I have a plea. Please, GW, please come home and stop embarrassing Americans by your stupid antics abroad.
What the hell was he thinking when he gave German Chancellor Merkel an uninvited back rub? What was going through that pea-size brain of his when out of the blue he decided to grope the female Chancellor?
I thought his repeated mention of the “pig” (most likely the famous German dish of roast pig knuckle Schweinshaxe - it is also called Schweinstelze in Austria) even when asked about the situation in the Middle East during a press conference in Germany was bad enough.
This is what i would like to do to the asshole who left these deep marks on my car yesterday or the day before yesterday. Of course, without leaving me any note.
The author of this article hit the nail right on the head.
If Israel has the right to use force in self defence, so do its neighbours
The west appears to insist that only one side in the conflict is able to intervene militarily across borders. That will never be accepted
Much has been made in recent days - at the G8 summit and elsewhere - of Israel’s right to retaliate against the capture of its soldiers, or attacks on its troops on its own sovereign territory. Some, such as those in the US administration, seem to believe that Israel has an unqualified licence to hit back at its enemies no matter what the cost. And even those willing to recognise that there may be a problem tend to couch it in terms of Israel’s “disproportionate use of force” rather than its basic right to take military action.
But what is at stake here is not proportionality or the issue of self-defence, but symmetry and equivalence. Israel is staking a claim to the exclusive use of force as an instrument of policy and punishment, and is seeking to deny any opposing state or non-state actor a similar right. It is also largely succeeding in portraying its own “right to self-defence” as beyond question, while denying anyone else the same. And the international community is effectively endorsing Israel’s stance on both counts.
From an Arab point of view this cannot be right. There is no reason in the world why Israel should be able to enter Arab sovereign soil to occupy, destroy, kidnap and eliminate its perceived foes - repeatedly, with impunity and without restraint - while the Arab side cannot do the same. And if the Arab states are unable or unwilling to do so then the job should fall to those who can.
It is important to bear in mind that in both the case of the Hamas raid that led to the invasion of Gaza and the Hizbullah attack that led to the assault on Lebanon it was Israel’s regular armed forces, not its civilians, that were targeted. It is hard to see how this can be filed under the rubric of “terrorism”, rather than a straightforward tactical defeat for Israel’s much-vaunted military machine; one that Israel seems loth to acknowledge. Continue reading ‘If Israel has the right to use force in self defence, so do its neighbours’
I have been seeing and hearing this being repeated over and over again by Western media that the main reason, as claimed by the Israelis, for the huge Lebanese civilian casualties on the receiving end of Israel’s brutal assaults is because Hizbollah stores its rockets among the civilian infrastructure. And yet, no one, other than the brave British journalist Jonathan Cook, has brought up the fact that several Israeli armament factories and storage depots have been built close by Arab communities in northern Israel. According to Jonathan Cook, “the inhabitants of several of Israel’s Arab towns and villages have been turned into collective human shields – protection for Israel’s war machine.”
Another oft-repeated theme in the current conflict between Israel and Lebanon is Hizbollah’s rockets and missiles are supplied by Iran and Syria, as if to tie Hizbollah’s actions with both countries. But you will not find Israel’s arm supplier being mentioned in the mainstream media. Who supplies Israel its F-16 fighter/bomber jets, its Apache attack helicopters, and the guided missiles and bombs that are being rained down on mostly Lebanese civilians? Using the same line of reasoning that if Iran and Syria are responsible for Hizbollah’s actions because it is armed by both countries, is the United States responsible for Israel’s actions because it is armed and financed by the U.S.?
Here we go again – another “serious escalation” has begun in the Middle East, or so BBC World was telling audiences throughout Sunday. So what prompted the BBC’s judgment that the crisis was escalating once more?
You can be sure it had nothing to do with the more than 130 Lebanese dead after five days of savage aerial bombardment from at least 2,000 sorties by Israeli war planes that are making the country’s south a disaster zone and turning Beirut into a crumbling ghost town. Those dead, most civilians and many of them women and children, hardly get a mention, their lives apparently empty of meaning or significance in this confrontation.
Nor is it the Lebanese roads and bridges being pounded into dust, the petrol stations and oil refineries going up in smoke, the phone networks and TV stations being obliterated, the water and electricity supplies being cut off. The rapid transformation of a modern vibrant country like Lebanon into the same category of open-air prison as Gaza is not an escalation in the BBC’s view. Continue reading ‘BBC, shame on you’
It will be called the massacre of Marwaheen. All the civilians killed by the Israelis had been ordered to abandon their homes in the border village by the Israelis themselves a few hours earlier. Leave, they were told by loudspeaker; and leave they did, 20 of them in a convoy of civilian cars. That’s when the Israeli jets arrived to bomb them, killing 20 Lebanese, at least nine of them children. The local fire brigade could not put out the fires as they all burned alive in the inferno. Another “terrorist” target had been eliminated.
Yesterday, the Israelis even produced more “terrorist” targets - petrol stations in the Bekaa Valley all the way up to the frontier city of Hermel in northern Lebanon and another series of bridges on one of the few escape routes to Damascus, this time between Chtaura and the border village of Masnaa. Lebanon, as usual, was paying the price for the Hizbollah-Israeli conflict - as Hizbollah no doubt calculated they would when they crossed the Israeli frontier on Wednesday and captured two Israeli soldiers close to Marwaheen. Continue reading ‘Robert Fisk: Hizbollah’s response reveals months of planning’
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