Lebanese Programmer blog

Oh, come on. Life isn't that simple. How about some proposal for how to resolve the conflict instead of catchy one-liners...

I'm so glad that that is not my problem. :) ;)

Sadly enough, Israel dosen't have much choice in order to survive. The country mustn't show weakness, otherwise it is doomed. Even though I dislake unneccessary violence like this, I think that terrorists and their supporters should be taught an even more severe lesson.

south lebanon is basically run by street gangs associated with hezbollah. they have been randomly firing rockets and missiles across the border into israeli towns for years now, and now they kidnapped two israeli soldiers, and killed 4 more in the same incident. the israelis are mad as hell, and they have a right to be. hezbollah provoked this, a response by israel is not unwarrented. an argument could be made that israel is overreacting, but they are not out of line in responding to the threat. israel has pleaded with the lebanese government for years to crack down on the hezbollah gangs, but they refused, and even helped to funnel iranian money and weapons to them. at this point i think they feel they have no other option than to handle it themselves.
the most important thing to remember here though is, hezbollah provoked this.

..by killing innocent civilians? good lesson!

I agree with hj... and I think there's no way in hell that Israel is terrorist. I think that you, niko, need to start doing a little bit of research if you plan on continuing to post this bullshit. Basically, you take on the mindset that a lot of Europeans and Canadians (I am Canadian, not American) take, that is the mindset that everything that Bush does is wrong and that anyone affialiated with Bush is wrong... it's like the midas touch but reversed. I think that this mindset is totally screwed. Seriously... I can see how you would think that Bush is wrong to be in Iraq even though I disagree with that, but I have no idea about how you came to the conclusion that Israel is terrorist.

huh? were did niko say that isreal is terrorist? he only said isreal breeds new terrorists with their actions which i kind of agree with. war against terrorism is quite a silly idea.

nothing seems to work to really squash terrorism does it, but that doesn't mean the answer is to do nothing and just hope it goes away by itself. that would be nice, but its not realistic.
so what to do? comply with them? well then its open season for any yahoo to extort whatever he wants with the threat of violence. targeted assasinations? now they are martyrs. they incite more to join in. arrest them? now they will kidnap people and demand their release. israel needs to turn the public against them, and to do this they will punish lebanon, and in doing so earn the hatred of the lebanese, but also some of that vitriol will be directed internally at hezbollah, for inciting israel to do this. israel is doing the only thing they can do.

lay down and they will step all over you (WWII/911). stand up for yourself. do not live in fear of the terrorists. much as lug like irrlicht and niko, some of niko's political views are really narrow (scarely sometimes). lug recommends niko to stick to programming, leave the political stuff to people in the know. lug still loves you niko!

what the hell are you reading into the two sentences of niko? :)

he said that the pictures are shocking and that isreals strike (more collateral damage than dead hisbollah guys) will fuel more hatred.

is this wrong or what? :)

Israel is exerting colective punishment over a people which has NOTHING TO DO with terrorism. In other words, to hit Hezballah Israel is taking hostage a whole country which suffered already the bitterness of a civil war less that 16 years ago. By any definition, that's state terrorism. If not, then
-Why should they target their bridges?
-What about power plants?
-...And fuel depots?

The aim of Israel is to continue its policy of bullying the whole region, always unpunished since the USA will always veto any UN resolution against them. Did you read the last proposal of resolution by Qatar? Nothing could possibly be more balanced, they started in fact by condemning Hezballah! So why veto it?

Let's be logical here. What can Israel possibly achieve with this? I understand the kidnapping of the soldiers by a terrorist group bothers them, it's natural. But will they ever get them back like this? No way in hell!
What thei gain from this is the radicalization of the population of the neighbouring countries, which will them give them an excuse for total war.

This case looks more and more like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, which served as the pretext to start a world war.

Or you think Israel did not have this planned in advance?

Jarod, yeah, it is so easy to lay all the blame on Israel. Israel is attacked by terrorists all the time, coming from the occupied territories or elsewhere all the time. Somehow you seem to take these killings of innocent people for granted. You lament the death of innocent Lebanese, but ignore the death of now thousands of equally innocent Israelis. Why?

You ask, what can Israel gain by this? But actually the question is: What can Israel gain by twiddling their thumbs instead? Simply let those attacks happen all the time? Like Japan has earthquake and and Indonesia has tsunamis, Israel has terrorist attacks? Israel has to answer and Hezbollah knew very well, that Israel couldn't negotiate with them now, since they refused negotiation with Hamas, which again they had every right to. So if you want to blame someone, blame Hezbollah.

And don't try to tell, Israel didn't do enough to resolve the question on occupied territories. They did. Palestinians failed time and time again in this question.

Baal Cadar,
It's you who is now putting all the blame on the Arabs.
I for one think it's very regretable that terrorist attacks of ANY kind happen, independently on the perpetrator or the victim, Israel included. But if Baal Cadar,
It's you who is now putting all the blame on the Arabs.
I for one think it's very regrettable that terrorist attacks of ANY kind happen, independently on the perpetrator or the victim, Israel and the Arab nations included. But if Israelis have the right to live in peace, so do the Palestinians and Lebanese.
A live is a live, independently of its ethnic background or national origin. A dead jew is worth exactly the same as a dead arab, chinese, black, european white, native american or australian maori. But people (and many times the press) many times tend to resort to the caricature that the Israelis are all innocent citizens and the Arabs are all terrorists. BTW, check http://www.ifamericansknew.org/ to see the numbers of the occupation of palestine and see who killed more people or destroyed more houses. Not that any side is exempt of guilt... But please don't whitewash Israel.

Again, independently of what the neighboring countries and peoples think about the foundation of the state of Israel (which they take as illegitimate), it's a fact that now the nation exists, they have no power to make it disappear and generations of people where born there as Israelis. Said that, they have the right to defend themselves as any other nation, no more and no less. But legitimate defense has its limits, and the destruction of the civilian infrastructure of a country which can't even fight back (Hezballah is not the army of Lebanon) is state terrorism, no matter how you paint it!
And of course, as Niko said, the result of this action in the long term will be the utmost radicalization of the attacked populations. Let me repeat the still unanswered question: If Israel is just fighting back Hezballah, then
-Why should they target their bridges?
-What about power plants?
-...And fuel depots?
-The Beirut Airport was already bombed SIX times during the last week

What can they achieve with this? Face it, the objective is not to get the soldiers back, it's a wider plan of total war and conquest. Soon probably involving also Syria and Iran.

(FIRST SENTENCE CENSORED by niko. No need for personal insults here, sorry.)

Iran and Syria are enemies to Israel... total war and conquest, what the hell? Israel is retaliating to Hezbolla's actions.

What I wrote was only pro-israel on this high level, because your post was so anti-israel. I concentrated on these points. Of course I don't see the whole issue all black&white.

As for why they attach infrastructure instead of just the hezbollah, is because they are not able to strike at hezbollah. If this were this easy to remove them, they hadd done so already.
Lebanon had just left the impression on Israel (and the rest of the world too for that matter) that Hezbollah is an Israelian problem that somehow happended to be stationed on Lebanese territory. They did nothing against them, let them attack Israel all the time with not even a half-hearted attempt to move against Hezbollah, they even have Hezbollah ministers in their government. Israel wants Lebanon to take action. They hadn't listened to Israel's requests to move against Hezbollah before and it is impossible to fight effectivly against Hezbollah themself, as history showed.

Attacking infrastructure is a) retaliation(obviously I don't like it, but you asked and this is what I believe is part of the answer) and b) like any attack on infrastructure to hinder the enemy to effectivly defend himself. This is a war afterall. According to Israel: If Lebanon wants this to be ended, Hezbollah is to be fought down. And Lebanon's army has to take over control in the south and not let have Hezbollah have control there. Since Lebanon didn't move earlier, they have to be forced to fight against Hezbollah.

So to ask again my unanswered question: How were Israel to react in this situation in your opinion? (With regard to the palistine situation as it is now.)

Sure it can´t be right to destroy half a country within a couple of days just because terrorists live there (by the way, about half of the Lebanese population is Christian). Hezbolla´s actions have not been sanctioned by the Lebanese government, so they didn´t give the Israelis a legitimate reason to start a war. (Two abducted soldiers are a mighty meager pretext to kill thousands of civilians, too...) The whole region has been destabilized by Israel´s actions, which can be characterized as riding roughshod everyone else there in the pursuit of their own interests: The palestinians have been living in refugee camps for 40 years, are standing for hours in army road blocks to go to work and back, the Israeli don´t respect their government (that now - aimed attacks to kill government officials - should be a reason for war) nor their borders (building new settlements), nor their civil rights. No wonder they now "have to" crack down on all the terrorists who happen to have popped up from out of nowhere...

Anna, about the first part: Lebanese government has not sanctioned these actions? Sorry, but this is a very lame statment. They have done nothing against it either. They were twiddling there thumbs and let them do all the killing business. The abduction(and murder of the other ones not to forget) might not be sanctioned by some official letter of intent or something, but this is sanctioned by letting it happen so many times already.

To the second part: The history you told can be told in other ways too and this could also have been resolved 50 years earlier in a much more friendly manner. Anyway, looking at how things are today, we have a democratically legitimated Hamas lead government which does support terroristical attacks on Israel, which does not accept the state Israel as legitimate and wants to extinguish it. Not exactly a good negotiation partner. They themself (organisation Hamas, with or without official sanction) have abducted the soldiers, they themself have started this whole situation. Why does everyone (not exactly, but you and Jarod) only search for reason on Israels side. Israel is, in this whole discussion, the only party expected to act reasonable. It can get unreasonably attacked, its people unreasonably murdered, but must never do anything unreasonably itself, while this position doesn't seem to be taken towards the opposite parties in this conflict. Do you believe the Arabs in this region to be some kind of native tribe, that just lives to its own rules? Or do you believe them to be plain stupid and not to understand reason? Or what it? I don't get it, please explain it to me.

And to you too the question I asked trice already and that is still unanswered: What were the alternatives for Israel in the current situation?

One of the problems is that you have 2 completely different issues here. If Israel were just another country defending itself, no-one would bat an eyelid. Taken in the context of just the present day, Israel is the defender.

However, taken in a historical context it's much more complex than that. There was no state of Israel until the mid-20th century (ignoring pre-600AD), and it was basically carved out, by a mixture of slow immigration and eventually force, from what had been the territory claimed by others for several hundred years. It is folly to think that this would have no ramifications.

Violence can never be justified, but the underlying causes run deep. Lebanon, Syria et al absorbed many of the people displaced by the creation of Israel, so it should be no surprise that hostilities exist there. Whilst the Lebanese government certainly doesn't want Hezbolla stirring up trouble for it, at the same time it is politically very difficult to eliminate it entirely without undermining your own position and basically encouraging a coup by exactly these people. They've tried to incorporate and diffuse, a common approach, but it hasn't worked, clearly.

There are rights and wrongs on both sides. Hezbollah was undeniably wrong for starting this. Israel clearly had to respond, but the extent that the response has affected everyday civilians from many, many countries is not winning it any friends.

Put it this way - the argument that Israel's scale of response is justified on the basis of provocation isn't entirely watertight. You could make the case that Israel provoked the very people that are attacking them now too by displacing them to begin with. So who's right? No-one. Until a balanced agreement is reached nothing is going to break the Tit-for-tat cycle - and I do think the Palestinians missed a serious opportunity a few years back, thanks to Arafat - but that earlier offers in the 60s were woefully one-sided in favour of Israel so it's not surprising they didn't go anywhere.

I do have to say though, taken in the context of the here and now, that Israel had only 2 response options - to invade southern Lebanon to stop further Hezbollah attacks, which might have been more surgical but would have undoubtedly resulted in more casualties on the Israeli side, or do what they're doing now. I do think they've gone a bit too far with the bombing, especially since I doubt it will eradicate the problem anyway, but their options were very limited.

But at the same time in the broader context they can't point at other countries and say 'It's all your fault', since their history carries a considerable amount of blame for the creation of the current environment, if not the triggering actions of the violence in this instance.

Firstly, the kidnapping done by the Hezbollah/Hammas which led to 'open war' by Israel is actually very small in scale compared to kidnappings done by Israel. Israel has kidnapped lots of Palestinians that hardly no one make a fuss of it. And it is not so when the Israelis was kidnapped. Just imagine, close to 3 millions people in Palestine fled when Israel bombs the bridges, infrastructures just because they want the Israeli corporal back. Is that simply insane? How about the thousands of Palestinians which had already been kidnapped? In short, this Israel is MIGHTY ARROGANT.

There are so many things to say.. but please educate yourself in the actual happening. Many have indeed suffered losing wives,husbands,sons,daughters and houses and here, we are just typing from our comfort chairs defending things base on higly biased news from 'Fox' or 'CNN'. Yes, they (Fox/CNN) had always never reported when Palestinians were kidnapped or murdered for example. BBC is definitely better than them.

baalcadar,

This is the response to your question of 'what is the alternative response to Israel'.

The answer is not easy - first you have to understand in entirety (or in context) because you can think of an answer. And I will try to put this as simple as possible because I am quite lazy at typing ;)

If you have been studying their actions from the past.. Israel is definitely arrogant (the mildest term it is). How can you imagine Israel put a concrete border inside another nation (Palestine) and in the end, people cant simply move from one village to another. Or people cant simply go to shop to buy groceries because they are all blocked? Fine.. you say it is because 'terrorist/suicide bomber' has been trying to bomb Israeli and they need to be restrained. Are these 'suicide bombers' are born full of hatred as soon as they come out from their mothers' wombs? Impossible isn't, and there must be something that has triggered the action. The truth is Israel soldiers have been freely coming to ANY Palestinians village, rape the womens or even girls, kill anyone at will, trimming their crops until they are practically destroyed and lastly have their houses buldozed so that ILLEGAL SETTLEMENT can build on top of the rubbles. What if you are the son of a family where everyone else excluding you have been murdered this way? And you are unable to do anything because you dont have the Apache (which was willingly supplied by USA). You are feeling helpless, and some of these helpless souls indeed turn into 'suicide bomber', or joining Hammas or Hezbollah. Although the Israel knows all this fact, they have always been ARROGANCE, and the solution is well to put a border surrounding critical villages.

And know, do you think Israel is acting out of self-defence? And now, do you think that Israel has the so-called alternative? Indeed, they are the terrorist and they had been claiming the victims as terrorist whereas the victims had all been retaliating to the terrorism they done.

Sorry for the 'insult' thing earlier... I guess the facts are being portrayed as opinions here so, I'll try not to get frustrated too much with whatever 'opinions' people might have.

what israel could do? well, a good starting point would be to get out of other peoples land and to stop kidnapping other goverments politicians. besides: hamas was elected not without any reason: the old goverment of the palestinians was corrupt and did almost nothing for their own people, especially for the poor and the unemployed people, so the people voted for opposition - i think i heard of such things happening in other countries, too...
and yes, hamas is responsable for many assaults on israel, but kept the truce for quite a long time and planed to indirectly accept the right to excist of israel. and on the israelian side: the wall, disseizin, assasination with killing innocent passants, and that in times of, when you can use that word in this context, peace. yes, hamas does not accept the right to excist of israel, they have to change that as soon as possible. but israel does not accept the indepence of the palestinian, and so does not accept their state.

syedhs, I read and reread your post, but didn't find the answer to my question as how Israel should resolve this. Are you saying Israel should invent a time machine and make itself unhappen?
Also I clearly don't believe everything you wrote to be unbiased facts.

Again I have to say it explicitly that I do not see Israel as a saint here, not at all. This cannot be seen in my posts so far, as they were written in quite an rather agressive mood and as answer to the posts so one-sidedly biased against Israel (which made me agressive in the first place ;) )

Anyway, The contrast to Steve's post showed, that I cannot really write on such topics, so I withdraw from it now..

@Baal Cadar: Of course, the discussion is emotional and there are arguments for each side. And noone´s ever right when when civilians die, on whichever side. But what people are trying to say here (I think) is that Israel promoted terrorist action by (re)acting more aggressively than would have been necessary in the past, getting caught up in a vicious cycle of violence.
And, even without any judgement on the justification of the war against Lebanon, I think it definitely wasn´t the right solution and will only stir up more hate. As lame as it may sound: Talks are the only way to resolve the whole situation down there, and the more violence is used, the more difficult it becomes to start talking. What may seem as a inevitable step to defend yourself this moment will just multiply the casualties on both sides in the long run.

Btw, the Lebanse programmer answered to your question:
http://codedemigod.com/blog/

Rape, murder and even there was a story of an old man who was buldozed life because he couldnt escape quickly enough from his own house. That was a story running maybe at least 3-4 years ago. This was all done so that Israel could occupy their places, and built an illegal settlement on top of the rubbles. These are all documented, you will have to find the stories yourself (and definitely not biased).

Well yes, I dont offer the solution, as the situation is very difficult. The solution is actually clear, but this will be controversial and will divert the dicussion away. Stick to one topic, be finished with it, so that we can to the next one ;)

Baal Cadar,

I won't expand myself on this post since Steve made a good synopsis of my general line of thought. But resuming, it's shortsighted to say that Hezballah's kidnapping of the israely soldiers was the trigger to this conflict. They where in turn reacting to the shelling of a family in a Gaza beach by Israeli artillery. And the Israel did that in retaliation for something else, and so on. It's all a regrettable vendetta cycle.

Now, you said that israel refused to negotiate with Hamas and they have the right to do so. Maybe they have, but then they risk to be perceived as acting in bad faith towards its neighbors. They moved there to the middle of the Arabs, not the opposite, so they should be able to concede to negotiate as well.
About your question, what where the alternatives to Israel, the smart answer would be to contribute to end the root of all the conflicts in that region: follow the path that Itzack Rabin and Arafat tried to draw years ago and recognize the state of Palestine. And of course, dismantle the illegal settlements in the occupied territories and stop the economical embargo to Palestine.
Start, for example, by enabling a win-win situation and negotiate the soldiers in exchange for palestinian political prisioners.

I actually liked the analogy you used before between the terrorist attacks in Israel and the tsunamis in Japan and earthquakes in Indonesia. It really became a "feature of the region" and the founders of the state of Israel should have predicted so. It's like when a problematic neighbor moves to your building.
But they are still in time to deserve their acceptance by the nations around, if only they really have the will to do so.
Of course, that could require Israel's eternal protector to feel a little bit of shame once in a while and stop sending them inconditionally money and weapons.