Wednesday, July 19, 2006
The UN-solution by the UnintelligentX
1. The UN-solution by the Unintelligent
The West and Israel's leftists are already bandying around a new pusillanimous "solution" for Lebanon - turn southern Lebanon over to the UN, which will patrol it and keep the terrorists under bay. Sure they will.
The only problem is - the UN already is there, has oodles of troops there, and they have yet to stop a single rock being thrown at Israel, let alone a katyusha missile! Actually, more often that not they collaborate with the terrorists!
Fool us once, shame on you; fool us again, shame on us for not jailing the idiot politicians who would agree to such a "deal"!
Remember UNIFIL? On 15 March 1978, the Lebanese Government submitted a "protest" to the Security Council against an Israeli incursion, stating that it had no connection with Palestinian terrorist operations. On 19 March, the Council adopted resolutions 425 (1978) and 426 (1978), in which it called upon Israel immediately to cease its military action and withdraw its forces from all Lebanese territory. It also decided on the immediate establishment of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). The first UNIFIL troops arrived in the area on 23 March 1978. Incompetents from the Third World mostly, they have been there ever since. They have done absolutely nothing to stop any terror attacks on Israel nor to prevent all of south Lebanon being converted into the Hezbollah's launch pad.
(see http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unifil/background.html)
In short, a UN "solution" is merely to help the Hamas re-arm and shoot a few thousand upgraded new missiles into Israeli living rooms.
2. Thought for the day:
The dwarf Trumpkin from C S Lewis' book 'Prince Caspian' - "being the target of attempted murder makes onevery hungry!"
3. Another war caused by Labor Party Folly:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150886036561&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
4. From Tom Gross:
THE FRENCH LOVE BOMBING
In 1999, in the heart of Europe, in a 72-day air war against
Yugoslavia, dozens of NATO bombs and missiles hit Serbian bridges, communications grids, power plants and a television station, killing at least 498
civilians, including many children, and decapitating a village priest.
Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine reports that French fighter
pilots flew more than 1,100 of the war's air strikes, or about 11
percent of NATO's missions.
Last week, France was among 10 UN Security Council members voting to
condemn Israel for "disproportionate use of force."
The 25-nation European Union, which includes other countries that
participated in NATO's air war, such as Britain and Denmark, also condemned
Israel's "disproportionate" response.
Meanwhile, the BBC was so busy in recent days scrutinizing what its
chief Middle East correspondent Jeremy Bowen called Israeli "war crimes,"
that it forgot to report in any detail that on Saturday British troops
led the raids in Afghanistan that killed 35 people.
5. Pen-gate?
http://israelnn.com/news.php3?id=107703
6. More Frog meat:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2006/07/frances-disproportionate-response-in_17.html
7. You know Israel is winning when the Cockburn Cockroaches are whining about a TV station getting vaporized!
http://counterpunch.com/Schuh07192006.html
8. "I never was an objective reporter."
29.11 2005, Knesset Member Sheli Yechimovitz - in radio interview
Duh!
9. Maybe he could get work at Ben Gurion University?
Canadian white supremacist jailed for contempt
18 July , 2006
For the first time in Canada, a white supremacist has been jailed for ignoring a court order to stop spreading hate messages against Jews, blacks and immigrants via the Internet. The Federal Court jailed Tomasz Winnicki for nine months for contempt of court for refusing to cease his "vile and unrelenting message of hatred."
Justice Konrad von Finckenstein sent Winnicki to jail for flouting a Federal Court order last fall to stop his Internet postings while a complaint against him wound its way through the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
"They send a persistent vile message, which in essence suggests that there is a Zionist conspiracy, that Jews dominate all levels of government, that those of the black race are lazy, AIDS-infected, criminals and welfare cheats, that all non-white immigrants fall into the same category and that multiculturalism is a policy conceived by Zionists to perpetuate non-white immigration."
Norman Finkelstein woul dbe his cousin even if it turns out they are not related.
10. "Proprtionate?"
July 19, 2006
Arithmetic of Pain
By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
July 19, 2006; Page A12
There is no democracy in the world that should tolerate missiles being fired at its cities without taking every reasonable step to stop the attacks. The big question raised by Israel's military actions in Lebanon is what is "reasonable." The answer, according to the laws of war, is that it is reasonable to attack military targets, so long as every effort is made to reduce civilian casualties. If the objectives cannot be achieved without some civilian casualties, these must be "proportional" to the civilian casualties that would be prevented by the military action.
This is all well and good for democratic nations that deliberately locate their military bases away from civilian population centers. Israel has its air force, nuclear facilities and large army bases in locations as remote as anything can be in that country. It is possible for an enemy to attack Israeli military targets without inflicting "collateral damage" on its civilian population. Hezbollah and Hamas, by contrast, deliberately operate military wings out of densely populated areas. They launch antipersonnel missiles with ball-bearing shrapnel, designed by Syria and Iran to maximize civilian casualties, and then hide from retaliation by living among civilians. If Israel decides not to go after them for fear of harming civilians, the terrorists win by continuing to have free rein in attacking civilians with rockets. If Israel does attack, and causes civilian casualties, the terrorists win a propaganda victory: The international community pounces on Israel for its "disproportionate" response. This chorus of condemnation actually encourages the terrorists to operate from civilian areas.
While Israel does everything reasonable to minimize civilian casualties -- not always with success -- Hezbollah and Hamas want to maximize civilian casualties on both sides. Islamic terrorists, a diplomat commented years ago, "have mastered the harsh arithmetic of pain. . . . Palestinian casualties play in their favor and Israeli casualties play in their favor." These are groups that send children to die as suicide bombers, sometimes without the child knowing that he is being sacrificed. Two years ago, an 11-year-old was paid to take a parcel through Israeli security. Unbeknownst to him, it contained a bomb that was to be detonated remotely. (Fortunately the plot was foiled.)
This misuse of civilians as shields and swords requires a reassessment of the laws of war. The distinction between combatants and civilians -- easy when combatants were uniformed members of armies that fought on battlefields distant from civilian centers -- is more difficult in the present context. Now, there is a continuum of "civilianality": Near the most civilian end of this continuum are the pure innocents -- babies, hostages and others completely uninvolved; at the more combatant end are civilians who willingly harbor terrorists, provide material resources and serve as human shields; in the middle are those who support the terrorists politically, or spiritually.
The laws of war and the rules of morality must adapt to these realities. An analogy to domestic criminal law is instructive: A bank robber who takes a teller hostage and fires at police from behind his human shield is guilty of murder if they, in an effort to stop the robber from shooting, accidentally kill the hostage. The same should be true of terrorists who use civilians as shields from behind whom they fire their rockets. The terrorists must be held legally and morally responsible for the deaths of the civilians, even if the direct physical cause was an Israeli rocket aimed at those targeting Israeli citizens.
Israel must be allowed to finish the fight that Hamas and Hezbollah started, even if that means civilian casualties in Gaza and Lebanon. A democracy is entitled to prefer the lives of its own innocents over the lives of the civilians of an aggressor, especially if the latter group contains many who are complicit in terrorism. Israel will -- and should -- take every precaution to minimize civilian casualties on the other side. On July 16, Hasan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, announced there will be new "surprises," and the Aska Martyrs Brigade said that it had developed chemical and biological weapons that could be added to its rockets. Should Israel not be allowed to pre-empt their use?
Israel left Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. These are not "occupied" territories. Yet they serve as launching pads for attacks on Israeli civilians. Occupation does not cause terrorism, then, but terrorism seems to cause occupation. If Israel is not to reoccupy to prevent terrorism, the Lebanese government and the Palestinian Authority must ensure that these regions cease to be terrorist safe havens.
Mr. Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115326519401110452.html
The West and Israel's leftists are already bandying around a new pusillanimous "solution" for Lebanon - turn southern Lebanon over to the UN, which will patrol it and keep the terrorists under bay. Sure they will.
The only problem is - the UN already is there, has oodles of troops there, and they have yet to stop a single rock being thrown at Israel, let alone a katyusha missile! Actually, more often that not they collaborate with the terrorists!
Fool us once, shame on you; fool us again, shame on us for not jailing the idiot politicians who would agree to such a "deal"!
Remember UNIFIL? On 15 March 1978, the Lebanese Government submitted a "protest" to the Security Council against an Israeli incursion, stating that it had no connection with Palestinian terrorist operations. On 19 March, the Council adopted resolutions 425 (1978) and 426 (1978), in which it called upon Israel immediately to cease its military action and withdraw its forces from all Lebanese territory. It also decided on the immediate establishment of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). The first UNIFIL troops arrived in the area on 23 March 1978. Incompetents from the Third World mostly, they have been there ever since. They have done absolutely nothing to stop any terror attacks on Israel nor to prevent all of south Lebanon being converted into the Hezbollah's launch pad.
(see http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unifil/background.html)
In short, a UN "solution" is merely to help the Hamas re-arm and shoot a few thousand upgraded new missiles into Israeli living rooms.
2. Thought for the day:
The dwarf Trumpkin from C S Lewis' book 'Prince Caspian' - "being the target of attempted murder makes onevery hungry!"
3. Another war caused by Labor Party Folly:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150886036561&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
4. From Tom Gross:
THE FRENCH LOVE BOMBING
In 1999, in the heart of Europe, in a 72-day air war against
Yugoslavia, dozens of NATO bombs and missiles hit Serbian bridges, communications grids, power plants and a television station, killing at least 498
civilians, including many children, and decapitating a village priest.
Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine reports that French fighter
pilots flew more than 1,100 of the war's air strikes, or about 11
percent of NATO's missions.
Last week, France was among 10 UN Security Council members voting to
condemn Israel for "disproportionate use of force."
The 25-nation European Union, which includes other countries that
participated in NATO's air war, such as Britain and Denmark, also condemned
Israel's "disproportionate" response.
Meanwhile, the BBC was so busy in recent days scrutinizing what its
chief Middle East correspondent Jeremy Bowen called Israeli "war crimes,"
that it forgot to report in any detail that on Saturday British troops
led the raids in Afghanistan that killed 35 people.
5. Pen-gate?
http://israelnn.com/news.php3?id=107703
6. More Frog meat:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2006/07/frances-disproportionate-response-in_17.html
7. You know Israel is winning when the Cockburn Cockroaches are whining about a TV station getting vaporized!
http://counterpunch.com/Schuh07192006.html
8. "I never was an objective reporter."
29.11 2005, Knesset Member Sheli Yechimovitz - in radio interview
Duh!
9. Maybe he could get work at Ben Gurion University?
Canadian white supremacist jailed for contempt
18 July , 2006
For the first time in Canada, a white supremacist has been jailed for ignoring a court order to stop spreading hate messages against Jews, blacks and immigrants via the Internet. The Federal Court jailed Tomasz Winnicki for nine months for contempt of court for refusing to cease his "vile and unrelenting message of hatred."
Justice Konrad von Finckenstein sent Winnicki to jail for flouting a Federal Court order last fall to stop his Internet postings while a complaint against him wound its way through the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
"They send a persistent vile message, which in essence suggests that there is a Zionist conspiracy, that Jews dominate all levels of government, that those of the black race are lazy, AIDS-infected, criminals and welfare cheats, that all non-white immigrants fall into the same category and that multiculturalism is a policy conceived by Zionists to perpetuate non-white immigration."
Norman Finkelstein woul dbe his cousin even if it turns out they are not related.
10. "Proprtionate?"
July 19, 2006
Arithmetic of Pain
By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
July 19, 2006; Page A12
There is no democracy in the world that should tolerate missiles being fired at its cities without taking every reasonable step to stop the attacks. The big question raised by Israel's military actions in Lebanon is what is "reasonable." The answer, according to the laws of war, is that it is reasonable to attack military targets, so long as every effort is made to reduce civilian casualties. If the objectives cannot be achieved without some civilian casualties, these must be "proportional" to the civilian casualties that would be prevented by the military action.
This is all well and good for democratic nations that deliberately locate their military bases away from civilian population centers. Israel has its air force, nuclear facilities and large army bases in locations as remote as anything can be in that country. It is possible for an enemy to attack Israeli military targets without inflicting "collateral damage" on its civilian population. Hezbollah and Hamas, by contrast, deliberately operate military wings out of densely populated areas. They launch antipersonnel missiles with ball-bearing shrapnel, designed by Syria and Iran to maximize civilian casualties, and then hide from retaliation by living among civilians. If Israel decides not to go after them for fear of harming civilians, the terrorists win by continuing to have free rein in attacking civilians with rockets. If Israel does attack, and causes civilian casualties, the terrorists win a propaganda victory: The international community pounces on Israel for its "disproportionate" response. This chorus of condemnation actually encourages the terrorists to operate from civilian areas.
While Israel does everything reasonable to minimize civilian casualties -- not always with success -- Hezbollah and Hamas want to maximize civilian casualties on both sides. Islamic terrorists, a diplomat commented years ago, "have mastered the harsh arithmetic of pain. . . . Palestinian casualties play in their favor and Israeli casualties play in their favor." These are groups that send children to die as suicide bombers, sometimes without the child knowing that he is being sacrificed. Two years ago, an 11-year-old was paid to take a parcel through Israeli security. Unbeknownst to him, it contained a bomb that was to be detonated remotely. (Fortunately the plot was foiled.)
This misuse of civilians as shields and swords requires a reassessment of the laws of war. The distinction between combatants and civilians -- easy when combatants were uniformed members of armies that fought on battlefields distant from civilian centers -- is more difficult in the present context. Now, there is a continuum of "civilianality": Near the most civilian end of this continuum are the pure innocents -- babies, hostages and others completely uninvolved; at the more combatant end are civilians who willingly harbor terrorists, provide material resources and serve as human shields; in the middle are those who support the terrorists politically, or spiritually.
The laws of war and the rules of morality must adapt to these realities. An analogy to domestic criminal law is instructive: A bank robber who takes a teller hostage and fires at police from behind his human shield is guilty of murder if they, in an effort to stop the robber from shooting, accidentally kill the hostage. The same should be true of terrorists who use civilians as shields from behind whom they fire their rockets. The terrorists must be held legally and morally responsible for the deaths of the civilians, even if the direct physical cause was an Israeli rocket aimed at those targeting Israeli citizens.
Israel must be allowed to finish the fight that Hamas and Hezbollah started, even if that means civilian casualties in Gaza and Lebanon. A democracy is entitled to prefer the lives of its own innocents over the lives of the civilians of an aggressor, especially if the latter group contains many who are complicit in terrorism. Israel will -- and should -- take every precaution to minimize civilian casualties on the other side. On July 16, Hasan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, announced there will be new "surprises," and the Aska Martyrs Brigade said that it had developed chemical and biological weapons that could be added to its rockets. Should Israel not be allowed to pre-empt their use?
Israel left Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. These are not "occupied" territories. Yet they serve as launching pads for attacks on Israeli civilians. Occupation does not cause terrorism, then, but terrorism seems to cause occupation. If Israel is not to reoccupy to prevent terrorism, the Lebanese government and the Palestinian Authority must ensure that these regions cease to be terrorist safe havens.
Mr. Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115326519401110452.html
# posted by Steven Plaut : 8:28 AM
