Forgive My Ignorance But...

[:Ace:]

What exactly is all this fighting in the Lebanon about?

[Lonnie]

To give you the history of it, wouls take to long, you'll get it if you google it.

In a nutshell, the Palestinians and Hezbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, want to destroy Israel, its on their mandate.

This present trouble was caused first by Hamas kidnapping an Israeli soldier, and then Hezbollah kidnapping two Israeli soldiers, while at the same time, firing a rocket into Israel.

Israel has basically said, enough is enough, and wants to destroy Hezbollah, virtually an impossible task, and while i'm on the side of Israel, and can understan their initiaI reaction, I believe they've gone well over the top this time.

[Zen]

Surely it was caused by the Jews stealing the land of the Palestinians ??

[Lonnie]

Your now going back into history Zen, how far back do you want to go, there was never a country called Palestine, the area, as i've said before, was called palestine by the Romans, a corruption of the name 'Philistine'The area, including Egypt, was taken by force, by Mohamet warriors, and they stayed,

Now there's an idea, lets give all land that was taken by force, back to the original inhabitants.

[Ralph]

There are two sides to every story, but either side is too large to analyse in any great detail on these pages.

But just to redress some balance to previous posts:

Israel is trying to exert military superiority on its neighbours and so beat them into long term submission to its rule in the middle east. Why they think that brute force will work where dialogue has only succeeded anywhere else before is anyones guess.

In the mean time, they are executing a plan of Collective Punishment on the Lebanese. They are dropping leaflets to say they'll be bombing in specific villages, then when the civilians try to leave the area, they get bombed by Israeli F16's. Yet the media concentrates on the 2 Israelis killed by Hezbollah rockets (which is not right either before you ask).
........continued

[Ralph]

continued..............

How far can this go? Well the comments from the Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni indicates that the Israelis have no intention of stopping.

"Civilians sometimes pay the price of giving shelter to terrorists," she said, adding that many civilians in southern Lebanon have Katyusha and other rockets under their beds. (emphasis mine)

She's justified the carpet bombing of the entire Lebanese population with that statement. Why aren't we doing something about this? Why aren't the Americans? What got the Israelis such support from the good ol' US of A?

[Zen]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_ bombing

[maxximus]

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/origin. html here you go, this will keep you busy.

[mash]

Its all about land and power. Loads of detail but the essential theme is that until the day that Israel and the arab states of the middle east actually agree what makes up the state of Israel (a tonne of history around this one) then there will always be fighting, especially with states surrounding Israel. I long for the day when the terrorists wise up on how progres is really made and Israel keeps its fists in its pockets. The lebannon is a wonderful country and ill deserves the treatment is currently faces.