Why is Israel getting away with these atrocities?

Have you never heard of Mordechai Vanunu? Ever since he revealed the truth about Israel's nuclear capabilities in 1986 the idea that Israel can be destroyed by anyone except one of the superpowers is nonsense. And apparently death or meekly accepting being treated like sub-humans for the Palestinians.I think the phrase is approximately 'a plague on both their houses'.

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But you were talking about the complete destruction of Israel - they all die.Look at the actual effectiveness of 9/11 in terms of number of people killed. Given that in 2001 there were 42,196 deaths on US roads it was about a month's worth of traffic fatalities. You simply can't annihilate a country using such techniques.If the attack had been the detonation of a nuclear device I would contend that Afghanistan (and possibly Iraq) would have suffered nuclear retaliation - and in the case of the former with some justification.If some Arab or Islamic group actually manages to come up with a way to destroy Israel you can bet the farm that Mecca, Medina etc. along with some of the Arab capitals are going to be glowing in the dark for the forseeable future. This is what guarantees Israel is not going to be destroyed. It will continue to suffer losses to terrorist attacks, but at a relatively low level. As has been pointed out upthread, the Israelis are - unsurprisingly - outkilling the Palestinians by quite a rate.

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It's a fairly well known fact that Israel initiated hostilities in the Six Day War (and I know it is also generally accepted that it was a pre-emptive strike - but that doesn't alter the fact the Arabs didn't attack first on that occassion).

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I agree completely - I was just correcting Faith's claim (should have made that clear - my bad). Sadly I don't see any way it can be made better currently. The people in power on both sides aren't really interested in a fair and lasting solution.The Palestian population will continue to endure poverty, humiliation at the hands of the Israelis, collective punishment and the all the rest of it.The Israeli population will continue to endure rocket attacks, occassional suicide bombings and a perceived lack of security.It breaks my heart to see it.

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No.The justification being the need to demonstrate that a country which assists in a nuclear (or significant biological or chemical) attack is going to face a response in kind and on a larger scale. It may not be possible to deter a group such as Al-Quaeda but any country that has seen the consequences is unlikely to assist them in the future.

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That may well be a better way of putting it. Especially if you change it to 'the necessary (essential?) compromise'.

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That's not the bottom line by a country mile. I'd buy third from bottom at a pinch (not that I go around pinching bottoms you understand ).The second bottom line is blindingly obvious to anyone who has even passingly studied recent military conflicts, especially the two wars against Iraq.In modern warfare numbers don't count for squat if one side has significantly superior military technology. Guess what the current situation is - Israel has better tanks, planes, artillery, helicopters (attack and transport), sef-propelled guns, blah, blah, blah than any of the Arab countries or Iran.I don't mean just a bit better either - they are at least a generation ahead of anything likely to be deployed against them. Not only that, they have weapons that none of their potential adversaries even possess - specifically atomic weapons (long proven fact) and (probably but I'm not sure it's definitively proven yet) cruise missiles - including submarine launched ones.You remember the way the US military annihilated the Iraqi forces in 1991 and 2003? A conventional military attack on Israel would be like watching an action reply.In addition it has also long been suspected that Israel has been as active in chemical and biological weapons development as it has in nuclear. The surrounding states may have things like mustard gas and sarin but Israel can probably call upon stuff that's a lot worse.As I said, that's only the second bottom line...The real bottom line is that Israel has the unqualified support of the world's only hyper-power. As long as that is true nobody is going to destroy Israel. Until China or maybe a resurgent Russia reaches the economic and military level where they can at least force a stand-off with the US that's not going to change.Of course, even if either of them does gain parity there's no reason to think they would stop the US saving Israel if it needed it. To forestall you raising something based on your point 3: Past wars were during the Cold War era. Russia supplied planes and tanks to them because the Arab states were by and large Russia's clients or proxies in the region, just as the US had Israel and Iran (how times change!).

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If what's happening wasn't so serious that would be a very funny line.I pointed out to Buz a day or two back that Israel held all the aces in any conventional military conflict - I didn't expect to be proven right so soon.I have a depressing feeling we could call it the 'Carries on until Israel decides to stop because it's not going to get what it wants' War.

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Pretty much sums it up.The trouble is I don't see any realistic solution to either the short or long term problems.

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Have you seen the latest civilian death tolls buz?200+ Lebanese vs. 24 Israelis.Hezbollah has managed to kill an average of 4 Israelis a day since the conflict started. Are you seriously claiming that's the way to destroy a country? There's as much chance of me killing an elephant with a pea-shooter.Your repeated claim that the survival of Israel is at stake is unmitigated bullshit. There is no possibility of Israel being destroyed.Lebanon, however is another matter. Israel is in the process of turning a fledgling democrary into a failed state.Kind of ironic considering how much Bush has talked about the dangers of failed states recently.

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Are you being deliberately dense about this buz?That's the whole point.Like I said all the way back in Message 80 Israel is at least a generation ahead in military technology. Guess what that means - nobody in the region can defeat them. Join the dots slowly now - Israel can't be beaten, therefore it can't be destroyed.That's why your claim about Israel's survival being at stake is such crap - even if everybody and their dog in the rest of the Middle East wanted to destroy Israel they don't have the capability of doing it.

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I missed this piece of charm at first.I'm glad you find the deaths of over 200 civilians funny.Tell me buz, is it the fact they're dead Arabs or dead Moslems that you find so amusing?You disgust me.

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This article by Yoram Schweitzer of The Institute for Counter-Terrorism (which is based in Israel and isn't exactly a bunch of bleeding heart, left wing, pinko communits liberals) gives you all the answers you want up to 2001.I don't know what the figures are since then - obviously Iraq has slewed the figures considerably and the Tamil Tigers declared a ceasefire later in 2001 so their contribution was static for a few years.History of suicide attacks: Advent of modern suicide bombings: How many attacks: So prior to the Tanil Tigers declaring a ceasfire in 2001 the mostly Hindu Tamil Tigers were responsible for around a third of the suicide bombings there had ever been.In a related article to the one above Schweitzer makes this observation: (The LTTE is the acronym of the real name of the Tamil Tigers)

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And from your Message 184: Ok, so let's go through this.Hezbollah is explicitly targeting civilians and probably wants to kill as many Israelis as possible. I doubt many people would disagree with this. The sum total of their effors so far is 24 Israelis killed.Israel is not targeting civilians and in the same time period has killed over 200 Lebanese civilians.To me this leads to one of two conclusions.First option, the Israelis response is massively disproportionate. They have killed around nine times as many Lebanese as they have had killed without even trying.Second option, the oft-repeated claim that Israel doesn't target civilians isn't true.My suspicion has been for many years that the actual situation is that while they don't target civilians explicitly they also don't care how many are killed, hurt, displaced, ruined or whatever by their operations. This may well be because the years of oppressing the Palestinians generally and demonising the Palestinian terrorists who resist has engendered a view of them and their suffering as less important than that of Israelis - in fact they are regarded as sub-human.I also don't have any dount that what is happening in Gaza and Lebanon is a form of collective punishment - and that is targeting civilians in a way.

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Anyone care to make a prediction on what will happen next (beyond Hezbollah and Israel trying to knock the crap out of each other and one causing a lot more damage than the other)?Mine is that assuming Israel isn't pulled back by the US (which I don't see happening) then they will knock out the water supply and sewage systems of at least Southern Lebanon and Beirut. This won't be done directly by hitting the water supply/sewage works - that would make it too obvious what was going on = but by collateral damage or knock on effects. This could actually be as simple as taking out enough power stations and electricity distribution infrastructure to stop electricity reaching the water/sewage plants.Removing water from a population is a very effective way of exerting pressure on them - particularly large urban populations.Of course, this has already happened in Gaza. Last night on HardTalk on the BBC News 24 channel there was an interview with the Palestinian chief peace negotiator Saeb Erekat who said that as a result of the Israeli bombing of Gaza's only power station there was now no sewage processing happening and that there is a real concern over disease outbreaks.Given how crowded Gaza is I'd say they are right to be worried. It;s an interesting question - if cholera or something does break out how many will be left to die before Israel is made (by the US) to allow the Palestinians to get power back on, let foreign aid and medicines in and so on?It's pretty clear Bush takes the Israeli view that Palestinian lives are less valuable than Israeli ones, maybe this will finally allow us to set an exchange rate.

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