ISRAEL;WHEN WILL THE WEST DO SOMETHING... PART II

[UCM]

Here goes....

So what are you saying, Mud?
That the remaining palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank should b*gger off to Jordan and relinquish those lands to Israel?

Late to join this thread... I agree with Mimoyello that hopefully this is a turning point to worldwide condemnation of Israel.

If you haven't yet signed the petition on the stop the war website, please do. Here's the link

No I think its gone beyond that possibility .. if that was going to happen it should have happened in 1948 when Dayan actually invited the Palestinians to stay

I am firmly of the mind that the occupied territories should be returned

I am stongly of the opinion that the current war should be stopped

But I think people should know a little more of the history of the area before they comment on the rights of Israel to exist to begin with. That's just ignorance.

Most here are not commenting on Israel's right to exist Mud. Most are condemning the atrocities Israel have committed in Lebanon and Palestine.

war crimes i would call them. i hope that the international court in the hague is watching this closely

....and in the circumstances arguing about history of the Middle East is a bit like discussing what started the fire instead of putting out the fire. I know that the problems will still be there afterwards but meanwhile Israel simply cannot be allowed to solve the problem of Hezbollah once and for all, by killing hundreds of innocents. Which appears to be their attitude atm.

I think you can find a lot of Republicans who are pro choice and moderately religeous. A lot would support stem cell research.

I vote Republican because I support fiscal responsibility.

I support the war in Iraq, not because it was a good thing, but because it was the lesser of two eveil (leaving sadaam and his alleged WMD in place being the greater evil).

So, it is true, Bush is pretty extreme right and I don't wholly support some of his views. But, when you vote for president, you accept the whole person. And I believe he is a far cry better than his opponents were.

going to war to get rid of teh, er alleged WMD Uwila? And the fact that they weren't there doesn't mean anything to you?

ok, ignore that, I'm getting sucked in again. Going to take my ds out. Bye!

FWIW it is pretty hard to distance the occupation in 1948 from the current problems
Also the Lebanese problem this also stems from occupation of the Shaba Farms and the internment without trial for over 20 years of several hundred Lebanese.
So while Israel bang on about Un resolution 1559 and Hizbollah disarming, Hizbollah expect the other things in return.
So once again it's a tit for tat disarming and tit for tat retaliation
Well not that tit=tat forcewise of course
Collective punishment rarely causes your enemy to capitulate.
Infact within Lebanon it appears quite the reverse is happening, it is almost legitimising Hizbollah.

Yes, I think Sadaam was terrible man who did worse things than going to war to remove him. I don't think war is a good thing, but I do think removing Sadaam was the right decision.

I fully accept that no one on this will chat board is likely to agree. I'm going to see if I can find my hard hat now...

But if it was just Saddam they could have easily got SAS etc in to take him and key members out.
Or even better they could never have felt the need to meddle and put him in power there in the first place

Uwila has the very valid point that in a 2 party system, it's impossible for it to represent a cohenerent set of views that any one individual might agree with. Also the party has to have a line on every issue, including many that you simply don't care about.
Even if Bush had a brain, it's doubtful if he had any view on acceptable levels of hormones in beef, tariff levels on steel imports, or the exchange of intelligence information on neo-Nazis in Austria.
But he has to make decisions on these and 1,000 other issues.
I also agree that Gore was a highly defective person, who even now strikes me as pathologically dishonest. Recall him "inventing the Internet", and in his book "facts are a kind of pollution", when talking about climate change ?
It's possible that in a 2 horse race I might have held my nose in the first election, and voted for Bush. But how anyone who can read might vote for him the second time ?
What Bush has done with Israel is not really that different to what a Democrat president would choose. Indeed, typically the Republicnas have licked the arse of the Israeli lobby with less joy than Democrats.

But, "Fiscal responsibility" ?
OK, this is not Economist.com, but that's quite breathtakingly divorced from anything anyone might call reality.
OK, no war is cheap, but from a nearly balanced budget under (Democrat Clinton), the Republicans have spent vast amounts of money on pork barrel politics. Recall "the bridge to nowhere" ?
Also look at the spending by Homeland security ?
Recall how resources have been allocated 100% on whether the area is represented by Republican ?

And did you really expect us not to know that the Republican controlled gang in charge of that really did say that (Democrat represented) New York had no major terrorist targests ?
Yes, really.

Given this, and other posts where you misrepresent all sorts of views, not just my own, I have to ask Uwilla if you have some sort of dyslexia ?

No, I don't. But, my brother does and he is also a Bush voter.

i find it amazing stuff that with over 14,000 dead iraqis in the last 6 months, Uwila still feels that it was the right thing to remove Saddam Hussien just because he may have had WMD. That Iraqi women who enjoyed a lot of personal freedoms, now hardly leave their homes. You mean the lies of your President is more valuable than the lives of the last 14,000 Iraqis?

Shortly after Bush declared unilateral victory on the decks of an aircraft carrier, I wrote that now that he has won the war, I wished him luck on winning the peace.

Well I wonder how representative Uwila is of Americans. They have a media which as far as I can tell is decidedly pro-the government so maybe it's not surprising if many Americans think this way - ie if they don't have access to more neutral reporting. This is probably the case in most countries. I would guess that most people in the world are at least a little bit nationalistic.

Anyone see the "Judah and Mohammad" program last night?
It didn't exactly fill me with hope for a peaceful resolution if the Arab-Israeli conflict any time soon.
Really liked the teacher in the Israeli school. Encouraged the kids to open their minds and see that there is more then one valid viewpoint.

Kiskidee, I wouldn't say "just because he may have had WMD". Sadaam was a bad bad man. He cause lots of pain and suffering among his people.

Yes, Saddam caused a lot of death to his own people. He was also the US's man for 20+ years while he did that. Releasing his people from his tyranny was never one of the reasons given for going to war in Iraq - pre Invasion that is.

Uwila, so, too do many despots. So why single out Saddam Hussein for removal? What about Richard Mugabe, to name the first example that springs to mind? Why not him?

i think you'll find we [USA and UK] have caused a hell of a lot more suffering to the Iraqi people than Saddam could have ever dreamed about Uwila.

saadia, Access 'neutral reporting' what's that? al jazeri? BBC? The Telegraph, The Guaridan? Seems to me that if you actually know more than the journalist, they are usually wrong. And if want to find out about something you don't, you pick the news source that most syncs up with your world view. And then, after viewing/reading it, you think you know!

Please, don't believe everything your see/read. I don't think the Americans are any less informed than you. Just a different slant .

Oh, and the media in the US is most certainly no friend of conservative goverment. It is liberally biased, always has been (apart from Fox news). At least it was when I last set foot in the good old U S of A -- about 3 years ago.

I do think I'm rather middle ground as far as Bush supporters go. This statement by mimoyello describes not a typical Republican, but rather an immoral bad person:

"The PROPORTION of the American electorate who voted for Bush ARE: Pro-Jewish Lobby, Neo-Con, Extreme Right, Fundamentalist Christian, anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-liberal, anti-humanity, anti-Arab, very racist, pro-Bu-shites (especially the Shites bit !!) "

And another thing, don't Jewish Americans typically vote for the Democrats? Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I'm sure I was told this at Uni.

sillyrabbit I think it helps to have access to a range of viewpoints. You are right, most people pick a newspaper according to their political leanings. But the biggest seller in the UK is the Sun is it not? Broadsheets have tiny readership figures compared to the red-tops.

Most people actually don't care what is happening outside their country. MNers are not typical.

Just as an example, remember the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. The media was up in arms about insitutional racism in the police force. But I remember listening to radio interviews with people out and about in S London and the prevailing view among them was that the police were being given an undeserved hard time. People are not as liberal as the media thinks.