7/30/2006

the tragedy of moderation

Go read. ALL of it.

Hizbollah has won. again.

And to those who have so little faith in the power of the Enlightenment, who argue that the sole route to victory requires the West to abandon its soul, then my response is that the West has already lost and does not deserve to win.

While you look at this picture of this man, keep in mind what Alan Dershowitz has said. And then ask yourself just how falsely the claims of sorrow from Israel must ring in his ears.

UPDATE: Jonathan Edelstein aka the Head Heeb sums it up: the attack on Qana was stupid.

O, Israel! You are your own worst enemy. Jan Egeland's proposal for a 72-hour humanitarian cease-fire, seems like such a lost opportunity now. Israel will now suspend aerial attacks for 48 hours, but the damage is done and Israel has lost.

Had the Egeland proposal been accepted, precious time would have been secured for Hizbollah to succumb further to domestic pressures - Hizbollah had already agreed to the 7-point plan that subtantially achieved most of Israel's strategic objectives!

But Israel pressed on and now they have lost. Hizbollah is supreme in Lebanon, it's national reputation reclaimed from the abyss it faced just three days ago. Oh, you fools!

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why that man? Why the same man (guy with green helmet) in a dozen posed photos?

We now have 2 confonding elements:

1. IAF has video of the bombing of the Qana building that proves rocket launchers were present.

2. An IDF investigation has found that the building in Qana struck by the Air Force fell around eight hours after being hit by the IDF.
"The attack on the structure in the Qana village took place between midnight and one in the morning. The gap between the timing of the collapse of the building and the time of the strike on it is unclear," Brigadier General Amir Eshel, Head of the Air Force Headquarters told journalists at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, following the incidents at Qana.
Eshel and the head of the IDF's Operational Branch, Major General Gadi Eisnkot said the structure was not being attacked when it collapsed, at around 8:00 in the morning.

Hezbollah is 100% responsible for the deaths here, just as they were 100%A responsible for killing 2 Arab children when their rockets hit nazareth, just as they are responsible for killing dozens of civilians with their 1500 rocket attacks on Israel.

THE TRAGEDY OF MODERATION?!?

No, the tragedy of Arab terrorism.

Biggest victims of Arab terrorism, whether Al Qaeda terrorism, Hamas terrorism, Hezbollah terrorism, or Iraqi insurgent terrorism ... are Arabs!!

Anonymous said...

"But Israel pressed on and now they have lost. Hizbollah is supreme in Lebanon, it's national reputation reclaimed from the abyss it faced just three days ago. Oh, you fools!"

Let me add another point to illustrate the absurdity of Hezbollah reclaiming some reputation (and besides, in what world does IDF's loss of prestige have to be Hezbollah's gain - when Hezbollah does DELIBERATELY what IDF does by accident??) ...

On Tuesday, Hezbollah fired 90 rockets. The casualties included a 15-year-old girl who was killed when a rocket struck a home in a Muslim neighborhood in a Galilee village and a 78-year-old Haifa resident who suffered a heart attack while trying to reach a bomb shelter. On Wednesday another 100 rockets hit northern Israel.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah apologized for an attack that killed two Israeli Arab children in northern Israel, saying the youngsters were "martyrs for Palestine."

In the days following the cross-border ambush, Hezbollah terrorists have waged a terror war against Israel, firing over 1,500 rockets at targets all over the northern part of the country. Major cities as far south as Haifa and Tiberias have been hit, injuring nearly 1300 people and killing at least 51 more. Hezbollah rocket fire kills Israeli civilians with no apologies. It is a deliberate targetting.


http://www.onefamilyfund.org/Default.aspx?tabid=907

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said following an attack that killed civilians, "Today, especially in this sensitive moment and after several military achievements and surprises, Hezbollah is not fighting a battle for Hezbollah or even for Lebanon. We are now fighting a battle for the(Islamic) nation," he said. "The peoples of the Arab and Islamic world have a historic opportunity to score a defeat against the Zionist enemy ... We are providing the example," he added.

You may want to compare - Israeli victims of Hezbollah ...
http://www.onefamilyfund.org/Portals/0/WWH_Pics/Terror_Today/Latest_Attacks/904_HezbollahAttack/WoundedIsraeli1.jpg

These are dramatic pictures too.

If Hezbollah has 'credibility' for 'bravely' wantonly civilians even after IAF attacks them, then the world is upside down.

jinnderella said...

patrick, aziz is not saying that israel doesn't have cause, just that the mechanism they have chosen is stupid.
hizb' is integrated in the leb population. truly impossible to root them out without killing innocent bystanders.
the optimal solution is a diplomatic one.
the solution which saves lives.

you know, in cosci genetic algorithms and neural nets are far more more robust than rule based systems. we always say, the organic algorithm is the strongest.
in leb, the analogy would be to strengthen the leb gov't so that it can both compete with and control hizb'.
my objection is that israel is stupid. they are allowing hizb' to shape targetting with shoot and scoot. israel treated lebanon, a sovereign nation, like a retarded child.
israel should treat with the lebanese gov't directly.
they completely undercut siniora.
israel's attitude is "you, leb gov't are too powerless and weak for us to notice, you defaulted on 1559, so we are going to clean out your nasty hizb' infestation and massacre a bunch of your innocent citizens that can't get out of our way, and destroy your infrastructure and set your economy back fifty years. so there. that will teach you to harbor terrorists."

Arcane said...

First of all, the photo of that man carrying the child is acting, pure and simple, just like on a Hollywood set. I reject it completely as a hoax.

hizb' is integrated in the leb population. truly impossible to root them out without killing innocent bystanders.

The "bystanders" were told to leave. They did not.

the optimal solution is a diplomatic one.
the solution which saves lives.


"Saving lives" is irrelevent. I don't want any Hezbollah "lives" to be saved. If I could kill every single one of them and their supporters with a single snap of my fingers, I'd snap them right now and then do it two more times just to make sure.

And you're not "saving lives." You're simply securing the future of Hezbollah.

israel should treat with the lebanese gov't directly.

They have been dealing with the Lebanese government FOR YEARS and they have done NOTHING. They're still the puppets of Syria. Emile Lahoud was installed by Syria and until just two years ago the Syrians were running a large portion of the country and sending supplies to Hezbollah. The Lebanese president publicly thanked Iran for sending more Pasdaran operatives over to help Hezbollah at the start of hostilities and regularly praises Hezbollah. You can't work with people like that!

israel treated lebanon, a sovereign nation, like a retarded child.

They basically are a retarded child. Not once have they attempted to confront Hezbollah. Not once!

And for those who say that they are "too weak" to attack Hezbollah, then why have they never requested assistance in dealing with them?

israel's attitude is "you, leb gov't are too powerless and weak for us to notice, you defaulted on 1559, so we are going to clean out your nasty hizb' infestation and massacre a bunch of your innocent citizens that can't get out of our way, and destroy your infrastructure and set your economy back fifty years. so there. that will teach you to harbor terrorists."

Tell me, at what point did the Israeli government deliberately and knowingly target civilians in this latest conflict, as you insinuate?

Was the USA wrong to firebomb and nuke cities in WWII? Was the USA wrong to line up SS-men in civilian clothes after WWII and shoot them as we did in many cases? What are called "war crimes" today were much more common in WWII... are those men and women who served in WWII guilty? Should the US have abandoned the war because of a few?

Arcane said...

Aziz,

It's important that you actually THINK here: I did not say that Qana was a hoax, as many on the internet are saying; I'm saying that the photo of the man carrying the child specifically is a hoax, since he is in numerous other photos dressed in different garb at supposed different locations, two of which he is carrying the same child in brown clothing as he was supposedly carrying in Qana.

The Palestinians do hoaxes like this on a regular basis, such as with the al-Durah kid in Jenin and the fake funeral processions where when the body is dropped he miraculously gets up and back in the coffin again, or the line goes around in a circle to give the impression that many more died. An example of such staged scenes is here:
http://www.seconddraft.org/movies.php

Arcane said...

I do not deny that probably 24 people died, as reported by NGOs, but I reject the claim that 50% died, as is being pushed by Hezbollah.

I do not believe it was a hoax.

But I also do not believe that Israel was wrong to bomb that building, especially if it was being used to house munitions. Seems nobody cares about that little fact...

John Shklov said...

Calling folks "heebs" is like calling folks "towelheads," it is demeaning to your arguments. Racism is the root cause of this conflict. Stoopid times two equals two stupid people. Get it? Otherwise, I agree with you.

jinnderella said...

arcane, they couldn't leave.
they had no money or food or transport.
the kids were too little to walk out.

what if...we had a time machine, and we could go back and change things about the establishment of israel as a state? could we reduce the sense of injustice, the hatred, the desire for revenge of the palestinians, somehow?
what if what israel is doing right now, could be done in some different way to not insert the hatred and vengence and percieved injustice into arab culture?

Aziz P. said...

Arcane, I deleted your comment. You can bash Islam at some other blog. If you want to engage me in debate here youre going to have to at least pretend to be more respectful of my sensibilities; this is not LGF.

You owe me an apology for the last comment you posted, which is now deleted. I advise you to calm down and engage me as a reasonable and civil person, or to leave. Until you make a choice between those two, further ocmments from you will be deleted.

Arcane said...

OK, what did I say that constituted "bashing" Islam?

Aziz P. said...

when you explicitly stated that the religion itself is to blame for the violence.

I will accept more qualified statements, but you made no effort, and on my turf I insist that you do the due diligence. I've got respect for your opinions from what I've seen you comment elsewhere, so I am willing to engage you, but I'm not going to waste my time on old arguments.

And yes I do expect you to search my archives via google for related posts on topics you wish to debate with me.

Arcane said...

I should have said "various highly militant interpretations of the Islamic religion." I apologize.

Aziz P. said...

ok Arcane- accepted, and let me apologize as well for being touchy about it.

Arcane said...

Well, now that the photographer who took the Qana photos has been suspended for doctoring other photographs, I think there is more than enough precedent now to state that the Qana photos were probably doctored, as well.

Adnan Hajj

Arcane said...

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525816599&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

jinnderella said...

arcane, they were not doctored, but they could have been "staged" for effect.

Scorpius said...

Doctored, staged, what's the difference? What is important that Hizbollah has gone on a propaganda war and some people easily bought into it at Qana, showing that they will always side with their tribe.

Repugnant.