby.
doug –
If all they’re upset about is “occupation”, then why do the Palestinian factions and Hizbullah always INCREASE their violence immediately after Israel withdraws from territory ?
Cases in point:
-Fall 2000 – Israel withdraws from southern Lebanon and is promptly rewarded with the 2nd Intifadah and increased attacks from south Lebanon
-Summer 2005 – Israel withdraws from Gaza, yet violence initiated by Hamas and Fatah factions increases dramatically.
Also, during the 18 years that Jordan and Egypt OCCUPIED the West Bank and Gaza, how come THEY didn’t allow a Palestinian state to come into existence?
22. Frank, you made my point for me – there simply is no point in arguing about who is at fault for the last 60 years of fruitless violence. It is funny, when you listen to Arab and Israeli spokesmen, it is like they are not even talking about the same thing. The two sides could go back and forth all the way back to the first modern Jewish settlements, and beyond, and there would simply be no point to it – neither side is going to say “my bad, go ahead, you can have what you want.”
the real thing to do is come up with a seperation plan that can leave both sides with defensible borders and drain the pool of hatred and misery in which extremists breed.
there must be a diplomatic solution, because there simply is not a military solution, as the last 60 years have shown.
How do you plan to implement this “diplomatic solution”, doug? What if one side does not want to abide by the terms of your “solution”, as the Palestinians and Hizbullah have done with countless agreements in the past?
If you want to get rid of the “pool of hatred”, I suggest you go to the source – Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, which promote fanatical hatred of Israel and Jews as a diversion from their internal problems.
> seperation plan
Unfortunately for the Muslims there, this plan is to separate Jews from the Middle East. They don’t want a two-state solution.
OK,
I have a problem here.
For an area of the world that has been fighting ITSELF for over 2000 years. BEFORE Mohammad. And Even AFTER.
AL these people cant get it around there heads to get together and stabilize the nations.
EVEN as Mohamad tried to STOP the tribal systems that caused all the fighting, and enequities in the tribes, and succeded for as long as he lived, but MOSt of the groups went beck to there tribal based beliefs.
And started beating on each other AGAIN, and STILL DO.
Even when they spout religious beliefs that incorporate the tribal aspects, of HATE, and killing each other over dead sheep from 2000 years ago(metaphor)
“you killed my great great great great gandfathers, brother, so Im going to Kill you”., Mentality JUST DONT DO IT. Unless you are into POPULATION control, and a women run nation.
Sticking our finger into a FIGHT thats this old, is ASKING to get shot at, by both sides.
SO, I say, GET OUT, and give as much ammo as they need to kill each other, and GET IT OVER WITH.
Even Mohamad couldnt get them to STOP shooting each other… SO you THINK we can..
there IS a way, but I REALLY dont think the US wants 100,000,000 Muslims PISSED at it, just to draw all the groups together for 1 cause.
#25-26 The alternative is perpetual war. Easy to suggest for others, not so easy to live with.
doug –
So every time you’re shown that the Palestinians are clearly in the wrong, that’s just more proof that “there’s no point in arguing about who is in the wrong”? That’s at best intellectual laziness and at worst moral cowardice.
And how do YOU propose to end this “perpetual war”? Will “peace” simply enforce itself?
ECA –
an area of the world that has been fighting ITSELF for over 2000 years
That’s a bit of an overstatement, ECA. While there have been battles and invasions (by Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs and their various factions, Mongols, then finally the Ottomans) for the past 5000 years, there was no significant fighting between the Arabs and the Jews until 1948, when the Arab countries tried to wipe the newly-founded state of Israel off the map.
By contrast, the four centuries between the start of Ottoman rule in 1517 and WWI were relatively peaceful, as were several other long periods between the successive invasions. Note that while most Jews were exiled by 132 AD/CE, there was a continuous, if small, Jewish presence in what is now Israel through the centuries. Particularly in Jerusalem, which had a Jewish population until Jordan expelled all Jews living there in 1948-49.
#29 – OK, lets fight the War of 1812 until the US, Canada and the UK all agree who was wrong. wow, that would be productive.
International relations is not about right and wrong, it is about states and groups pursuing their best interests. If right and wrong were the key, woudn’t Europe be paying massive reparations to Africa for the slave trade? But I digress.
The best interest of Israel (as the Israeli government has recognized for some time) is a two-state solution. You can say that there is no point in negotiations, but you do not suggest an alternative. Unilateral seperation, as the current Israeli govt is pursuing, will not work, since there is no wall that can stop rockets. It would probably be a good place to start, IF the Israelis were walling off the 1967 border or something close to it, but they are not.
Peace will come when both sides are willing to back off of their insistance that theirs is the only legitimate viewpoint and make the necessary concessions to achieve an imperfect agreement.
Perfect peace? No. But the IRA kept fighting for 60 years after the Irish Republic was proclaimed. Does that mean that it was not a good idea for the UK to pull out of Catholic Ireland? Of course not. The alternative to pullout was continuous bloodshed, instead of a bomb now and again.
that is it for me.
There seems to be a failure to communicate here, doug.
Israel has already accepted the two state solution. It evacuated all 7,000 settlers from the Gaza Strip a year ago. The Palestinian Authority is in charge of all of Gaza and most of the West Bank.
We are waiting for the Palestinians and Hizbullah to do the same, to show that they are actually serious about a two-state solution, i.e., permitting Israel to exist and not slaughtering every Jew the moment that the IDF lays down its weapons.
Oh, but I forgot, this is just a silly argument about “right and wrong”. We mustn’t be “judgemental”, you know.
31. again – you do not suggest an alternative to negotiating a solution.
but really, that’s it for me. as you note, we are talking past each other.
cheers,