chicot

Hey, that's my line

My bad. Substitute "heavy" for "carpet".

It never has been anywhere near as powerful as that of Israel's. I remember reading somewhere that the Syrian plan to counter the Israeli airforce was to use missile attacks to devastate their airfields. Whether that has any chance of success I don't know.

There's also the fact that Iran has said it will come to Syria's defence if it was to be attacked by Israel.

That's a fair point

Not actually being in Lebanon, I don't know for sure any more than you do that that is definitely the case.

I remember it (even though I'm not American) but does even Jesse Jackson (he's black but is he a muslim?) have the same amount of fame as Mel Gibson? I'm not sure that calling NYC "Hymietown", stupid though it was, is quite the same as saying "the (profanity redacted) Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world".

If he had the same level of fame, I would guess that they would.

I certainly condemn them for the rocket attacks since they are attacks on civilian targets and not Israeli military.

I made a statement that bombing people with no air defences is not an act of courage. Nowhere did I say that Hizbollah were "brave freedom fighters" or that the "big, bad Israelis just aren't playing fair".

I was not the one who brought up the matter of "cowardice", I simply replied to JSP's post where he raised the matter. There's little in modern warfare that is actually "fair".

They don't, just pointing out that it's hardly an act of courage to drop bombs on people who lack any sort of air defences (didn't someone get fired in the US for making a similar sort of point?)

</sarcasm> As opposed to the heroic and courageous western powers that specialize in carpet bombing of nations that have virtually no air-force. </sarcasm>

From my anti-semetic, terrorist-supporting perspective, that is an amazingly bad article. Of the 3 photos that supposedly "damn Hizbollah", 2 of them are of exactly the same scene, shot from a different angle, so there is only really 2 images. Of these, one shows a fat bloke with a Kalashnikov. So what? What is this supposed to prove? Is he intending to fire his long-range AK47 into northern Israel from East Beirut, where, it is stated, these images came from? The other shows a mobile anti-aircraft gun. Since Israel is bombing Beirut constantly, I don't think it's that suprising that anti-aircraft guns should be positioned in Beirut. Where exactly can you position anti-aircraft guns to protect Beirut from aerial attack without putting them in Beirut? Again, it's not as if this weapon is going to be used to fire into Northern Israel. And then we have the image that supposedly "depicts the remnants of a Hezbollah Katyusha rocket in the middle of a residential block blown up in an Israeli air attack", or rather we don't, as the article strangely leaves out the most relevant photo. According to the blurb: "Hezbollah came in to launch their rockets, then within minutes the area was blasted by Israeli jets," he said. But hang on a minute, the article stated that the images were taken in East Beirut. So Hizbollah are somehow launching Katyushas from East Beirut into Israel?! Hizbollah may or may not be launching rockets from residential areas, as the articles states, but the "photos that damn Hizbollah" prove nothing of the sort.

I couldn't care less whether people on this board treat me like an idiot or not. The matter is irrelevant. I've done a search for my earlier posts since you weren't helpful enough to specify which post or even which thread I'm supposed to have had the aforementioned argument with you in. I'm guessing that the exchange was this one: My response: You made the statement that Hizbullah are not really Lebanese and I asked how you worked that out. That is very different from saying Hizbullah doesn't represent Lebanon and then me arguing that they do. Nice try of deflecting the argument away from the fact that you stated that you never said something that you had actually said just a few posts earlier in the very same thread. Myself, I would have held my hand up and said I made a mistake, but each to his own ...

There's far more than that. There are hizbollah run schools, hospitals. I came across this very (!) long article on Hizbollah from the Boston Review (before anyone rants or raves, I know nothing about this publication). Might be of interest to people interested in background info to the current conflict, though it probably won't be of interest to the "who cares how they're pronounced, they're Islamofascists" brigade. Hizbollah

Go back and read your earlier posts in this thread:

Actually my last response to you was at 1.15 am (it seems your arithmatic is somewhat flawed), which is about the usual time I go to bed but thank you for your concern.

No, never heard of him. Is he a Republican politician?

Actually, I never said my response was well-thought out, I said yours was (it's called sarcasm). Whatever. You can call me what you like. Doesn't worry me in the slightest.

"We, Israeli citizens resident in the UK, write to make public our dissent from the acts of aggression committed by the Israeli army in Lebanon and Gaza. The Israeli government claims this is necessary aggression in the interests of Israeli national security. We say: "Not in our name." We do not share the sense of victimisation so immediately assumed by many Israelis. In casting themselves as the sole victims, they obscure the suffering of others, as well as their own role in inflicting that suffering. The destruction of a neighbouring country and the devastation of its civil society cannot contribute to the growth of a partner for peace. Likewise, the long-lasting occupation of millions of Palestinians cannot inspire good will among Israel's Arab neighbours. The persistent policy of abducting of Lebanese and Palestinian citizens and their detention in Israel without trial cannot further the process of constructive political dialogue. The ongoing Israeli boycott of the democratically elected government of the Palestinian authority has resulted in a humanitarian crisis. This is now aggravated by the Israeli bombardments of densely populated civilian areas, meant to bring them into submission and to assert the Israeli control of Gaza, despite Israel's withdrawal. Israel's unilateral politics cannot generate just solutions to constant Israeli aggression in Lebanon and to 40 years of occupation over the Palestinian people. We call upon the Israeli government to immediately withdraw all forces from Lebanon and to stop its attacks on Lebanese and Palestinian civilian populations. We call upon the British government and on the international community to actively intervene to end the Israeli aggression in Lebanon. Ilana Bakal, Daphna Baram, Nimrod Ben-Cnaan, Ron Cohen, Talya Ezrahi, Naama Farjoun, Yael Friedman, Gali Gold, Anat Pick, Meir Shabat, Ehud Sivush, Tirza Waisel" Letters to the friggin' Guardian Damn these Jew haters

No, I'm not stumbling over that point at all. For a start, I reject the notion that it was somehow "all quiet on the Western Front" until those dastardly Hizbollah terrorists launched a sneak attack. In reality it hasn't been all quiet on the Israel/Lebanon border for decades and since Israel ended it's occupation a state of low-level war has existed between Israel and Hizbollah with skirmishs, border incursions in both directions and incursions into each other's airspace (unmanned drones in the case of Hizbollah). In that context, the Hizbollah action represents a minor escalation at most, not a "de facto declaration of war". It was Israel that decided to take things to the next level by targetting Lebanese infrastructure. Even if I accepted that Lebanon had declared war on Israel that still does not mean that Israel is entitled to do anything at all it wants to Lebanon. You keep repeating the phrase "they declared war on Israel" like somehow that means that proportionality goes out of the window. Would you regard it as all well and good were Israel to kill every man, woman and child in Lebanon? Were Israel to deliberately target primary schools, would you still repeat your mantra "well, they started it"? No? Why Not? After all, "they declared war on Israel" and that's all we need to know here. Nothing to see here, case closed, move along. You might think that bombing clinics, power stations, the Red Cross and the UN is a justified response, I do not. You might think that weakening the Lebanese government that Israel expects to rein in Hizbollah is logical, I do not. You might think that bombing Lebanese army barracks and killing the very soldiers that Israel wants deployed to the Southern Lebanese border makes sense, I call it sheer stupidity. And far from turning the Lebanese against Hizbollah it seems to be having the opposite effect - a poll out tomorrow in a Lebanese paper puts support for Hizbollah against Israel in the Christian population at 80%! (Yes I know, polls, blah, blah, blah ...) This Lebanese adventure was ill-advised and is already starting to go badly for Israel. Hizbollah aren't like most Arab armies i.e. incompetent. Whatever else they may or may not be, one thing they are is a highly capable fighting force. Israel's declared aim of having a "security zone" in southern Lebanon is likely to turn out at least as badly as it did last time but sadly hundreds, if not thousands, more people are likely to die before they realize that.

He also said that Israel's offensive was "disproportionate and a violation of international humanitarian law". It's nice of the IDF to warn people to leave, it would be nicer still if they wouldn't keep bombing people trying to do exactly that.

Even assuming Hizbollah was responsible for all the aforementioned, I think you'd be extremely hard pressed to find "countless thousands of civilian deaths" in all those incidents, which was your original statement.

Not sure if what he said was actually "largely supporting the Israeli viewpoint". He also had some pretty harsh words for Israel.