From Israel to Lebanon

[Uke]

http://fromisraeltolebanon.info/

This was sent to me recently. Very graphic and eye opening stuff.

[eXcessiveForce]

Geez, how many times do I have to see pictures of the same dead people. Like I said on another board. Show me some new pictures. I've seen these dead people on probably 20 webpages about lebanon.

Each one blames somebody, either the west, america, or the israeli's. I haven't seen one yet that says thank you hezbollah

[eXcessiveForce]

I won't pretend to know what Uke's reasons for reposting the link. Perhaps he simply was moved by the images on the link.

But i've seen a barrage of propaganda like this on many sites. And that is what it is. Propaganda.

War is tragic, 500 people give or take have lost their lives. This is what happens in war. sometimes people are sacrificed for the good of future generations.

Hopefully this situation will eventually resolve with a peaceful solution that will maintain a lasting peace. But there will be pain and suffering until then.

[treelizard]

Safely home, but not for long

Palestinians get phone calls to warn about bombings
July 27, 2006 Edition 4


Gaza City, Gaza Strip - Ibrahim Mahmoud picked up the phone in his appliance shop in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. On the other end was a woman speaking Hebrew-accented Arabic, warning him to get his family out of his house before it was bombed.

It's a new Israeli tactic in a month-long offensive against Hamas and other militants in Gaza, hitting houses of suspected militants but warning them to get their families out first.

The Israeli military described the structures as weapons-storage facilities and said the aim is to reduce civilian casualties.

Another tactic is to warn people to stay away from militants by dropping leaflets from aircraft and by broadcasting messages over radio frequencies used by Hamas.

Israel's offensive began after Hamas-linked militants tunnelled under the Gaza-Israel border on June 25 and attacked an Israeli army post, killing two soldiers and capturing a third. More than 120 Palestinians, including many civilians, have been killed in ground assaults, artillery barrages and airstrikes.

Israel said it is trying to reduce civilian casualties, blaming militants for operating in crowded areas.

This week, in the southern city of Khan Younis, about 1 000 residents answered their phones and heard a recorded Israeli army warning to not harbour militants or hide weapons.

The Palestinian phone company said the numbers were apparently picked at random. Government officials said that hospitals and government buildings also received phone warnings.

Palestinian officials don't accept the Israeli tactic as an effort to spare lives. They see sinister motives.

Government spokesperson Ghazi Hamad said the Israeli calls are a "criminal act" that targets civilians and government buildings. The campaign aims to drive people out of their homes, paralyse the government and "demoralise" the population, he said.

An Israeli army spokesperson said the calls are to specific homes or areas. He refused to say how they got the numbers.

Mahmoud said the woman who called his shop accused him of working with Hamas and of selling weapons, which he denied. She called back later to say his house was not a target after all.

"She ended the call with: 'Be safe'," he said, adding that by then he had moved 20 family members out of his four-storey home.

"They terrorised the whole family," Mahmoud said.

Many others are exasperated by the warnings. Othman Shbeir, a Palestinian security officer from Khan Younis, said he got the evacuation order in the middle of the night.

He had dismissed it as a joke until neighbours warned him that a nearby house of an Islamic Jihad activist was bombed the same night.

Two days later, his three-storey house still stood empty.

"It is better if they just bring the house down," he said. "We are living in terror and no one can come near the house." - Sapa-AP

[Tom Yum]

1817 GMT Venezuela/Iran

Chavez and Ahmadinejad reaffirm their commitment to defend their respective countries should the U.S. attack. Both leaders expressed their dislike for Washington's hostile stance towards the Chavez regime in Venezuela. The meeting between both leaders was followed by a threat from Venezuela's Energy Minister to cut oil exports to the U.S. if Washington maintains its Venezuelan hostilities. The meeting was sweetend by Iran's promise to invest $4 billion in two Venezuelan energy projects and Venezuela's desire to export additional gasoline to Iran.

[Uke]

Like I said, this is an attempt by Uke to get people mad at the US and Israel. He's not showing anything remotely reflecting reality, and he knows it. But he's not concerned with showing reality. He wants to shout "Boo! Down with the US and Israel!" and punctuate his rants with pictures of dead babies. If he was at all concerned with reality or fairness or truth, he'd show what happens on the other side of the border, and he'd try and make the point that peace is better for the world than war. But he's not concerned with any of that. Solutions are not high on his list of priorities. He just wants people to get mad at their government.

I did not wish to do anything but post an email that I had just received. I didn't write anything biased to warrant Mike's responses, but some just feel justified doing and saying anything as long as they hang a patriotism sign on it.

If we really want to get into this discussion, we can. I didn't post the email to declare that the Israelis are the only ones fighting. That's just one of the many assumptions made on this site. I simply wanted to share and see what dialogue it generated.

But let me clarify my stance. The facts show that Israel is the catalyst in this conflict. It all started at the end of WWII, when world leaders offered the holocaust survivors a land of their own. They were offered land on many different continents. But the holocaust survivors, who have no indigenous roots or claim to land in Africa, were adamant about being given the land of Canaan as their new home. So, the powers that be pushed the then current occupants of Canaan out of their land and on May 15, 1948 the nation of Israel was born. The struggle to occupy that land has been ongoing ever since. The reason given for relocating the Palestinians was that they were primitive and did not develop the land or their people to a certain standard of civilization ... the same reason given as to why the rest of Africa was pillaged and underdeveloped during the middle passage.

The USA has become a target because Israel is a state sponsored country, meaning that the majority of wealth, weapons and resources that fuels Israel as a nation comes directly from the United States. This is not a slight on my country, but merely the facts. Israel serves as a station for US interests in the middle east, for both business and military purposes. They are our allies and our sister country based on the amount of resources that the United States gives them.

So instead of worrying about the pictures I think some should focus on the facts. War is never pretty or one sided. But the majority of the press would have you believe that many of the patriots of Canaan are nothing more than Al Qaeda terrorists, which is a lie and just more irresponsible propaganda. Any group that has a conflict with Israel is labeled anti-semitic, and is quickly lumped in with terrorist groups who have different interests and goals.

Forget WMD's and Saddam Hussein. The true focus should have been that Iraq, like Canaan 58 years prior, has been invaded, occupied and is now currently being fitted for a puppet regime that will answer to international bankers and businessman in the name of democracy and freeing a subjugated people. Its nothing new. It was done in North America to the Indians. The indians were seen as barbarians and heathens, and even though they were instrumental in the European settlement of North America, they were killed off with war, alcohol and small pox infected blankets.

The only difference here is that George Bush didn't have the balls to call this so called war what it is: another Manifest Destiny.

Americans are more at peace with the term war than we are with invasion, or conquest. Since we are supposed to be so socially and ethically "evolved" we couldn't in good conscious just invade a country and call it that. No, there must be a wrong to right or a cause to champion. And once a couple of fanatics blew up something on US soil, everything we did after that point is supposedly justifiable, no matter how many war crimes we and our allies(Israel) commit. Oliver North walks around a free man today due to America's uncanny ability to turn a blind eye to the truth when it suits us. But those weapons didn't get to the middle east by themselves.

Mike accused me of trying to demonize one side and not the other by only telling one side of the story. Well now I've told the whole story of why the conflict exists all together. So every other subsequent detail and skirmish after the fact isn't as significant as the reason why the conflict existed in the first place.

[Uke]

Mike, I've got news for you. I never said that Jews didn't inhabit the land today known as Israel. I'm telling you that the people in Israel today are not the jews or the decendants of the jews that inhabited that land during or before the time of christ.

Today, the Jews known as Ashkenazim were Khazars from Russia who converted and changed their names. Todays Jews known a Sephardim are the decendants of Spaniards and Portuguese who converted and changed their names. The Sephardim were expelled from Spain by the Spanish Inquisition of 1492.

The argument wasn't that the land was never inhabited by the Jews, Mike. The argument is that the Jews currently inahbiting that land are NOT the decendants of the original Jews. They are converts who lay claim to that land by claiming faith and religious right.

I pay little attention to your tirades, but I do address the facts. And all of what you've outlined still goes to support what I've writtten. The inhabitants of Israel are not the indigenous people of that land. They fought no war to win that land either. They were given that land and the inhabitants were driven away. Now that the Arabs want their land back and have been in a struggle with Israel for 58 years, they are terrorists? So when the Indians put up a fight against the colonists, were they terrorists? Because the situation isn't much different. You go ahead and push people off of their land and try to justify it by saying its been done before? And I'm supposed to be the stupid one? And at least the americans fought for the land. The Israelies didn't lift a finger for it. Once they acquired the land they had weapons and aid given to them from the US to keep the land, while the ousted Arabs threw sticks and rocks at them.

What part about this is ridiculous? What part about this is untrue? And your excerpt about the former kingdom of Israel is untrue as well. Israel is the name that Jacob took based on Genesis 32:28, and anyone born before that was not a child of Jacob, therefore they couldn't be Israelites. The name Israel has been used so loosely to justify the wrongs that have been done.

But you won't find that on Wikipedia, Mike.

There was no land originally called Israel. There was no land named after Jacob in his time.

[treelizard]

Uke,
I'm interested in your opinion on why Palestinians elected a group responsible for the murders of hundreds of civilians as well as hundreds of suicide bombings just a few months after Israel unilaterlly turned over the Gaza strip to them.

[treelizard]

From Wikipedia:
The theoretical Khazar contribution to the bloodline of modern Ashkenazi Jews proposed by some historians is politically sensitive. Current genetic studies show that Jewish Y-Chromosome DNA seems to have originated in Middle Eastern populations, whereas studies which take into account Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) show no relation to middle eastern ethnic groups. [1] So although Khazars might have been absorbed into the Jewish population it is unlikely that they formed a large percentage of the ancestors of modern Ashkenazim. [2]

^ In DNA, New Clues to Jewish Roots by Nicholas Wade (New York Times) May 14, 2002
^ The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East by Almut Nebel, Dvora Filon, Bernd Brinkmann, Partha P. Majumder, Marina Faerman, Ariella Oppenheim (The American Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 69, number 5. pp. 1095-1112) (brief)

[treelizard]

Lebanon PM thanks Hizbollah:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Lebanons-PM-thanks-Hizbollah/2006/07/31/1154198039135.html

[EmptyneSs]

lol its true, the jews that now occupy israel are convert immigrants, not the decendants of the original twleve tribes of israel are they?

and israel kills just as many innocent lives, if not more than arabs do. israel kills civilians and innocents every single day as does the usa. why do some people point fingers and not even look at themselves? are some people just in denial? two wrongs dont make a right. israel has been responsible for many massacres of innocents, and has been since its creation. how come its ok for them to take innocent life as they please, yet when someone dares criticize or standup to them they are so shocked and in disbelief?

its not good vs evil, or black vs white, or country vs country because the fact is everyone and every faction plays a hand in fucking everyone over cause when it comes down to it we are all the same

[treelizard]

How about this from Yoni the blogger??

I just found out a fact that I had not known. If we remember back to the
start of this war Hizballah came across the border and attacked an Israeli
patrol of two Hummers killing 8 soldiers kidnapping two.

The next day Israel put a tank across the border which hit a huge anti tank
IED, which killed the four man crew. Israel was not able to rescue all
bodies of the crew, due to heavy fighting and the bodies being trapped in
the ruble of the tank.

After Israel was forced out of the area, Hizballah surrounded the tank.
Hizballah terrorist then cut off parts from the bodies i.e. arms, legs,
heads to hold these body parts to exert pressure on Israel in addition to
holding the two soldiers.

The west must understand the nature of the enemy in order for a victory to
be achieved.

[treelizard]

Mike, I just posted an hour plus long video that more than adequately covers the other side. Uke--I challenge you to watch it.

[EmptyneSs]

How about this from Yoni the blogger??

I just found out a fact that I had not known. If we remember back to the
start of this war Hizballah came across the border and attacked an Israeli
patrol of two Hummers killing 8 soldiers kidnapping two.

The next day Israel put a tank across the border which hit a huge anti tank
IED, which killed the four man crew. Israel was not able to rescue all
bodies of the crew, due to heavy fighting and the bodies being trapped in
the ruble of the tank.

After Israel was forced out of the area, Hizballah surrounded the tank.
Hizballah terrorist then cut off parts from the bodies i.e. arms, legs,
heads to hold these body parts to exert pressure on Israel in addition to
holding the two soldiers.

The west must understand the nature of the enemy in order for a victory to
be achieved.

whats your point? hezbollah targeted soldiers, not civilians. soldiers are fair game. if you are in the armed forces, you should expect people to want to fight you and kill you. israel kills people too, every single day. so whats your point tree lizard? both sides still kill innocents, what makes one better than the other?

[EmptyneSs]

You've still not looked at the Palestinians with the same depth of analytical criticism that you've directed at Israel. And neither has Emptyness. How about you take a week or so and research them. Read their charters. Look at their methods. Be critical, and question them in the same way you question Israel.

how do you know that? ive studied the palestinian/israeli conflict almost daily for many years, i should take a week to read up on it?? lol.

no offense, but you are obviously pro israel and you seem to be the one who lacks understanding of the palestinians and their culture. ive actually lived in the middle east bro, i think i know a little about the culture over there.

and even still i dont take sides. i feel all parties share blame.