They Wonder Why We Support Israel
 

Heart-wrenching story:

(Knight Ridder).

It is hard to understand anyone's opinions if they feel the need to detonate bombs in civilian areas, aimed at inflicting mass casualties. A more shocking pat:

A lot of people wonder why the US is so slow to throw any support behind the Palestinian cause, but I think in incidences like this the answer is quite clear: the Palestinians promote terrorist activites doctrinally, and culturally have proven to be more than lacking to live up to the term 'civilized.'

We are not asking for Palestinians to give up their religion, but rather, we are asking them why they think they are responsible enough to have their own state if the only precedent we have seen from them is one of inflicting terror on civilian targets.

Any society with a collective glorification of terrorism, where children are often dressed in imitation of them at rallies of the elected, ruling political party Hamas, will never have my moral backing.

There seems to be little choice other than support for Israel, being that there is no other alternative that makes sense.

thanks.

Well. I'm pretty bowled over by your heroic and unique view that terrorism is bad. I'll have to give that some thought, as really, it never crossed my mind.

"we are asking them why they think they are responsible enough to have their own state if the only precedent we have seen from them is one of inflicting terror on civilian targets. "

Hah! I WISH statehood came with a responsability requirement. It doesn't, it never has, and how unexpected you obviously see yourself as part of a 'responsability' Kulture that would be in a good position to decide who gets a state and who doesn't.

"There seems to be little choice other than support for Israel, being that there is no other alternative that makes sense."

Have you ever thought of being Secretary of Sate? What are you, Binary? There are about a bajillion alternatives, which you tacitally acknowledge by not giving us any hint of what 'support' might mean.
'Support' could cover everything from saying 'You go, girl' to Nuking every one of their enemies.

And heartfelt support from someone who calls himself 'KulturKampf'? NOT what Jews generally find reasuring.

KK and I are destined to engage in fatal combat. There can only be one.

Mortal combat over what? The title of the supreme big cheese douche turd of the internet?

We when again, fucker.

We do when again...

But seriously...

What do you think we could do? Help prop up a Palestinian state that refuses to acknowledge Israel's right to existence? The last thing we need is another Arab state that thinks the world owes them something.

You're rigt. Propping them up and doggedly supporting all of Israels actions ARE the only two choices on the table.

Erm...irony?

rofl

I do not think i ti sthat ironic --- the Israelis are willing to make deals with the Palestinians and the overwhelming majority have no interest in permanently holding the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, whereas for Palestinians it is generally "all or nothing."

Furthermore, if we do not help support the Israeli state we will have 1967 all over again - they need our help.

You are so right K we DO need to support Israel. How else is Israel going to eradicate refugee camps, like Sabra and Chatila, without US military equipment.

They could eradicate them with machine guns carried at the hip to make sure they get the kids, too.

I knew I could count on you to find the bright side of any situation.

Yeah, except if you're really keeping an Arab death toll, Arab regimes (including the PA) are way ahead on that list.....

The Christian Phallanges committed those murders. Not Israel. At best, Israel can only be held "indirectly" responsible.

Israel has not eradicated a single "refugee camp", all of which were established under Arab rule to begin with.

Israel's largest wars were fought using Czech, and French arms, not US military equipment.

Wow...

Kev and ABCD and I vaguely, and I mean vaguely, appear to be in some sort of loose consensus on a solitary point that Palestinian Authority has not done a good job and the Israelis are not the devil.

That is incredible. I almost want to halt all discussion before we drift drastically apart gain, and savor the moment.

This could be the first time ever where KK got along with smeone other than Pharaoah or the guy who I am the stand-in replacement for.

ABC defends Israel!!?? :eek

While I will admit that wasn't the best example, I feel Israel was more then "indirectly" responsible for the masacres.

The Phallanges militias (among others groups) at the time were being supplied and trained by Israel to combat the PLO during the civil war in Lebanon.

The militias who did the dirty work had been invited to enter the camps to clear out PLO fighters by Israeli commanders, it should be pretty easy to guess who one of the commanders was.

During the 3 days that the massacres were taking place Israel army units surronded the camps and turned back civilians who were trying to escape. As well as resupplying the militias through the course of the whole affair. I believe they even lent a bulldozer to destroy buildings in the camps.

In a very real sense Israeli military units had been providing support to the Phallanges militiamen.

In response to your last point Israel has probably killed a hell of a lot more people in between the "official" wars then during them, and the US has been providing huge ammounts of aid for Israel for over 30 years. In the last decade or so half of the aid Israel recieves is "Forgein Military Financing" which is where we help Israel buy weapons from us, that is when we aren't givin' em away, hot off the press! as we say.

So, no mention of Iran and Hezbollah? You should probably read this.


"In response to your last point Israel has probably killed a hell of a lot more people in between the "official" wars then during them, and the US has been providing huge ammounts of aid for Israel for over 30 years. In the last decade or so half of the aid Israel recieves is "Forgein Military Financing" which is where we help Israel buy weapons from us, that is when we aren't givin' em away, hot off the press! as we say."

Wow, you really hit upon all of the campus brochure talking points there. What if I told you Israel was open to the idea of reducing the amount of aid they get from us?

They'll get those weapons and resources from somebody, believe that much. So the choice that Americans have is do they want to continue supporting the only true democracy in the Middle East, or do they want to abandon that and let countries like India and/or China step in???

"If we don't make the weapons someone else will," has been a winning argument since some troglodyte realized he had a knack for making killing implements.

It's probably something akin to instinct at this point. :(

It's not about who simply makes the weapons. The point is that there will be a weaponized Israel doing what they do regardless. So, would you rather WE have influence and sway over their actions, or would you rather China have it?

The Sabra Shatilla massacre was the outcome of a 25+ year civil war, but it was not a 3 day event.

The PLO had just failed coup attempts in every neighboring country, and moved on to their next target, Lebanon. Israel's only interest was securring Southern Lebanon, not kill Palestinians. The PLO had been entering into Israel's border, taking hostages, and killing American tourists. Are you suggesting it was Israel's responsibility to occupy Lebanon and keep these fueding factions apart? Israel was ordered to leave. The Phallanges were in power, and the massacre was avenging the assasination of he Lebanese president.

No the point beng made was that Arab nations have killed more people then Israel ever has. Jordan alone killed 20,000 Palestinians during a failed coup attempt.

If you are refering to the 1996 plan under Netanyahu, I thought that Israel would be reducing it's economic aid but increase it's military aid, but I could be wrong. Even so I find a bit odd considering that as far as I can tell Israel is not very economically self suficient and leans heavily on US economic/military aid.

And I don't disagree with you there, a lot of the Arab states have done what they have done more out of attempts to shift the balance of power between Israel and themselves, then actaully trying to achieve any kind of self determination for Palestinians. But that doesn't change the fact that Israel has done it's fair share of repression against Palestinians, and I feel that while Sabra and Chatila was not actually directly carried out by Israeli forces the whole situation was indicative of Israel's treatment of Palestinians; I merely use it becuase it is the most well known event regarding such things, I suppose the way i used it could be likened to campus pamphlets (that one was to Kevin).

I guess one of the points of contention here is what was the real nature of Israel's involvement in the civil war that led to the massacres. First of all my own feelings on it, was that Israel's ivasions had a couple of reasons behind it, one was it's attempts to destroy the PLO and create a buffer zone in the north against terrorist organizations and the northern Arab states like Syria. And it was also a response to Syria's invasion to make sure they didn't get a foot hold in lebanon which would complicate Israel's attempts to solidify it's power in the region. The aim of the whole thing was to take Southern Lebanon (for above reasons) and support a Maronite, pro-Israel or at the very least a we-won't-try-and-drive-you-into-the-sea government. My own opinion is that Israel's attempt to consolidate it's power in the region was more the driving force then rooting out the PLO, although the two aren't seperate.

Back to specifics, again I reiterate, Israel had been supplying the Maronite militias for 6 years prior to the massacres and in the course of 2 invasions had been directly supporting them for 4 years. And it was essentially under Israeli military control that Gemayel was elected into the presidency. It wasn't just Gemayel's assassination that resulated in the massacres, Israel had already broken the withdrawl agreements, and had pushed up all the way to Beirut in response to the assassination of an Israeli diplomat for the express purpose of rooting out PLO fighters that it claimed were hiding in refugee camps around the area, Israel was already planning on going into those camps they just used Phallanges militas to do it.

I'm not trying to defend the Arab countries governments, you'd have to be pretty ballsey to do that. But to say that Israel's actions are merely out of self defense is bullshit, in the civil war or otherwise; it's this idea that Israel's "retaliations" are justified that I'm arguing against.