Israel's invasion of Lebanon

Is Israel doing the right thing by invading Lebanon?

  • Yes
  • No
  • Yes but…
  • No but…
  • What’s a Lebanon?

0 voters

Is Israel doing the right thing? I’d love to hear your thoughts. As this is a contraversial topic, please keep your responses free from terms that could be taken as highly offensive. Feel free to express your opinion, but read your post a couple of times and put yourself in the other persons shoes before you hit submit! Oh and brevity is good too - everyone will want to weigh in on this one so no 1000 word essays :slight_smile:

Also, since I think there are few if any Israelis or Lebanese in this forum, bear in mind that your point of view is probably highly uninformed.

I know I’m stating the obvious a little, but this is such a friendly forum I’d hate to see something like this flame the place up :slight_smile:

Go nuts lads

Ohhh a tricky one. I think its important to make a distinction between two issues here. One id whether you believe what Israel is doing is understandable or justified, and the other is whether or not it is advisable or helpful.
I understand why israel is responding this way, but I dont think its the right thing to do. Even if you disregard the effect on lebanon in terms of loss of life and humanitarian problems, I dont think it’s actually helping Israel at all.
Being from the UK, I naturally compare the situation to the UK and Northern Ireland terrorists. Although its not on the same scale, we had a problem with terrorists shooting mortars in our cities, and letting off carbombs.
We could have responded using missile and bombing attacks against parts of the country that we suspected harbored the IRA, but the chances of killing innocent civilians and pushing up support for the IRA as a result was too high.
Now, years later, we dont have the car bombings and the mortar attacks, and the irish economy is doing very well.
Unfortunately the situation in Israel is probably too far gone for it to be salvaged in a similar way.
Anyway, thats my initial thoughts, which I normally keep to myself. What does eveyone else think?

As I’m already participating in this discussion (forums.filefront.com/showthread. … 21&page=30) on its 30th page, I’ll keep my views brief.

Israel has hit far too hard against Lebanon, when the whole thing isn’t Lebanon’s fault. Hizbollah, neither, is a wholey terrible organisation, they fund a lot of schools, hospitals, social welfare and such in southern Lebanon, as well as providing the Lebanese a strong defence force. Responding with violence was not the way to do things, but so long as Israel maintains this strict no-deals approach, I don’t think there will ever be any sort true peace in the Middle East. Pity, that.

It was a long time coming. Rather Isreal than us anyway.

I like a lot a comment I read in a newspaper recently.

Basically, Israel is attacking because and complaining about Lebanon’s inability to disarm and control the Hezbolla…

Well, with Lebanon’s very limited capacities, how could we really expect it to succeed, when the world’s #1 power, the USA, can’t accomplish the same in Irak?

As Cliffski, I understand Israel’s reaction. And they were justified, in terms of international law, to respond. But their answer is much exagerated and really, can only provide further grounds to recruit more Hezbolla members. In short, it’s not solution and can only lead to aggravating the problem.

What’s the solution? Frankly, none for now.

Well i think US support for Israel both historically and through this crisis certainly encourages Israel to reach its goals forcefully since it knows it has the backing of the most powerful/influential nation in the world.

As for the terrorism part i think that the main terrorists are american capitalists and Bush and his cronies…lemme explain why…(u may be rolling your eyes here thinking ughh hippy, but read on i believe i raise a good point here)

I don’t even like the word terrorism i think it should be replaced by desperation because what urged ‘terrorist’ attacks pre-Iraq War was mainly US capitalist leeching/resource exploitation and the US mentality that ‘any business is my business’ in foreign countries in this case the middle-east (hence you here Bin Laden and Kim Jong Il talk about American Imperialism)…now we know people from the middle-east are not the wealthiest or mightiest and hence when so desperetly at odds with America this desperation turns into extremism (terrorism) since they see no other alternative to counter their oppression by the US.

I mean why do you think Al-Queda (if they did organise the 9/11 attacks at all) attacked the world trade centre!!!

Furthermore, now that the US is militarily present in the middle-east the only way the middle-easterners can counter this presence is by guerilla warfare which in this case involves ‘terrorist attacks’.

The US kills civilians too…It’s war for pete’s sake what do people expect. Do you simply expect the middle-easterners to fight the US conventionally if so we’re kidding ourselves. This thing they call terrorism is simply a way of defense/guerilla warfare in light of desperation caused by an overwhelmingly powerful oppressor. We saw extremist measures in Vietnam, North Korea, Angola just to name a few and yes this extremism is different but times change, these are simply the old guerilla tactics adapted to suit the times.

Now i’m not saying that killing of civilians is justified, no it is NEVER justified infact war overall is a very bad thing…what i am saying is that we should stop seeing this extremism as the world’s biggest evil and devoid ourselves of rationality and infact ask ourselves why is this extremism present and what is its cause?

One question I would like to ask: when Hezbollah lobs high-explosive warheads into civilian population centers, it is called ‘terrorism’, whereas when Israel lobs high-explosive warheads into civilian population centers, it is called ‘legitimate self defence’. Why? Any idea that ‘Hezbollah started it’ is ridiculous - this is part of the wider tit-for-tat Middle East conflict which has been going on since Israel was established, so unless you go through every single incident that has happened over the last 50-odd years, you really don’t know which side ‘started it’.

Israel might have been legally entitled to respond, but the manner of that response is definitely not legal - the UN have already categorised it as a war crime.

You should see what both the Jews and the Americans are doing to me. I’m holed up in my parent’s house while they try and make me into an American Jew. It’s been going on for years now. I point out I’d rather be dead than be a Jew or an American, but it doesn’t stop them.

(I’m the Australian so-called vampire. I don’t actually know what everyone’s been told about me, and have no way of knowing, since I’m apparently supposed to be denying everything including my telepathy and sexual orientation. I only found out about the telepathy and the Y-chromosome about four years ago).

Umm, not a vampire?

If you think your parents are really brainwashing you call kids helpline 1800 551 800

This is not the place to discuss it.

Ay? I’m 43, for goodness sake!! It’s not my parents doing the brainwashing, it’s the lunatics surrounding me attempting to!! My god, is that what people think? I’m just pointing out that Jews and Americans do all sorts of similar things all over the world. I know it’s no good discussing it - I’ve been trying for years.

And - I might just point out - wasn’t it you that started this topic of Jews and Americans invading things?

What do you think of Obadiah Shoher’s views on the Middle East conflict? One can argue, of course, that Shoher is ultra-right, but his followers are far from being a marginal group. Also, he rejects Jewish moralistic reasoning - that’s alone is highly unusual for the Israeli right. And he is very influential here in Israel. So what do you think? uh, here’s the site in question: Middle East conflict