THEY (Israel) are responsible for everything, nobody else!

…and so the fighting and bloodshed continues. Beautiful how your logic works in favor of the conflict, and nothing else – proving my point precisely. The fact that Hezbollah and radical Islam holds the cards to stop the mayhem instantly in the region is no secret to anyone except for Hezbollah itself (apparently). Speaking of this truth is definitely no “stylish excuse” of any sort. Radical Islam quits beating their head against the wall and the bloodshed stops – and its as painfully simple as that. Of course, to admit this as truth, you’d have to admit that radical Islam is in fact controlling the flow of blood in the region, and that leaves you little or no room for lodging complaints about the resulting humanitarian crisis.

The rest of the world would love to see the Palestinian countries surrounding Israel flourish and prosper to their highest potential, but it will never happen as long as their continue to choose HATE as their primary export.

Learn about Iran-Iraq war and how on behalf of Western powers Saddam stupidly made all the work to keep Khomeini’s revolution within borders of Iran and thus exhausted his once prospering country.

Yet in the next breath you’ll blame us for overthrowing Iraq because of the immense wealth of their oil reserves! Also, fuel prices are at an historic high here in the US, so your banter about “filling up our SUV’s for free” is grotesquely off base.

I guess the chance is exactly as slim as make you say – Gee I guess I was wrong, and I don’t want to kill anybody who has different values than me.

Your enemies in this conflict would gladly say this tomorrow if they could be assured that radical Islam would bring an end to their offensive attacks. The opposite is not true. Yet again you fail to admit that radical Islam holds the cards to peace. The rest of the world is fed up with their lust for mayhem and would gladly end the bloodshed. The truth of this seems to be lost on you after repeated attempts to share that insight with you. Though if you were to admit this, your arguments would hold no water.

Let me ask you, how exactly did for example Iraqis endanger your way of life?

They attacked our Allies unprovoked and attempted to overthrow a soverign nation – period. We came to the rescue of Kuwait, and that war dragged on for over a decade (though some conveniently don’t see it that way for their own argument’s sake). Saddam continued attacking our aircraft in his no fly zone and defying all of the resolutions that secured him from further correction. In the end, his punishment fit the crime. If he could not be trusted to keep within his borders and not overthrow neighboring nations, he himself would have to be overthrown. The only challenge now is installing a replacement government that can (hopefully) be rationalized with so we can get out of that hell hole – but that’s another story.

I’m not sure where you’re from Flex, but if your country gets threatened by overthrow, I can probably guess who your government will be calling. Of course, a certain ilk among you will complain that we’re only there to harvest whatever resources you might have. It sucks beign the first country people turn to for help, and the first country people blame when even the slightest misgiving comes as a result.

Which is the lesser of two evils – letting Saddam run roughshot over Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc, or trying to balance the region by stopping him, only to set various tribes at each others throats as a result. Either way the Middle East always seems to be teetering on massive imbalance. Next time we’ll do nothing and be blamed for not caring about Muslims and allowing Iran one of its neighboring countries to destroy each other completely. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

My point exactly! Glad to see you coming around 😉

Israel gravitates towards peace?? Well then there must be bit different gravitation down there thna up here

…and rhetoric is cheap.

So when all we see from the news is innocent palestinians and lebanese being killed by you guys…So why should we care if they make terrorist attacks agaisnt USA and Israel and kill them???

Because Israel is otherwise willing to coexist side-by-side with the Palestinians peacefully with out this unnecessary bloodshed. All it would take is for the Palestinians to knock off the terrorism and offensive strikes and all would essentially be at peace. That seems to be the status quo in that region until yet another radical Islamic faction decides to start up the fight again and bring hell to both sides of the situation.

Radical Islam holds the key to peace in its actions, not Israel. Israel’s resolve naturally gravitates toward peace while radical Islam gravitates toward conflict. This is why no one seems to listen when radical Islamists yell about the loss of innocent lives at the hands of Israel. Should I preach to the bees about the pain my children suffer every time I thrust a stick into their hive? Should I expect them to care enormously about my suffering if it comes at the hand of my own idiocy?

I guess it all comes down to this: Either you believe Israel was established as a legitimate nation following WWII, or you don’t. Other than that, neither side’s point of view is really any more righteous than the other. Possession is 9/10ths of the law as they say, and Israel is never going to let go of what is physically, legally, historically and righteously (as they see it) their land. Either the Palestinians are going to lose the war, or the land they are fighting for will be completely destroyed anyway! Even if you’re fighting for principle alone, the means to an end currently being emplyoed by thr Palestinians is completely illogical.

IMO, a legitimate Armistice, as well as a number of truces were agreed upon that more than adequately defined the reality of Israel as a soverign nation long ago. Numerous wars since then have also proven Israel’s dominance over the fringe opposition. It’s a shame that the entire world is going to get dragged into war over a few hundred square miles of desert real estate that could otherwise have been shared anyway, but the Palestinians (like the Japanese) desire the “hard lesson” over what otherwise would be an extremely minimal materialistic compromise. If WWIII is what it takes to finally put an end to the otherwise vanquished axis alliance of WWII, so be it IMO. Germany, Japan, and every other Axis faction capitulated in 1945. If the Palestinians want to hedge their bets against their own promises and agreements, they can expect the rest of the world now (including Germany, Japan, etc) to work against their regressions to correct their lapse in judgement.

I completely agree with the common assessment of how completely tragic the current debacle is. I draw the root of my logic in the fact that, if the Islamic radicals surrounding Israel simply stopped attacking that country, there would be no more bloodshed! There’s always a more civilized court for addressing grievances, but the Islamic radicals continually default to the sword over the pen, so blood is what they summon for all the otherwise innocent masses who count on them for security and political leadership.

It’s kind of like watching some guy beating his head against a rock. The poor bloody soul is screaming about his pain, loss, and the whole unfair tragedy of it all, and all I want to do is scream “Then stop beating your head against the damned rock then!”. I have great pity for the Lebanese people caught in the crossfire of this rediculous mess, which is directly counterbalanced by my total disdain for Hezbolah and their tactic of deliberately hiding their military command among the civilian populance, obviously relying on the inevitable innocent deaths as part of their equation for political sympathy. That’s as perverse as it gets, and knowing they have the ability to stop the bloodshed instantly at anytime makes it VERY easy for me to blame them for the current situation – past politics be damned.

Those Lebanese citizens were alive and content two weeks ago, and are dead today because the power that controls their country (Hezbolah) is willing to see them slaughtered to further Hezbolah’s cause – period. Dredge up the minutiae of a 50-year old feud if you like, but the rockets are still raining heavily on Israel just as they were before a single Lebanese life was lost in this fight. Stop the rockets and you cut the legs out from underneath Israel’s justification for retaliation. Still, there’s no outcry here for Hezbolah to cease fire in order to save those lives and infrastructure that so many here are waxing tragic over.

By their actions, Hezbolah and radical Islam are telling the world that the destruction ofthese innocent Lebonese lives is the required price for maintaining pressure against Israel. If they did not, they would cease fire, diffuse the battle instantly, spare those lives, and let the world hold Israel accountable for their obtuse reaction to the situation. Fact is, those who rule Lebanon care more about serving their hatred than they do about serving their own populance. That being the case, I can’t see how Israel can apparently be held solely responsible for the plight of the Lebanese people, as is seemingly reflected by so many in this thread.

About 95% of the world has no fear of Israel ever using nuclear weapons. The vast majority knows how imbalanced Iran and the rest of the region’s fringe radicals are about “the occupation” which is why the two circumstances are no comparable.

One low-yield bomb is all it would take to wipe Israel completely off the map, and I’m fairly confident that the proponents of such an act would be more than willing to absorb whatever backlash was dealt by the world community in response to that act – as long as there was no more Israel left after the fact.

This is why Iran, Syria, and the rest of the Middle Eastern countries propping up extremist aggressors are not seen as trustworthy powers in the nuclear race. The very religion they base their collective philosophy on overtly urges them to manipulate, cheat, and lie if neccessary to see that Allah’s will is done. Yet another reason why arguments from Muslim extremists ridiculing the West for not exercising those same virtues is so laughable, and rings so completely hollow in public debate. How could anyone justify giving a loaded gun to a culture that prides itself on being “righteously untrustworthy”?