Middle East Crisis

I didn’t think you had the balls. Now I wonder if you have the brains.

With all due respect, hail Miss Manners, etc: Good lord, man, what have you been smoking?

I do not think that anyone here believes that all the problems of the region can be traced to Israel.

I also do not think many rational, informed people believe the actions by Israel have been measured, appropriate or in accordance with international law and the conventions of wartime.

Yes, Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. And they’ve killed a great many Israelis and continue to do so.

But from the beginning of this 22-day-and-counting war the IDF has deliberately destroyed roads, airports and gas stations, preventing civilians from fleeing. They also deliberately targeted and destroyed a UN outpost. The American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) is running out of fuel. Today they defined everyone left in the area as a de facto terrorist.

Lebanese Casualties: 835, of whom slightly more than a third are children. 800,000 homeless.

You might wish to take a look at this as well. The War on Children is an illegal, immoral act by a nation which is clearly confident that in the current anti-Islam political climate it will not be sanctioned in any meaningful way, shape, or form.

In this at least they are perfectly right.

But you’re absolutely correct, Boris, that the war in Iraq is bloodier and even more absurd and futile. What I’m not getting is why you present that as a plus.

We can look at the war in Lebanon objectively. It’s possible. Let’s leave Mel Gibson out of it, though. And perhaps leave the US out of it as well, although they’ll be hurt. Because they’re not actually in it yet, are they?

Now I’m going to make a daring suggestion:

Let’s leave religion and race out of it as well. Because according to Israel this war is a direct response to the actions taken by Hezbollah in conducting a raid and kidnapping soldiers and not about Jewish hatred for Muslims or Muslim hatred against Jews. Or Aussie-American hatred for rationality.

So let’s react to it in that context, as a war by two nations in a political hotspot. Now all the “weep for the persecuted Jews” moralizing makes no more (and no less) sense than “weep for the persecuted Muslims” and we can turn our beady eye to the political and legal actions, consequences, and lessons here.

Well said Borris. Whilst they are some easy points, people often forget and quite the figers in the hundreds of civilians that mis placed US and IDF bombs have killed. This is a great tragedy and one that means every political avenue must be explored with vigor before commencing armed conflict. However it is a salient that the IDF is an Army acting on behalf of a state in a war, a state that in its short lifetime has been under constant threat of attack and destruction by midnless thugs wanting to spread their own disgusting version of a peaceful and intelligent religion with a lot to offer. However Hezbollah is not an army, either for a state or a religion it is a terrorist organisation, like the IRA is and PLO is - at least the IRA had some form of poliitcal wing that you could converse with. IDF aims its weapons and threats what suports those threats. PLO and Hizbollah destroys cafes and discos on purpose with no regard for human life. IDF has said the bombing of Qana was a mistake. Hezbollah rocketing Hifa is not.

ps Hezbollah ~ Hizbollah ?

Thanks Boris! I wasn’t sure if you’d have the courage either, I’m glad you did
An excellent post, and “… when Israeli rockets kill civilians, they have missed their targets, and that when Hizbollah rockets kill civilians, they have scored a deliberate hit.” really hits the nail right on the head.

I think it is also important to bear in mind that for the past decade Israel has been unilaterally seeking peace in the region. Unilaterally because the terrorists around are unwilling to talk to them. It has been 6 years since Israel withdrew from Lebanon, and a good while since Israel withdrew from Gaza. Given some time without terrorist attacks on it, Israel would probably have withdrawn from the vast majority of the West Bank too. Israel is not, as many people seem to think, intent on expansion, enslavement, or any of the other accusations levelled at it. It is in fact striving for peace, and the safety of it’s civilians, and those countries who realise this (Egypt, Jordan) demonstrate it in the form of safe and stable borders, and relatively prosperous peaceful economies.

Israel is clearly exercising a disproportionate response to the provocation, however their declared aim does go further, to the disablement of Hizbollah. That is something which only Israel has any chance of doing, and it is something which is clearly needed, as the UN and everyone agrees.

Well, Jack, we agree that the most important quote here is

it is still true, in principle, that when Israeli rockets kill civilians, they have missed their targets, and that when Hizbollah rockets kill civilians, they have scored a deliberate hit.

What we disagree on is whether or not it is true. Take a look at the aerial photographs of Beirut and tell me whether those residential neighborhoods were completely populated by terrorists or whether Israel deliberately flattened the houses of civilians.

If these really were accidents, if the IDF is really as incompetent as Boris implies, then I really do think it’s time we took the guns away, because this is madness.

raincoaster, I want to marry you and have your babies.

I will be responding to this article by the idiot in chief (in my own inimitable way) when the rigours of penury permit.

I’m afraid on this one I’ll have to diverge a bit from you Boris.

When the most recent chapter of this whole mess started Hizbollah kidnapped a couple of Israeli soldiers and killed a few others.

Now this is most certainly a heinous crime, murder and kidnap - however you paint them - are, but the Israel government described the action as an act of war.

Sorry but to my eyes there is no way in hell that the murder of eight soldiers and abduction of two more can be described as an act of war. It was a criminal act, a dirty nasty criminal act purpetrated by a nasty bunch of criminals and needed to be dealt with as such.

Israels response to this was, to all intents and purposes, to declare war on Hizbollah and proceed to drop enough bombs on Southern Lebanon to have to get its personal diplomatic poodle- the US - to speed up the delivery of more high powered bunker-buster bombs. I can only guess that they were running low to require this, with Israels arsenal that’s one hell of a lot of ordinance.

Now I realise that Israel as an entity does not intend to kill civilians, and I know that HIzbollah couldn’t care a monkeys cuss who these rockets fall upon. But honestly did Israel really give the Lebanese government anyything like the time it required to try to solve this crisis? Was time and safe passage provided to the large civilian population? When the UN requested a short cessation to allow this it was denied as unneccesary hours before they accidentally bombed over 50 children off the face of the planet in Qana.

Of course this was not deliberate, but was there really a significant military advantage gained by Israel over Hizbollah by denying the requested 72 hours?

Finally what are the longer term rammifications of this upon the Lebanese government, Israel has effectively castrated them in the eyes of a great many of its own people. The government of the Lebanon desperately needed support and maybe, in time with the right amount of international support and encouragement, Hizbollah would have been disarmed.

Instead the primary income of the Lebanon has once more been devastated and getting close to a million Lebanese have been displaced. What better grounds for recruitment for organisations like Hizbollah than the poor and displaced, the bitter remnants of families killed in the conflict? Could there have been a better outcome of these kidnappings from Hizbollah’s point of view than the past few days, they may have lost ordinance and manpower, but bombs can be reaquired and there will be no shortage to angry youths willing to join them after this debacle.

Such a pity for a place that only months ago looked like it may have been dragging itself away from its past and towards a democratic and wealthy future. It is that future that the Islamists fear most and Israel has it seems to me, provided a great service to the extremists by its actions.

Boris, we expect you to come up with an oblique view of these things. Here you have surpassed yourself. An excellent piece of commentary.

It’s a gigantic conspiracy, Boris, they say, and it is high time you did something about it. And believe me, if I thought it would make a blind bit of difference, I would.

The world is full of I’m-right-you’re-wrong opinionistas with their tiresome cry that something must be done (MY something, naturally). But some issues - and this is one - are almost too big for us mortals to grasp. I confess to being confused by it, a subject steeped in events going back to the Old Testament. It must be quite literally the longest-running political problem on Earth. What good would Boris do by banging out yet another “solution”, as demanded by some of his correspondents? At least he has the guts to admit it and stick to an admirably honest - if somewhat resigned - overview of the situation. Well done that man.

“it’s time we took the guns away, because this is madness.” - Yes we could stop selling the IDF arms, at which point is Syria and the others going to stop arming Hezbollah - in short no. Then you leave Isreal open to attack, unless you’d like to send more overstretch NATO troops to not just keep the two sides apart but activly defend Isreal when the unavoidable invasion and ethnic cleansing begins. Yes a wonderful idea if everyone could put down their weapons and chill out - while we’re at it, why don’t we ask Bono to pop by and give everyone a great big hug. Isreal have made active concession after active concession ever since Yitzhak Rabin was murdered over a decade ago. often these concessions have done nothing for political will inside Isreal and have never, ever caused the terrorism to lesson in and around such a beautiful region. I personally remember being so upset when visiting the Wailing wall seeing armed guards there to stop attacks on civillians.

“But honestly did Israel really give the Lebanese government anyything like the time it required to try to solve this crisis?” well they’ve had 21 years to sort out the problem of Hezbollah and they have failed - one the principal declared aims is to fight the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon, which ended 6 years ago… rocket attacks and incurrsions havn’t ended for the people of Hifa.

it is still true, in principle, that when Israeli rockets kill civilians, they have missed their targets, and that when Hizbollah rockets kill civilians, they have scored a deliberate hit. Boris the Bozo

If you believe that Bozzer you’re even more gullible than in my wildest dreams.

So how many terrorists were in the power station then?

It’s hard to say. Even Hezbollah’s numbers are iffy. Great reading, this Haaretz article, particularly the comments.

Question: If an aggressor goes into battle with a baby strapped to their chest, and that baby ends up getting killed, is it the moral responsibility of the baby-strapped aggressor, or the baby-killing defender?

Serious question folks, because I think it is the answer to this question that determines where one falls in relation to the terrible events now transpiring. One either feels it is morally excusable to kill innocents in defense of self and state, or, that is is morally unjustified to attack when one knows there is a moderate-to-high chance of killing innocents.

If one takes the morally unjustified position (which I think most people would prefer to take, even if they don’t, i.e. that pragmatism wins out and they defend themselves) - how does one then combat an aggressor who uses such tactics, since they can seemingly attack at will without fear of retribution?

Serious answers please folks, because I’m beginning to feel that unless I can satisfactorily answer the above questions I really don’t have the right to ‘bitch’ about the Israeli tactics.

It is not a clear ethical answer either way as I see it - makes me wish I was back at Uni so as to ask my professors, in their absence I’ll ask the ‘enlightened’ readership of Boris’ blog.

War is war. Everyone understands that except the people nattering on about how Israel doesn’t kill civilians.

I’m in favour of a ceasefire and UN peacekeepers, and as a Canadian (we do a lot of that sort of thing) I fully realize how difficult and dangerous and possibly doomed this will be.

But it would be better than this, and I have no hesitation whatsoever about saying that.

What a sad and unexpected article from Boris.

No mention of the Yanks wanting to broker a ceasefire on one side while shovelling in weapons to the Zionists on the other, using British airports as staging posts. No mention of the fact that the UK and the US aren’t prepared to critcise Israel whatever atrocities they perform. What has happerned to you Boris, has the party central office come down like a ton of bricks or are these really your views?

Open your eyes and see that the Israelis are still expecting the sympathy of the whole world for what happened to the Jews in WW2, and using this as an excuse for the most horrendous present-day behaviour.

I fear you’re as much a closet totalitarian as Blair (God help us).

What Raincoaster said.

Not much to add, really, apart from taking issue with one point. You describe Israel as ‘a country responding, however incompetently, to direct aggression against its own people from a neighbouring failed state.’

Sorry, but my understanding was that Lebanon, having once been a shattered state, was in the process of doing a damn fine job of succeeding again. Virtually from scratch. They’d got themselves out from under Syrian and Israeli influence. They’d established a working democratic state. And within the terms of that democracy they’d started to slowly and painfully deal with the presence of Hezbollah.

Fat chance of that happening now. Hezbollah are sucking in new recruits like wasps to a honey jar. Israel can, and probably will, knock them back strategically - but that’s just dealing with symptoms, not causes. They’ll be back. And they’ll keep coming back until the international community starts to figure out a peaceful solution to the presence of Isael in that part of the world (and the consequent effect on the Palestinians).

You’ve been to Iraq. You’ve seen what violence achieves. Do you really think Israel throwing its weight around to prove it’s the meanest SOB in the region is going to IMPROVE Middle East relations?

“The darkest places in Hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.” –Dante

CNN reports:

As of Tuesday, 557 Lebanese civilians and soldiers have died and 2,128 have been wounded in the conflict, according to Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces.

Israel has reported 54 deaths, including 19 civilians killed by Hezbollah rocket attacks.

Thanks for those figures Raincoaster, though they’ll make no difference to the vast majority who think that Israel is entitled to do what they like to any other country, whenever they like, knowing that if they get any criticism, their extremely effective propangada machine (it’s certainly fooled Boris) will simply parrot its normal claim that the people complaining are ‘Anti-Semitic’. (Although the majority population of the countries surrounding Israel are also Semitic).

I feel very sorry for the good Muslims and Christians of Lebanon who were aiming to bring their agricultural nation into the European Economic Area and perhaps eventually the European Union. These projects are all suspended now.

I think there is room for criticism of the Israeli response, though I actually think Blair is handling this quite well.

As for Iraq, at least the allies are in a position to stop Teheran expanding into it’s borders, Saddam would never have been able to protect his people (not that I’m suggesting he cared for his people) from the Ayatollahs. Sixty per cent of Iraqis voting showed some signs of promise, unfortunately some of the men with guns seem to want to become another Iran with no liberation for women.

The FT on Tuesday was saying that Iran have until August 31st (by virtue of a UN resolution) to suspend their Uranium Enrichment. I hope Hizbollah are not allowed to distract the international community from the important work of de-nuking the Ayatollahs.

One last comment before I actually do some work today:

Blair, I must admit, surprised me, and in a good way. He didn’t actually do anything, but it’s remarkable to hear a world leader rebuking Syria and Iran. And it could never be the US taking on Syria; they have as much invested there as they have in Israel.

Not one of your best, Boris. You, and other apologists for what the Israel is doing to Arabs, forgets that the State was created by means of its own terrorism. I am old enough to remember what the Irgum Zvei Leumi and the Stern Gang did to the British in the days of the Mandate. They created terror then and have continued with it ever since.
The fact that they have disposed the Palestinians of their land, presumably is matter of no importance in your eyes - but then being of Turkish antecedents, no doubt you think Northern Cyprus is also OK.
But as to Lebanon, perhaps we should arm the Lebanese so that they can protect themselves from the brave flyers of the IDF bombing undefended targets.

So I assume that when the IRA were blowing Belfast to bits in 1972 and British soldiers were being killed in a 25 year period, you would have said say that London should have blown the Irish Republic and Dublin to pieces ? Think about it….

Reading some of the above comments, I have to assume some people missed:

“if I thought it would make a blind bit of difference, I would [say something]. I can see that the Israeli strategy seems to be disastrous, and is turning terrorists into martyrs.”

Boris’ position seems pretty sound. In effect, I don’t like what’s happening, but it’s not as bad as Iraq, and I voted for that, so what weight does my opinion carry now?

I think that’s a brave argument from a politician, certainly a refreshing one.

But the point is he DID say something. Otherwise we’d have nothing to comment on.

I refer you to Dante’s remark.

Boris…

I’ve been following this blog for what seems like ages, and I can’t remember a single post from you that inspired such a passionate response in the comments column.

Wouldn’t this be a good time to break that rule of yours that stops you replying to the comments?

S Roberts it tires me when people try and directly compare the IRA and any other 20th / 21st century problem. It was never an IRA stated aim to destroy this country or eradicate the Protestants. Further more the IRA, whilst inexcusable, had a mechanism of coded warnings etc for a reason their target was millitary / paramillitary inferstructures. Yes they did have a habbit of beating / knee caping other paras but not a cafe full of teens having a latte.

Hurd tried this ludicrous comparison over the Balkan conflict - he was as wrong then as you appear to be now. I draw everyones attention to a book called Unfinest Hour by Brendan Simms. The inept handling of that conflict by the EU and in some parts the UK’s handling is culpable, should be on everyones minds now. Thus fiddling about calling for a ceasefire while Rome burns is unforgivable.

Mark Gammon Wouldn’t this be a good time to break that rule of yours that stops you replying to the comments?

Forget it mate, that’d require a full set of balls and at least half a backbone.

Radio silence will be maintained for the duration of the emergency.

I think it’s a miracle he wrote as much as he did even if it is uninformed bollocks.

Question: If an aggressor goes into battle with a baby strapped to their chest, and that baby ends up getting killed, is it the moral responsibility of the baby-strapped aggressor, or the baby-killing defender

Chris, it’s a moral responsibility to shoot the c**t in the head as opposed to the Israeli strategy of using a bunker buster/cluster bomb to take out the gook, the baby and the shopping mall they were standing in.

How about a question on football?

Perhaps things aren’t that bad. At least UK interest rates have gone up by 0.25% today so (as my mortgage is paid off, and I’m looking to move house) my savings will earn a tiny bit more, and perhaps there might even be a fall in house prices (fat chance!).

At least it’s a crumb of cheer to get me away from these ‘Protocols of the Elders of Texas’ or whatever.

Well a Boris did post a very funny comment on that Haaretz article. But our Boris only talks to Vicus, to Melissa, and to God.

Slightly less flippant answer.

If you are suggesting that your question is in some way analagous to the Israeli attack on Qana (where the IDF claims H’zBallah hid behind civilians) I’d have to say, that it’s a false analogy.

For want of a better reason only because you can’t claim either side of the Lebanon conflict is an aggressor or defender unless you look at the last 60 years or so which blurs the respective roles a bit. Anyway, in answering your question, let’s drop the aggressor/defender stuff because those are just labels mostly determined by perspective.

So what we have, for the sake of argument, is someone who has strapped a baby to their chest to stop his/her opponents shooting at him/her whilst being able to shoot back with impunity.

The answer to your dilemma in the latter proposition is very simple, the responsibility lies solely with the person who brought the baby INTO the combat area where death is an extremely likely outcome of engagement. This is NOT, however, the case in Lebanon where the ‘baby’ is already in the field of conflict and (using your analogy) strapped to the defender not the aggressor. Both sides, however, STILL have to make a decision about whether to engage or not. Note that engagement is entirely a one sided decision when aerial bombing is involved.

But, I hear your anguished cry, how then is poor Israel to prevent missiles being lobbed over the border if they can’t take out the terrorists with a nice, undiscriminating anti-personnel cluster bomb?!?

Simple, they send in ground troops and engage in the old time honoured fashion. It’s often easy to spot civilians in these circumstances because they are the ones without guns and missiles and are sometimes in nappies.

The problem, from Israel’s viewpoint with this latter approach is that it’s very expensive on military lives (soldiers, you know. the guys that actually get paid for being shot at) So we can come to a simple conclusion, and the reason the Israel deserves our strongest censure, is that Israel values the lives of their military personnel VASTLY more highly than the lives of Lebanese civilians.

To the tune of about 40:1 by my estimate.

And yes, I agree, Britain and the US are JUST as bad as Israel. It is my considered opinion (backed up by the opinion of a number of international lawyers) that Blair and Bush are war criminals in terms of UN and international law.

PaulD seems to abdicate his moral authority, saying “It’s all too confusin’ for me, guv’ner!”

Nuts. This is possibly the single example of Middle-East conflict that can be taken out of context and debated on its mathematics alone:

8 Israeli soldiers dead + 2 kidnapped = roughly:
500 Lebanese adult civillians
+ 250 Lebanese children (presumed civillians except, one assumes, by the IDF)
+ 100 Hizbullah guerillas
+ 40 Israeli soldiers
+ 20 Israeli civillians

(all dead).

Chris B defends the murder of civillians by saying “they’re just in the way, and it’s Hizbullah’s fault”. The statement that “Hizbullah is hiding in the civillian population” is untrue, and in any case does not relieve the IDF of responsibility for those deaths.

Israel’s stated goal of “stopping Hizbullah” was unattainable from the start. And the continuing slaughter makes it less so with each passing hour. Worse yet, the longer the international community looks away (and I mean here particularly the elements of that community who voted against the UN call for ceasefire) the more Islamist organisations will reap the benefits in recruits and funding.

“They also serve who only stand and wait.”

The victims of the Holocaust knew that.

i noticed as i skimmed down the comments a few references to the IRA, however i didn’t read them totally so please do forgive me if somebody has already brought up this point, but the current situation is like conducting airstrikes on dublin in retaliation for the canary wharf bombings. it seems to have been forgotten that the lebanon is in fact a SECULAR DEMOCRACY, over half of the cabinet is in fact made up of christians of various denominations, and i don’t see how attacking UN observation posts and villages full of children is dealing with the terrorist element, and remember that those two attacks were after all deliberate. in fact the IDF only stopped shelling Qana because they began seeing news reports from inside the town. also do not forget that the attack on the UN post was certainly deliberate, you don’t stop shelling and then begin shelling the rescue parties “by mistake”. wether or not there is a grand zionist conspiracy, i am not going to speculate, after all there is evidence for both there being one and it all being crap.

There are essentially two issues in this debate, the first being whether Israel was right to begin attacking Hizbollah/Southern Lebanon, and the second being whether they have gone about it in the right way. I haven’t spoken to a single person who supports the second, although opinions are much more evenly split on the first. I know lots of people who follow the “plight of the oppressed” logic, that the Lebanese are suffering, and so Israel must be in the wrong (very typical I find of Israel/Palestine debates). However on the whole people will take a more balanced approach to the issue.

Either way, it is generally agreed that Israel is conducting this war very poorly. It is worth noting though that this is unusual for Israel. Israel does have one of the most effective intelligence services in the world, along with one of the most effective armies, and usually they are much more discriminant in their targetting. In the recent conflict in Gaza for example, the Economist recently reported that just over 100 people had been killed, slightly more than half of whom were civilians. This means that Israel managed to attain a successful targetting rate of nearly 50%, which is extremely high by anyone’s standards.

I have been variously a supporter of the Palestinian cause or that of the Israelis over the years, but for the last few years I have been fairly consistently in support of Israel. However, the astonishing number of civilians who have been killed, the bombing of civilian infrastructure, the bombing of the UN station, and the reluctance to use ground troups has been surprising. The Israelis are not stupid, and realise I’m sure that this will fuel militant feeling in Lebanon, weaken the favourable government of Lebanon, probably not destroy or disarm Hizbollah, and by killing UN observers damage international opinion. Consequently I suspect there may be a further motive for this military action which we have not seen yet.

For the moment I’m maintaining my position, supportive of Israel’s invasion and right to it, but critical of the means they have used.

Yes Metro, I also find this ‘Hizbolla hides in civilian areas’ a bit implausible.

Let’s face it most people are pretty sensitive to getting themselves plastered over a few square feet and, even the most rabid base jumpers and extreme sports addicts, are likely to head for the nearest underground car park if they see a missile launcher getting erected in the vicinity. Or do the IDF think we believe the lebanese are so indescribably thick that they’ve failed to associate the launching of missiles with about 400 lbs of high explosive landing on them half an hour later?

The other explanation offered for this curious behaviour is that Hizbolla effectively imprison the local civilian population while they are launching missiles, presumably to attract a lot of irate international criticism of Israeli tactics. Okay, that sounds plausible at first glance; maybe Hizbolla are a bunch of murdering scum who would walk over a pit of newborn babes to achieve their goals.

Seems a bit odd then that Hizbolla spend so much time effort and money in community support and building hospitals etc. It also doesn’t explain why the surviving local population (assuming the IDF don’t get all of ‘em) still keep singing the praises of Hizbolla when all the fuss has died down.

I would have thought they’d be a bit pissed off if they’d really been used as a human sandbag.

According to Sky News, there’s a ‘masturbate-a-thon’ to raise money for charity and to celebrate, if you can believe it, Channel 4’s ‘national wank week’

Link if you don’t believe me
(http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1229695,00.html)

Apparently some people are going for records (8 hrs - male record, 6 hrs female record)

With the crap in the opening article Bozzer could win hands down.

Or should it be hands up and down?

I have to say I’m generally with raincoaster on the Israel conflict.

As for the baby strapped to an agressor - it’s the agressors responsibility. When you have a child you will do ANYTHING to protect it - crawl, beg, and yes even kill or die yourself. But if you’re faced with the prospect of the baby dying anyway, through thirst, starvation or bombs/gunfire then, between a rock and a hard place it’s anyones guess what you’ll do. And you won’t know till you’re there.

Have to disagree with raincoaster when it comes to Boris though. He has/does respond to comments on the blog, when he wants to. Trust me I’ve been around for…. ooh ages. I was here at the birth….. awwwww.

I’m very disappointed with your article - the casual condemnation of the Palestinians’ elected leaders, the lack of recognition that Hizbollah are fighting on behalf of the downtrodden Palestinians and so on.

Why do Conservative politicians have such a knee jerk pro-American attitude? I’m inclined to think that it’s cowardice stemming from a fear that their careers will be damaged if they choose a different attitude.

As for Mel Gibson, I’m sure that he would get a brilliant reception on the occupied West Bank and in many different parts of the world whether christian, muslim, hindu etc - one has to ask oneself why Israelis are so unpopular?

@Metro - To be clear, I wasn’t defending the murder of civilians - what I was doing was asking for an answer to an ethical scenario.

Perhaps I didn’t make the second part of my question clear; namely that, if it is morally unjustified to defend oneself where it is highly likely that an innocent might die (which I noted was the preferred position) then how does one defend oneself? I did not mean this as a challenge, rather as a genuine question requiring a pratical answer.

I will trust that your accusation of my defense of civilian murder was precipitated by a misinterpretation of my argument. I was simply asking for the readership’s opinions as to alternative strategies that might be employed that would negate the majority of risk to non-combatants. To ask such a question does not condone, nor support, the position of harming innocents in order to neutralise an aggressor. It is exactly what it is, a question.

The final part of my post was saying not that you don’t have the right to ‘bitch’ about the Israeli tactics, but rather that I feel it negates my moral right to critcise the Israelis when I cannot generate an alternative strategy. (Thus the use of the emphasised I in my post.)

Perhaps the only moral thing to do is for the Israelis to call an immediate cease-fire and then simply suffer the random and indiscriminate murder of innocents within Israel. If they did this then the entire rational community would be agreed on who the ‘bad guy’ was and perhaps the international community would mobilise a peace-keeping force to engage and defeat anyone involved in acts of murder within the area. However, why would the Israelis have any cause to believe such a force would appear when elsewhere in the world, notably in the Sudan presently, there has been a clear programme of genocide that the United Nations has shamefully allowed to be perpetrated. (Rwanda is another ealier example). Hence my own personal reluctance to critic the Israeli actions given this history. And that is without mention of the most terrible of crimes, the Holocaust.

I therefore, honestly and humbly, ask anyone, what can be done?

Hi ChrisB. My apologies for the misunderstanding. But truthfully, I feel that the chosen analogy is false. Mainly because Israel had a choice. They have freed hostages through negotiation before–what was new in this situation?

Can we agree though, that the moral thing to do, whatever it might actually be, is not to actively target civillians and the UN?

Apparently Hizbullah has asked for a ceasefire, in return for which Nasrullah has promised that they will not target any settlement or city of Israel.

I respectfully suggest that since the avowed objective of the IDF was to stop Hizbullah’s rocket attacks, they should accept.

Or am I crazy?

I’d like to congratulate Boris for at last strapping on the pads, donning the gloves and the helmet, clasping firmly the bat, and marching out to the wicket to take a swing at all this. Bravo!

I’ve been wondering if the political classes in Britain have simply decided to look away from the Israel-Hezbollah war, in the hope that it would all simply go away. Boris’ article last week - on the Dome, of all things -, certainly seemed part and parcel of this averting of eyes. I was wondering what Boris would write about this week. The threat that bicycles would have to carry licence plates?

But, no, Boris has finally come good. He has looked at the matter squarely in the face, and expressed an opinion about it at last.

But having applauded Boris for going out to bat on a very sticky wicket, I would like to suggest that he took a very wild swing at the first ball. Mel Gibson is irrelevant, except if one wants to somehow tar any critic of Israel as another Mel Gibson. I for one would not like to be associated with the producer of the blood-soaked Passion of the Christ.

But Boris connects with the second ball, and hits it past square leg for a four, when he writes: “I can see that the Israeli strategy seems to be disastrous, and is turning terrorists into martyrs.” It’s done a bit more than that: it’s united Lebanon against Israel:

In an event that would have been unthinkable a few months ago, in this country where politics is locked into religious lines, the Maronite Catholic patriarch — the spiritual leader of the most pro-Western populace — convened a meeting this week of religious leaders of other communities, Shiite and Sunni Muslims and several varieties of Christians . . . Their joint statement, condemning the Israeli “aggression,” hailed “the resistance, mainly led by Hezbollah, which represents one of the sections of society.” (New York Times)

And then Boris blocks the third ball by faux-meekly describing himself as “some obscure Tory spokesman”. Since when has Boris been ‘obscure’, huh? But it perhaps answers the question of why political figures seem so strangely silent on this issue: they don’t think their opinions matter.

I’ll leave it at that for now. I’m really just simply glad Boris went out to bat.

I think I’ll carry on my commentary.

Boris takes a big swing at the fourth ball, and misses completely.

“The real problem in the region is not Israel, but what it represents to the Islamicists who surround it. The difference between Israel and her neighbours is that Israel is a capitalist democracy, with all the freedom and tawdriness that entails. They don’t give a monkey’s in Teheran about the fate of the poor Palestinians.”

The real problem with the region, I would suggest, is oil. It is for this reason alone that it has suffered the unholy attentions of first the British, and now the Americans, for an entire century. Israel has simply been yet another humiliation. What they hate is not our freedoms, but our guns and our bombs. And it is absurd to suggest that the inhabitants of the region are indifferent to the plight of the Palestinians: what has happened to the Palestinians is quite likely to happen to them, as Lebanon has just found out.

And the fifth ball catches the edge of Boris’ bat, and heads straight for the hands of first slip. At which point Boris trudges back to the pavilion.

“it is still true, in principle, that when Israeli rockets kill civilians, they have missed their targets, and that when Hizbollah rockets kill civilians, they have scored a deliberate hit.”

What Israeli rockets? They’re not firing rockets. They’re dropping laser-guided munitions, which land with pin-point accuracy. Which is why we may know that the destruction of the southern suburbs of Beirut, and the bombing of Red Cross vans, and UN observation posts, was perfectly deliberate.

By contrast, it is the unguided rockets of Hezbollah which are entirely aimless - and consequently far less destructive. Their purpose, if anything, has been to terrify Israelis. And in this at least they have been highly successful.

Boris, by my account, scored only four runs off one ball. And that is in recognizing that the Israeli strategy has been disastrous. In fact, it is not clear to me that there is any strategy, since it seems to change from week to week, if not from day to day.

And a disastrous strategy must imply also disastrous defeat. Whatever happens, this is a victory for Hezbollah and its leader, Sheik Nasrallah, and a defeat for Israel. Israelis have been learning these last few weeks that, for all its tanks and warplanes and laser-guided bombs, the IDF cannot protect them from Hezbollah. It is this that is going to be the primary lesson of this futile war.

I have just seen figures from Save the Children that 49% of 800 deaths in Lebanon and 33% of wounded are children. It is a relief to hear from Boris Johnson that the Israelis are NOT trying to kill civilians. Let’s hope they don’t change their minds.

The truth is Hizbollah attacked and captured Israeli SOLDIERS who are occupying tracts of land in Lebanon and Syria and half of Palestine. In response, Israel unleased massive air attacks in civilian areas including appartment blocks, bridges, ports,highways with no apparent thought for civilian casualties, all in the name of self defence (even the name IDF reminds one of Orwell’s 1984) and the War on Terror. Hisbollah did not fire any rockets until the Israeli air raids into civilian areas of Beiruit.

Ah yes, the War on Terror, supported wholeheartedly by Mr Johnson and the Conservatives and resulting in an escalation of fear, hatred and terror throughout the ME and beyond. A policy that can never win nor do anything but create ever more division in our society. It is easy to sneer at well meaning people who call for a ceasefire and negotiation as sentimental and naive. Was it not a great deal more sentimental and naive of Mr Johnson and his party to beleive that a quick invasion of Iraq who bring joy and light throughout the ME? Mr Johnson tells us he has not given up hope. Tell that to the mothers of the children playing football in Bahgdad this week.

How deeply depressing that the alternative to Blair is Boris.

All quiet on the Henley front recently.

Thanks, idlex, for your thought-provoking comments. I, too, am glad Boris stepped up to the plate, but I call what he accomplished there the same way.

I’ve been thinking this whole issue over for a while now and I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t care who wins this battle any more; it’s irrelevant.

To explain this position I need to take a step back and look at something Mr. Blair said recently. When asked, by a journalist, how he could sleep at night having killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians, Mr. Blair replied “I think you’ll find it’s closer to 50,000.” To say that my jaw dropped when I read this is inadequate to describe the gamut of emotions which ran through me as I considered this statement. “Is he for real?” I thought! So the proposition we must accept is that 50,000 deaths is “pretty much okay”? What would the upper limit be then? If he’d been accused of killing a million would he have justifying it by saying that he had, in fact, only rubbed out half a million and that this was perfectly acceptable? Were there estimates of this magnitude before he dispatched the army and if not, what went wrong? Surely these are questions which must be put to him. Now, of course, I understand why Blair has been so circumspect in his criticism of Israel. He’s a far more successful mass murderer than in Olmert’s most febrile dreams. All thanks to his Iraqi campaign and his unquestioning support of US foreign policy and military tactics.

We may all have suspected, from time to time, that Israel and Iraq have become ‘cunning’ and convenient diversions which destabilize the Middle East and give the indigents something to gripe about and so distract them while we are nicking all their oil. The question all this begs is simply: Are we so greedy in the West that we support wholesale murder to supply our ‘habits’?

Regardless of all the saber rattling rhetoric about wars on terror, aggressors and defenders, who’s in the right etc., people are getting killed by the truckload daily in this conflict and in many parts of the world for more or less the same reason: the rapacious appetite of the US. It seems, much of this activity occurs with the support (and also the supply of military and strategic equipment) of the West, China and the Russian Federation. I can only conclude, therefore, that there is something fundamentally wrong with us as a species if we, even if only through inaction or apathy, allow this state of affairs to continue. In my view we should all be ashamed of ourselves.

What I find utterly extraordinary is that now, the foremost mass murderers of modern times, Blair and Bush, are goading the most rabidly psychopathic military in the world to new heights in arbitrary civilian mortality simply because they don’t want to admit that, perhaps, they misjudged the situation in invading Iraq.

Suffice to say I have since lost all interest in human ‘civilisation’ (if you’ll excuse the term) and any remaining vestige of faith in human nature; except perhaps where that nature describes a rabid, murderous animal, crazed with fear and greed.

Maybe World War Three would be a good thing; if only to eradicate the dangerous virus infesting the planet.

@Metro - I hadn’t seen that news item previously, but having seen it I agree with you that it represents the best out so far. Some people would no doubt say, Ah! but to do that one has to ‘trust’ Hezbollah to not violate the cease-fire, well, one has to trust the sides to abide in any cease-fire. I would like to see Israel immediately cease all military operations for a period of 48 hours, that way the world would clearly see whether there is the option of diplomacy. If Hezbollah carried on rocket attacks then you can always go-back to military operations, but I agree with you that if the ‘aggressor’ has offered a cease-fire and one refuses to act upon it, hencefore you become morally responsible for any resultant lose of innocent life, even if they are ‘baby-strapped’. (Of course if the ‘aggressor’ uses this ‘pause’ as an opportunity to attack then the moral impetus immediately switches back.)

Alas, I see on the morning news that Israel has attacked Beriut again, and Hezbollah has continued its rocket attacks. So it seems that this opportunity to halt the violence has passed. It seems that there is to be more death.

Thanks for interesting discussion Metro, I just wish it was a hypothetical ethics debate rather than a real one. Peace.

Boris seems to have made up his mind so please don’t confuse him with the facts idlex.

I find is passing strange that any politician can say things like “…if I thought it would make a blind bit of difference, I would do. [something about it].”

Don’t you get paid to say inconvenient things to the government? Or is that just a perk when you think you can score a few cheap points? EVERYONE has an obligation to condemn militaristic regimes like Israel (and the US) even when it may attract unwanted criticism and/or cost you a constituency.

Things don’t stop being wrong just because they inconvenience us.

P.S.
I see Jack Ramsey is conspicuous by his absense.

Well, Boris???????

Come on, old son. You stirred up this hornets’ nest of a comments string. If you’ve got the courage of your convictions, get in here and argue for them.

And don’t bluster about being too busy in the constituency or whatever - we’ve all got jobs to do as well.

An interesting article here citing the Israeli practice of placing military camps and weapons factories close to population centres. It also discusses the censorship many journalists are operating under as they report from the area, and details the propoganda efforts being made by the Israelis.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article14349.htm

When satellite pictures clearly show whole civilian neighbourhoods in Beirut being flattened by the Israeli air force, it becomes nonsensical to argue that Israeli bombs only kill civilians when they miss their targets.

Four civilians were killed today in Jounieh, a Christian city north of Beirut where Hezbollah has no presence whatsoever.

Is this also part of this titanic struggle between the ignorant extremist Arabs and the enlightened Judeo-Christian world?

But then again, we have grown eerily accustomed to dark-skinned, turbaned men, veiled women, and children being slaughtered by soldiers in Western-style military uniform and pilots in sleek American aircraft, haven’t we?

I think I’ve become too political over the years. Because I look at what everyone above has contributed to the debate and I consider the inaccuracy and wrongness of Boris’ article to have been well established. So I’m dropping that fight for the moment.

What occurs to me now is that we haven’t heard a peep from Cameron; do you think that Boris was given a last meal, a keyboard and a blindfold and told “just go out there and get it over with”?

Is this some kind of Tory trial balloon? Just to test public reaction?

God, I hope so.

New stuff in the Guardian:

As the full extent of Lebanon’s catastrophe began to emerge yesterday, the US-based watchdog Human Rights Watch accused Israel of war crimes. “In some instances, Israeli forces appear to have deliberately targeted civilians … the failures cannot be dismissed as mere accident and cannot be blamed on wrongful Hizbullah practices. In some cases, these attacks constitute war crimes,” it stated when releasing a study of attacks in Lebanon.

“Israeli forces have fired with war planes and artillery on dozens of civilian vehicles, many flying white flags,” it said.

Israel has sought to justify the deaths by saying Hizbullah fighters hide among civilians to fire rockets. HRW says it believes Hizbullah does violate the laws of war by hiding among civilians during military operations, but “the image promoted of such shielding as the cause of so high a civilian death toll is wrong”.

And here is the Human Rights Watch report itself.

And here is the summary, in full. Sorry for droning on, but what the hell. Obviously there’s at least one person on this blog who needs to read it.

Summary
This report documents serious violations of international humanitarian law (the laws of war) by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Lebanon between July 12 and July 27, 2006, as well as the July 30 attack in Qana. During this period, the IDF killed an estimated 400 people, the vast majority of them civilians, and that number climbed to over 500 by the time this report went to print. The Israeli government claims it is taking all possible measures to minimize civilian harm, but the cases documented here reveal a systematic failure by the IDF to distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Since the start of the conflict, Israeli forces have consistently launched artillery and air attacks with limited or dubious military gain but excessive civilian cost. In dozens of attacks, Israeli forces struck an area with no apparent military target. In some cases, the timing and intensity of the attack, the absence of a military target, as well as return strikes on rescuers, suggest that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians.

The Israeli government claims that it targets only Hezbollah, and that fighters from the group are using civilians as human shields, thereby placing them at risk. Human Rights Watch found no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack. Hezbollah occasionally did store weapons in or near civilian homes and fighters placed rocket launchers within populated areas or near U.N. observers, which are serious violations of the laws of war because they violate the duty to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties. However, those cases do not justify the IDF’s extensive use of indiscriminate force which has cost so many civilian lives. In none of the cases of civilian deaths documented in this report is there evidence to suggest that Hezbollah forces or weapons were in or near the area that the IDF targeted during or just prior to the attack.

By consistently failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians, Israel has violated one of the most fundamental tenets of the laws of war: the duty to carry out attacks on only military targets. The pattern of attacks during the Israeli offensive in Lebanon suggests that the failures cannot be explained or dismissed as mere accidents; the extent of the pattern and the seriousness of the consequences indicate the commission of war crimes.

This report is based on extensive on-the-ground research in Lebanon. Since the start of hostilities, Human Rights Watch has interviewed victims and witnesses of attacks in one-on-one settings, conducted on-site inspections (when security allowed), and collected information from hospitals, humanitarian groups, and government agencies. Human Rights Watch also conducted research in Israel, inspecting the IDF’s use of weapons and discussing the conduct of forces with IDF officials. The research was extensive, but given the ongoing war and the scope of the bombings, Human Rights Watch does not claim that the findings are comprehensive; further investigation is required to document the war’s complete impact on civilians and to assess the full scope of the IDF’s compliance with and disregard for international humanitarian law.

While not the focus of this report, Human Rights Watch has separately and simultaneously documented violations of international humanitarian law by Hezbollah, including a pattern of attacks that amount to war crimes. Between July 12, when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight, and July 27, the group launched a reported 1,300 rockets into predominantly civilian areas in Israel, killing 18 civilians and wounding more than 300. Without guidance systems for accurate targeting, the rockets are inherently indiscriminate when directed toward civilian areas, especially cities, and thus are serious violations of the requirement of international humanitarian law that attackers distinguish at all times between combatants and civilians. Some of these rockets, Human Rights Watch found, are packed with thousands of metal ball-bearings, which spray more than 100 meters from the blast and compound the harm to civilians.

This report analyzes a selection of Israeli air and artillery attacks that together claimed at least 153 civilian lives, or over a third of the reported Lebanese deaths in the conflict’s first two weeks. Of the 153 civilian deaths documented in this report by name, sixty-three of the victims were children under the age of eighteen, and thirty-seven of them were under ten. Israeli air strikes also killed many dual nationals who were vacationing in Lebanon when the fighting began, including Brazilian, Canadian, German, Kuwaiti, and U.S. citizens. The full death toll is certainly higher because medical and recovery teams have been unable to retrieve many bodies due to ongoing fighting and the dire security situation in south Lebanon.

The report breaks civilian deaths into two categories: attacks on civilian homes and attacks on civilian vehicles. In both categories, victims and witnesses interviewed independently and repeatedly said that neither Hezbollah fighters nor Hezbollah weapons were present in the area during or just before the Israeli attack took place. While some individuals, out of fear or sympathy, may have been unwilling to speak about Hezbollah’s military activity, others were quite open about it. In totality, the consistency, detail, and credibility of testimony from a broad array of witnesses who did not speak to each other leave no doubt about the validity of the patterns described in this report. In many cases, witness testimony was corroborated by reports from international journalists and aid workers. During site visits conducted in Qana, Srifa, and Tyre, Human Rights Watch saw no evidence that there had been Hezbollah military activity around the areas targeted by the IDF during or just prior to the attack: no spent ammunition, abandoned weapons or military equipment, trenches, or dead or wounded fighters. Moreover, even if Hezbollah had been in a populated area at the time of an attack, Israel would still be legally obliged to take all feasible precautions to avoid or minimize civilian casualties resulting from its targeting of military objects or personnel. In the cases documented in this report, however, the IDF consistently tolerated a high level of civilian casualties for questionable military gain.

In one case, an Israeli air strike on July 13 destroyed the home of a cleric known to have sympathy for Hezbollah but who was not known to have taken any active part in hostilities. Even if the IDF considered him a legitimate target (and Human Rights Watch has no evidence that he was), the strike killed him, his wife, their ten children, and the family’s Sri Lankan maid.

On July 16, an Israeli airplane fired on a civilian home in the village of Aitaroun, killing eleven members of the al-Akhrass family, among them seven Canadian-Lebanese dual nationals who were vacationing in the village when the war began. Human Rights Watch independently interviewed three villagers who vigorously denied that the family had any connection to Hezbollah. Among the victims were children aged one, three, five, and seven.

Others civilians came under attack in their cars as they attempted to flee the fighting in the South. This report alone documents twenty-seven civilian deaths that resulted from such attacks. The number is surely higher, but at the time the report went to press, ongoing Israeli attacks on the roads made it impossible to retrieve all the bodies.

Starting around July 15, the IDF issued warnings to residents of southern villages to leave, followed by a general warning for all civilians south of the Litani River, which mostly runs about 25 kilometers north of the Israel-Lebanon border, to evacuate immediately. Tens of thousands of Lebanese fled their homes to the city of Tyre (itself south of the Litani and thus within the zone Israel ordered evacuated) or further north to Beirut, many waving white flags. As they left, Israeli forces fired on dozens of vehicles with warplanes and artillery.

Two Israeli air strikes are known to have hit humanitarian aid vehicles. On July 18 the IDF hit a convoy of the Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates, destroying a vehicle with medicines, vegetable oil, sugar and rice, and killing the driver. On July 23, Israeli forces hit two clearly marked Red Cross ambulances in the village of Qana.

As of August 1, tens of thousands of civilians remained in villages south of the Litani River, despite the warnings to leave. Some chose to stay, but the vast majority, Human Rights Watch found, was unable to flee due to destroyed roads, a lack of gasoline, high taxi fares, sick relatives, or ongoing Israeli attacks. Many of the civilians who remained were elderly, sick, or poor.

Israel has justified its attacks on roads by citing the need to clear the transport routes of Hezbollah fighters moving arms. Again, none of the evidence gathered by Human Rights Watch, independent media sources, or Israeli official statements indicate that any of the attacks on vehicles documented in this report resulted in Hezbollah casualties or the destruction of weapons. Rather, the attacks killed and wounded civilians who were fleeing their homes, as the IDF had advised them to do.

In addition to strikes from airplanes, helicopters, and traditional artillery, Israel has used artillery-fired cluster munitions against populated areas, causing civilian casualties. One such attack on the village of Blida on July 19 killed a sixty-year-old woman and wounded at least twelve civilians, including seven children. The wide dispersal pattern of cluster munitions and the high dud rate (ranging from 2 to 14 percent, depending on the type of cluster munition) make the weapons exceedingly dangerous for civilians and, when used in populated areas, a violation of international humanitarian law.

Statements from Israeli government officials and military leaders suggest that, at the very least, the IDF has blurred the distinction between civilian and combatant, and is willing to strike at targets it considers even vaguely connected to the latter. At worst, it considers all people in the area of hostilities open to attack.

On July 17, for example, after IDF strikes on Beirut, the commander of the Israeli Air Force, Eliezer Shkedi, said, “in the center of Beirut there is an area which only terrorists enter into.”1 The next day, the IDF deputy chief of staff, Moshe Kaplinski, when talking about the IDF’s destruction of Beirut’s Dahia neighborhood, said, “the hits were devastating, and this area, which was a Hezbollah symbol, became deserted rubble.”2

On July 27, Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon said that the Israeli air force should flatten villages before ground troops move in to prevent casualties among Israeli soldiers fighting Hezbollah. Israel had given civilians ample time to leave southern Lebanon, he claimed, and therefore anyone remaining should be considered a supporter of Hezbollah. “All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah,” he said.3

International humanitarian law requires effective advance warnings to the civilian population prior to an attack, when conditions permit. But those warnings do not way relieve Israel from its obligation at all times to distinguish between combatants and civilians and to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians from harm. In other words, issuing warnings in no way entitles the Israeli military to treat those civilians who remain in southern Lebanon as combatants who are fair game for attack.

In addition to recommendations to the Israeli government and Hezbollah that they respect international humanitarian law, Human Rights Watch calls on the U.S. government immediately to suspend transfer of all arms that have been documented or credibly alleged to have been used in violation of international humanitarian law in Lebanon, as well as funding or support for such materiel, pending an end to the violations. Human Rights Watch calls upon the Iranian and Syrian governments to do the same with regards to military assistance to Hezbollah.

This report does not address Israeli attacks on Lebanon’s infrastructure or Beirut’s southern suburbs, which is the subject of ongoing Human Rights Watch research. It also does not address Hezbollah’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israel, which have been reported on and denounced separately and continues to be the subject of ongoing Human Rights Watch investigations. In addition, Human Rights Watch continues to investigate allegations that Hezbollah is shielding its military personnel and materiel by locating them in civilian homes or areas, and it is deeply concerned by Hezbollah’s placement of certain troops and materiel near civilians, which endangers them and violates the duty to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties. Human Rights Watch uses the occasion of this report to reiterate Hezbollah’s legal duty never to deliberately use civilians to shield military objects and never to needlessly endanger civilians by conducting military operations, maintaining troops, or storing weapons in their vicinity.

The armed conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is governed by international treaties, as well as the rules of customary international humanitarian law. Article 3 Common to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 sets forth minimum standards for all parties to a conflict between a state party such as Israel and a non-state party such as Hezbollah. Israel has also asserted that it considers itself to be responding to the actions of the sovereign state of Lebanon, not just to those of Hezbollah. Any hostilities between Israeli forces and the forces of Lebanon would fall within the full Geneva Conventions to which both Lebanon and Israel are parties. In either case, the rules governing bombing, shelling, and rocket attacks are effectively the same.

Oh, and Vicus told me to tell you you’re a silly bugger, Boris.

When asked, by a journalist, how he could sleep at night having killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians, Mr. Blair replied “I think you’ll find it’s closer to 50,000.” (Wobbly)

I’ll have to see a link to this before I believe it, I’m afraid. It also doesn’t sound like Blair. He’s too quick on his feet. He would have more plausibly replied that the mortality figures were disputed or unknown, and that he regretted any there may have been.

And I can’t say that what’s happening has affected my views on human nature or civilisation at all. My read on events is that a bunch of crazies (and the neocons were called “crazies” during Bush I’s tenure) have taken over the US government, and have been wreaking havoc ever since, both around the world and within the USA. They don’t believe in peace, but in war - or “creative destruction”. They believe in violence as a first resort rather than a last resort. None of them has ever fought in any war, and so it’s easy for them to entertain stupid fantasies about its efficacy. They have undoubtedly been encouraging Israel to use maximum violence. They also want a war with Iran. They believe that the more the region is shaken up, the sooner it will settle into Western-style democracy - hence Condi Rice’s recent infantile “birth pangs” remark.

My only hope is that the world makes it to the end of the Bush idiot presidency without too many more wars, and without too much more totally unnecessary bloodshed.

I wish people wouldn’t say ‘Judeo-Christian’. Islam and Judeism are the close religions, not Judaism and Christianity. Both Islam and Judaism have a vindictive, capricious tribal god; a mere demiurge, whose most obvious characteristic is an over-reaching jealousy of some other (un-named)God. YHWH/Allah is worthy only of our contempt, and I can only hope that there is some other higher God out there. (One who obviously has other things to do than spread a little peace and light in this world though it seems).

I’ll have to see a link to this before I believe it idlex

http://www.newstatesman.com/200608070017

From your link, Wobbly.

At a Downing Street reception not long ago, a guest had the temerity to ask Tony Blair: “How do you sleep at night, knowing that you’ve been responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis?” The Prime Minister is said to have retorted: “I think you’ll find it’s closer to 50,000.”

So it was a guest, not a reporter, who asked the question. And we only know what Blair is said to have replied. Unless somebody can corroborate the exchange, there appears to be no record of it.

But it is alarming, all the same. It reminds me of something I read a few months back, about how, after Maggie Thatcher’s popularity surged during the Falklands war, the previous Labour PM, James Gallaghan, is reported to have said, “I wish I’d had a war.” Or, as I read it, “I wish a lot have people had been killed and maimed, simply so that I could have remained in office.”

It’s the enormous self-regard of these people that is astonishing. In many ways, Blair is not different form Callaghan or Thatcher. It’s just that his wars have turned into disasters, although he will be the last person to ever admit this.

I wish people wouldn’t say ‘Judeo-Christian’. Islam and Judeism are the close religions, not Judaism and Christianity. Both Islam and Judaism have a vindictive, capricious tribal god; a mere demiurge, whose most obvious characteristic is an over-reaching jealousy of some other (un-named)God. YHWH/Allah is worthy only of our contempt, and I can only hope that there is some other higher God out there. (One who obviously has other things to do than spread a little peace and light in this world though it seems).

In fact all three of the main monotheistic religions have a great deal in common with each other, and many different pairings can be made if wanted. It is true that Islam and Judaism are both legalistic and law-based religions, whereas Christianity sets broad concepts and allows the individual believer to determine the correct course of action in any instant. (I am of course talking about the religions in their pure form, many Christian churches in the world, notably Catholic and Evangelical ones, have turned Christianity into a legalistic religion).
However, Judaism and Christianity both place a greater emphasis on human ability than Islam does, Judaism having a long tradition of debate even with God, and Christianity putting trust in people to adapt rules to the situation. They also have the same basic mythology from the Old Testament, whereas Islam changes some parts of it.
Likewise, Islam and Christianity are both missionary religions, who are open to anyone who accepts the appropriate theology. Judaism on the other hand is a tribal and racial religion, based on birth to a Jewish mother rather than acceptance of the theology.

With the advent of liberalism all of these pairings are not strictly true anymore, with some denominations within each religion showing features of the others (as you might expect anyway from religions with a common root). As already mentioned some Christians have become very legalistic (pretty much since the day Christ died in fact… so much for that), some Muslims have been questioning their legal structure’s applicability in the modern world, and some liberal Jews have been opening up to people who wish to join the club.

And Wobbly, I’m afraid I would be slightly dubious of that quote. Even if it is true word-for-word, it sounds like it has been taken out of context and would be the beginning of a reply rather than the entirety. For example I would not be surprised if the reply were something along the lines of:

“I think you’ll find it’s closer to 50,000; but even so, I sleep with the knowledge that we have helped to make the lives of ordinary Iraqis better and toppled a ruthless dictator.”

Or some other self-justifying nonsense. Like idlex I think it is hardly in Blair’s style.

Yes, I misread it the first time (broken telephone mode) and I’m putting it down to shock (though not much awe).

New Statesman isn’t the most backwater periodical and if these statements are untrue, defamatory or have been misrepresented significantly, I’m sure we’ll hear of it. Alternatively, maybe he was just caught on a bad day.

Incidentally, I think it sounds JUST like Blair. He always dives into statistics if he’s cornered on a point of delinquency and, in this instance, I don’t think he thought it through before reacting with his usual B.S.

Unlike Hizbollah, Mel, Israel is not trying to kill civilians.
Bald statement, no supporting evidence (anywhere)

Apart from a pint of tequila, I don’t know what got into Mel Gibson when he decided to favour the Los Angeles police with an anti-Semitic rant.
I don’t know what whacko religious convictions inspire the Aussie heart-throb, or whether he genuinely believes that the “f—— Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world”.
But whatever Mel was having the other night was powerful stuff; and, you know what, my impression is that a lot of folks across Britain are secretly having a snifter of the same. Across the country there are sober people who would never dream of calling an LA police officer “sugar tits”, or swinging like an ape from the bars of their cell. Yet these people seem to share the essentials of Mel’s analysis of the Middle East.
Amusing but largely irrelevant.

Come on, Blair! they write from their wisteria-clad redoubts. Come on, Straw, Cameron, Hague, and you, too, Boris Johnson! When are you all going to stop poodling and call a halt to Israeli murder? American-made Israeli helicopters are pounding villages, killing hundreds of women and children - and our politicians do nothing but wring their hands.
Very true, damn good question. Unfortunately it begs an answer which you fail to supply.

Look at Blair, they say with real disgust: out there in Hollywood, touting for his next job while Beirut blazes, and we all know who runs Hollywood, eh, hmmm, know what I mean? It’s a gigantic conspiracy, Boris, they say, and it is high time you did something about it.
And they would be right.

And believe me, if I thought it would make a blind bit of difference, I would. I can see that the Israeli strategy seems to be disastrous, and is turning terrorists into martyrs. But then I don’t live in Haifa, or any of the places rocketed by the Hizbollah maniacs. These are not my relatives being killed, nor the relatives of my angry correspondents; and let us imagine that I did “denounce” Israel in full, free, frank and ferocious terms. Let us suppose that news of this stunning démarche were to reach the ears of some Katyusha victim, or some grime-streaked soldier of the Israeli Defence Force.
Your first sentence is simply a rather lame excuse to cover up the fact that you can’t be bothered or you’re too scared of losing your job. If we all took that view, i.e. not to stand up and be counted if our friends and family aren’t involved, we’d all still be living in caves (mud huts and tents requiring more social organisation and constructive criticism). And what if your words DID “…reach the ears of some Katyusha victim..”? You have adequately demonstrated in the title that you are happy to make unsupported and unjustifiable statements; why change the habits of a lifetime?

Never mind the mild hilarity at discovering that some obscure Tory spokesman had “denounced” Israel. If I were an Israeli, I would be astounded that any member of the British Government or Opposition felt able to criticise Israel at all.
Very good point. As ‘Wobbly’ has suggested, the British government aren’t quite the ‘poster government’ for keeping civilians out of bomb zones. That’s not the point however, the entire country was mislead along with the government by Blair and his spinning Jeremy. The majority of British people weren’t in favour of the invasion anyway. This is not, apparently, the case in Israel where, currently, the ‘vengeance’ enjoys popular support.

This is a country responding, however incompetently, to direct aggression against its own people from a neighbouring failed state. It was only three years ago that we, the goody-goody British, invaded a sovereign country thousands of miles away that presented absolutely no direct threat whatever.
I would REALLY like to be a fly on the wall when you make that ‘failed state’ comment to anyone Lebanese. Beirut has been flattened (by Israel coincidentally) three times now in the last decade and, since the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, pretty much rebuilt their economy and the city. I doubt that Britain could match their industry if the situation was reversed. I’ll let ‘direct aggression’ comment slide for now because I haven’t finished my research on the events which really led up to the Israeli ‘retaliation’.

We, the smug British, have been responsible for what is now a full-scale civil war, and in case there is still some ass out there (such as Blair) who says this is not a civil war, let me point out that Iraqi civilian deaths are now averaging 800 a week, and the monthly casualties for June approached the levels of the American Civil War, one of the bloodiest in history.
Yup, spot on, full marks, I hop you stand up in the Commons and say the same thing one day when you’re a big boy.

Our strategy - Jack Straw’s strategy - for Iraq has proved to be pure carnage, and for him to criticise Israel’s strategy is laughable. All of which, of course, makes my friends even crosser. Yes, they hiss, but then we shouldn’t have gone near Iraq. It was our fault for poodling to the Americans, and we all know why the Americans wanted to invade Iraq, hmmm?
In the circumstances, Mr Straw’s comments are indeed laughable; however, if he were to publicly admit that he had, under orders from Blair, made a terrible error in his handling of Iraq, we might allow this criticism if only because his advice would be derived from legitimate experience. As to why the Americans wanted to invade Iraq, your guess is as good as mine; Maybe Bozo Bush just wanted to impress his Dad.

It was partly about oil, but it was also Israel, wasn’t it? It was the old Jewish lobby, eh? they say, beginning to rev up like Mel in the cell. To which I can only wearily respond that, yes, I suspect that it was a bit about oil, and, yes, I have no doubt that the Israelis were happy to see the back of Saddam Hussein.
Reasonable speculation, bit light on evidence as usual.

But the only reason I supported the war was because I persuaded myself that it would be in the long-term interests of the people of Iraq, and, though that hope now looks pitiful, it has not quite died.
It must be on life support then.

And whatever the frustrated ravings of Mel Gibson and my correspondents, I do not believe that all the problems of the region can be traced to Israel, and nor do I believe that if Britain were to spurn Bush, snub Condi and “denounce” Israel, we would make the slightest difference to the fate of southern Lebanon.
Israel certainly contributes significantly to the problems and is a constant irritant to the local regimes. The US wasn’t very happy about Cuba if you remember the missile crisis. Israel is a FAR greater danger to nearby Middle Eastern countries than Cuba was to the US and that little affair came close to starting WW3. Again, you’re trying to excuse yourself by saying any criticism from you wouldn’t make any difference. How do you know unless you try it? Extremely unconvincing argument I’m afraid.

Of course anti-Americanism wins votes, especially if, like Jack Straw, you have a seat with a lot of Muslims. But show me how it works, this proposed spanking new “independent” British policy on Israel? Presumably we join France and Germany in their vapourings. Presumably we join the European Commission in encouraging the pouring of further squillions down the gullets of the brutal and corrupt Palestinian government.
Now Boris old boy, you really are treading on thin ice. I now challenge you to spend a month in Palestine without a team of Israeli bodyguards to actually see where the brutality and corruption exists. I’ll be happy to go with you. I’m not going to lecture you on this point but the evidence is utterly overwhelming and you’ve either ignored it or you aren’t interested.

Well, let me remind Mel and all his secret British sympathisers of two last differences between Israel and the Islamicists. Whatever the hideous shambles of the past few days, it is still true, in principle, that when Israeli rockets kill civilians, they have missed their targets, and that when Hizbollah rockets kill civilians, they have scored a deliberate hit.
I would sincerely like to see you demonstrate that statement in court. There are a number of excellent links in the comments here which, even if they don’t demolish this argument, certainly cast a very dubious light over it.

That is a moral difference that needs to be dinned into the skull of every saloon-bar strategist currently denouncing Israel. Finally, Mel, if you want to get wasted on tequilas and sheilas, you’re much better off in Tel Aviv than Teheran.
Simply drivel

Boris you are an utter buffoon and it saddens me that someone who comes across as a fairly affable and easy going sort of chap is in fact a right wing prick. It seems Michael Howard had your number after all.

By the way, I’m Jewish (not one of the “self-hating” ones mind you) and I think the Israelis are behaving appallingly as do a number of my friends in Israel.

Good day to you sir, and may the Lord have mercy on the shrivelled husk which is your soul (as you peace loving Christians say).

2/10
See me.

Well troops, shall we declare victory?

Looks like the opposition has shot their bolt…and fallen well short of hitting any particular target, let alone making an effective strike.

So tell me, does Cameron have a blog?

Declare victory if you will raincoaster, I’m still with Boris on this one!

There simple fact of the matter is that Hezbollah needed disarming, and nobody else could/did do it. Israel stepped up to the plate and I’m glad.

It is of course agreed, I think by everyone including Boris, that Israel has been conducting the invasion with either extreme ineptitude or highly immoral deliberate targetting.

However, the motives for this invasion were sound, and we should be trying to pursuade Israel to be more humane in their conduct, NOT asking for a complete and unc