sobo

WTF are you talking about, Gary? This? Or, more seriously, this? List some instances of this "secret assistance" and cite your sources, Gary.

Found this, and just couldn't resist posting it... Mods, feel free to delete if in bad taste. I thought it was funny, and this is Spray after all.

Leaving aside the matter of how their economy got where it is for the moment, why - in your opinion - is it that Egypt, a vocal friend of the Palestinians, has erected a wall to keep the Palestinians out, and sends the army to seal the break every time that the Palestinians punch a hole through it? Nay, much more than fundamentally a Palestinian problem, Gary. It is much deeper than that; it's a problem faced by all the Arab-allied states. Jay asks a valid question as to why Egypt doesn't want to see the Gaza Strip explode (although that may already be too late to prevent). To gain some perspective on that question, noodle on this article from last week's Jerusalem Post, (before the Israeli ground invasion): Israel's reluctant allies Interesting read...

I wouldn't call it a "direct" response when they assassinate folks 10 years later, even when those folks have grown out of terrorism, or when they assassinate an innocent in Norway from poor intelligence. What happened in Lillehammer was an unfortunate case of mistaken identity, I'll grant you that. But despite your line of reasoning, it was a direct response, coming out of the senseless murder of 11 athletes who were "guilty" of nothing other than being Jews. In civilized society, there is no statute of limitations on murder. So I do not begrudge the Mossad for keeping up the hunt on the Israeli Olympians' murderers till all of them were either assassinated or dead by other causes, no matter how many years it took, any more than I do not begrudge the Simon Wiesenthal group for keeping up the hunt for escaped Nazi war criminals. Again, there is no statute of limitations on murder.

I recall hearing on the news recently that around 3,000 rockets and/or mortars were lobbed at Isreal in the 12 months of 2008. The "attacks in 2008" link below states the same statistic that I heard on NPR. That's about the same as 2005, 2006, and 2007 combined in Don's graph, and averages about 8 hits per day for each and every day of the year. That's pretty amazing... and not a little bit frightening. A little Googling and Wiki-ing brings up these citations: Quassam rocket attacks upon Israel from 2001 to 2007 Rocket and mortar attacks upon Israel in 2008 And look at this! A brand new Wikipedia listing: Rocket and mortar attacks upon Israel in 2009 I expect this page will see regular updates in the coming weeks and months...

Jeebus, STP, give the guy a break. He's been out of the hairstyle fashion loop for 7 years. He has no earthly idea what is haute coiffure these days, and it's not his fault.

Every time a new page opens or is refreshed, the right-side scroll bar drops all the way to the bottom of the page. This just started doing this again today. Irritating... Also, the embedded quote function still isn't fixed. After the 4th or 5th embedded quote, the names in the "quote boxes" fuck up and the quotes become misattributed to the wrong posters. When you look at the code in the edit/reply pane, it's all correct. It just doesn't post correctly in the view/reading pane. Also irritating...

stfu bug This is why I luv Spray.

FW, I still think that a return to the 1948 borders is a good faith effort first step. It would give them some needed credibility and solidify Israel's position with the world community, or at the very least the UN member states, if they were to return to their 1948 borders and abide by UN Resolution #242. At the very least, they would have "right on their side" which is a good first step if you're looking for support from a global organization ostensibly dedicated to world peace. If rogue Arab states and/or terrorist groups/states want to continue to press the issue of refusing Israel's right to exist, it would be a whole helluva lot easier to assemble a UN coalition to do something to thwart that if Israel came back into line first. Consider this analogy: States like Iran and groups like Hamas gain traction with their rhetoric because Israel is "behaving just as badly" and the world community feels like an exasperated parent trying to separate two bickering brats. When one of those brats shapes up into a decent kid, its a whole lot easier for the parent to determine which kid is acting out of line, and what to do about it. Iran, Hamas, and other states are emboldened because Israel acts irresponsibly, too. Does anyone really take Kim Jong-il seriously? Sure, he gets some attention lavished upon him from time to time, but he's really just the "lone brat" in his little part of the world, and the "parents" all know how to deal with him. He has isolated himself and his nation, and made himself into nothing less than "that ADD kid" pariah we all avoided in grade school. He's a non-factor to whom no one gives any serious attention. The same would become of Ahmadinejad and others if Israel started behaving in a less reactionary fashion and returned to its borders and retaliated less aggressively. I'm not saying that Israel should not defend itself against all comers. But a week-long bombing campaign (that has exacted a death toll roughly 100X that which the Israelis suffered) in response to a week-long rocket attack is a bit much, don't you think? And just so we're all aware, Israel launched a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip today. Is this not a bit too over the top?

JoshK's comments are spot on, and readily apparent to anyone paying even the slightest amount of attention to the matter. And I did not miss the "key concept" nuance of Jew vis-a-vis Israeli, either. Yes, there is blood on the hands of both sides. Yes, there are rocket attacks from Hamas and its predecessors. Yes, there is Israeli retaliation for those attacks, and more often than not it is overly punitive. Yes, there is guilt on the hands of the UN and the other nations that forced the Israeli state into being in 1948 and partitioned an area already settled by Palestinians (again, I remind the reader that Jews have lived in this same area in millenia past and have an equal claim to the traditional area as just about anyone else in the Middle East). And yes, it is up to the moderates to wrest control of their respective nations' governments and their fates to bring this situation under some semblance of control. j_b, I think the first thing that Israel must do, if they intend to develop a ME peace process, would be to return to the 1948 borders. That would also entail compelling its citizens to respect those borders. I would not consider this action to be unexpected. Why not? Look what Israel did in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to its own citizens in mid-2005 for your answer. Israel's borders were set up by an international organization with a global mission to establish peace. Whether the Palestinians like it or not is immaterial at this point in time. On the opposite side of the coin, it is up to the Israeli government to exercise its control over its own citizens and prevent them from (dare I say, force them to stop) developing settlements in disputed areas and/or those lands not within the 1948 UN borders. As I said above, I think that act alone would go a long way toward engendering some consideration and cooperation from a more moderate Palestinian and/or Hamas government, and the Arab world in general. But Hamas must respond in kind and get control over their own citizens and compel them to stop shelling Jewish residential settlements, whether those settlements be in Israel or in any disputed/captured territory. A cease-fire must be established and maintained. Hamas broke the last one...

Sweet route and beautiful pic, Craig. Did Kevin manage to make it out there with you?

I suspect it is in much the same way that Couloir finds those fetching avatar pics of his...

Israel's borders, whose do you think? Israel, as a new state, was "granted" borders in 1948 by the UN, despite the inhabitant's displeasure with their new neighbors, never mind the fact that millenia ago it had been inhabited by Jews before the Romans expelled them. The world didn't notice in 1948, nor did it care if it did notice. It had just concluded a world conflict, and was probably tired of "little disagreements" in a faraway corner of the globe. Fast forward to 1967. The entire Arab world was ganging up on Israel with the stated intent of wiping it from the map. In an act of state self-preservation, it launched a pre-emptive strike against a superior force and cold-cocked them back to the 6th century. The fact that Israel gained so much ground during the offensive is a result of good intelligence, battle planning, and execution. And probably a will to continue to exist. I do not begrudge Israel the gains they made in their several wars, because if the Arab armies had succeeded in defeating Israel, it would not exist today. Because Israel typically wins its wars, it is fitting that they increase their territory. This is the age-old nature of warfare. However, I suspect they could engender much goodwill in the Middle East if they would give the gained lands back and return to their 1948 UN-described borders. They forcibly evicted their own citizens from a few settlements in the West Bank and all settlements in the Gaza Strip in August and September of 2005, and offered to do as much with the Golan Heights last year in exchange for a peace agreement with Syria. Syria, however, refused to sever its ties with terrorist organizations bent on destroying Israel as part of the conditions of the exchange, and the agreement fell through. But I would also posit that if Israel were to embark upon a wholesale land return, it should reasonably expect to be left alone and not have to suffer incessant and indiscriminate rocket and mortar attacks from Hamas and/or other terrorist organizations as a way of life. Don't you agree?

Also the bombing of the Iranian Iraqi nuclear plant. [correction made by sobo] Then there was the revengeful Wrath of God, though some would argue that those folks were assassinated because they remained to be threats. OK Gary, fair point about the Iraqi reactor and it being a pre-emptive strike. I'd forgotten about that one. But research indicates that no persons were harmed. Gotta give the Israelis props for thinking ahead about safety at least, huh? BBC News link However, I must call BS on the Wrath of God comment. The Wrath of God assassinations were in direct response to the Palestinian militant organization Black September and its PLO allies killing 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. Surely you must remember that from your history, yes? Once again, a response to an attack from outside its borders, and not a pre-emptive strike. STP- Nice video. My 4-year-old daughter thought it was a righteous find. Quote: "That awesome, Daddy."

Seriously, we do. Best solution going. Don't know how that would work with goggles, though, as I've never tried it above water.

Exactly! Like FW said on Page 1: "They voted in Hamas. They made their bed." Now they're having second thoughts about getting between the sheets. It's too late for that, or maybe it's time to change the sheets again.

A happy, peaceful, caring person is one who has beer. So f___ you if you don't have any.

Bug, This is what I was trying to get across. ^^ I think a reasonable way to stop the bloodshed is to stop instigating it in the first place and just lay off the indiscriminate lobbing of missiles and rockets across a border, no? Just how difficult is that for Hamas to understand?

I don't see how what I wrote is "spineless", and I never set out to disagree with you, Keith. I think you would do well to reread my 4:13 p.m. post, which was undergoing a refining edit while you were posting the above quote. I merely provide information that shows that this conflict has been an ongoing thorn in the participants' sides for thousands of years, was not created by the primary players, is not black and white, and is not rooted in the relatively recent attacks initiated by Hamas and responded to by the IDF. I may be wrong, or it may be my Western media sources, but it seems to me that every time Israel throws a few missiles or launches a couple of airstrikes across the border, it was preceded by an attack from outside its borders, i.e., Hamas, or Fatah or the PLO in earlier times. I cannot recall a time when the IDF launched a pre-emptive attack, except in 1967, and that was in response to Egypt expelling the UN peacekeeping force immediately before the Six-Day War broke out. Israel saw itself alone (the US was "busy" in Vietnam and not interested in what Israel was getting itself into), pitted against the entire Arab world, and decided to act, likely out of self-preservation. And they did act... decisively. I dare say it could not have been a huge surprise to the Arab armies when they saw the IDF coming, but I digress. If you want a solution from me, I don't have one. But I would posit that any workable solution just might start with Israel's neighbors laying off trying to kill Jews all the time. By this point, it should be obvious to any observer that the Israelis believe firmly in the Eye for an Eye Doctine. If someone throws a few rocks at them, they're going to throw a few rocks right back. It ain't rocket science.

Keith, Your history is not "off", but may not be complete. We all know that the Brits left it up to the UN to split up the Palestinian state in 1948 to create Isreal. But I think FW is forgetting that Palestine was actually a state since Roman times and has been in existence for almost 2,000 years, and it was created by the Romans in response to another conflict. See here and here. So it is not just the Jews who have suffered a diaspora in this conflict and seek to return to their homeland, but the solution to their diaspora created yet another diaspora, this one for the Palestinians, who also claim the same area as their homeland. So we have an invading army from thousands of years ago disect an area, forcibly remove its inhabitants, and create a massive refugee problem. That refugee problem has never been solved to this day, as every attempt to create a state where none exists serves no purpose except to create more refugees and repeated diasporas of the existing inhabitants. Clearly, there is no easy solution to this conflict, but I think beating up on the Jews for beating up on Hamas/Palestinians for beating up on the Jews is likely not the correct approach. What is interesting to me is that one could reasonably argue that the Jews and Palestinians are of the same bloodlines. Modern day Isreal is founded right where ancient Palestine existed. Somewhere in that mess they are all related, but religion and its attendant fundamentalism and intolerance has exacerbated the problem to a point that borders unsolvable.

Methinks isha not sucha wise idea.

Antelope, OR, perhaps. Jus' sayin'...

That makes perfect sense to me, having just finished reading through that thread. Now, how to get those 10 minutes back...