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| Is Israel guilty of War Crimes? |
| Obviously, yes. |
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42% |
[ 27 ] |
| No, they should be free to do as they see fit. |
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41% |
[ 26 ] |
| Undecided ( this is just too tough to call ) |
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15% |
[ 10 ] |
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| Total Votes : 63 |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2006 4:50 pm Post subject: |
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| ddeubel wrote: |
| Their "readyness" and the level of attack they undertook, its prolongation, begs that point. |
You might as well have said- "I know nothing about Israel and am just pulling this stuff out of my ass."
What planet were you on when the preparations were being reported daily in the news?
That Israel is the fastest mobilizing military on the planet is the world's worst kept secret.
And why are you unwilling to apply the same standards of logic to Hezbollah? Did those Israeli soldiers drunkenly stumble across the border into Hezbollah hands one night? Was Hezbollah stockpiling rockets for a big fireworks display or something?
I don't get it- I'll admit to being disgusted by the way Israel has conducted this campaign. But those who are demanding universal condemnation of Israel are not willing to see Hezbollah as anything but an innocent party, like a swell bunch of Shriners in a parade of tiny cars who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
WTF? |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2006 9:53 pm Post subject: |
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| ddeubel wrote: |
| Also, let me remind you that Hizbollah never never never retaliated to repeated Israeli incursions over the years (atleast in a "war" level way). One poster here also refered to the kidnapping Israel undertook just days before of a Lebanese doctor , was that not provocation? |
improve those reading skills of yours. Big bird said a Palestinian doctor was kidnapped. Different location there.
What incursions have the Israelis made since they withdrew a few years ago? any??
How many times has Hizballah gone into Israel since then? Too many to count. Even a spokesman for Hizballah said something along the lines of, "Yeah, we were pretty shocked at Israel's response this time since we've been doing this pretty frequently." I'm obviously paraphrasing, but the man was admitting Hizballah routinely launched small offensives along the Israel-Lebanon border.
In other words, up until a month ago, Israel was the one behaving well, NOT hizballah. |
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AbbeFaria
Joined: 17 May 2005
Location: Gangnam
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| Posted: Fri Aug 18, 2006 1:46 am Post subject: |
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I don't have time to read 14 pages of posts as I have not been following this current Isreali/Terrorist thread (or any for the last week and a half or so) but this seemed like the most appropriate place for it. I'll read up when I have more time, and I apologize if this has already been mentioned somewhere within the extensive posting on this one.
http://jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin081606.php3
| Michelle Malkin wrote: |
Fauxtography: The media scandal continues
By Michelle Malkin
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | It's the story that the journalistic elite would rather just go away. In the aftermath of Reuters' admission that one of its photographers, Adnan Hajj, had manipulated two war images from Lebanon after bloggers smoked out his crude Photoshop alterations and all 920 of his Reuters photos were pulled, evidence of far more troubling photo staging and media deception in the Middle East continues to pour in.
Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs (littlegreenfootballs.com) calls it "fauxtography."
One of Hajj's photos was an iconic image of a dusty dead child with a clean blue pacifier clipped to his shirt, paraded by a corpse handler at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Qana, Lebanon. Mainstream journalists have sneered at bloggers' suspicions, first raised at EU Referendum ( eureferendum.blogspost.com), that some of the gruesome photos from that scene may have been staged. Washington Post photographer Michael Robinson-Chavez, who was at Qana, huffed: "Everyone was dead, many of them children. Nothing was set up." But last week, a German television station aired damning video footage from the scene showing a lead propaganda director (dubbed the "Green Helmet Guy") positioning a young boy's corpse, yanking it from an ambulance, placing it on two different stretchers for the cameras, and pushing bystanders out of the way for clearer shots.
This Lebanese version of horror film director Wes Craven was identified by the Associated Press in a softball profile as "Salam Daher," who told the reporter, "I am just a civil defense worker. I have done this job all my life." To clear-eyed readers, that's an inculpatory statement, not an exculpatory one. How many more "jobs" has Daher overseen? And how many more media stage managers like Daher are out there?
Not all photographers overseas have their heads in the sand. Last week, Middle East-based photographer Bryan Denton, whose work has appeared in the New York Times, revealed on the professional photography website Light Stalkers (lightstalkers.org) that he had observed routine staging of photos � and even corpse-digging � by Lebanese stringers:
"I have been witness to the daily practice of directed shots, one case where a group of wire photogs were choreographing the unearthing of bodies, directing emergency workers here and there, asking them to position bodies just so, even remove bodies that have already been put in graves so that they can photograph them in people[']s arms." Denton noted that he had witnessed the photo choreography at numerous protests and evacuations, as well as at an Israeli airstrike location in Chiyeh, Lebanon. Denton followed up with a second post reporting that respected photographer friends of his Lebanon informed him that "this was not an isolated incident" and that "this has been something I've noticed happening here, more than any other place I've worked previously."
Which is probably why bloggers have noticed so many copious examples of phony-looking scenes � from countless pristine stuffed animals lying in the foreground of destroyed buildings ( slublog.com/archives/2006/08/the_passion_of.html), to artfully placed Korans amid scenes of destruction, to a snow-white wedding dress on a mannequin standing in the middle of a street surrounded by piles of rubble, to intact cars photographed on Lebanese roadsides and dubiously labeled as being struck by Israeli missiles (see hotair.com/archives/2006/08/14/
fauxtography-amazing-new-iaf-missiles-mimic-sledgehammer-damage/).
Miscaptioning (which always makes Israel look worse, never Hezbollah, go figure) adds another dimension of fauxto deception. One Associated Press image of an anguished father carrying his dead 5-year-old daughter into a Gaza City hospital last week blamed the death on an Israeli airstrike. Charles Johnson found a correction of the caption revealing that the girl had been killed in a swingset accident. I found a Reuters photo of an 18-month-old girl with two broken legs that was pulled by the wire service in late July after being included among a photo set of hospital patients injured in an Israeli air raid. In truth, the girl had been admitted for a "routine hospitalisation."
Then there was the New York Times' misrepresentation of a half-naked young man sprawled Pieta-like, appearing dead, amid Tyre rubble. The original Times' website photo caption? "The mayor of Tyre said that in the worst-hit areas, bodies were still buried under the rubble..." Turned out the "dead" man was a "rescue worker" who was supposedly "injured" (with his baseball cap tucked neatly in his arm as he closed his eyes and flung his head back) and had been photographed in several other scenes running around the bombing site.
Isolated incidents? In a rare moment of candor, CNN's Anderson Cooper revealed the routine mechanics of Hezbollywood propaganda tours last week: "I was in Beirut, and they took me on this sort of guided tour of the Hezbollah-controlled territories in southern Lebanon that were heavily bombed..they clearly want the story of civilian casualties out. That is their - what they're heavily pushing, to the point where on this tour I was on, they were just making stuff up. They had six ambulances lined up in a row and said, OK, you know, they brought reporters there, they said you can talk to the ambulance drivers. And then one by one, they told the ambulances to turn on their sirens and to zoom off, and people taking that picture would be reporting, I guess, the idea that these ambulances were zooming off to treat civilian casualties, when in fact, these ambulances were literally going back and forth down the street just for people to take pictures of them."
"Just making stuff up." Remember that.
Meanwhile, the media ostriches carry on. Joe Elbert, Washington Post assistant managing editor for photography, told ombudsman Deborah Howell smugly: "We don't use tools to change reality." Newsflash: You are the tools being used. |
I was most impressed that CNN reported it. That means it must be true. 
I suppose this article would be most appropriate in the "Photo's that Damn Hezbollah" thread, but that one appears to have dropped off and this one was near the top. These things are all the same anyway.
�S� |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Fri Aug 18, 2006 2:17 am Post subject: |
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| ddeubel wrote: |
Gopher,
I will again state that this war was pre-meditated by Israel. Their "readyness" and the level of attack they undertook, its prolongation, begs that point. The kidnapping was an excuse. I condemn them for taking this path and killing so many innocent people, regardless of Hizbollah, Iran, Syria and their own horrid side.
To say Israel didn't "make" this war, if not start -- is much more wacko than anything I print....Not many in the world will disagree with me except those with a military code book.....
DD |
DD why would Israel even have a war plan against Hizzbollah? |
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AbbeFaria
Joined: 17 May 2005
Location: Gangnam
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| Posted: Fri Aug 18, 2006 10:23 am Post subject: |
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This is really good too.
| Quote: |
srael's fight for life in the name of the West
The conflict in the Middle East may have subsided, but the war is far from over, writes Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
August 19, 2006
NOW that the guns have mainly fallen silent, at least temporarily, a look back can help us look forward. The critical fact for understanding the war in Lebanon and how Hezbollah has enduringly changed the geopolitics of the Middle East conflict is to be found near the beginning.
It is not that Hezbollah seized two Israeli soldiers on July 12 but what it did immediately afterwards. When Israel began responding to the kidnapping - together with the Katyushas striking northern Israel - as the act of war that it was, Hezbollah, in choosing not to return two soldiers, showed that it preferred that Lebanon suffer progressive large-scale destruction.
For the second time in the long history of the Middle East conflict, an enemy of Israel has effectively said: "We do not care what you do. We do not care if our war-making leads you to attack our cities, ruin our economy and kill our people. What matters most is inflicting damage on you, weakening your morale and goading you to destroy more of our country and kill our children, increasing your international condemnation." The Palestinians said as much with their second intifada and their suicide bombing. But this conflict was different because Hezbollah's daily rainfall of rockets in Israel portended an intolerable military assault without end.
What could Israel - what could any country - do with such an enemy? Except for desperate Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War, other countries and armies that would have liked to destroy Israel did not dare target Israeli cities because they knew Israel would more intensely bomb Cairo, Amman or Damascus. Israel had deterrence, its nuclear deterrence inducing Egypt to make peace. Even if an enemy had dared such an attack, Israel could have compelled it to stop by inflicting damage until it desisted. With Hezbollah - and to a great extent with Hamas as well - Israel lost the first two strategic options for dealing with a belligerent, dangerous foe: deterrence and compellence (short of inflicting widespread destruction).
The third strategic means for responding to an enemy, making a genuine peace, has never been possible because Hezbollah and Hamas, by religious or ideological conviction, as they themselves say, are committed to Israel's utter destruction and see any cessation of hostilities as an interlude before further attack. Hezbollah, which built its prodigious missile-terror capacity and perpetrated its acts of war six years after Israel vacated Lebanon, saw the assault as the initiation of its ambition's fulfilment. Its leader Hassan Nasrallah declared: "It is the beginning of the end of this entity."
So Israel adopted the fourth strategic possibility: to devastate its dangerous foe, which it hoped would also restore deterrence. Yet Israel discovered that, against a terror foe whose combatants looked like civilians and whose rockets that reach Israel from afar were hidden everywhere, it must fight longer and occupy and destroy much more of Lebanon than it deemed moral, wise or feasible. Hence its foot-dragging for weeks. Even after an Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, Hezbollah would continue to fight with no end in sight, including by launching rockets into Israel.
What strategic possibilities remained? The fifth was intolerable: living with ongoing, and probably increasing, rocket attacks into northern Israel and likely the heart of Israel. Nasrallah has promised: "There are many cities in the centre of Israel which will be targeted in the phase of 'beyond Haifa'," which can come sooner or, after an interlude, later.
The sixth option was to re-establish deterrence by striking Hezbollah's suppliers and patrons, Syria and Iran. Neither country wishes a war with militarily superior Israel (Syria's sabre-rattling notwithstanding). If Hezbollah's missiles into Israel produced Israeli retaliation against Syria, and possibly Iran (including its nuclear production sites), then Syria and Iran would be compelled to force Hezbollah to stop. Obviously, this was a last-ditch strategic option that was unattractive and carried its own risks. It would escalate the conflict enormously, as well as the international pressure on Israel to desist. This option, however, had the virtue of being the likeliest to re-establish the deterrence critical to Israel's long-term survival and, perhaps counterintuitively, stability in the region, by demonstrating Israel's enduring power of compellence. And it might have prevented the otherwise certain widespread devastation of Lebanon.
All of Israel's strategic choices were bad or ineffective or undesirable. And now a putative deus ex machina UN resolution has arrived in the form of an international force south of the Litani River, with a mandate to displace but not immediately disarm the rocket-laden Hezbollah. Although this becomes a new, seventh strategic option, of interjecting a new strategic player that could potentially stabilise the region and create a new security paradigm that would allow for progress towards regional peace, it may still prove an ominous defeat for Israel.
Even if the international force seriously tries to do its job of keeping Hezbollah out of this southernmost part of Lebanon, northern Israel will remain in Hezbollah's rocket range (which will only increase with time). Hezbollah can start a guerilla war against the international force, which may not have the wherewithal and staying power to prevail. And it allows an armed Hezbollah with its umbilical cord with Syria and Iran to live on, rearm and fight another day, and to remain, for the Arab world, a proud symbol of its triumph in terrorising and emptying one-third of Israel of its Jews.
Make no mistake; Israel has been fighting for its life. Unexpectedly. Because it faces a historically new kind of fanatical foe, political Islam, which combines three characteristics: a political-religious ideology calling for the annihilation of its enemies; indifference, even the celebration of its own people's death (because such martyrs are rewarded with a place in heaven); and virtually unstoppable technology (missiles) and techniques (suicide bombing) of terror. The spectre of unending terror and unending war haunts and threatens to cripple Israel.
The political Islamists have been emboldened by this new-found power. Nasrallah's boast, whatever his present setback, is resounding through the Arab world: "When were two million Israelis forced to become displaced or to stay in bomb shelters for more than 18 days?"
The political Islamist danger will escalate a thousandfold if Iran, the epicentre of political Islam and Hezbollah's master, achieves its own invulnerability with nuclear weapons so that it, too, can wage its own rocket and other attacks against its many targets, starting with Israel, which Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has just reiterated must be annihilated and about which its former president and powerbroker Hashemi Rafsanjani spoke candidly in 2001.
"The use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything," Rafsanjani said, whereas it would merely harm the Islamic world. "It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality."
Whatever the battlefield results, this conflict's enduring effect will be Israel's extreme vulnerability: with simple and cheap rockets, and terrorists aspiring to martyrdom, its enemies can paralyse virtually all of the geographically tiny country. Downtown Tel Aviv is a mere 20km from the West Bank. Israel's political Islamic enemies understand and rejoice over the new geostrategic situation.
The destruction of Israel, which apparently seemed a remote goal worth the long struggle, appears to them to be within their grasp. And the prospect that they would settle for a final peace with Israel correspondingly recedes.
These totalitarians' ultimate targets - all infidels, especially in the US and in Europe - should study the new geostrategic situation as well, be sobered and realise that Israel, in fighting this war in self-defence to re-establish a geostrategic balance and for its long-term survival, has been ultimately fighting for them as well.
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, an affiliate of Harvard's Centre for European Studies and the author of Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, is completing a book on genocide in our time. |
I'm on page five of this thread, more reading tomorrow. However, the Malkin article does appear to have a direct reference to this thread since IGTG posted those pictures of of apparently dead Lebonese folks. Not that some of them weren't very obviously dead, but as the article points out, it doesn't mean the Israeli's killed them. It's very easy to see how they could have been faked for the camera. Few guys in helmets, a few ambulances and some urgent looking faces and there you go.
�S� |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 8:46 am Post subject: |
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U.S. "Probes" Israeli Use Of Cluster Bombs 
By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer
WASHINGTON - The State Department is investigating whether Israel misused American-made cluster bombs in civilian areas of Lebanon.
The United Nations said unexploded cluster bombs � anti-personnel weapons that spray bomblets over a wide area � litter homes, gardens and highways in south Lebanon.
"We are definitely looking into these allegations and we'll see where they lead," State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said Friday.
The inquiry will determine whether the munitions were used and if so, how, Gallegos said.
A spokeswoman for the U.N. Mine Action Coordination Center refused to comment on the investigation. She said that it's not illegal to use the cluster bombs against soldiers or enemy fighters, but the Geneva Conventions bar their use in civilian areas.
The State Department investigation will look at whether Israel's use of the cluster bombs violated secret agreements with the United States.
Gallegos had no estimate of how long the inquiry by the department's Office of Defense Trade Controls would take.
The Israeli army said all weapons it uses "are legal under international law and their use conforms with international standards."
Cluster bombs are typically used against tanks and explode upon impact with steel. In the conflict in Lebanon, the shells were fired into urban and rural areas where Israel thought Hezbollah guerrillas might be hiding.
Many hit the ground or pavement and did not explode.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060825/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_israel_weapons_1 |
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Summer Wine
Joined: 20 Mar 2005
Location: Next to a River
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| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 12:30 pm Post subject: |
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I must say that I find it interesting that Isael gets accused of war crimes when most of hizbellahs missiles were directed at cities and towns.
The lack of casulties on the Israeli side seemed to be due more to less explosive power and not less attempts. I would be pretty upset if my country recieved that many rockets.
What happens in the future when the missiles are larger but just as numerous? How should Israel respond? |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 1:09 pm Post subject: |
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Good point.
That's the catch-22: Nobody accuses Hezbollah of war crimes, because, well, they're terrorists!
But for those people who think Hezbollah isn't a terrorist organization and are just defending themselves against an unwarranted invasion, do those people cry out about Hezbollah's war crimes?
No.
Apparently, to them Hezbollah is not deliberately targetting Israeli civilians, they simply don't have the resources to fire their rockets with any degree of accuracy at military targets.
So from that perpective, the solution would be to give Hezbollah bigger, better and more accurate rockets for the future.
I guess that would make Iran and Syria champions of human rights and justice.
Maybe one day, they too can aspire to be the chair of their own UN committee on Human Rights. |
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AbbeFaria
Joined: 17 May 2005
Location: Gangnam
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| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 1:16 pm Post subject: |
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It's pointless to expect a real answer out of a question like that. Anytime it's put forward the answer is always "The Israeli's should be nice and negotiate, pacify, submit and bend over to the foriegn powers on her borders." Always they should talk peace, even though the peace table has never, ever, given them anything in return but a brief lull before they're attacked again. Terrorists are given a free pass to kill whoever their bombs can reach but Israel is expected to jump through every hoop, obey every rule, law and whim to secure their own borders. The hypocrisy boggles the mind. This is dduebel's standard response. I think he just copy-pastes it from a text file somewhere on his harddrive whenever someone asks. Of course he and others are not condoning what Hezbollah/the Palestinians are doing, (at least not openly) but the burden of peace is always on Israel.
�S� |
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AbbeFaria
Joined: 17 May 2005
Location: Gangnam
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| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 1:18 pm Post subject: |
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| Bulsajo wrote: |
Good point.
That's the catch-22: Nobody accuses Hezbollah of war crimes, because, well, they're terrorists!
But for those people who think Hezbollah isn't a terrorist organization and are just defending themselves against an unwarranted invasion, do those people cry out about Hezbollah's war crimes?
No.
Apparently, to them Hezbollah is not deliberately targetting Israeli civilians, they simply don't have the resources to fire their rockets with any degree of accuracy at military targets.
So from that perpective, the solution would be to give Hezbollah bigger, better and more accurate rockets for the future.
I guess that would make Iran and Syria champions of human rights and justice.
Maybe one day, they too can aspire to be the chair of their own UN committee on Human Rights. |
That chair is swapped out, I believe, and I'm pretty sure Iran sat in the head seat, as well as such bastions of peace and humanistic values as China. It's a joke.
�S� |
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pastis
Joined: 20 Jun 2006
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| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 5:40 pm Post subject: |
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| AbbeFaria wrote: |
| Always they should talk peace, even though the peace table has never, ever, given them anything in return but a brief lull before they're attacked again. Terrorists are given a free pass to kill whoever their bombs can reach but Israel is expected to jump through every hoop, obey every rule, law and whim to secure their own borders. The hypocrisy boggles the mind. |
Israel doesn't deserve anything in return because Israel is the one that has illegally occupied foreign land for decades, and continues to do so, not the other way around in any sense. Israel kills 30 time more innocent Arabs than vice versa, and the Palestinians are made to live like dogs. You are all the same, and don't give a damn about Arab blood and suffering. Period. And you know it.
Mod Edit: Removed personal attacks. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 5:44 pm Post subject: |
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Can you get pastis in Korea???? Seems you can.
Salut.
DD |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 5:58 pm Post subject: |
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Hey buddy, where were when you were needed at Camp David?
And why is it up to Hezbollah to fight for the Palestinians?
Why not the Jordanians, Egyptians, Saudis?
Answer those questions please.
period.
[who the *beep* drinks pastis anyway? People who can't get their hands on Arak?]
Mod Edit: Removed quoted personal attack and counter personal attack. |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 6:12 pm Post subject: |
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| IGTG places a lot of value in his polls... would now be a good time to see what the results are? |
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pastis
Joined: 20 Jun 2006
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| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 6:23 pm Post subject: |
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It's not an easy solution, but a fairly simple problem when you get down to it: Israel illegally occupies other countries' land and commits the lion's share of atrocities. That is a fact. They just destroyed Lebanon, not vice versa. Why is Lebanon hostile in the first place? Because (whether a racist like you will admit it or not) part of their territory is currently being occupied by Isreal. There you go: simple.
| Quote: |
| Hey buddy, where were when you were needed at Camp David? |
Probably drunk, hiding out somewhere nice and safe. Not much different from you I gather.
| Quote: |
| And why is it up to Hezbollah to fight for the Palestinians? |
Isreal illegally occupies part of Lebanon. Or did you even know/care about that? As for Palestine, maybe Lebanon just feels their pain. Beats me.
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| Why not the Jordanians, Egyptians, Saudis? |
Good question, why not? Nobody else does a damn thing.
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| [who the *beep* drinks pastis anyway? People who can't get their hands on Arak?] |
It's a southern French thing, probably influenced by Arabic culture far enough down the line (it's actually a leftover remnant of Absinthe since it became illegal). It's a great drink on a hot day, though a racist like you wouldn't understand.
Mod Edit: Removed quoted personal attack and counter personal attack. |
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