1 Hate to say it, but Buchanan has a point. I think you're missing the complexity of the internal situation in Lebanon, and why Israel's response is likely to make things (including Israel's safety) worse in the long term.

2 So, are you a supporter of Richard Cohen's "Just lay back and enjoy it" policy prescription for Israel?

3 Of course not. Do you really think there are just two choices here?

The problem is (as Buchanan, in a rare moment of lucidity, pointed out) is that it's not realistic to think that the government of Lebanon would be able to rapidly get rid of Hezbollah when Israel couldn't do it in years of occupation, especially when they enjoy significant popular support among the populace there.

A "tit for tat" response from Israel is justified, correct, and smart - as long as Hezbollah is there, there is no peace of security. What we've seen, with heavy casualties among Lebanese civilians and widespread destruction of infrastructure, is not just morally wrong, but is going to set back democracy in Lebanon and security for Israel. It's as if (as a friend of mine commented yesterday) the UK had decided to deal with the IRA by shelling Dublin because Sinn Fein was part of the Irish government.

Israel is in a horrible situation, with neighbors who don't even want them to exist. Unfortunately, they've reacted to this by being fairly aggressive with those neighbors - and their treatment of the Palestinians has been less than stellar. There are valid complaints against them.

None of which justifies the aggrssion of Hamas or Hezbollah, but here's the problem - nobody there is going away, so they need to learn to live next door to each other. Israel's current actions can perhaps be justified, but I think they're unlikely to lead to any kind of lasting peace.

It's unfortunate, when you consider how much progress had been made until the last few years. I think that you'd find a lot of people in Lebanon being able to live with, if not support, incursions into their country to take out Hezbollah targets - especially moderates there who just want to leave in peace. Israel's pushing them away from moderation. Similarly, before all of this the more moderate elements in Hamas seemed to be figuring out that they had to govern, now that they'd been elected - unfortunate Israel responded to attacks from the radical elements just as one would expect, essentially playing into their hands and undermining the forces of moderation.

So yes, you can probably justify everything Israel is doing in some abstract way, but that doesn't mean it's going to lead to any kind of good ending for anybody.

4 Sorry, I have to disagree with you entirely. Saying that there has been progress between Israel and her neighbors in recent years is like saying the 1938 Munich agreements were progress. Israel thought it was getting peace but all it did was surrender security.

The major problemis that Hezbollah and Hamas place their fighters and munitions among civilians. That is a strategic decision on their part -- make the threat of civilian casualties force israel to refrain from protecting itself. The Israelis have justifiably drawn the conclusion that the threat of such casualties cannot continue to be the basis for giving up security. Ultimately, however, the blood of every dead civilian in this conflict belongs on the hands of the terrorists.

5 Like the airport?

So what do you see as the endpoint of all this? I think it's a crucial question.

6 Yes -- keep the terrorists from fleeing, or from bringing in additional weapons by air.

7 Greg is an Arabophobic racist who loves to label
as "anti-Semitic" any opponents of Israel. Further, his racism derives from heretical Biblical exegesis which assumes God gave Palestine to Jews. This in turn causes him to have a most incurious attitude about the terroristic founding of Israel which permanently precludes its acceptance in the Arab world.
As far as America is concerned, John's prognosis
for Israel applies to it also as long as "the Lobby" has Congress bought lock stock and barrel.

Greg moralizing about Buchanan's stand says it all and it matters ultimately not to the former that Buchanan has the overwhelming majority of European Christians in his corner. Greg can't see the moral forest for the heretical trees
of theological Left breakoffs from Old Testament Puritanism traditionally termed "Judaizing."
This is as much a faith statement as that of Heaven's Gate, and as lethal for American policy.

8 Let's see, Ken -- you deny the Holocaust (actually claiming that Hitler didn't mean to kill the Jews despite all the "Final Solution" documents that prove otherwise). You don't accept Israel's right to exist. You go on about the Jewish Lobby. You send me private links from racist and anti-black organizations. You still support the "White Citizen's Councils that stood and stand for segregation.

Yet somehow you expect to be taken seriously when you call someone else a bigot?

Take your sheets and swastikas and crawl back under your rock.

9 Perhaps Greg can explain why and how substantial numbers of Jews were resettled by Germany in the Mideast via the "Transfer Agreement" during the 1930s if Hitler "wanted to kll them all."

Moreover, the only reason several times the number weren't settled elsewhere was the reluctance of America to take many and the refusal of Arabs to take more (and the unwillingness of Germans to step on Palestinian toes.)

Arabophobia endangers America by inflaming a Moslem world far greater in numbers than Zionists can muster. I have simply called for
America to cut off foreign aid to all parties in the Middle East,come home, develop alternative energy sources and our own oil supplies.

Your call for continued financial support for Israel is of a whole different interventionist cloth.

10 http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1153291959426&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

and now Israel has inflamed the Quakers of Islam,the peaceful Sufis

11 I'll repeat my question: how does this end?

12 Well, your apologia for Hitler certainly says it all.

13 Oh, Ken, I read your article -- and it shows that even the "good Muslims" are, in the end, constrained by their patholoogical hatred of Jews and the state of Israel.

Maybe now would be a good time for them to get renounce their Israeli citizenship and go to a Muslim state wehre they would receive better treatmenta and have greater freedom.

Oh, yeah, that's right -- there is no place in the Muslm world that offers Muslims as much freedom as they have in Israel.

14 A wise woman once offered a very clear answer:

“We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us” -- Golda Meir

15 http://counterpunch.org/Lind07202006.html


There is hope,John, but not for a Zion-occupied American government...Lind by the way is a Conservative noninterventionist.

16 Come on -- call it ZOG, just like the other neo-Nazis and skinheads. After all, the term "Zionist Occupied Government" has always been very popular among them. Same with the Christian Identity Movement -- which is where I placed you theologically some time back.

Thanks for confirming that you are a bona fide hatemonger.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_Occupied_Government
http://www.indopedia.org/Zionist_Occupied_Government.html
http://christianparty.net/zog.htm
http://www.aryan-nations.org/

17 Greg, Meir's comment is pithy but it is nothing resembling an answer to the question, which I posed quite sincerely. Where do you think this leads? What constitutes victory for Israel? Will that victory lead to security? I assume yo have given this some thought, given your support for their actions.

And yes, I'm purposely not saying what I think is likely to happen, because I'd really like to hear your thoughts rather than your responses to mine.

Cheers,
John

18 Ideally, it would end with the situation presented in the Meir quote.

Personal preference?

It ends when not one member of Hezbollah is left alive. Or at least with enough of them dead to render them no longer a threat. Ditto Hamas. It should also end with Israel annexing Golan, the West Bank, and Gaza -- and pointedly suggesting that any unhappy Arab find a more amenable place to live. And lastly, with Israel telling the international community to f*ck off.

A more realistic end scenario is that it ends with Israel again caving into the international community's call to play nice -- and with the real aggressors (the so-called Palestinians) again being painted as the victims of injustice. That means security for another few years -- until the next time Israel caves into the latest demands of the international community to make concessions. That will set off a new round of the IDF engaging in another round of vermin control -- and Israel being condemned for it.

19 Hmm. I think your scenario is unlikely. It is probably within Israel's capabilities to neutralize Hezbollah in Lebanon, but in doing so, I suspect that they will cause immense damage in Lebananon, setting the stage for a new Hezbollah - under the same name or another - to arise, because there will be so much anti-Israel sentiment among the population.

I think you have a tendency to view groups as undifferentiated masses of people, and that's just not accurate. Hezbollah and Hamas are able to garner popular support among Lebanese and Palestinians who mostly just want to live their lives.

Israel is in a tough situation and has to protect itself, but the details of their treatment of ordinary Palestinians are quite disturbing - and feed the anti-Israeli sentiment. Does that excuse Hamas? Of course not. But in practical terms, you can't expect to treat people badly and not have them foster long term resentments.

I don't have the ultimate solution, but what Israel is doing now isn't it - unless they intend to bomb and occupy all their neighbors and keep the populations subjugated indefinitely, becoming essentially the dictators of their part of the middle east.

20 No, I don't view people as undifferentiated masses -- in this case i simply recognize that there is sufficient hatred of Israel among the Palestinians that it is possible to make a broad generalization.

And by the way, I don't find Israels treatmetn of the Palestinians to be at all disturbing --- given that for nearly 6 decades there have been attempts by the Israels Arab neighbors to destroy it. Two of those neighbors have stepped-up and made peace -- Egypt and Jordan -- and interestingly enough there are not attacks on Israel coming from their territory. On the other hand the Syrians and Lebanese harbor groups that attack Israel on a frequent basis -- and we won't get into the acts of the various groups operating out of Gaza and the West Bank.

21 Frankly, I believe there are only two options -- maybe three, but the third is untenable -- out there that lead to permanent peace and security for Israel.

1) Israel crushes her belicose neighbors.

2) Syria and Lebanon, like Egypt and Jordan, choose to accept the existance of Israel and to quit providing safe havens for terrorists within their borders and financial support for their operations outside. The Palestinians must, at a minimum, be completely disarmed -- if not resettled elsewhere in the region, as should have happened in 1948. Israel should, of course, bear a proportionate cost of that program, along with the Arab states which ursued a policy of keeping the Palestinians inflamed.

The third -- and utterly unacceptable -- proposal is the removal of all Jews from Israel and their resettlement elsewhere. Personally, I like the idea of Montana and Wyoming.