Promoted by Steven D.
It is an open question which nation of bullies is more insane: us or Israel. We share a couple of common tendencies. Both nations tend to place outsized attention the lives of its own citizens while discounting the worth of our “enemies” and the innocents who get caught in the crossfire. Second, both nations lecture others about the rule of law while almost gleefully ignoring it themselves.
We’re seeing this again in Lebanon. If the Israeli tendency to punish everyone for the crimes of a few continues in this current expansion, it seems only logical that the entire Muslim world will pay for the actions of Hezbollah and Hamas militias. The bald-faced attempt to draw the US into their war of aggression with assertions that Hezbollah is planning to transfer captured IDF soldiers to Syria or Iran threatens to set the entire world ablaze.
All of this because some home-made rockets were launched into Israel, arguably in response to Israeli provocations. Can any sane person deny that this is a horrible over-reaction?
The insanity of these two nations, these two nuclear states ruled by men who worship only profit and hegemony, is a grave danger to the world. Dahr Jamail observes, from Amman:
The next day, Thursday, we awoke with our eyes glued to al-Jazeera on the television. Israeli warplanes bombed Beirut’s Rafiq al-Hariri airport. At least two air strikes were reported while Lebanese anti-aircraft guns fired feebly at the jets, according to witnesses. Israeli jets also bombed bridges linking south Lebanon to the rest of the country, and 22 civilians were killed last night by Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon.
In response to the bombings, Hezbollah claims to have fired 60 rockets into northern Israel.
The Israeli justification for bombing the airport in Beirut and pushing into southern Lebanon is that two of their soldiers were captured. In classic newspeak, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said of the incident, “It is an act of war by the state of Lebanon,” conveniently omitting the bombings in the occupied territories, including civilians on a beach, by Israeli forces over the last weeks.
“This is going to be a big war,” Abu Talat tells me while we watch plumes of smoke billowing from locations within Lebanon, “This is even more important for us to cover than Iraq, and you know how much I love Iraq.”
If Ohlmert has his way, it will be one large war, aflame from Gaza through Syria and into Iraq and Iran. It seems that he will settle for nothing else other than total capitulation, and I think that Muslims despite all of their internal divisions are unlikely to give it.