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At 7/1/06 12:25 PM, Fronzy wrote: He was unstable,thats why rooney stepped on his crotch.He had no balance >=(

It's hard to determine whether or not it was intentional. But I think Rooney's behaviour after the ref blew his whistle didn't really help his case.

Lol, Rooney. If you want to put your foot in the crotch of a Portuguese don't do it when the ref is less than a few meters away. And don't start a fight after the foul had been noted. Sucks for him.

At 7/1/06 03:26 AM, Enyruu8 wrote: Well asshole if you look in the forum menu THERE IS NO "OFFICIAL BUSH TOPIC."

noob

I nominate Figo for biggest pussy of the 2006 WC. His dive (for which he deserved an Oscar) in the Neth - Port game was justified since van Bommel fucked him over, but they've been playing for less than 20 minutes in this game and he already dived twice after being touched in the slightest of ways.

Homo.

At 7/1/06 07:44 AM, Iamrecognized wrote: There is a bit in the Qur'an (spelling?) about killing all of the infadels.

It's a pretty common misconception, but if you're talking about Sura 9:5, it deals with upholding a peace treaty. After the peace treaty expires, you may kill the unbelievers/idol worshippers. But nowhere does it say "you must kill all the unbelievers/idol worshippers". On the contrary:

[60:9] GOD does not enjoin you from befriending those who do not fight you because of religion, and do not evict you from your homes. You may befriend them and be equitable towards them. GOD loves the equitable.

[60:9] GOD enjoins you only from befriending those who fight you because of religion, evict you from your homes, and band together with others to banish you. You shall not befriend them. Those who befriend them are the transgressors.

This is what an Argentinian in General had to say to Germans after Argentina got knocked out of the WC:

"Andate bien a la re concha de tu muerta abuela."

Could someone translate it for me? I know it involves a dead grandmother but other than that freetranslation.com couldn't really help me.

At 7/1/06 07:19 AM, lapis wrote: By saying: "yes, they are legal"? So you can rebut my argument by saying: "no, they aren't".

Illegal. My bad.

At 7/1/06 07:45 AM, lapis wrote: Come one

Jesus Christ, the shorter my post, the more likely it becomes that I make a spelling-related mistake. It should be the opposite.

At 7/1/06 12:13 AM, Politics wrote: Mike, just so you know, 3rd_Front is none other than Genghis_Khan in disguise. Look at his posts. It's the same tripe.

Lol. Come one, that was the joke. Please don't tell me you didn't see through the obvious sarcasm.

At 6/30/06 02:05 PM, Dragon_Smaug wrote: There was a new effort in the peace process. Abbas came to power and tried to stem terrorism. An informal almost-successful cease-fire was enacted. Israel pulled out of Gaza. That seems like trying for peace to me.

Not hard enough in my opinion. If you steal 100 dollars and offer to return $50 in exchange for peace then you're hardly doing your best.

I have info, which I don't have time to write up now, detailing the legality of the settlements. I will write it up here later. You wait and see.

Oh wow, my heart is beating like crazy with excitement.

I disseagree. As long as there are a few members of Islamic Jihad, they will work towards their goal. What do they care about support among the people?

Oh, come on. They need money for weapons, they need recruits to carry out attacks, they need houses to stay at, to snipe from, to make bombs in. Terrorists without popular support can maybe pull off one attack every few years before they eventually die out.

I am not familier with the IRA and Ireland. I'm actually planning to read a book about it sometime, but I cannot comment on it now. Please select another analogy.

With what I can glean from your question, Sinn Fein is an ex-IRA person? And the IRA is akin to or is/was a terrorist organization? Well, if that is the case, if I guessed correctly about your question, then it is different in the Middle East. The Palestinians didn't elect a former member of Hamas to government, they elected Hamas itself to be the government. Quite different.

It's not a person, it's a political party that was closely tied to the IRA in the eighties. I only know parts of the entire history, but the Provisional Sinn Féin was the voice for those who saw violence as a means of driving the British out of Northern Ireland, yet they were legalised by the British authorities. They later agreed to cease-fires.

Hamas has tried to get Islamic Jihad to obey them. They don't listen.

It's hard to get them to listen when the bigger neighbour is breathing down your neck, foreign donaters have cut off all funding and you're fighting out a dispute with the Fatah all at the same time.

Also, it should not be up to Israel to rebuild the economy of those who are attacking it. Perhpas an improved economy would stem terrorism, but not if all the improved economy is going to do in the meantime is fund the terrorist operations.

You need investments to build up your economy and most of the progress, made thanks to the money that the EU had pumped into the occupied territories, has been undone by the IDF. They wrecked the Palestinian economy, now it's up to them to rebuild it. Why are the US trying to rebuild Iraq at the moment? They fought out a defensive war, according to your definition of defensive wars, so why should they have to spend money on Iraq, money that could potentially fund the insurgents?

Why don't people spend less time criticizing Israel's response to terrorism, and focus on ending the Palestinian terrorism itself?

Because I expect a moral high ground from Israel, since they're a rich, Western nation. A nation that should adhere to Enlightenment principles like human rights and war ethics rather than nationalism and ethnocentrism. And right now they sure as hell aren't living up to my expectations. And whatever solutions I proposed focused on ending terrorism. I'm no expert, but I honestly believe that they'll work better than what Israel is doing at the moment.

At 7/1/06 06:14 AM, Togukawa wrote: I didn't read any more posts except for Cahenn's.

Yeah, I'll try to keep up with the thread if I really get bored in the course of the afternoon. IF. I mean, having to read 90-ish posts when you get out of bed with a hangover on Saturday morning is never a pleasure, but it wouldn't have nearly been as much of a pain in the ass if the posts hadn't been so verbose. I might also be guilty of bloviating, but bleh, there's a lot of text in this thread.

At 6/30/06 02:00 PM, Dragon_Smaug wrote: Well, first of all, Israel never agreed to the U.N. resolutions, and a majority decision doesn't make it correct. In any case, the security barrier is thwarting terrorism. It's about protecting Israel's citizens.

Yeah, thanks for the completely invalid response. You said there were ways the Palestinians could act for the release of the imprisoned children other than terrorism. I said that since Israel hardly even listens to UN resolutions they sure as hell aren't going to listen to Palestinian complaints. You said Israel never violated UN resolutions, I pointed out they did. "Israel never agreed to these resolutions" rebuts nothing. I know they didn't, that's why they're ignoring them.

At the very least, the dead terrorists cannot go on to kill more.

And there are plenty of vengeful youths ready to take their place. Once again, you're failing to show why the hardline approach is scaring the militants into submission.

The Palestinians are not Israel's to govern.

As long as there's no nation called Palestine these areas remain to be occupied by Israel. The PA is a pseudo-authority at best. And besides, you don't have to be a formal citizen of a country to suffer under the reign of that country's government.

I want you to acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization and that its okay to try to capture or kill terrorists.

I agree that the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam brigades are terrorist, but then again, what is terrorism? There are over a 100 definitions of terrorism. Let's use the Wikipedia definition: "a strategy of using violence, or threat of violence to generate fear, cause disruption, and ultimately, to bring about compliance with specific political, religious, ideological, and personal demands". Then Israel is also guilty of terrorism. They use excessive violence like firing missiles into crowds to scare the Palestinians into submission, which is their political demand.

Haniya is not a terrorist by the way. His political party is affiliated with terrorists, but he does not deserve to be captured and certainly not to be killed.

Yeah. It's really tough to stop terrorism. You see what I'm talking about? Yet the attacks decreased, from measures like the security barrier. People still died, but less people died.

The attacks were decreasing because Hamas upheld a cease-fire, because the second Intifada was over. The separation wall can't stop the Qassam launches and never will - suicide bombings have become harder to carry out but they'll keep on happening from time to time if you have a whole people against you. If Israel keeps up their current strategy then there will still be large scale missile launches in 2050. Maybe the violence will finally be curbed when Israel forcibly implants a mind-reading microchip in every Palestinian. I'm pretty certain that the current Israeli administration would not hesitate to take such a "security measure".

Israel is not resettling anyone.

Oh yeah, I forgot, those settlers just popped out of nowhere. The Palestinians were all collectively blinking and the next second there were settlements all over their territory. What the hell are you trying to prove?

Okay. But the settlements are legal, no one's land is being stolen.

What? How the fuck do you expect me to respond to this? By saying: "yes, they are legal"? So you can rebut my argument by saying: "no, they aren't". And then we can continue this cycle until this thread reaches 20 pages?

Part of the Fourth Geneva Convention was dedicated to prohibiting occupying powers from moving their own people into those occupied territories. The Arab countries in the UN called for a special meeting regarding the Israeli settlement problem and the 4th Geneva Convention. Although the US managed to scale down the meeting it only took 45 minutes to get the attendees to agree, nem con, that yes, Israel does violate the convention. And no, the opinions of a few partisan Zionists on the Internet hardly change this.

You'd better give me a good reason to continue this debate in your next reply.

Israel fired the first bullet yes. But it six-day war actually started when Egypt, along with other countires, declared war on Israel. That is not political fancy talk for anything, that is a declaration of war. Israel, having been declared war upon, decided to destroy the enimy's air force, and strike first.

I skimmed through the rest of the thread and I believe that Fab already countered this. But just to add to the suspense, Egypt had already promised the Johnson Administration not to strike first according to newly declassified documents. Here:

"The previously classified chronology of secret Johnson Administration communications reveals laborious Egyptian efforts to wind down the conflict and vain US attempts to restrain the Israeli "tiger" from a first strike.

June 2, 1967, Egyptian President Nasser promised the US administration that he would not strike first, but was anxious about being overrun by Israel necessitating an Egyptian military mobilization into the Egypt's Sinai. Nasser stated that he did not want repetition of 1956 when he was "reluctant to believe that an attack had begun and was slow in moving troops to Sinai only to be caught between the Israelis in the north and the British at Port Said." He said he had no other choice but to mobilize and send troops to Sinai in a defensive posture, but critically, that he would not begin any fight but would wait until the Israelis had moved."

Defensive war. Pffffft.

Yeah, why not give it away? Pullout of Gaza, plan to pull out of the West Bank. Oh wait. That's been done. Legally made settlements in disputed territories is not theft no matter how many times you say it. And once the kidnapped soldier issue is resolved, I'll make you a bet that Israel pulls right out again.

I acknowledged that Israel has pulled out of Gaza while noting that they were expanding their settlements in the West Bank. And no, they're not planning to pull out of the West Bank settlements. They are building the separation wall around them just for that purpose.

At 6/30/06 01:31 PM, lapis wrote: Alaya.

* Ayala

GERMANY!!!! Hahaha, they're fighting on the field. RIOT!!!

Penalty kicks! Even though the first half was downright boring the match really intensified after that goal of Alaya. It's been pretty exciting ever since, and now it's about to reach it's climax.

Hahaaa, the entire cabinet fell over her and Verdonk's decision about her status. I hope they decide to prepone the elections rather then form a minority cabinet. It's pretty sad that I had to read this on the BBC website by the way, one day late. I completely lost touch with domestic issues thanks to Newgrounds and it's fucking BBS.

At 6/30/06 02:56 AM, JudgeMeHarshX wrote: They can't run newspapers, because that'd be like installing Al Jazeera in Cleveland, so they can choose between some of America's most popular newspapers for their news.

I disagree, I don't think you want the corrupt liberal American media to brainwash them into thinking negatively about the huge favour you're doing them. Fox News should be the only news source in these communal homes. I also suggest that Bruce Willis be put in charge of security in the communal homes, just to make the situation resemble The Siege better. The world needs to see more Bruce Willis anyway.

At 6/30/06 12:26 AM, Dzex wrote: I've tried to search the forum for an explanation on how to use quotes, so please don't be angry at me for making this correction.. (I know you've got strict rules)

Too late, mixing up quotes is an e-capital offense. It'll probably be a matter of days before your Newgrounds account is terminated. But in case you escape punishment:

:All I'm saying is that, in this situation, you can't even begin to pretend like one side has a moral high ground on the other.

All I'm saying is that, in this situation, you can't even begin to pretend like one side has a moral high ground on the other.

The white space between the : and the first letter of the sentence(s) you're trying to quote makes the difference.

At 6/29/06 06:04 PM, Dragon_Smaug wrote: Israel has? When? Maybe when the PLO ignored it first. But never were they the first to do it. I don’t recall Israel ever being the first to break an agreement or resolution.

Pretty recently, actually. And the resolution that called for Israel to tear down the separation wall is just one out of many.

Part of the reason Hamas agreed to the truce (and they admitted this) is because they kept losing members due to targeted assassinations.

And they revoked it later when the violence didn't stop. So that violence wasn't that much of a successful deterrent, now was it?

No. First of all, they are not suffering. Yeah, they are being inconvenienced, maybe highly inconvenienced.

Their human rights are being violated, their land is being taken away and they are kept poor by ruining any attempt at building an economy. They can vote for a government but whenever that government does something Israel disapproves of tanks roll through the Gaza strip. Under your definition, no people ever suffered under a dictatorship, like Karimov, Franco or Pinochet. They were just inconvenienced.

So, its left up to Israel to defend itself against the terrorists. Now, it has a choice between not hindering the Palestinians in some ways and continuing to be attacked daily,

So now that the Israelis chose to "inconvenience" the Palestinians, did the daily attacks stop? I thought Lidov said that Qassam missile launches kept on going for every day in the past month? Didn't an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber kill eleven people in Tel Aviv on April 17?

Where is it forbidden to build settlements in disputed territories (not belonging to any nation or state) in the Fourth Geneva Convention?

Here:

"The convention outlaws torture, collective punishment and the resettlement by an occupying power of its own civilians on territory under its military control.

International efforts led by the United States were successful in scaling down a special UN meeting in Geneva held on July 15, 1999. The closed-door meeting lasted a mere 45 minutes. However, a resolution was unanimously passed stating that the Fourth Geneva Convention does apply to Israeli settlements in the occupied territories."

Well, technically, since Israel won the land in a defensive war, international law allows them to annex the whole thing if they want.

The Six-Day War started when Israel launched a pre-emptive strike against the Egyptian Air Force. You fight a defensive war when you don't fire the first official bullet, Israel did so they lose all claim to having fought a defensive war.

But they just want a little bit, where the majority of the legally made settlements are. (By the way, the Israeli government does dismantle illegal settlements.)

If it's such a "little bit" then why don't they give it to the Palestinians? And the size hardly matters, theft is theft no matter how little you steal.

I was not referring to pullout of Gaza, although that was a pretty big unconditional concession, giving them land that was by international law Egypt’s and Israel’s decision what to do with.

Cite a specific law before making claims. I'm not going to search the entire Internet just to find out what you're talking about.

I was referring mainly to things such as the 2000 deal that Arafat rejected, in which he got almost everything he wanted. Many Israelis were furious that the deal had been agreed to by Israel at all, because of the huge concessions in it.

Arafat was far too stubborn when it came to the refugee problem for example. But after he died a new impulse could have been given to the peace process - I cite once again the Geneva Accord which both factions should be able to agree on.

At 6/29/06 06:06 PM, Dragon_Smaug wrote: And when did they annex land? It was no more “their” land than that they were living on it. And Jews were living on it too, even before Israel was created. Building settlements (legal, by the way) is not annexing.

Yes, the settlements are illegal, and when you build a separation wall around the settlements to pull the surrounding territory into Israel you're annexing.

…..except for the kidnapping.

That happened after the truce was revoked. Get your facts straight.

Islamic Jihad will only be pacified by Israel’s destruction.

Or when they realise that their support among the Palestinian people is steeply declining.

At 6/29/06 06:08 PM, Dragon_Smaug wrote: Well so is kidnapping. So is electing a terrorist organization to the government.

When that organisation sticks to a truce there's no harm in negotiating with them. But okay, so you think that the Sinn Fein should be outlawed in Northern Ireland due to early IRA ties?

While that may be detrimental to the peace process, I have to say that Palestinian factions have been more detrimental to the peace process that Israeli factions in the past.

That's pretty irrelevant when determining whether or not this measure was a sound tactic. The only way to stop the violence is to make the peace process work and when this measure inflicts grave damage on that process then it's not a good measure.

So I ask you again, what do you do? You said diplomacy. What exactly would you propose to Abbas and Hamas?

The peaceful approach has never fully been tried so there's no determining whether or not it has worked. But in addition to all the other measures I proposed, try to rebuild the Palestinian economy and try to get the Hamas to turn on the Islamic Jihad. You can't fully stop terrorism, true, but it will decrease over the years. Look at the 1998 Omagh bombing, you can't fully eliminate splinter groups but the support for them will start ebbing away if the situation in the occupied territories, or hopefully an independent state of Palestine, starts improving.

In turn, could you explain to me why this time the hardline approach will work? Explain why this time is special. Explain why a humanitarian crisis due to the lack of power won't create a new generation of militants.

"Israel intends to arrest more senior Hamas figures in addition to the dozens of Palestinian lawmakers and ministers arrested in a predawn raid Thursday, the Justice Ministry said Thursday.

The detention of Hamas parliamentarians in the early hours of Thursday morning had been planned several weeks ago and received approval from Attorney General Menachem Mazuz on Wednesday. The same day, Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin presented Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with the list of Hamas officials slated for detention."

They had been waiting for weeks looking for a suitable opportunity and then God sent his gift from heaven.

At 6/29/06 02:29 PM, Dragon_Smaug wrote: Well, perhaps it is or was not then a policy. But it is still a sound tactic, and on the heels of Hamas claiming the Gaza pullout was due to terrorist attacks, Israel cannot seem to be caving in to terrorism.

It's detrimental to the peace process so it hardly falls under my definition of a "sound tactic".

Yes, the response was great, but then what tactics do you suggest against these terrorists? In fact, in general (or specific to this incident) if you were given the task to design measures to thwart, detect, capture, and assassinate terrorists, what would you choose? And don't you say diplomacy, that route has been tried to exhausten in the past, but it doesn't work when the terrorists are trying to utterly destroy you.

After World War 1 being hard on Germany didn't really prove to be a working solution in the end. Due to the fact that the Israelis aren't exactly going for appeasement, and because of a general lack of land size and resources, the Palestinians don't have the means of building a great army, so in that respect Israel's tactics are working. But if things go on like this the problem will last forever. Germany wasn't truly pacified until the country was rebuilt with Marshall Aid. The participation of the IRA's political wing, the Sinn Fein, has curbed violence in Northern Ireland. The increasing autonomy in the Basque Country has caused the ETA to lay down a lot of it's weapons.

If the British had treated the Irish just like the Israelis are treating the Palestinians right now Ireland would have been just as much of a shithole as the Gaza strip.

The problem with the tough guy approach is simple: it doesn't work in the long run. In this particular case (hostage situation), the Israeli government should have put more effort into a diplomatic solution and they should have only sent the troops in after everything else had failed. Furthermore, Israel should start respecting human rights and they should tear down their settlements in the West Bank except for the ones mentioned in the Geneva Accord. They should stop with ethnic discrimination like revoking the residence permits of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem when they leave the city for some time, and they also should stop frustrating economic initiatives like the Gaza seaport and now the infrastructure in the West Bank. If a people is kept dirt poor they'll always have something to be pissed off about.

Most Palestinians already support the two-state solution and they're in favour of concessions like giving up the right of return for all the refugees and East Jerusalem. If the hate for Israel starts waning then so will the support for extremists. But measures like this premature invasion are only harming the peace process. You say that negotiating has failed, but being hawkish has failed even harder in the past.

I hardly checked these posts for spelling and grammar errors by the way so, yeah, whatever.

At 6/29/06 02:27 PM, Dragon_Smaug wrote: there are ways the Palestinians could act for their release other than terrorism.

What do you suggest they do, write a letter? Israel has made a habit out of ignoring UN resolutions and Palestinian officials or Israeli Human Rights activists are even less influential. I highly doubt that a formal Palestinian protest would have get any responses, let alone a positive one.

Negotiating with terrorists, even if we think that what Israel would give up is fair, is never the answer. It sets a bad precedent, and encourages terrorism.

The alternative in this case is a setback to the peace process that could take years to mend, scores of new potential terrorists and a worsened humanitarian situation in the occupied territories. I don't think this is any better than a dangerous precedent. Since scaring them into submission isn't going to work, like it hasn't worked for decades, negotiating is a better solution. Even if it fails you at least showed you tried the peaceful solution before going to war.

Well comparing the situation in the Middle East to Apartheid is BS, btw. As for your second sentence, yes I agree.

I gave an example to show how one could use your argument to justify anything that penalises innocents. "It's not our fault they suffer, if they stop a specific minority that causes harm then we have no reason to harm them in turn".

Israel has tried negotiating many times in the past, suggested agreements where its concessions were great and the only desire it had was for peace, its even unilaterally pulled out of some of the disputed territories. All the time, before, during, and after these events, there were attacks on Israel, whether by all terrorist organizations or just a few. It is clear that although Israel wants to solve the problem through a means other than bloodshed, there may be no alternative.

Pfft, great concessions alright. While pulling out of some strip of land they had been occupying after seizing it in an earlier war, they expanded their settlements in the West Bank, an action forbidden under the Fourth Geneva Convention. And they built a separation wall to make the land an official part of Israel afterwards. And when others took initiaves that did have some support among both peoples, like the Geneva Accord, the negotiators were called traitors, both by the Islamic Jihad and Sharon.

@first sentence: incorrect. But when the lethally dangerous minority refuses to dissociate itself from the group, the group has to undergo inconveniences to thwart this minority.

I love your use of words. A gunboat or artillery shell colliding with my head is an "inconvenience" alright. Death due to running into a missile when leaving the mosque, because a Hamas ideologist happened to be in the crowd? Oh my, I hope the blood stains come off.

@ second sentence: How does Israel mistreat the Palestinians any more than what they need to to keep themselves safe?

By annexing their land, perhaps?

Well, personally, I believe that them. Perhaps they are wrong, but I beleive they beleive their shells did not hit that family. Anyhow, if it was an Israeli shell, it was not on purpose. When the terrorists launch rockets from civilian areas and move through them, knowing that they are targetted, civilian casualties are to be expected.

For every launched Qassam missile Israel launches 150 artillery shells into the occupied territories. There are bound to be casualties this way. Out of the 3,448 casualties in the second intifada 237 were the targets of targeted killings and 700 were children. Like bcdemon said, if they're really trying to prevent civilian deaths then they have shit aim.

Personally, I believe that Israel should try to snipe the terrorists instead of bombing them, resulting in less casualties.

Okay, I can agree with this.

Right, but that shouldn't influence the way they deal with Hamas.

Hamas members were the ones who did the kidnapping. Just because the ones in the government didn't know about it doesn't exempt them from blame, not to mention that Israel has already stated that being in the government doesn't exempt a terrorist from being targetted.

Yes, but what does that have to with the Islamic Jihad? Hamas kept the truce until the beach was shelled, like I said, and the Islamic Jihad didn't. They are separate organisations so it's meaningless to point out that group A kept bombing while group B upheld a truce, when the point is that group B remained calm.

On a side not, it shouldn't influence how they deal with Hamas as in blaming Hamas for other terrorist actions. It should, however, influence how they deal with Hamas in terms of understanding that there is no one person or faction that can order a stop to the terrorists violence and be obeyed.

Okay, so the Israeli government should have done more to keep the peace with Hamas while, at the same time, trying to put more effort into fighting the Islamic Jihad whenever they were guilty of violence. Or better yet, tried to pacify the Islamic Jihad as well.

At 6/29/06 07:22 AM, Turandot wrote: thank you Lapis

Cheers.

At 6/29/06 11:48 AM, Dragon_Smaug wrote: Oh not at all! Caving in to terrorism by releasing terrorists is always, or even sometimes the right answer.

The majority of these evil terrorists is comprised of stone throwers, sometimes held in administrative detention and oftentimes among adults. Both are violations of the Convention on the Rights of the Child which Israel ratified. They should be released anyway, or moved to youth penitentiaries if they're convicted of serious charges, so it would be a pretty good deal to get the Israeli soldier returned in exchange. If the demands of the terrorists are disproportional (all imprisoned women and children) then you negotiate, and if after one or two weeks the Egyptian intercession and other diplomatic initiatives had failed it would be time to bring in the troops. But this military intervention was executed far too early and a lot of damage will be done that might have been prevented through talking.

You often hear people condemn Palestinian militants for sending children to battle even though the number of these incidents has been fairly limited in the past few years, but when the Israeli government punishes the same children as adults they lose whatever moral high ground they're supposed to have. A fun detail here is that Israeli children in Gaza or the West Bank are defined as minors until they're 18, while Palestinian children in the occupied territories reach "adulthood" when they're 16. Article 2 of the CRC is in place to protect children from discrimination.

No, the way to end the unfortunate restriction placed on the Palestinian people is for them to stop the terrorists amongst them from launching attacks. The precautions, like the checkpoint security, are to thwart terrorism. While its a shame that it has to affect non-terrorists as well, there is no way to take security precautions against terrorists hiding in a population without inconviencing the population itself.

Yeah, I bet the apartheid was also a simple security precaution against black crime, retrospectively not an unfounded position considering the high murder rates in the townships we see today. Collectively punishing an entire group for the actions of minorities completely disregards individual responsibility and accountability, laid out in international law. Not to mention that it doesn't work; it will only breed another generation of stone throwers and terrorists. If this problem is ever going to be solved is will be through a lot more mediation and a lot less bloodshed.

Let's extend your reasoning to the Palestinian terrorists by the way. Punishment of the entire group is justified when a minority in that group is guilty of actions you hate, correct? The Israeli civilians are the ones who keep electing governments that mistreat the Palestinian people so violence against them is justified, Total War.

The shelling was not an Israeli shelling (there was an investigation. yes i know it was a self investigation, but honestly Israel doesn't lie.)

You must have selectively read the thread, this is the third time I'm linking to this. It wasn't just a self-investigation, they also forgot to mention two gunboat shells and they expect us to take their word for it that these shells landed too far away from the beach to hit the picnicking family. They also messed up in estimating the time at which the Palestinian family died while these points in time were supposed to clear them from guilt.

Two gunboat and six artillery shells are launched into a small area and we're expected to believe that within the same hour a family steps on a Hamas mine, on a beach that had only been open to Palestinians for a few months. Now your blind faith in the Israeli government is truly heartwarming but personally, I don't buy it.

And while Hamas kept its calm, Islamic Jihad continued to bomb Israel.

Right, but that shouldn't influence the way they deal with Hamas.

Isreal has not thrown away diplomacy, but it has a policy of not negotiating with terrorists

Again: "Between December 1999 and January 2004, Israel held Lebanese prisoners in administrative detention as hostages for potential exchanges for Israelis taken prisoner or missing from the Lebanon War. Over the years Israel released these hostages, and the last of them were released in a prisoner exchange in January 2004.
"

If they have such a policy then they're not very adept at upholding it.

Plus Israel gave the kidnappers a day to release the prisoner without consequences.

Yeah, I'm sure that gives them carte blanche in whatever they want to do to get that soldier back. Even if it means incarcerating dozens of politicians, blowing up bridges and taking down needed power plants in the occupied territories. Not.

This has nothing to do with politics, but just to help you out before this gets locked: his profile name was "Regret", he made this movie, which pretty much depicts what he'd do some time later.

At 6/28/06 01:46 PM, FightingForFreedom wrote: No, prices don't go up a few dollars a barrel untill he actually pulls oil productions. The oil market isn't the stock market - The prices aren't affected by the headlines, only by the pipelines. (Yes, that I just came up with that)

No, I disagree. When Bush would hypothetically threaten Iran, corporations that buy large amounts of oil would expect the price to start rising in the future. This happens because, like you said, the amount of oil that can be imported from Iran will imminently start decreasing. This makes the possibility of future deliveries uncertain, which in turn stimulates corporations to start securing extra amounts of oil beforehand to avoid the uncertainty. They make deals with suppliers to deliver them the oil in the future for a certain price. This increases the demand and thus raises the oil price, so even the news about a coming war will affect the oil prices before actual supply starts to plummet. Maybe not a few dollars per barrel, but that depends on the severity of the impending situation.

At 6/28/06 10:18 AM, Lidov wrote: Also, the researches have found that it wasn't us to bomb the beach.

I linked to this earlier, the IDF statement was false as they didn't take two gunboat shells into account, so we'll have to take their word for it when they say that the shells landed far away from Huda Ghalia's family. They also made mistakes regarding the points in time at which the events took place: the IDF claimed that the civilians must have died at some point between 16.57 and 17.10, but a UN call was already made at 16.43 which mentioned a number of casualties near the coast.

At 6/28/06 11:05 AM, Lidov wrote: The link I gave was from the 15th of this month, not to mention the fact that in this month Qassams were launched every day, not only May 31st, but every day. Also, in order to make this more shocking, the Qassams were launched by the Hamas, the palatinian ruling terror organization which signed a cease fire and broke it.

The beach shelling took place on the ninth of June, which was also the time at which the Hamas announced that they'd
revoke the truce. So it's not that much of a surprise that they launched those Qassams at the 15th or a few days before that. My Hebrew is also pretty lacking so whatever is written in your link is beyond me. If you could give me in a link in English which proves that the Hamas launched a Qassam before the ninth then I'll admit that the Hamas didn't live up to their cease-fire. The cease-fire was pretty one-sided anyway since the IDF continued to assassinate Hamas officials even after their electoral victory, the real surprise here is that the Hamas upheld the truce for so long, rather than that they broke it in the end.

At 6/28/06 10:18 AM, Lidov wrote:

Look two posts under it. I was in a hurry and didn't bother to check whether or not the crappy Wikipedia I got it from had it's facts straight. I was getting tired of the redundant remarks that didn't have much to do with the hostage situation or the ensuing military intervention and tried to make a quick post. I did, it took me three minutes to notice the post, read it and post a reply but unfortunately it contained errors. So I corrected myself with another post.

At 6/28/06 07:27 AM, lapis wrote: There hadn't been any Qassam launches since March 30.

Gah, I should never just rely on Wikipedia for factual information. Missed this one for example. But the point still stands, Israel fires an average of 150 artillery shells into Gaza per Qassam which is the perfect recipe for civilian casualties. Especially launching six artillery shells to hit a beach, which had only recently been open for civilians after the Israeli setllers pulled out of Dugit, in the afternoon. Don't tell me that Israel doesn't target civilians, they use the same tactics as the Qassam launchers - firing barrages of shells into enemy territory in the hope that it hits something. The only difference is that the latter party openly admits that it doesn't mind hitting civilians while the IDF tries to cover it up, this incident was just particularly painful due to the video footage of the little girl running amidst the corpses.

At 6/28/06 07:24 AM, GSgt_Liberal wrote: Qassams are launched by non-Hamas groups. And Israel has every right to destroy launching sites.

Name an incident. There hadn't been any Qassam launches since March 30. And explain why they decided that a popular beach at 4pm would be a good place to shell.

At 6/28/06 07:06 AM, GSgt_Liberal wrote: Shell? A random beach? Now, why the hell would they waste shells to do that? And why would the Sea Corps do that? It was likely the Army trying to destroy nearby Qassam launching sites. At least, that's what the IDF says. But I wouldn't doubt it. That makes much more sense than "oMg the IDf killz palutininz wuth duhz shellz d00d."

Qassam launching sites? Mind the chronology, the Hamas broke the truce after the beach was bombed. And why they did it? Probably for the same reason why so many other civilians died, 3448 according to B'Tselem, and for the same reason why they launch missiles into crowds when trying to assassinate hostile ideologists. They target crowded areas and excuse civilian casualties by claiming to target militants as a way of scaring the Palestinian militants into submissiveness.

I find hard to believe that they really are stupid enough to shell a popular beach in broad daylight. Plus, they also fucked up their orginal announcement, they're intentionally careless knowing that the international community won't intervene anyway.

At 6/28/06 06:26 AM, GSgt_Liberal wrote: The Palestinians launch missiles at innocent civillians and blow themselves up to kill civillians. The Israelis use targeted attacks against terrorists. Let's see. Moral equivalency? I think not.

We WERE talking about this, you know.

Answered.

At 6/28/06 05:59 AM, Lidov wrote: Never the less, in a democracy the will of the people is almost always to be done, so if the people of Gaza will decide that it is not worthy keeping the soldier, the government will be under palastinian pressure to release the soldier. Don't forget that chosing a terror organization has its results, the palastinians know that, or should have known that.

First of all, a lot of Palestinians voted for Hamas because they were sick of the corruption that was rampant under Fatah rulership (link). What you can also see (Q17) is that 57.9% of the poll respondents supported the two-state solution, 55.1% - 60.7% with 95% certainty, assuming that the sample was representative. That's even higher than in earlier polls, so a majority of the Palestinians in fact does want to recognise Israel. They elected Hamas as the lesser of two evils but they don't control everything they did afterwards, including their persistence in not acknowledging Israel's existence, so you can't blame it on the people that easily. Besides, the Spanish and Italian governments also supported the war in Iraq while the majorities of their respective populations were strongly opposed.

Since negotiation is immpossible, the only way we could act is by threatening and attacking, either way the responsability for this opperation and to its continuation is layed on the Hamas.

Negotiations were hardly impossible. Prisoner exchanges happen all the time and to be honest, demanding that the Israeli authorities release incarcerated children isn't even that unreasonable. And Israel is guilty of similar practices, here: "Between December 1999 and January 2004, Israel held Lebanese prisoners in administrative detention as hostages for potential exchanges for Israelis taken prisoner or missing from the Lebanon War. Over the years Israel released these hostages, and the last of them were released in a prisoner exchange in January 2004."

Throwing away diplomacy as a solution happened far too early especially since foreign powers were intensely arbitrating. And both sides carry equal responsibility, don't forget that the armed wing of Hamas kept it's calm for 16 months until the Israeli Sea Corps decided to shell a random beach where a Palestinian family was having a picnic. There are hardly any "good" or "bad" guys among the armed factions/forces of both sides in this conflict.

Anyway, it is not like we are invading to Gaza in order to conquer it again, just to get our soldier back. Once we got the soldier back, we will leave and start conquering bigger pieces of lands, like Syria, and start acting meanfully to them, since this is what we like to do.

Aha! A confession! And I don't think "meanfully" was the word you were looking for, if I'm right in detecting sarcasm then "hatefully" would be a better alternative.

---

On a completely unrelated note, this forever changed the image I had of the IDF. I wouldn't mind having my house demolished if one of these soldiers was guarding the bulldozer.

At 6/28/06 06:26 AM, GSgt_Liberal wrote: The Palestinians launch missiles at innocent civillians and blow themselves up to kill civillians. The Israelis use targeted attacks against terrorists. Let's see. Moral equivalency? I think not.

At 6/28/06 06:51 AM, GSgt_Liberal wrote: And Israel is a democracy.

Yawn. You really love to stick to the issues, don't you mackid?

At 6/28/06 04:59 AM, Iamrecognized wrote: And this is not the main topic, so try not to stay on this point.

The main topic, "my country is better than your country", has nothing to do with politics anyway so I'll take the freedom of deviating from it. And dude, you're linking to myths. The Trojan War is to some extent based on history but not all the characters in Homeros' story really lived, and if they did then not in the way he described them. I mean, your second link states that other Greek writers attributed the founding of Rome to a son of Odysseus and Circe, they're suggesting that the offspring of a witch who turned Odysseus' crew into animals founded the city.

Aeneas was probably a fictional character and Vergilius' Aeneis was a way to link Rome to ancient Greek mythology. The Romans probably descended from Latin farmers who settled on the hills prior to 753 BC. There was a guy called Imperator who posted here some time ago, he'd probably know something more about the subject but he unfortunately left.

At 6/28/06 04:54 AM, FAB0L0US wrote: Flopping flopper motherfuckin flopper fucks. I know offically hate your country because of your gayass soccer team and how panzy-ish-ly they play. Go to Milan and go get some handbags and makeup, you big group of women on the Italian National Team.

I just had to emphasise this. Quoted for great Justice.

And this link can never be posted too often.